TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-1847. 381 



works of devotion or elementary religious doctrine, which American 

 missionaries have presented you. 



Will it not be admitted that an American library, the national 

 librar}^ of a people descended from men of ever}^ clime, and blood, 

 and language — a country which throws open its doors as an as3^1um 

 for the oppressed of every race and every tongue — should be some- 

 what more comprehensive in its range? That it should at least have 

 some representatives of every branch of human learning, some memo- 

 rials of every written tongue that is spoken within its borders ? 



But, even in English literature our Library is sadly meager. How 

 far are we from possessing a tolerably complete series of the English 

 printed books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or even of that 

 best age of English learning, that age with which every honest Amer- 

 ican most truly sjmipathizes, the age of Cromwell and of Milton? 

 Would it not be well to have at our command the means of enabling 

 some diligent scholar to write what has not yet been worthily written, 

 or indeed scarce even attempted, a complete history of the literature 

 of our Anglo-Saxon mother tongue — or to perform that herculean task 

 which, in spite of the vaunted but feeble labors of Webster, remains 

 still to be accomplished — the preparation of a respectable English 

 dictionary ? 



If there is any department of learning in which a library selected 

 for the use of the representatives of a democracy should be complete, 

 it is that of history. But what have we of the sources of historical 

 investigation? Histories, indeed, we have; but little history. True, 

 we have Robertson, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Gibbon, and, above 

 all, Alison, a popular writer in these days, and — 



Like Sir Agrippa, for profound 

 And solid lying, much renowned; 



but of those materials from which true history is to be drawn we have 

 little, very little. The works belonging to the proper history of the 

 American Continent alone, every one of which it would be highly 

 desirable to possess, number certainly more than 20,000 volumes, fully 

 equal to one-half the Congressional Library, and of these we have, 

 as yet, but a small proportion. 



If the bounty of the generous foreigner, in spite of the broad lan- 

 guage which expresses his liberal purpose, is to be confined to the 

 narrow uses which some gentlemen propose, the appropriation of 

 $10,000 per annum is unnecessarily large, at least for permanent 

 expenditure. A moderate amount would collect all that is worth l)uy- 

 ing in the experimental sciences, and a small annual appropriation 

 would keep up with the advance of knowledge in this department. 

 But it is due to ourselves, due to our age, due to the lofty views 

 which inspired a benefaction so splendid — a gift clogged with no nar- 

 row conditions — that we act in a more generous, a wider, a more 



