Doc. No. 11. . 15 



steam, is a revolution in human affairs. Distance, once an element in our 

 safety, as in all our relations with the old world, and the basis on which 

 rested essential maxims in our policy, has disappeared. Europe has sud- 

 denly become neighbor to us, for good and for evil, involving consequen- 

 ces that baffle all foresight. Our statesmen must wake up to the mighty 

 change. There is no time to lose. They will have to ask themselves 

 what are the parts of our policy to be accommodated to the change. Our 

 men of science, feeling new excitem.ents from this approximation of the 

 hemispheres, will naturally be on the alert, growing more emulous in 

 their several fields. The continent that Columbus found was a desert, 

 or overspread with barbarous people and institutions. The continent 

 that steam has found teems with civilization, fresh, advancing, and una- 

 voidably innovating upon the old world. The statesmen, the warriors, 

 the active and enterprising men, the whole people of the two worlds, now 

 almost confront each other. It is at such a point in the destinies of Amer- 

 ica that the Smithsonian Institution comes into being. By their physical 

 resources and power, the United States are well known. Their resour- 

 ces of intellectual and moral strength have been more in the back 

 ground ; but may not an auspicious development of them be aided by an 

 institution like this, rising up in their capital simultaneously with this new 

 condition of things, guarded, as it will be, by the annual watchfulness, 

 fostered by the annual care, and improved, from time to time, by the 

 superintending wisdom of Congress ? 



The usefulness of the institution would doubtless be increased, if young 

 men could be regularly educated at it. But here imperious obstacles 

 seem to interpose. I!" I only, in conclusion, touch this part of the plan, 

 without dilating upon it, it is from a fear that the fund would not bear 

 their maintenance, in connexion with what has seemed to me other indis- 

 pensable objects. Perhaps a limited number who had passed the age of 

 18, taken equally from the different States, say two from each, under the 

 federative principle, might come to the institution, be formed into a class, 

 and attend its lectures for a couple or three^ courses ; their expenses to 

 be paid under such restrictions as the Government might prescribe, and 

 the young men to undergo public examinations at the end of the term, 

 prize medals being awarded by the board of visiters or a committee of 

 Congress, to keep the tone of ambition high. But would the fund bear 

 even this ? Again, I fear not. 



In the foregoing suggestions as to the nature of the institution, sent to 

 you in compliance with the President's call, I have confined myself to a 

 very general outline and a few reflections. The subject has many as- 

 pects, and 1 have dealt only with some of them, and those partially. It 

 is intiinsically one on which much diversity of opinion may be expected 

 to prevail, and that hardly any discussions could exhaust. However 

 honored by the President's call, and desirous of responding to it ade- 

 quately, I have felt incompetent to the task of going into the arrange- 

 ments in detail necessary to the complete organization of an institution, 

 designed by its philanthropic founder to be so universal in its scope, so 

 far-reaching in its benefits. It ought to have all the simplicity compati- 

 ble with its ends; but these are momentous, since they may run, by their 

 effects, into distant ages. It is like a new power coming into the repub- 

 lic — its means the human mind ; its ends still the triumphs of the mind ; 

 its fields of glory beneficent and saving — a power to give new force to 



