774 MEMOIRS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



nine trustees — three chosen by each House, and three by 

 the President — to sit during the recess, and prepare a plan, 

 to be submitted to Congress at the next session, for a cor- 

 poration, of which the same trustees were to form a part. 

 I had offered resolutions against all this, which the com- 

 mittee of the House adopted, and I prepared a bill conform- 

 ably to my own plan. By way of compromise it was agreed 

 that both committees should report both bills ; which was 

 done. I never called either of them up in the House, for I 

 knew it would be in vain. Kobbins attempted to get up his 

 bill in the Senate but could not carry it through. I left copies 

 of both bills, of my resolutions, and of Robbins' proposi- 

 tions, with Mr. Woodbury, requesting him to consider them^ 

 and inviting his views concerning them — telling him that I 

 should, if able to take my scat at the next session of Con- 

 gress, resume the subject, in which I felt an interest more 

 intense than in anything else before that body. I told him 

 that before leaving this place I intended to see and speak 

 again with the President concerning it. 



Mr. Woodbury promised to give his attention to the sub- 

 j,ect and to speak of it also to the President. But he told 

 me that in the general appropriation bill ten thousand dollars 

 had been taken from .this fund to pay for the expenses and 

 charges of procuring the mone}'. Cambreleng swindled 

 this into the bill without my knowledge, and it crept through 

 both Houses unobserved. I shamed him out of it last year^ 

 and I believe he did it now to spite me. The Attorney 

 General had given an opinion against it. I am deeply mor- 

 tified not to have detected this dirty trick. 



April 8, 1839. 



I had some conversation with Mr. Grundy, and afterwards 

 with Mr. Poinsett, on the Smithsonian fund bills. 



October 26, 1839. 



I have chosen the Smithsonian bequest as my subject for 

 a lecture to the Quincy Lyceum, which I last Wednesday 

 promised Mr. John A. Green, now its President, to deliver, 

 " Deo adjuvante," on Wednesday, the 20th of next month. 

 This subject weighs deeply upon my mind. The private in- 

 terests and sordid passions into which that fund has already 

 fallen fill me with anxiety and apprehensions that it will be 

 squandered upon cormorants or wasted in electioneering 

 bribery. The apparent total indifference of Mr. Van Buren 

 to the disposal of the money, with his (jeneral professions ot 

 disposition to aid me; the assentation of all the heads of 



