4 Boc. No. 11. 



val of tho money in this country, not remain unoccupied, even until the 

 next session o( Congress. The object now first deserving attention will 

 be to secure the permanency of the fund entire ; for which purpose, I 

 must indulge the hope that it will not be intrusted to any bank, nor 

 loaned upon any pledge of State stocks. 



I should gieatly prefer that it should be disposed of as was the fund 

 of one hundred thousand dollars which had been held by the President 

 of the United States, in trust for an annuity of six thousand dollais, 

 payable to the Seneca Indians. By the act of February 19, 1831, the 

 whole fund was placed to the ciedit of the Department of War, and the 

 duty of making the annual payment to the Seneca tribe was assigned 

 to the Secretary. In the present case, the whole fund might pass to the 

 credit of the Treasury of the United States, and the annual payment 

 be diiected to be made by the Secretary of the Treasury. The fund of 

 course to be redeemable at the discretion of Congress, and otherwise 

 invested for the objects of the institution. 



This would give an annual appropriation of 30,000 dollars, and, to 

 keep \he fund permanently unimpaired, the annual appropriation should 

 be ccuilii'.ed to that sum. 



I think that no i)art of the money should be applied to the endowment 

 of any school, college, university, or ecclesiastical establishment ; to 

 no institution for the education of youth, for that is a sacred obligation, 

 binding upon the people of this Union themselves, at their own expense 

 and charge, and tor \Nhich it would be unworthy of them to accept an 

 eleemosynary donation from any foreigner whomsoever. Nor do 1 be- 

 lieve it to have been strictly within the intention of the testator. For 

 ihe immediate object of the education of youth is not the increase and 

 diffusion of knowledge among men, but the instruction of children in 

 ihat which is already known. Its result is doubtless to diffuse, and 

 may be to increase, knowledge among men ; and so is apprenticeship to 

 trades, and so is the tillage of the ground, and so was to the ancient 

 shepherds of Egy})t and Chaldea the nightly keeping of their flocks, for 

 it enabled them, by the habitual observation of the stars, to trace their 

 courses to some of the sublimest discoveries of astronomy. 



Nor could the application of the fund to any ecclesiastical or religious 

 Establishment be a proper fulfilment of the testator's intention. The 

 people of the United States have also religious duties to perform, for the 

 charge and discharge of which they should not consent to be tributary, 

 even in gratitude, to the bounty of any foreigner. The preaching of the 

 gospel, like the education of youth, promotes the increase and diffusion 

 of knowledge ; but the worship of God, and the fulfilment of moral 

 duties to man, the special object of religious institutions, do not so much 

 import the increase of knowledge as the right use of what is known. 



I suggested to the President that annual courses of lectures on the 

 principal sciences, physical and mathematical, moral, political, and liter- 

 ary, to be delivered not by permanent professors, but by persons annu- 

 ally appointed, with a liberal compensation for each course, were among 

 the means well adapted to the end of increasing and diffusing knowledge 

 among men. 



But the great object of my solicitude would be to guard against the 

 canker of almost all charitable foundations — ^^jobbing for parasites, and 

 3ops for hungry incapacity. For the econonaicai management of the fund, 



