846 PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON's BEQUEST. 



Letter from John Quincy Adams. 



QuiNCY, October 11, 1838. 



Sir : I have reserved for a separate letter what I pro- 

 posed to say in recommending the erection and establish- 

 ment of an astronomical observatory at Washington, as one 

 and the lirst application of the annual income from the 

 Smithsonian bequest, because of all that I have to say I 

 deem it by far the most important, and because having for 

 many years believed that the national character of our coun- 

 try demanded of us the establishment of such an institution, 

 as a debt of honor to the cause of science and to the world 

 of civilized man. I have hailed with cheering hope this 

 opportunity of removing the greatest obstacle which has 

 hitherto disappointed the earnest wishes that I have enter- 

 tained of witnessing, before my own departure for another 

 world, now near at hand, the disappearance of a stain upon 

 our good name, in the neglect to provide the means of in- 

 creasing and dift'using knowledge among men, by a sys- 

 tematic and continued scientific series of observations on 

 the phenomena of the numberless worlds suspended over our 

 heads — the sublimest of the physical sciences, and that in 

 which the field of future discovery is as unbounded as the 

 universe itself, I allude to the continued and necessary 

 expense of such an establishment. 



In my former letter I proposed that to preserve entire 

 and unimpaired the Smithsonian fund, as the principal of a 

 perpetual annuity, the annual appropriations from its pro- 

 ceeds should be strictly confined to its annual income. 

 That, assuming the amount of the fund to be five hundred 

 thousand dollars, it should be so invested as to secure a per- 

 manent yearly income of thirty thousand ; and that it should 

 be committed to an incorporated board of trustees, with a 

 secretary and treasurer, the only person of the board to re- 

 ceive a pecuniary compensation from the fund. 



On the 18th of March, 1826, Mr. C. F. Mercer, chairman 

 of a select committee of the House of Representatives of 

 the United States, reported to that House a bill for the erec- 

 tion of a national observatory at the city of Washington, 

 together with sundry documents containing estimates of the 

 cost of erecting the buildings necessary for such an estab- 

 lishment, for the instruments and books which it would re- 

 quire, and for the compensation of a principal astronomer, 

 two assistants, and two attendants. These estimates of ex- 

 pense were, however, prepared upon the principal of pro- 

 viding the establishment at the smallest possible expense — 



