To my mind, it gains nothing from the theory which presided at its origin.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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Its unit is not to be regarded as a certain portion of the distance between the equator and the north pole, but as an artificial measure determined with peculiar care.
Had the same or any other unit been selected without measurement of the earth, the metric system would not have been less beautiful or perfect.
Looking closely at the metric system, we must confess its simplicity and symmetry.
On this account it may be acquired by the young with comparative facility, and, when once acquired, it may be used with despatch.
A superficial criticism has objected to the Greek and Latin prefixes; but this forgets that a system intended for universal adoption must discard all local or national terms.
They are common, or cosmopolitan, and in all countries they are equally suggestive in disclosing the denomination of the measure.
Unquestionably it is difficult for one generation to substitute a new system for that learned in childhood.
But no abridgment should be allowed to sacrifice the cosmopolitan character which belongs to the system.
The names in all languages should be identical, or so nearly alike as to be recognized at once.
They would preserve the characteristics of the unabridged terms, so that the simple mention of the measure, even in this abridged form, would disclose the proportion it bears to its fellow-measures.
In closing this chapter on the unquestionable advantages of the metric system, I must not forget that it is already the received system in the majority of countries.
The adoption of the metric system by the United States will go far to complete the circle by which this great improvement will be assured to mankind.
Here is a new agent of civilization, to be felt in all the concerns of life, at home and abroad.
It will be hardly less important than the Arabic numerals, by which the operations of arithmetic are rendered common to all nations.
It will help undo the primeval confusion of which the Tower of Babel was the representative.
They who have already passed a certain period of life may not adopt it; but the rising generation will embrace it, and ever afterwards number it among the choicest possessions of an advanced civilization.
After ample discussion, extended through several evenings, the Senate refused outright to appropriate $10,000 for distribution among public servants who, I insisted, had earned it by faithful labor.
I present, then, as my first objection, the consideration of economy.
Do not, Sir, wastefully, inconsiderately, heedlessly give away so much.
If you are in the mood of appropriation on this scale, select some of those public servants who have been discharging laborious duties on an inadequate compensation, and bestow it upon them.
Do this rather than become such sudden patrons of art.
I am pained to be constrained into these remarks; but, when you press a vote, you leave me no alternative.
Admit that she may make a statue; she cannot make one that you will be justified in placing here.
Promise is not performance; but what she has done thus far comes under the former head rather than the latter.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
