TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, 1843-1845. 287 



be finished, and your library should rival anything which civilization 

 has ever had to show, there would still be the whole principal of your 

 fund unexpended, yielding its income forever, for new and varying 

 applications for increasing and diffusing knowledge in the world. 



[Mr. Choate here read a letter of Professor Torrey, of Burlington, 

 showing at what reduced prices valuable books may now be purchased.] 



I hesitate, from an apprehension of being accused of entering too 

 far into a kind of dissertation unsuited to this assembly of men of busi- 

 ness, to suggest and press one-half the considerations which satisfy 

 my mind of the propriet}^ of this mode of expenditure. Nobody can 

 doubt, I think, that it comes within the terms and spirit of the trust. 

 That directs us to " increase and diffuse knowledge among men. " And 

 do not the judgments of all the wise, does not the experience of all 

 enlightened States, does not the whole history of civilization concur 

 to declare that a various and ample library is one of the surest, most 

 constant, most permanent, and most economical instrumentalities to 

 increase and diffuse knowledge? There it would be — durable as lib- 

 erty, durable as the Union; a vast storehouse, a vast treasury, of all 

 the facts which make up the history of man and of nature, so far as 

 that histor}'^ has been written; of all the truths which the inquiries 

 and experiences of all the races and ages have found out; of all the 

 opinions that have been promulgated; of all the emotions, images, sen- 

 timents, examples of all the richest and most instructive literatures: 

 the whole past speaking to the present and the future; a silent, yet 

 wise and eloquent teacher; dead, yet speaking — not dead! for Milton 

 has told us that a "good book is not absolutely a dead thing— the 

 precious life-blood rather of a master spirit; a seasoned life of man 

 embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life bevond life." Is that 

 not an admirable instrumentality to increase and diffuse knowledge 

 among men ? It would place within the reach of our mind, of our 

 thinkers, and investigators, and scholars, all, or the chief, intellectual 

 and literary materials, and food and instruments, now within the 

 reach of the cultivated foreign mind, and the effect would be to 

 increase the amount of individual acquisition and multiply the number 

 of the learned. It would raise the standard of our scholarship, 

 improve our stjde of investigation, and communicate an impulse to our 

 educated and to the general mind. There is no library now in this 

 country, I suppose, containing over 50,000 volumes. Many there are 

 containing less. But, from the nature of the case, all have the same 

 works; so that I do not know that of all the printed books in the 

 world we have in this country more than 50,000 different works. 

 The consequence has been felt and lamented by all our authors and all 

 our scholars. It has been often said that Gibbon's history could not 

 have been written here for want of books. I suppose that Hallam's 

 Middle Ages and his Introduction to the Literature of Europe could 



