284 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



He constructs his college on a far more moderate model; and of this 

 college of his I am constrained to sa}"^ that I think it in the actual 

 state of academical education wholly unnecessary, and in a great 

 degree useless. Why, sir, there are in the country more than a 

 hundred colleges; I have seen them estimated at one hundred and 

 seventy-three. These are distributed all over the United States; two 

 are in this District. They are at the doors of the people. I suspect 

 that every one of them has a professor for every department provided 

 for in this bill, except architecture and domestic science, and agri- 

 culture and rural economy. In every one, without any difficulty, 

 that special attention here recommended, to the application of science 

 "to the ordinary business of life," may be, if it is not now secured, if 

 in the judgment of those who are intrusted with their management it 

 is thought expedient. Why, sir, I recollect that navigation was 

 taught in one at least of our common free district schools of Massa- 

 chusetts thirty years ago. I can not concur with the honorable f ramer 

 of the bill, therefore, that his school is to "furnish facilities for the 

 acquisition of such branches of knowledge as are not taught in the 

 various universities." It will do no such thing. It will injure those 

 universities, rather, if it has any effect, by withdrawing from them 

 some portion of the patronage for which they are all struggling, and 

 of which so few get a full meal. 



Such a school, then, I think, is scarcely now necessary. In this 

 it would be, to say no more, very far from generally useful. It 

 would hardly appear to be an instrumentalit}- coming up to the sono- 

 rous promise of "increasing and diffusing knowledge among men." 

 Who would its pupils be? Who could afford to come all the way to 

 Washington from the South, West, and North to learn architecture, 

 navigation, and domestic science? Certainly only the sons of the 

 wealthy, who would hardly come, if they could, to learn any such 

 branch of homely knowledge. You might collect some few students 

 in the District and the borders of the adjacent States; but for any 

 purpose of wide utility the school would be no more felt than so much 

 sunshine on the poles. Meantime here would be your professors, 

 their salaries running on; your books, and apparatus, and edifices, a 

 show of things — a pretty energetic diffusing of the fund; not much 

 diffusion of knowledge. 



I shall venture, then, to move to strike out all those parts of the bill 

 which indicate the particular mode in which the bequest is to be applied 

 to the increase and diffusion of knowledge. I except the provision for 

 experiments in seeds and plants, on which I will sa}^ a word hereafter. 

 If this motion prevails the whole question will recur: What shall we 

 do with the fund? 



It has seemed to me that there are two applications of it which may 

 just now meet with favor. 



