TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, 1843-45. 345 



right to intrust the administration of the public funds to 

 any functionary of this Government, much less to an irre- 

 sponsible agent, unknown to the constitution of the United 

 States, calling itself a National Institute. If we had a 

 right, he would be opposed to this bill, for he could say 

 that, within his reading and his observation, he had never 

 known a single instance of a fund of money, charitable or 

 otherwise, being intrusted to the care of an incorporated 

 body of men, that was not squandered, and made to fall 

 short of the object of the donor. It was the instinct of 

 these machines called corporations; and it was impossible 

 for it to be otherwise. Intrust this corporation with the 

 administration of- this fund, and it would be just as much 

 throwing it away as to throw it into the mud-banks of the 

 Potomac. All these corporations are filled with law — they 

 are but the incorporation of laws; and never, without an 

 exception, either in English history or ours, with regard to 

 the administration by corporations, was there an instance 

 where the corporation had not consumed the fund or squan- 

 dered it away, and caused it to fall short of the object of 

 the donor. The Girard folly in Philadelphia was an in- 

 stance of this fact. There might be found thousands of 

 instances in the reports made to the British Parliament by 

 those charged with the investigation of these subjects; and 

 in many instances, not only the income, but the principal 

 was consumed in paying the administrators. It was always 

 80. This society in Washington city, which calls itself a 

 National Institution, has no more right to the direction or 

 control of this fund than the Wistar Club in Philadelphia — 

 an institution established there by an able physician of that 

 name — or any literary society in the East or West, of which 

 there were great numbers, as he had before stated. 



It is said that this fund is to be applied in the District of 

 Columbia. That ver}' idea gave rise to the origin of the 

 National Institute, he had no doubt. Here was a fund to 

 be expended here; and of course there must be somebody 

 to receive it, and w^hat so handy as a corporation ? What 

 so convenient as to take into its hands a fund of money 

 which has to be expended ? What so convenient as a cor- 

 poration got up for the purpose of receiving it ? And what 

 w^as better calculated to lead Congress into their object 

 than to take the title of national? National! a word always 

 dear to the American people — so dear that many an inn^ 

 tavern, and eating house, throughout the country, bore the 

 title, and he believed there was an establishment some- 

 where in town here which bore upon its sign the national 



