I04 Memorial of Gcoi'gc Brozvit Goode. 



members, appear to have been especially friendly to the plans of Mr. Poin- 

 sett, and on various occasions promoted the interests of the National 

 Institution on the floor of the Senate from 1841 to 1846. 



In June, 1842, Mr. Poinsett was again in Washington, and on the nth 

 presided at a meeting at the home of Mr. Francis Markoe for the purpose 

 of connecting the organizations of the National Institution with that of 

 the Smithsonian Institution. 



Mr. Preston [wrote John Quincy Adams] has introduced into the Senate a bill for 

 combining together these two institutions, and now stated to the meeting his views 

 on the .subject, embracing an appropriation of |;20,ooo, and the occupation by law of 

 a large portion of the Patent Office building for the preservation and arrangement 

 of the objects of curiosity collected by the exploring expedition under Lieutenant 

 Wilkes, now daily expected home ; and he called on me to say how far my purposes 

 may be concurrent with these suggestions. 



I said I had the warmest disposition to favor them, and thought there was but one 

 difficulty in the way, which might perhaps be surmounted. I had believed that the 

 whole burden and the whole honor of the Smithsonian Institution should be exclu- 

 sively confined to itself, and not entangled or commingled with any national estab- 

 lishment requiring appropriations of public money. I exposed the principles upon 

 which all my movements relating to the vSmithsonian bequest have been founded, as 

 well as the bills which at four succes.sive Congresses I have reported, first for 

 obtaining the money, and then for disposing of the fund. 



At the motion of Mr. Walker, of Mississippi, the president, Poinsett, was author- 

 ized to appoint a committee of five members of the Institute, to confer with Mr. 

 Preston and me upon the means of connecting the Smithsonian Institution with 

 the National Institute. 



Nothing seems to have resulted from these deliberations. 



On the 13th of June, at a stated meeting of the National Institution, 

 Senator Preston was present, and delivered, as the records inform us, "an 

 eloquent speech, in which he descanted at length on the history and labors 

 of the In.stitute, what it had done, and what it .proposed to do, its capac- 

 ity to be eminently useful to the country and Congress, the advantage of 

 uniting the Smith.sonian Institution with it, etc., and appealed to Con- 

 gress, and to the liberal citizens of the United States, to come forward in 

 aid of a glorious cause, and in accomplishment of the great national 

 objects which the Institute has in view. ' ' ' 



Senator Preston's bill for the union of the two institutions came to 

 naught.^ 



During this .session, however, the act to incorporate the National Insti- 

 tute, as it was henceforth to be called, passed in a much modified form, 

 and was approved July 27, 1842,^ and the society now seems to have felt 



'Proceedings of the National Institute, 3d Bull., 1845, p. 236. A copy was 

 requested for jiublication (Idem., p. 241), but I can not learn that it was ever put 

 in type. 



^ It was laid upon the table July 18, 1842, and never again taken up. 



3 See Charter of Incorporation, Constitvition, and By-Laws in Appendix to this 

 report, and in Proceedings of the National Institute, 3d Bull., pp. 3SS-392. See also 

 "Bill to iucorporate the National Institution," etc., reported by Senator Preston 



