146 THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



died in Genoa in L829, leaving his entire estate to the United States of 

 America "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian 

 institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowl- 

 edge among men." 



After ten years of debate in Congress, turning partly on the ques- 

 tion whether the Government ought to accept such a bequest at all 

 and put itself in the unprecedented position of the guardian of a 

 ward, Congress accepted the trust and created by enactment an 

 "Establishment" called by the name of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 consisting of the President of the United States, the Vice-President, 

 the Chief Justice of the United States, and the members of the Pres- 

 ident's Cabinet. It has also a Secretary, with varied functions, among 

 of hers that of being the Keeper of the Museum. 



Smithson's money, which amounted to over half a million dollars, 

 and later to three-quarters of a million, a great fortune in that day of 

 small things, was deposited in the United States Treasury, the Govern- 

 ment afterwards agreeing to pay perpetually 6 per cent interest upon it. 



In the fundamental act creating the Institution. Congress, as above 

 stated, provided that the President and the members of his Cabinet 

 should be members of the Institution, that is, should be the Institu- 

 tion itself, but that nevertheless it should be governed by a Board of 

 Regents, composed of the Vice-President and Chief Justice of the 

 United States, three Regents to be appointed by the President of 

 the Senate (ordinarily the Vice-President), three by the Speaker of 

 the House of Representatives, and six to be selected by Congress; 

 two of whom should be residents of the District of Columbia, and 

 the other four from different States, no two being from the same 

 State. The fundamental act further provides that the Secretary of 

 the Institution already defined shall also be the Secretary of the Board 

 of Regents. The Museum is primarily to contain objects of art and 

 of foreign and curious research; next, objects of natural history, 

 plants, and geological and mineralogical specimens belonging to the 

 United States. Provision is also made for a library, and the functions 

 of the Regents and of the Secretary were defined. 



The preamble of this bill states that Congress lias received the prop- 

 erty of Smithson and provided "for the faithful execution of said 

 trust agreeable to the will of the liberal and enlightened donor." It 

 will thus be seen that the relations of the General Government to the 

 Smithsonian Institution are most extraordinary, one may even say 

 unique, since the United States solemnly bound itself to the adminis- 

 tration of a trust. Probably never before has any ward found so 

 powerful a guardian. 



The first meeting of the Regents occurred on September 7, 1846, 

 and in the autumn of the same year they elected as Secretary Joseph 

 Henry, then a professor at Princeton, known for his extraordinary 



