e United States were to be confidentially communicated.
No arrangement could have been more annoying to Mr. Monroe and his
cabinet, or more symptomatic of a settled opposition.

By a vote passed in March, 1817, the Senate had required of Mr. Adams a
report on weights and measures; and in December, 1819, the House of
Representatives had by a resolution made the same requisition. To this
subject he had directed his attention when in Russia; and had devoted
the leisure his duties as Secretary of State permitted, without
approximating to its completion, owing to the number and perplexity of
details its pursuit involved.

In the summer of 1820 he relinquished a visit to his father and friends
in Massachusetts, and concentrated his attention, during six months,
exclusively on this report, which he finished and made to Congress, in
February, 1821. At the conclusion of his work he thus expresses himself:
"This subject has occupied, for the last sixty years, many of the ablest
men in Europe, and to it all the powers, and all the philosophical and
mathematical learning and ingenuity, of France and Great Britain, have
been incessantly directed. It was a fearful and oppressive task. It has
been executed, and it will be for the public judgment to pass upon it."

From the abstruse character of this work, the labor, research, and
talent, it evidences have never been generally and justly appreciated.
It commences with the wants of individuals antecedent to the existence
of communities, and deduces from man's physical organization, and from
the exigences of domestic society, the origin of _measures of surface,
distance, and capacity_; and that of _weight_, from the difference
between the specific gravity of substances and its importance in the
exchange of traffic consequent on the multiplication of human wants,
with the increase of the social relations. He then proceeds to state
and analyze the powers and duties of legislators on the subject, with
their respective limitations. The results of his researches relative to
the weights and measures of the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans,
are successively stated. From the institutions of the nations of
antiquity he derives those of modern Europe and of the United States.
He praises the "stupendous and untiring perseverance of England and
France" in this field, and explains the causes which have not rendered
their success adequate to their endeavors. The system of modern France
on this