III. — GOVEENMENT EXCHANGES. 



Although Congress, by act July 20, 1840, authorized the printing 

 and binding of fifty copies of all volumes published by the two Houses, 

 which volumes were to bo reserved for the purpose of exchange with 

 foreign powers, yet from the omission to provide for the extra print- 

 ing, or from other cause, this liberal arrangement failed to go into 

 operation. 



An act of March 4, 184G, directed the Librarian of Congress to pro- 

 cure a complete series of reports of the United States courts and of the 

 laws of the United States, and transmit them to the minister of justice 

 of France, in exchange for works of French law presented to the United 

 States Supreme Court. 



By act of June 26, 1848, the Joint Committee on the Library was au- 

 thorized to appoint agents for exchange of books and public documents. 

 All books transmitted through these agents of exchange, for use of the 

 United States, for any single State, or for the Academy at West Point, 

 or the National Institute, to be admitted free. 



A resolution of June 30, 1848, ordered that the Joint Committee on 

 the Library be furnished with twenty-five copies of the Eevolutionary 

 Archives, twenty-five copies of Little & Brown's edition of the Laws of 

 the United States, seven copies of the Exploring Expedition then pub- 

 lished, and an equal' number of subsequent publications on the same 

 subject, for the purpose of international exchange. 



A joint resolution of March 2, 1849, directed that two copies of certain 

 volumes of the Exploring Expedition be sent to the Government of Rus- 

 sia, in lieu of those which were lost at sea on their passage to that coun- 

 try. The Secretary of State was also directed to present a copy of the 

 Exploring Expedition, as soon as completed, to the Government of 

 Ecuador. 



By the act of August 31, 1852, the act of 1848 regulating exchanges 

 was repealed. 



In 1852 the Smithsonian Institution urged that Congress should make 

 some systematic and permanent arrangement for distributing complete 

 series of its works to European libraries, to at least thirty of which they 

 might be judiciously supplied. It was also suggested that particular 

 works of scientific interest, as reports of patents, coast-survey opera- 

 tions, government explorations in geography and geology, and others 

 of a similar character, might be assigned in larger numbers of from one 

 hundred to three hundred, as had already been done in some instances 

 by the Senate. These might be distributed by the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion at moderate cost to the government, and direct returns or exchanges 

 obtained for the Library of Congress, if desired. The distribution of 

 Congressional documents in the United States could also be advanta- 

 geously modified. The copies given to the State Department for do- 

 mestic distribution were sent only to colleges or lyceums, not to regular 

 public libraries, even of the largest class. The rule in force with the 



745 



