TWENTY-SIXTH CONGRESS, 1839-1841. 193 



The education of children is, in all civilized and Christian communi- 

 tie.s, in the lir.st instance, a solemn and imperative duty of their 

 parents. It stands in the first rank of domestic and family duties; 

 and so far as it connects itself with social relations and becomes a 

 subject of legislation it belongs to that class of interests and concerns 

 which, under our complicated system of government, are considered 

 as exclusively confined to the authorities of the separate States. 

 Whether Congress possess, under the Constitution, the power to 

 establish a national university is at least a matter of doubt; and 

 although they have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatever over 

 the District of Columbia, in which the city of Washington is situated, 

 yet an institute of learning coextensive only with the District of 

 Columbia must necessarily be confined, in all its administrations, as 

 much within that District as the universities and colleges within the 

 several States are limited 1)y their respective jurisdictions. Nor did 

 it seem to the conmiittee altogether consistent with the self-respect of 

 a great confederated nation to receive from the hands of a foreigner 

 a liberal fund for the increase and diffusion of knowledge through- 

 out the world of man, and apply it to the schooling of their own 

 children. 



The peculiar expressions used by the testator himself, in the indica- 

 tion of the ultimate result of his purpose, and the selection of his 

 trustee, concur in confirming this view of the subject. Had it been 

 his intention to found a college or university for the purposes of edu- 

 cation, it seems impossible that he should have avoided the use of 

 words necessarih' importing them. The words school, college, uni- 

 versit}^, institution of learning, would have been those most appropri- 

 ate to the specification of his design; and it is not imaginable that, 

 having such an intention, he should studiously have avoided the use of 

 every word most appropriate for its designation. The increase and 

 diffusion of knowledge among men present neither the idea of knowl- 

 edge already acquired to be taught, nor of childhood or j^outh to be 

 instructed; but of new discovery; of progress in the march of the 

 human mind; of accession to the moral, intellectual, and physical 

 powers of the human race; of dissemination throughout the inhabited 

 globe. 



And if education had been his design, wh}^ should he have selected 

 the city of Washington for the seat of his institute, and the United 

 States of America for his trustees? In the land of his nativity there 

 were children and youth needing and destitute of the blessings of edu- 

 cation, in multitudes far exceeding those which might have been 

 found in the city of Washington or throughout the North American 

 Union. In the land of his habitation and of his decease there swarmed 

 around him, ever present to his eyes, numberless children and minors, 

 to whom an institute of learning would hav^e been far more beneficial 

 H. Doc. 732 13 



