PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 849 



Smithsonian Institution at Washington, without in any 

 manner interfering with it^ pursuits. 



If the President should approve and give the weight of 

 his recommendations to those suggestions, I have no doubt 

 they will receive the sanction of Congress at their next 

 session. As I propose the appropriation for seven success- 

 ive years of all the income from the fund to this special 

 object, there will be ample time for considering the best 

 manner of appropriating the same income afterwards to 

 permanent establishments for increasing and diffusing Imowl- 

 edge among men. Nothing could be more easy than to 

 dispose of a fund ten times as large, without encroaching 

 upon the proper sphere of any school, college, university, or 

 academy. iTot so easy will it be to secure, as from a rattle- 

 snake's fang, the fund and its income, forever, from being 

 wasted and dilapidated in bounties to feed the hunger or 

 fatten the leaden idleness of mountebank projectors, and 

 shallow and worthless pretenders to science. 



Since I began this letter, I have conferred with Mr. Ban- 

 croft, the collector of the customs at Boston, concerning its 

 object, who has promised to communicate his views of the 

 subject to the President. I may, perhaps, after consultation 

 with others, again address you in relation to it before my 

 departure for Washington. 



I am, very respectfully, sir, your obedient servant, 



John Quincy Adams. 



John FoPuSyth, Esq., 



Secretary of State of the United States, Washington. 



Letter from Hie hard Mush. 



Sydenham, near Philadelphia, November 6, 1838. 

 Sir : Heferring to your letter of July, the receipt of which 

 I had the honor to acknowledge, and desiring now to meet 

 the wishes it conveys, however sincerely distrustful I am of 

 myself in attempting the task, I proceed to remark : That 

 a university or college, in the ordinary sense, or any insti- 

 tution looking to primary education, or to the instruction 

 of the young merely, does not strike me as the kind of in- 

 Btitution contemplated by Mr. Smithson's will ; declaring it, 

 in language simple, yet of the widest import, to be " for the 

 increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," and 

 making the United States the trustee of his intentions, it 

 eeems to follow that it ought to be as comprehensive as 



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