84 TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



law atove referred to that Congress did not deem it advisable to pre- 

 scribe any definite and fixed plan, and deemed it more proper to con- 

 fide that duty to a Board of Regents, carefully selected, indicating 

 only in general terms the objects to which their attention was to be 

 directed in executing the testator's intention. 



" Thus, by the filth section, the Regents were required to cause a 

 building to "be erected of sufficient size, and with suitable rooms or 

 balls, for the reception and arrangement, upon a liberal scale, of ob- 

 jects of natural history, including a geological and mineralogical 

 cabinet ; also a chemical laboratory, a library, a gallery of art, and 

 the necessary lecture-rooms. It is evident that Congress intended by 

 these provisions that the lunds of the institution should be applied to 

 increase knowledge in all of the branches of science mentioned in this 

 section — in objects of natural history, in geology, in mineralogy, in 

 chemistry, in the arts — and that lectures were to be delivered upon 

 such topics as the Regents might deem useful in the execution of the 

 trust. And publications by the institution were undoubtedly neces- 

 sary to diffuse generally the knowledge that might be obtained ; for 

 any increase of knowledge that might thus be acquired was not to be 

 locked up in the institution or preserved only for the use of the citi- 

 zens of Washington, or persons who might visit the institution. It 

 was by the express terms of the trust, which the United States was 

 pledged to execute, to be diftused among men. This could be done 

 in no other way than by publications at the expense of the Institu- 

 tion. Nor has Congress prescribed the sums which shall be appro- 

 priated to these different objects. It is left to the discretion and judg- 

 ment of the Regents. 



"The fifth section also requires a library to be formed, and the eighth 

 section provides that the Regents shall make from the interest an ajv- 

 propriation, not exceeding an average of twenty-five thousand dol- 

 lars annually, for the gradual formation of a library composed of val- 

 uable works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge. . 



" But this section cannot, by any fair construction of its language, 

 be deemed to imply that any appropriation to that amount, or nearly 

 so, was intended to be required. It is not a direction to the Regents 

 to apply that sum, but a prohibition to apply more ; and it leaves it 

 to the Regents to decide what amount within the sum limited can be 

 advantageously applied to the library, having a due regard to the 

 other objects enumerated in the law. 



'' Indeed the eighth section would seem to be intended to prevent the 

 absorbtion of the funds of the Institution in the purchase of books. 

 And there would seem to be sound reason for giving it that construc- 

 tion ; for such an application of the funds could hardly be regarded as 

 a faithlul execution of the trust ; for the collection of an immense 

 library at Washington would certainly not tend ' to increase or dif- 

 fuse knowledge ' in any other country, not even among the country- 

 men of the testator ; very few even of the citizens of the United States 

 would receive any benefit from it. And if the money was to be so ap- 

 propriated, it would have been far better to buy the books and place 

 them at once in the Congress library. They would be more accepta- 

 ble to the public there, and it would have saved the expense of a costly 



