Under these circumstances, this resolution also, as I understand it, should be considered on practical grounds.

The question of universal time will come on for consideration hereafter, and how that may be settled seems to me a matter of indifference compared with the decision on this resolution.  I question, for myself, whether any other plan than that it proposes would be generally accepted.  That is what I am afraid of.  Whatever respect nations may have for this Conference, public opinion would be very strong upon the point now at issue.  When you further recollect that all around the globe, in all these various seas, there are colonies with histories; that their geographical positions and boundaries were originally recorded by longitude according to the notation of which I have spoken, I think it is to be over sanguine to expect that those colonies will accept a new notation of longitude without greater proof of the positive necessity of the change.  It would not be the fiat of this Conference, or the fiat of any government, that would bring about the change.  I say this with all deference to the opinions of those who have advocated a change.

General STRACHEY, Delegate of Great Britain.  At the risk of repeating somewhat my remarks made to the Congress when we last met, I would add a few words to what has now been said.  It is our wish that the points of real difference should, as far as possible, be clearly brought out before the Conference comes to a vote.

As regards the counting of longitude in two directions, and the degree of advantage or disadvantage that may arise in starting from zero and treating east longitude as positive or plus, and west longitude as negative or minus, let me ask the attention of the Congress to the fact that longitude is already counted in these two directions, and that, as a matter of fact also, latitude is counted in the same way, in both directions from the equator, north latitude being plus and south latitude minus.  Nobody, so far as I have heard, has ever proposed that we should abolish this method of reckoning latitude, and substitute for it North or South polar distance, to be counted right round the earth; and yet there is the same quasi scientific objection to the present method of counting in the one case as in the other.  As already stated, it seems to me that, for purposes of practical convenience, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to separate the ideas on which the reckoning of longitude must be based, from those which must regulate the reckoning of time, and especially the reckoning of time in the sense of adopting a universal day over the whole world.  Now, it appears to me that, as regards the acceptance of the universal day, it certainly will be anything but convenient, if it begins and ends otherwise than when the sun passes the 180th meridian.  On the contrary, I think it will be extremely inconvenient.  I think that if the world were to adopt the meridian