"That of the English nation he entertained sentiments of the most exalted admiration; that he was proud of being himself descended from that stock, although two hundred years had passed away, during which all his ancestors had been natives of this country. He claimed the great men of England of former ages as his countrymen, and could say with the poet Cowper, in hearty concurrence with the sentiment, that it is 'Praise enough To fill the ambition of a common man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.' "He believed that no nation, of ancient or modern times, was more entitled to veneration for its exertion in the cause of human improvement than the British. He thought their code of laws admirable; but, in the discussion of the bill before the committee, he had been compelled, in the discharge of his duty, to expose one great erroneous principle of morals incorporated into their laws; a principle, the natural and necessary consequence of which had been the occasion of the bill now before the committee; a principle enacted by the British Parliament, and sanctioned by the decision of their highest judicial tribunals, with the express and avowed purpose of encouraging the subjects of Great Britain to the practice of defrauding, even by the commission of perjury, the revenues of a foreign country." In July, 1840, a memorial was presented to Congress, from the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, asking the aid of government to carry on a series of magnetic and meteorological observations. This application was made in cooeperation with the Royal Society of Great Britain, and at their solicitation, and had for its object an extended system of magnetic observations at fixed magnetic observatories in different quarters of the globe. Mr. Adams, having been appointed chairman of a committee on the memorial, made a report setting forth at large the motives for concurrence, and the importance of the object asked for. The following extracts illustrate his comprehensive views and appreciation of the subject: