DJEPARTMBINT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. IO5 



chose its executive instruments from among its own membership, it has 

 been essential to draw a line between actions of Congress and actions of its 

 administrative organs. Executive actions of Congress as a body are prop- 

 erly a portion of the work, but it will not include executive acts of com- 

 mittees or of individuals — i. e., acts which individuals, whether members 

 of Congress or others, performed in pursuance of general orders of Congress. 

 In the case of our projected edition of the Proceedings and Debates of 

 Parliament respecting America it is in some particulars more difficult to fix 

 the scope of the intended publication. It is plain that it should embrace the 

 House of Lords and the Scottish and Irish parliaments, as well as the British 

 House of Commons ; that all printed and all discoverable manuscript sources 

 should be drawn upon ; that all matters which are located in North America 

 by distinct geographical reference should be included. But since, on the 

 one hand, the book will have in no particular a greater value than for the 

 light it will cast on the commercial policy of Great Britain with respect to 

 the colonies, and since that policy was a part of a general imperial policy 

 in commercial matters, while, on the other hand, it is inexpedient to expand 

 the book unduly by the inclusion of things only remotely American, many 

 difficult questions arise, some of which are yet to be settled, as to the in- 

 clusion of parliamentary proceedings respecting such matters as British trade, 

 duties, bounties, drawbacks, piracy, and Atlantic fisheries. The most compe- 

 tent advice has been sought, and all these points will soon be decided. 



Miscellaneous Operations. — Another matter requiring expert advice, in a 

 more organized form, is the preparation of a systematic plan for future his- 

 torical publications on the part of the National Government. After the 

 publication this autumn of a revised and enlarged edition of Van Tyne & 

 Leland's "Guide to the archives of the Government of the United States 

 in Washington" — i. e., the preparation of an inventory — the next step, logi- 

 cally, in securing a proper historical use of the material in those archives 

 would be that a competent committee, representing the most expert historical 

 intelligence of the country, should frame ja scientific plan, to be followed in 

 the publication by the National Government of its volumes of documentary 

 historical material. The Government now publishes many such volumes, but 

 without concert between Departments and without general plan. Without 

 the spending of more money than now, the effectiveness of what is done for 

 historical progress would be manifold increased if a commission of scholars, 

 having the confidence of the public and acting under the auspices of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington, should, after due consideration of the 

 gaps in our national historical record and the Government's materials for 

 filling them, lay before Congress and the public a far-seeing general plan for 

 national historical publications. Such a plan, framed by such a committee 

 as I have had the honor to propose to the Trustees, would operate as a stand- 

 ard to be appealed to in the future, unofficial in origin, yet authoritative. 



