796 memoirs of john quincy adams. 



December 30, 1845. 



A report was received from the Secretary of the Treasury 

 in answer to a resolution inquiring why certain sums of 

 money due to the State of Arkansas had been withheld 

 from payment; and the answer is that it had been by virtue 

 of a joint resolution of the 3d March last, providing that 

 whenever any State shall have been, or may be, in default 

 of the payment of interest or principal on investments in 

 its stock, or bonds held by the United States in trust, it 

 shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to retain 

 the whole, or so much thereof as may be necessary, of the 

 percentage to which such State may be entitled of the pro- 

 ceeds of the sales of the public lands within its limits, and 

 apply the same to the payment of said interest or principal, 

 or to the reimbursement of any sums of money expended 

 by the United States for that purpose. This provision was 

 first introduced into an act of Congress by me in 1842, and 

 is the only check which I believe practicable to an enor- 

 mous system of swindling and plunder by some of the 

 Democratic States upon the Treasury of the Union. 



January 23, 1846. 



I attended at the Capitol a meeting of the committee on 

 the Smithsonian bequest. There were present, Owen, 

 Adams, Jenkins, Marsh, Sims, Davis, and Wilmot — all the 

 members. The discussion was renewed upon the question 

 whether the directors of the Institution should be consti- 

 tuted in express terms a corporation ; for which purpose 

 the chairman, Owen, moved a reconsideration of the de- 

 cision made at the last meeting. It was again debated, and 

 again decided to make it a corporation — the vote now being 

 four to three, Owen, chairman, changing his vote to the 

 negative, and Sims, of South Carolina, still voting for the 

 corporation, with the avowed intention of voting against 

 the whole bill, and declaring his purpose to have the whole 

 money sent back to the English court of chancery. 



I told him that I thought that proposition came rather 

 late, after the formal acceptance of the bequest, and the 

 appropriation of the money to other purposes, with a formal 

 pledge of the faith of the United States that it should be 

 applied to the objects designated by the donor. 



It was, however, the original proposition of John C. Cal- 

 houn, and will be persisted in by the South Carolina school 

 of politics and morals to the last, without any idea of re- 

 turning the money, but with the purpose of defeating any 

 useful application of it. 



