. THIRTIETH CONGRESS, 184Y-1849. 457 



sideration, the Government, having loaned and lost the money, was 

 bound to make good the trust. Therefore, when the Government had 

 thought proper to make the establishment, it had authorized the 

 Regents in proper form to draw the mone}^ bequeathed b}^ James 

 Smithson. It was in this way that the money had been taken; and 

 because they had thought proper to make a judicious use of it from 

 time to time they were arraigned by the gentleman as having squan- 

 dered the funds. Let him agree to have the report published, and he 

 would tind that it gave a full account of what the}^ had done. 



But the gentleman had said it was a crisis. It had been a long crisis. 

 Thank heaven, the crisis to which the gentleman referred had passed 

 awa}^. The gentleman's allusion to the war reminded him of the apol- 

 ogy always offered by the steward in the Bride of Lammermoor, who 

 always accounted for the absence of articles of luxury about the castle 

 of his master on the ground that there had been a great fire there; 

 and now the gentleman would put down every appropriation, whether 

 for new objects or to maintain a great existing establishment, by the 

 cry, "the war, the war." He thanked heaven the war was at an end. 

 He thanked heaven peace had come in our time, and he trusted that if 

 there had been much treasure squandered in war, this establishment, 

 so sublime in its design, so magnificent in its conception, was not to 

 share in the calamities of war. His objection to the gentleman's 

 scheme was that it would launch the Institution on a political sea. 

 Leave the superintendence of the establishment to the Board of 

 Regents, of whom three were members of the House and three mem- 

 bers of the Senate, and who in some sense constituted a committee of 

 Congress, and leave to them to report upon the state of its affairs from 

 time to time. If their fidelit}^ and discretion could not be confided in, 

 then we had fallen on evil times. But he would not oppose the motion. 

 He would leave it to the judgment of the House to dispose of. 



Mr. Truman Smith, of Connecticut, thought this proposition alto- 

 gether premature. He had offered a resolution in the ordinary form — 

 a resolution which really ought to have been offered earl}^ last week — 

 for the adoption of the ordinary rules and orders of the House, and 

 had connected with this a proposition, as at the last session of Con- 

 gress, to raise a committee to revise and report upon the rules from 

 time to time. If this resolution as offered should pass, then they 

 would have a committee upon the rules and orders of the House, and 

 the gentleman from Tennessee could then offer his proposition and 

 refer it to that committee, who would take such action upon it as they 

 might deem proper. He was now very apprehensive that there was 

 to be no end to this discussion, and no end to their efforts to amend 

 the rules, if they were to favor propositions of this character at all, 

 and he desired to ask of the Chair whether it was competent for him 

 to move the previous question. 



