314 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



knows not. You ^ot the money; it is now in the public Treasury, or 

 ought to be, and was as much subject to the constitutional action of 

 Congress as any other moneys of the Treasury ; and for that action alone, 

 and in the name of the Smithsonian Institution, this National Institute 

 comes here to ask Congress to give it the exclusive administration of 

 half a million of the public money. This could be answered by the 

 general charge that no moneys ought to be drawn out of the public 

 Treasury except by the appropriation of law, and that Congress has no 

 right to intrust the administration of the public funds to any function- 

 ary of this Government, much less to an irresponsible agent, unknown 

 to the Constitution of the United States, calling itself a National Insti- 

 tute. If we had a right, he would be opposed to this bill, for he 

 could say that within his reading and his observation he had never 

 known a single instance of a fund of money, charitable or otherwise, 

 being intrusted to the care of an incorporated bod}'^ of men that was 

 not squandered and made to fall short of the object of the donor. It 

 was the instinct of these machines called corporations, and it was 

 impossible for it to be otherwise. Intrust this corporation with the 

 administration of this fund, and it would be just as much throwing it 

 away as to throw it into the mud banks of the Potomac. All these 

 corporations are filled with law — they are but the incorporation of 

 laws; and never, without an exception, either in English history or 

 ours, with regard to the administration by corporations, was there an 

 instance where the corporation had not consumed the fund or squan- 

 dered it away and caused it to fall short of the object of the donor. 

 The Girard folly in Philadelphia was an instance of this fact. There 

 might be found thousands of instances in the reports made to the 

 British Parliament by those charged with the investigation of these 

 subjects; and in many instances not only the income but the principal 

 was consumed in paying the administrators. It was always so. This 

 societ}^ in Washington City, which calls itself a National Institution, 

 has no more right to the direction and control of this fund than the 

 Wistar Club in Philadelphia — an institution established there by an 

 able physician of that name — or any literary society in the East or 

 West, of which there were great numbers, as he had before stated. 



It is said that this fund is to be applied in the District of Columbia. 

 That ver}' idea gave rise to the origin of the National Institute, he had 

 no doubt. Here was a fund to be expended here; and of course there 

 must be somebody to receive it, and what so handy as a corporation ? 

 What so convenient as to take into its hands a fund of money which 

 has to be expended ? What so convenient as a corporation got up for 

 the purpose of receiving it? And what was better calculated to lead 

 Congress into their object than to take the title of national? National! 

 A word always dear to the American people — so dear that many an 

 inn, tavern, and eating house throughout the country bore the title, 



