Report upon weights and measures / By John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State of the United States. Prepared in obedience to a resolution of the Senate of the third March, 1817.

  • United States Department of State
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report upon weights and measures / By John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State of the United States. Prepared in obedience to a resolution of the Senate of the third March, 1817. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/272 page 9
    multiplied together to yield the surface or the solid contents : and, unless the object to be measured is a perfect square or cube of equal dimensions at all its sides, decimal arithmetic is utterly incompetent to the purpose of their admeasurement. Linear measure, to whatever modification of matter applied, ex- tends in a straight line; but the modifications of matter, as produced by nature, are in forms innumerable, of which the defining outward line is almost invariably a curve. If decimal arithmetic is incompe- tent even to give the dimensions of those artificial forms, the square and the cube, still more incompetent is it to give the circumference, the area, and the contents, of the circle and the sphere. There are three several modes by which the quantities of material substances may be estimated and compared; by number, by the space which they occupy, and by their apparent specific gravity. We have seen the origin and character of mensuration by space and number, and that, in the order of human existence, one is the result of a ne- cessity incidental to individual man preceding the social union, and the other immediately springing from that union. The union of the sexes constitutes natural society : their permanent cohabitation is the foundation of domestic society, and leads to that of government, arising from the relations between the parents and the offspring which their union produces. The relations between husband and wife im- port domestic society, consent, and the sacred obligation of promises. Those between parent and child, import subordination and govern- ment ; on the one side authority, on the other obedience. In the first years of infancy, the authority of the parent is absolute; and has, therefore, in the laws of nature, been tempered by parental affection* As the child advances to mature age, the relations of power and sub- jection gradually subside, and, finally, are dissolved in that honor and reverence of the child for the parent, which can terminate only with life. When the child goes forth into the world to make a settle- ment for himself, and found a new family, civil society commences; government is instituted—the tillage of the ground, the discovery and use of metals, exchanges, traffic by barter, a common standard of measures, and mensuration by weight, or apparent specific gra- vity, all arise from the multiplying relations between man and man, now superadded to those between man and things. The difference between the specific gravities of different substances is so great, that it could not, for any length of time, escape observa- tion 5 but nature has not furnished man, within himself, with any standard for this mode of estimating equivalents. Specific gravity, as an object of mensuration, is in its nature proportional. It is not like measures of length and capacity, a comparison between different definite portions of space, but a comparison between different proper- ties of matter. It is not the simple relation between the extension of one substance, and the extension of another; but the complicated re- lation of extension and gravitation in one substance to the extension and gravitation of another. This distinction is of great and insu- perable influence upon the principle of uniformity> as applicable to a
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3