By the unanimous voice of the Conference the Delegate of Sweden, Count LEWENHAUPT, took the chair, and said that, for the purpose of proceeding to a permanent organization, it was necessary to elect a President, and that he had the honor to propose for that office the chairman of the delegation of the United States of America, Admiral C. R. P. Rodgers.

The Conference agreed unanimously to the proposition thus made, whereupon Admiral RODGERS took the chair as President of the Conference, and made the following address: 

GENTLEMEN:  I beg you to receive my thanks for the high honor you have conferred upon me in calling me, as the chairman of the delegation from the United States, to preside at this Congress.  To it have come from widely-separated portions of the globe, delegates renowned in diplomacy and science, seeking to create a new accord among the nations by agreeing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world.  Happy shall we be, if, throwing aside national preferences and inclinations, we seek only the common good of mankind, and gain for science and for commerce a prime meridian acceptable to all countries, and secured with the least possible inconvenience.

Having this object at heart, the Government of the United States has invited all nations with which it has diplomatic relations to send delegates to a Congress to assemble at Washington to-day, to discuss the question I have indicated.  The invitation has been graciously received, and we are here this morning to enter upon the agreeable duty assigned to us by our respective governments.

Broad as is the area of the United States, covering a hundred degrees of longitude, extending from 66 deg. 52’ west from Greenwich to 166 deg. 13’ at our extreme limit in Alaska, not including the Aleutian Islands; traversed, as it is, by railway and telegraph lines, and dotted with observatories; long as is its sea coast, of more than twelve thousand miles; vast as must be its foreign and domestic commerce, its delegation to this Congress has no desire to urge that a prime meridian shall be found within its confines.

In my own profession, that of a seaman, the embarrassment arising from the many prime meridians now in use is very conspicuous, and in the valuable interchange of longitudes by passing ships at sea, often difficult and hurried, sometimes only possible by figures written on a black-board, much confusion arises, and at times grave danger.  In the use of charts, too, this trouble is also annoying, and to us who live upon the sea a common prime meridian will be a great advantage.

Within the last two years we have been given reason to hope that this great desideratum may be obtained, and within a year a learned Conference, in which many nations were represented, expressed opinions upon it with singular unanimity,