390 CONGRESSIONAL I'ROCEEDINGS. 



Mr. Owen desired to s;iy a few words in reply to the gentleman 

 from Vermont [Mr. Marsh], and the g-entleman from Louisiana [Mr. 

 Morse]. The gentleman from Louisiana had already given the most 

 important item in repl}- to the gentleman from Vermont, namel}', that 

 we had no right to run counter to what might clearl}'^ seem to be the 

 intention of Mr. Smithson. This fund was not ours; it was intrusted 

 to us for a special purpose, and unless we could believe that he would 

 desire, if living, the establishment of a librar}' the money ought not 

 to be so appropriated. 



This bill had been framed in a spirit of compromise. The original 

 Senate bill of the last session appropriated $5,000 for this object. The 

 gentleman from Vermont, Mr. Owen believed, proposed |20,000, 

 The bill proposed a medium, a sum not exceeding $10,000. He hoped 

 the House would not go further. A gentleman who had formerly 

 been Librarian of Congress, in conversation with him, had said that he 

 thought it was impracticable to purchase with advantage more than 

 $10,000 worth of books. The duty must be intrusted to one agent to 

 prevent the purchase of duplicates, and no one agent could purchase 

 advantageously more than this amount, so that there was a practical 

 difficult}^ in the way. 



In relation to the course suggested by the gentleman from Louisi- 

 ana [Mr. Morse], the same plan had occurred to Dr. Cooper, of South 

 Carolina, but had been rejected by him. 



[Mr. Owen here read an extract in support of this assertion.] 



As to a cheap publication branch, he would remind the committee 

 that we already had one. In looking over the periodicals of the day 

 it did not appear that the prize essays were the best; the voluntary 

 essays seemed to be so. We should find plenty of treatises of a most 

 useful character without paying a dollar for them. The mere gratifi- 

 cation of having them published would be inducement sufficient to 

 enable us to obtain them. 



The gentleman said that there should be no laboratory; that it was 

 not the design of Mr. Smithson. The fact that Mr. Smithson spent 

 half of his life in a laboratory seemed to refute this objection. 



There was little in the bill of an imperative character in relation to 

 all these various branches. Its phraseology was "ma}"." If, there- 

 fore, it was discovered that one branch woidd be more beneficial than 

 another there was the power to adopt it. There was nothing at all 

 binding about it. 



Mr. John S. Chipman spoke urgently in opposition to the bill. His 

 first reason for voting (as he said he intended to do) was based on a 

 fact that was irrevocable, namely, that this Government, great and 

 powerful as it was, prospering and progressing as it was in original 

 native intellect, fostered by institutions known to no other country 

 and no other people, should have consented to be the recipient of what 



