Doc. No. 11. 5 



and the periodical application of it to appropriate expenditures, it should 

 be invested in a board of trustees, to consist partly of members of both 

 Houses of Congress, with the Secretaries of the Departments, the At- 

 torney General, the mayor of the city of Washington, and one or more 

 inhabitants of the District of Columbia, to be incorporated as trustee;* 

 of the Smithsonian fund, with a secretary and treasurer in one person^ 

 and to be the only salaried person of the board ; to be appointed for 

 four years, and be capable of reappointment, but lemovable for ade- 

 quate cause by a majority of the board. Into details it is unnecessary 

 to enter. 



The first object of appropriation, however, in my judgment, should be 

 the erection of an astronomical observatory, for all the purposes of the 

 Greenwich Observatory, in England, and the Bureau des Longitudes^ in 

 France. This alone would absorb the annual income of the fund for 

 seven years, and will form the subject of another letter. 



I an), with great respect, sir, your very obedient seivant, 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



John Forsyth, Esq., 



Secretary of State of the United States, Washington. 



QuiNCY, October II, 1838. 



Sir : I have reserved for a separate letter what I proposed to say iis 

 recommending the erection and establishment of an astronomical obser- 

 vatory at Washington, as one and the first application of the annual in- 

 come from the Smithsonian bequest, because of all that I have to say f 

 deem.it by far the most important, and because having for many years 

 believed that the national character of our country demanded of us the 

 establishment of such an institution, as a debt of honor to the cause of 

 science and to the world of civilized man. I have hailed with cheering 

 hope this opportunity of removing the greatest obstacle which has hith- 

 erto disappointed the earnest wishes that I have entertained of witness- 

 ing, before my own departure for another world, now near at hand, the 

 disappearance of a stain upon our good name, in the neglect to provide 

 the means of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men, by a sys- 

 tematic and scientific continued series of observations on the phenomena 

 of the numberless worlds suspended over our heads — the sublimest of 

 the physical sciences, and that in which the field of future discovery h 

 as unbounded as the universe itself. I allude to the continued and ne- 

 cessary expense of such an establishment. 



In my former letter I proposed that to preserve entire and unimpaired 

 the Smithsonian fund, as the piincipal of a perpetual annuity, the annual 

 appropriations from its proceeds should be strictly confined to its annual 

 income. That, assuming the amount of the fund to be five hundred 

 thousand dollars, it should be so invested as to secure a permanent yearly 

 income of thirty thousand ; and that it should be committed to an incorpo- 

 rated board of trustees, with a secretary and treasurer, the only persoE 

 of the board to receive a pecuniary compensation from the fund. * 



On the 18th of March, 1826, Mr. C. F. xMercer, chairman of a select 

 committee of the House of Representatives of the United States, report- 

 ed to that House a bill for the erection of a national observatory at the 



