614 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



among whom he desires the increase and diffusion of hiowt- 

 edge. 



And he has provided for this in his will. How could a 

 vast library established here accomplish this object? At 

 most it would be accessible to the people of Washington, 

 to casual visitors, and to those who came here for the pur- 

 pose of consulting its volumes. How intinitely short would 

 this fiill of the purpose of the testator, which was first the 

 increase and then the diffusion of knowledge among men of 

 whatever country or whatever clime. 



If a national library be a national want, who should sup- 

 ply it? Cannot Congress, which represents a population of 

 twenty-five millions, with resources almost incalculable, 

 and with a treasury not exhausted or impoverished, but 

 overflowing with revenue ? Can it not spare out of this 

 abundance whatever may be necessary ? Is it not now 

 supplying that want in the great library of Congress, to 

 which in the last three years they have appropriated more 

 than nine fi/ thousand dollars ? It is accessible now to every 

 scholar who may be at Washington, and will in a few years 

 be so increased under the policy of its present administra- 

 tion as to supply many of the wants of the student and the 

 scientific investigator. Shall a nation such as ours depend 

 for this national want upon the bounty of a stranger ? The 

 generous impulse of the American heart will quickly 

 prompt the answer — no. 



The resolutions of compromise, as they were called, to 

 which the committee have before alluded, were repealed by 

 the Board of Regents before the period when by their terms 

 they were to go into operation. What has been already 

 said will show that the committee think that they were 

 properly repealed. Their eflect was to tie up the hands of 

 the Board of Regents, to deny to the successors of those 

 who passed them the exercise of that discretion with which 

 the law invested the board, and thus to defeat the act of 

 Congress by taking away that discretion in regard to the 

 disposal of the fund which the law made it not onl3'the right 

 but the duty of the regents to exercise. Nor can there be 

 any breach of faith in this repeal. The faith which the re- 

 gents owe is to the law and to the purpose of the will of 

 Smithson, and any arrangement of their own which should 

 restrain them from promoting this purpose by the means 

 which they deem best suited to it, would itself, in the 

 opinion of the committee, approach more nearly to a breach 

 of faith. 



The regents, by pledging their faith to one another, can- 



