136 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



Mr. Chapin concluded by expressing the hope that the motion to 

 print would be adopted by the House without a dissenting voice. 



Mr. James H. Parker said the House had not entirely got out of a 

 debate which had arisen upon a bill which was intended to provide for 

 their own pay, in reference to the alleged excessive expenditures of 

 the contingent fund of the House for the item of printing. A great 

 deal of complaint was made on the occasion alluded to, because of the 

 number of President's messages ordered to be printed by the House. 

 He was so case-hardened that he would upon a like occasion do the 

 same thing again. He was, however, not prepared to vote for the 

 proposition before the House. The report was doubtless an able one, 

 but he could see no reason why five times the number which were nec- 

 essary for the information of the House should be printed. It would 

 be recollected that a report had been made in the Senate on this sub- 

 ject which had been published in all the newspapers he had seen. 

 They would not be called upon to make any disposition of these funds, 

 because they had not yet received them, and if they ever did it would 

 perhaps be fifteen or twenty years first. Upon the whole he did not 

 consider it at all important that an extra number of this report should 

 be published. 



The motion to print 5,000 extra copies of the report was then 

 agreed to. 



February 5, 1836.— Senate. 



The resolution to authorize and enable the President to assert and 

 prosecute with effect the claim of the United States to the legacy 

 bequeathed to them by James Smithson, was considered as in Com- 

 mittee of the Whole; and. 



On motion b}^ Mr. William C. Preston, 



Laid on the table. 



April 30, 1836.— Senate. 



On motion of Mr. William C. Preston, the Senate took up the reso- 

 lution authorizing the President of the United States to appoint an agent 

 or agents to prosecute and receive from the British court of chancery 

 the legacy bequeathed to the United States by the late James Smithson 

 of London, for the purpose of establishing at Washington city an 

 institution for the increase of knowledge among men, to be called the 

 Smithsonian University. 



Mr. Preston said that by this will it was intended that this Gov- 

 ernment should become the beneficiaries of this legacy, and contended 

 that if they had not the competence to receive it by the Constitution, 

 the act of no individual could confer the power on them to do so. He 

 claimed that they had not the power to receive the money for national 

 objects, and if so, the expending of it for another object was a still higher 

 power. He controverted the position that if they could not receive it 

 as the beneficiary legatee, they might receive it as the fiduciary agent. 



