662 CONGRESSIONAL' PROCEEDINGS. 



appropriate $10,000 more for preserving the collections of 

 the exploring and surveying expeditions of the Government, 

 and for the distribution of the collections of the exploring 

 expeditions, and the construction of additional cases to re- 

 ceive such collections as may he retained by the Govern- 

 ment. We are to appropriate $10,000 to this institution, to 

 keep and distribute these collections, in addition to their 

 annual income of $36,000. I am opposed to the whole of 

 it. I think it is wrong. I think the institution itself is 

 wrong, and based upon one of the grossest misconceptions 

 of plain English that any institution ever was. 



Old Mr. Smithson — if the Senate do not want to hear me, 

 I will stop ; I know it is not a very good time to speak, 

 [" Go on "] — old Mr. Smithson, I suppose, was a man of 

 scientific attainments — no doubt of that — a friend of science ; 

 a lover of science. He had seen the colleges and the uni- 

 versities of England hitched on to the Church and the State. 

 The yoking together of these three he thought was not favor- 

 able to the advancement of science in the world. Then, sir, 

 he had in his brain the sublime conception of founding a 

 democratic university ; one that should be free from the 

 corruptions of the Church and State, as they existed in Eng- 

 land. Looking abroad over the face of the earth, to see a 

 place where this great and benevolent idea might be carried 

 out, he selected the United States as a place where demo- 

 cratic institutions prevailed, and he gave this liberal fund 

 that he might found an institution under the benign influ- 

 ence of democratic institutions, that should be devoted to 

 the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, instead 

 of having it harnessed to Church and State. Well, sir, our 

 Government undertook the trust; and a grosser abuse of a 

 trust never was perpetrated on the earth. Some of the 

 wisest men we had at that day thought there was too vague 

 a meaning in that phraseology which said that it was to be for 

 the increase and diftusion of knowledge among men. They 

 forgot that men were made of boys ; and they thought that 

 if they devoted it, as poor old Smithson intended it should 

 be, for the education of boys, under the influence of such 

 an institution as he designed, it would not answer his pur- 

 pose, because he intended it for the increase and diffusion 

 of knowledge " among men ; " and so, they have got up the 

 thing they liave. I will not characterize it, for I confess I 

 do not know what it is. I saw an advertisement in the Na- 

 tional Intelligencer that there was to be an exhibition there 

 at twenty-five cents a ticket, or perhaps fifty cents. That 

 is for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.''"' 



