BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF JOSEPH IIEXRY 153 



able espectatious of tlie nation wliick accepted and established the 

 trust, the credit is mainly due to the practical wisdom, the catholic 

 spirit, and the indomitable perseverance of its first Secretary, to whom 

 the establishing act gave much power of shaping ends which, as rough- 

 hewn by Congress, were susceptible of various diversion. For Con- 

 gress, iu launching, did not shape the course of the Institution, except 

 iu a general way. And in intrusting its guidance to the Ilegents, the 

 law created only one salaried and permanent ofiicer, the Secretary, on 

 whom, by its terms and by the conditions of the case, it devolved great 

 responsibility and commensurate influence. Some of us are old enough 

 to remember the extreme diversity of opinion in Congress over the use 

 to be made of Smithson's legacy. Que party, headed by an eminent 

 statesman and Ex-President, endeavored to found with it an astronomical 

 observatory, for which surely the country need not be indebted to a 

 foreigner. A larger party strove to secure it for a library ; not, prob- 

 ably because they deemed that use most relevant to the founder's in- 

 tention, but because rival schemes might fritter away the noble bequest 

 in popular lecturing, itinerant or stationary, of which the supply and 

 the quality are in this country equal to the demand; or in the dissemi- 

 nation of elementary knowledge by the printing-press, as if that were 

 beyond the reach of private enterprise; or in setting up one more col- 

 lege, university, or other educational establishment on half an endow- 

 ment; or in duplicating museums and cabinets, which, when supported 

 by a fixed capital, necessarily soon reach the statical condition in which 

 all the income is absorbed in simply taking care of what has been ac- 

 cumulated. 



Congress rejected, one after the other, the schemes for making of the 

 Institution an observatory, a library, a normal school, and a lecturing 

 establishment, with professors at Washington. It created a Board of 

 Eegents, charged it with the care of the collections and museums be- 

 longing to the United States; authorized the expenditure, if the liegents 

 saw fit, of a sum not exceeding twenty-five thousand dollars annually 

 for the formation of a library; and in all else it directed them to make 

 such disposal of the income " as they shall deem best suited for the pro- 

 motion of the imrpose of the testator." 



Under this charter, and with the course of the Institution still to be 

 marked out, it is not surprising that the official adviser and executive 

 of the Board should look to the will of Smithson for the controlling in- 

 terpretation of the law. He knew, moreover, that in an earlier will 



