TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-1847, 377 



rience and some inquiiy I am satisfied that the whole cost of such 

 books as a national library ought to consist of, including binding and 

 all other charges, except the compensation and traveling expenses of 

 an agent, should not exceed $2 per volume. If you allow $2,000 for 

 the compensation and expenses of an agent (which would not be 

 increased upon a considerably larger expenditure), you have $8,000 

 remaining, which, at the average cost I have supposed, would purchase 

 4,000 volumes a year. How long, I repeat, would it require at this 

 rate to accumulate a library equal in extent to that of Gottingen? 

 More than seventy years. In some sevent}'^ years, then — in three score 

 years and ten — when you, sir, and I, and all who hear my voice, and 

 all the present actors in this busy world shall be numbered with the 

 dead, we may hope that free, enlightened America, by the too sparing 

 use of the generous bounty of a stranger, will possess a collection of 

 the recorded workings of the human mind not inferior to that enjoyed 

 by a single school in the miniature kingdom of Hanover. And what 

 provision is made for the increase of books meanwhile? Look at the 

 activity of the presses of London and Paris — at the vastly prolific 

 literature of Germany^ — at the increasing production of our own coun- 

 try — to omit the smaller but still valuable contributions to the store 

 of human knowledge in the languages of other countries, and you will 

 perceive that this appropriation, so far from being extravagantly^ large, 

 will scarcely even sufiice for keeping up with the current literature of 

 the day. Gottingen meantime will go on; her 300,000 volumes will 

 increase in seventy j^ears to half a million, and we shall still lag 

 200,000 volumes behind. 



The utility of great libraries has been questioned, and it has been 

 confidentl}' asserted that all truly valuable knowledge is comprised in 

 a comparatively small number of volumes. It is said that the vast 

 collections of the Vatican, of Paris, of Munich, and of Copenhagen 

 are in a great measure composed of works originally worthless, or 

 now obsolete, or superseded by new editions, or surpassed by later 

 treatises. That there is some foundation for this opinion I shall not 

 deny, but after every deduction is made upon these accounts, there 

 will still remain in any of these libraries a great number of works 

 which, having originally had intrinsic worth, have yet their permanent 

 value. Because a newer or better or truer book upon a given sub- 

 ject now exists, it does not necessarily follow that the older and 

 inferior is to he rejected. It may contain important truths or inter- 

 esting views that later and, upon the whole, better authors have 

 overlooked — it may embody curious anecdotes of forgotten times — it 

 may be valuable as an illustration of the history of opinion, or as a 

 model of composition; or, if of great antiquity, it may possess much 

 interest as a specimen of earl}^ tjqDography. 



Again, because any one individual, even the most learned, can not 



