334 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



example; small encouragement to such men to intrust to our care 

 bequests for human improvement. Due diligence is one of the duties 

 of a faithful trustee. Has Congress in its conduct of this sacred trus- 

 teeship used due diligence? Have its members realized in the depths 

 of their hearts its duties and their urgent importance? Or has not the 

 language of our legislative action rather been but this: "The Smith- 

 sonian fund? Ah, true; thafs well thought of. One forgets these 

 small matters. We ought certainly to attend to it one of these days, 

 if we could only find time." We are as the guests in the parable 

 bidden to the marriage feast: "I have married a wife, and therefore I 

 can not come. " "I have bought a yoke of oxen and must needs remain 

 at home to prove them." Let us see to it that the condemnation passed 

 upon their paltry excuses fall not with double force upon our supine- 

 ness in this thing. 



There are those among the strict constructionists of the House who 

 will vote to return this fund to the British court of chancer}^, alleg- 

 ing that we have no constitutional power to receive or to administer 

 it. I suppose, judging from the tenor of the amendment moved by 

 the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. G. W. Jones], that he will so vote. 



Mr. Jones. I certainly shall. 



Mr. Owen. Well, sir, though I share not the gentleman's constitu- 

 tional scruples, jet I, too, if action in this matter be much longer 

 delayed, shall join in a vote to send back the money to the country 

 whence it came. There is not common honesty in a man who shall receive 

 a trust fund, even for an object the most indifferent, and then keep the 

 money in his hands without applying it according to the will of the 

 legator. What, then, shall we say of a great Government that accepts, 

 solemnly accepts before God and man, a bequest for a purpose sacred 

 and holy, if any such purpose there be upon earth, and then, indolent 

 or indifferent, so braves the just censure of the world, so disappoints 

 the generous confidence reposed in it, as to neglect and postpone year 

 after year every measure for the administration of that bequest ? 



Delay is denial. We have no more right to put off throughout 

 long years the appropriation of such a fund than we have to direct it 

 to our own private purposes. -Nonuse works forfeiture as surely as 

 misuse. Mr. Richard Rush, through whose agency the fund was 

 realized and remitted to this country, in a paper read two years ago 

 before the National Institute, remarks that if this delay of action had 

 been anticipated b}^ the English chancery judges, it "might have fore- 

 stalled the decree in our favor in the unrestricted manner in which it 

 was made." He adds: 



It is at least known that the EngUsh court of chancery is slow to part with trust 

 funds under any ordinary circumstances without full security that they will not be 

 diverted from their object or suffered to languish in neglect. That tribunal asked 

 no such security from the United States. It would have implied the possibility of 

 laches in the high trustee. (Paper read April 8, 1844.) 



