194 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



than it could possibly be to the children of the city of Washington or 

 of the whole United States. Mr. Smithson had no personal relations 

 with this country; he had never visited its shores; nor from the pro- 

 visions of his will, nor from anything that has been ascertained of his 

 life, does it appear that he was ever intimate, or even acquainted, with 

 any one native citizen of this Union. Why, then, should he devote 

 the whole of an ample fortune to the education of a comparatively 

 small number of children in a hemisphere distant from that in which 

 he was born, had lived, and was to die, and with which he could have 

 no sympathy other than that of a common nature and common princi- 

 ples of moral and political truth ? 



Mr. Smithson's bequest was not to the city of Washington, but to 

 the United States of America. His reasons for fixing the scat of his 

 institution at Washington obviously was that there is the seat of Gov- 

 ernment of the United States; and there the Congress, by whose legis- 

 lation, and the Executive, through whose agency, the trust committed 

 to the honor, intelligence, and good faith of the nation, is to be ful- 

 filled. The peculiar powers by which Congress is enabled to dis- 

 charge this trust in all its magnitude are vested in them l)y their 

 authority of exclusive legislation over the District of Columbia; but, 

 in the execution of the trust, the obligation incumbent upon them b}^ 

 the will of the testator, and by their recorded pledge of the nation's 

 faith, is so to organize and so to superintend the conduct of the insti- 

 tution as to spread the lienefits to be derived from it not only over 

 the whole surface of this Union, but throughout the civilized world. 



The Smithsonian fund appeared to the committee of the House, 

 which at the last session reported the bill, equivalent to a considerable 

 yearly donation to the United States to l)e expended in furnishing the 

 means and in rewarding the accomplishment of new discoveries and 

 inventions throughout the whole range of science and of art. The 

 specific means of attaining directly or indjrectl}" this end are as various 

 as the arts and sciences themselves, and as prolific as the imagination 

 of man. Among the many establishments which were suggested to 

 them, or which occurred to their own consideration, which would be 

 strictly included within the express language of the will and the 

 undoubted intention of the testator, that upon which they rested as 

 first deserving, and for a succession of several years, the application 

 of the annual income of the fund, was an astronomical observatory of 

 the most enlarged and liberal character, with provisions for the most 

 etfective continual observation of the phenomena of the heavens; for 

 the actual calculations and periodical publication of the results of those 

 observations, and for affording to the navigators of our own and of 

 all other maritime nations our contribution of all the facilities which 

 the detected secrets of the starry universe can furnish to the wander- 

 ing pilgrim of this sublunary sphere. It was not the intention or 

 expectation of the committee that the appropriations from the Smith- 



