310 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



space between the college and professional schools which 

 should guide the maturer Ameiican mind to the highest 

 places of knowledge ; for such should be the functions of 

 such a university. It is not worth while to move this ques- 

 tion, because no such proposition is before us. I am afraid, 

 with Mr. Adams, that to found such a university would 

 consume the whole fund, interest and principal, almost at 

 once, and reduce you to the alternative of a signal faikire, 

 or of occasional and frequent application to the Govern- 

 ment for aid which could never be granted. But the Sen- 

 ator from Ohio contemplates no such thing. He constructs 

 his college on a far more moderate model ; and of this 

 college of his I am constrained to say, that I think it in the 

 actual state of academical education wholly unnecessary, 

 and in a great degree useless. Why, sir, there are in the 

 country more than a hundred colleges ; I have seen them 

 estimated at one hundred and seventy-three. These are dis- 

 tributed all over the United States ; two are in this District. 

 They are at the doors of the people. I suspect that every 

 one of them has a professor for every department provided 

 for in this bill, except architecture and domestic science, 

 and agriculture and rural economy. In every one, without 

 any difficulty, that special attention here recommended, to 

 the application of science " to the ordinary business of 

 life," may be, if it is not now secured, if in the judgment 

 of those who are entrusted with their management it is 

 thought expedient. Why, sir, I recollect that navigation 

 was taught in one at least of our common free district 

 schools of Massachusetts thirty years ago. I cannot concur 

 with the honorable framer of the bill, therefore, that his 

 school is to " furnish facilities for the acquisition of such 

 branches of knowledge as are not taught in the various 

 universities." It will do no such thing. It will injure 

 those universities, rather, if it has any eli'ect, by withdraw- 

 ing from them some portion of the patronage for which 

 they are all struggling, and of which so few get a full meal. 

 Such a school, then, I think, is scarcely now necessary. 

 In this city it would be, to say no more, very far from gen- 

 erally useful. It w^ould hardly appear to be an instrumen- 

 tality coming up to the sonorous promise of " increasing 

 and diffusing knowledge among men." Who would its 

 pupils be ? Who could afford to come all the way to 

 Washington from the South, West, and JSTorth to learn 

 architecture, navigation, and domestic science ? Certainly 

 only the sons of the wealthy, who would hardly come, if 

 they could, to learn any such branch of homely knowledge. 



