370 CONGRESSIONAL PKOCEEDINGS. 



Everything- in the bill tended to the increase and diffusion of 

 knowledge among men. 



Some had urged that the trust ought not to ha\'o been accepted. It 

 was too late to make that objection. He held that we were now o})liged 

 to carry it into execution, and as to the funds themselves, they ought 

 to be considered as money still in the Treasury, unconnected with any 

 stocks. He regretted that anyone had proposed to return the stocks 

 to the heirs or kin of the original owner. 



Mr. G. W. Jones said he did not profess to understand the whole 

 doctrine of trusts, but if trust funds were placed in the hands of the 

 Government, was the Government bound to keep the money, instead 

 of investing it? Was the Government bound to pay interest on it 

 without investing it? 



Mr. Davis. That will depend on the character of the fund. The 

 fund was given in trust for a specific object. 



Mr. Jones. Suppose the fund had been left to the gentleman from 

 Mississippi; was he bound to keep it and pay 6 per cent interest upon 

 it? Or, if he invested it in Mississippi or other State stocks, in good 

 faith, would he be bound as trustee to make good the principal and 

 interest of the fund? 



Mr. Davis could, he said, answer that case in perfect conformity 

 with his own views and feelings on the subject. He would reject the 

 trust unless he was willing to execute it; and if he misapplied the 

 money and delayed to execute the trust for eight years he would 

 consider himself bound in honor to make good the whole fund. 



Mr. Davis continued. He would admit that the Government had 

 no authority to take charge of the subject of education, and he did 

 not consider this bill as liable to that objection. The normal school 

 system he considered as highly beneficial, serving to produce uniform- 

 ity in the language and to lay the foundation of all sciences. The 

 spelling book of Noah Webster, which had been used extensively in 

 our primary schools, had done more to produce uniformity in our 

 language in this country than anything else. If we sent out good 

 school books from this institution it would be of vast service to the 

 country. 



Mr. Davis enlarged upon the benefits which would result to science 

 and the diffusion of every kind of useful knowledge from an institu- 

 tion which would gather young men from the remotest parts of the 

 country at the common point where every facility for practical 

 instruction would be afforded. The taste of the country would be 

 refined, and he did not consider this as antidemocratic. Knowledge 

 was the common cement that was to unite all the heterogeneous mate- 

 rials of this Union into one mass, like the very pillars before us. If 

 there was any constitutional objection to the establishment of a cor- 

 poration he was willing to strike out that fealture in the bill and pre- 



