134 COISTGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



of the separate States, without a single execution for treason, or a 

 single proscription for a political offense. The whole Government, 

 under the continual superintendence of the whole people, has been 

 holding a steady course of prosperity, unexampled in the contempo- 

 rary history of other nations, not less than in the annals of ages past. 

 During this period our country has been freely visited by observers 

 from other lands, and often in no friendly spirit by travelers from the 

 native land of Mr. Smithson. Their reports of the prevailing man- 

 ners, opinions, and social intercourse of the people of this Union have 

 exhibited no flattering or complacent pictures. All the infirmities and 

 vices of our civil and political condition have been conned and noted, 

 and displayed with no forbearance of severe satirical comment to set 

 them off; yet, after all this, a British subject, of noble birth and ample 

 fortune, desiring to bequeath his whole estate to the purpose of increas- 

 ing and diffusing knowledge throughout the whole community of civi- 

 lized man, selects for the depositaries of his trust, with confidence 

 unqualified with reserve, the Congress of the United States of America. 

 In the commission of every trust there is an implied tribute of the 

 soul to the integrity and intelligence of the trustee; and there is also 

 an implied call for the faithful exercise of those properties to the ful- 

 fillment of the purpose of the trust. The tribute and the call acquire 

 additional force and energy when the trust is committed for perform- 

 ance after the decease of him by whom it is granted, when he no longer 

 exists to witness or to constrain the effective fulfillment of his design. 

 The magnitude of the trust, and the extent of confidence bestowed in 

 the committal of it, do but enlarge and aggravate the pressure of the 

 obligation which it carries with it. The weight of duty imposed is 

 proportioned to the honor conferred by confidence without reserve. 

 Your committee are fully persuaded, therefore, that, with a grateful 

 sense of the honor conferred hy the testator upon the political institu- 

 tions of this Union, the Congress of the United States, in accepting 

 the bequest, will feel, in all its power and plentitude, the obligation 

 of responding to the confidence reposed b}^ him with all the fidelity, 

 disinterestedness, and perseverance of exertion which may carry into 

 effective execution the noble purpose of an endowment for the increase 

 and diffusion of knowledge among men. 



January 19, 1836— House. 



A motion was made by Mr. G. H. Chapin, that 5,000 additional 

 copies be printed of the message of the President, and the papers 

 which accompanied the same, in relation to the bequest of James 

 Smithson, together with the report and bill that day submitted by 

 Mr. John Quincy Adams, from the committee to which the same was 

 referred; which motion was laid on the table one day under the rule. 



January 20, 1836.— House. 



Mr, G. H. Chapin moved to consider the motion, which he submit- 

 ted on the previous day, for printing 5,000 copies of the report 



