10 Doc. No. iO. 



from political causes, or others inherent in its nature; and that its fina. 

 decision thus early has been brought about by the course adopted in Feb- 

 ruary, I arn no longer permitted to doubt. Early may at first seem a 

 word little applicable, after one entire year and the best part of a second 

 have been devoted to getting the decision ; but when the proverbial de- 

 lays of chancery are considered, (and they could hardly have become a 

 proverb without some foundation,) it may not, perhaps, be thought wholly 

 out of place. Although neither tlie counsel nor solicitors gave their pre- 

 vious advice to the course, it being a point of conduct for my decision 

 rather than of law for theirs, it is yet satisfactory to be able to state that 

 they approved it afterwards. They regarded it as best consulting the 

 interests of the United States, on every broad view of a case where a 

 great moral object, higher than the pecuniary one, was at stake, enhan- 

 cing the motives for rescuing it, at the earliest fit moment, from all the 

 unavoidable risks and uncertainties of the future. A fortnight has not 

 elapsed since it was said in the House of Commons by an able member 

 that " a chancery suit was a thing that might begin with a man's life and 

 its termination be his epitaph." 



On the whole, I ask leave to congratulate the President and yourself 

 on the result. A suit of higher interest and dignity has rarely, perhaps, 

 been before the tribimals of a nation. If the trust created by the testa- 

 tor's will be successfully carried into effect by the enlightened legislation 

 of Congress, benefits may flow to the United States and to the human 

 family not easy to be estimated, because operating silently and gradually 

 throughout time, yet operating not the less eflectually. Not to speak of 

 the inappreciable value of letters to individual and social man, the monu- 

 ments whicii they raise to a nation's glory often last when others perish, 

 and seem especially appropriate to the glory of a republic whose founda- 

 tions are laid in the presumed intelligence of its citizens, and can only be 

 strengthened and perpetuated as that improves. May I also claim to share 

 in the pleasure that attends on relieved anxiety now that the suit is ended ? 



I have made inquiries from time to time, in the hope of finding out 

 something of the man, personally a stranger to our people, who has 

 sought to benefit distant ages by founding, in the capital of the American 

 Union, an institution (to describe it in his own simple and comprehensive 

 language) for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. 

 I have not heard a great deal. What I have heard and may confide in 

 amounts to this : That he was, in fact, the natural son of the Duke of 

 Northumberland ; that his mother was a Mrs. Macie, of an ancient fam- 

 ily in Wiltshire of the name of Hungerford ; that he was educated at^ 

 Oxford, where he took an honorary degree in 1786; that he went under' 

 the name of James Lewis Macie until a few years after he had left 

 the university, when he took that of Smithson, ever after signing only 

 James Smithson, as in his will; that he does not appear to have had any 

 fixed home, living in lodgings when in London, and occasionally staying 

 a year or two at a time in cities on tbe continent, as Paris, Berlin, Flor- 

 ence, Genoa, at which last he died ; and that the ample provision made 

 for him by tlie Duke of Northumberland, with retired and simple habits, 

 enabled him to accumulate the fortune which now passes to the United 

 States. I have inquired if his political opinions or bias were supposed to 

 be of a nature that led him to select the United States as the great trustee 

 if his enlafged and philanthropic views. The reply has been, that his 



