TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, 1843-1845. 289 



Yet how much is to be done, how many authorities to be weighed, how many dif- 

 feient treatises to be analyzed and compared before we can venture to say, Here is 

 the history; for such was the rise, such the progress, such the changes of opinions, 

 such the received and such the rejected theories of political economy. The writers 

 of the first French school, of the Scotch school (and, if we wish for Jhistory, we 

 must go beyond the publication of Adam Smith's great work), the Italian, the new 

 French, and the new English schools, all have not merely a claim upon our atten- 

 tion, but are entitled to a full and accurate examination. And even then our task 

 would be incomplete, for literary justice would require us to trace, through the works 

 of general political writers, the hints and remarks which have contributed to the 

 progress of the branch we are studying by the discovery of truth or by the exposi- 

 tion of error. If such be the obligation of the student whose researches are con- 

 fined to a subject so new, what must be the necessities of the historian who attempts 

 to throw light upon those periods for which the testimony of printed authorities is 

 to be confronted with that of manuscripts and public documents and where igno- 

 rance and ijrejudice have combined with the more powerful incentives of interest to 

 perplex his path by contradictory statements and conflicting opinions? 



Books are needed, not confined to any single branch, but embracing the whole 

 range of science and of literature, which shall supply the means of every species of 

 research and inquiry, and which, placed within reach of all, shall leave idleness no 

 excuse for the lightness of its labors, and poverty no obstacles which industry may 

 not surmount. 



Whoever reflects, though but for a moment, upon the numerous branches into 

 which modern literature runs, and remembers that the literary glory of a nation can 

 only be secured by a certain degree of success in each of them — whoever considers 

 the immense mass of varied materials, without which no historical work of impor- 

 tance can be composed, or the extensive learning which is required of even the most 

 gifted genius of an age like ours, and adds to these considerations the general and 

 undeniable fact that of those who would gladly devote themselves to literature, but 

 a few can ever hope to obtain by their own resources the command of the works 

 that are essential to the successful prosecution of their studies, will be ready to 

 acknowledge that we have, as yet, done but a small part of what may be justly 

 claimed from a nation which aspires to the first rank for the liberality, and polite- 

 ness, and high moral tone of its civilization. Late, however, as we are to begin, 

 scarce anything in this department has been accomplished in Europe which might 

 not be done with equal success in America. And so numerous and manifest are our 

 advantages in some important particulars, that a prompt will and sound judgment in 

 the execution of it might, in the course of a very few years, render the American 

 student nearly independent of those vast collections which, in Europe, have required 

 centuries for their formation. The undertaking, however, in order to be successful, 

 should be a national one. Without arguing that no State is fully equal to it, or that 

 in the bounds of any single State it would not answer the same purpose, we may be 

 permitted to say that the enlargement of the Library of Congress upon those broad 

 principles, the application of which to the collection of books has become a difficult 

 and important art, would reflect an honor upon the country equal to the permanent 

 advantages which it would secure to every member of the community. (North 

 American Keview, vol. 45, p. 137.) 



Yet these writers had access to the best library in this country. 



Now there are very many among* us, and ever}^ day we shall have 



more, who would feelingly adopt this language. Place within their 



reach the helps that guide the genius and labors of Germany and 



England, and let the genius and labors of Germany and England look 



H. Doc. 732 19 



