56-i CONGKESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



the framers and enactors of the law expected that about $200,000 

 would be expended '^ for the gradual formation of a library composed 

 of valuable works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge" 

 in eight years. If the law does not contemplate that the annual 

 expenditure for the formation of a library shall be something like 

 $25,000, any other figures might as well have been used. If the 

 administrators of the law are at liberty to spend as little as they please 

 for a library, in the face of the sum thus indicated in the law, they 

 would have been equall}^ at liberty whatever sum might have been 

 named, whether $30,000 or $40,000. In other words, if the clause of 

 the act under consideration can be construed as justifving an annual 

 average expenditure for the gradual formation of a librar}^ of less than 

 $2,000, any intermediate sum between that and the entire income of the 

 fund would have been of equal authority and significance as indicating 

 the intention of the legislature, whichever of the said intermediate 

 sums might have been inserted in the act; that is to say, those who main- 

 tain that the language and design of the act are carried out by expend- 

 ing less than $2,000 annually for books assume and assert that it 

 would not have altered the sense of the act had $2,000 or $10,000 or 

 $4:0,0(H) been the sum actually named in it, instead of $25,000. 

 The ninth section of the act is as follows: 



And be it further enacted, That of any other moneys which have accrued, or shall 

 hereafter accrue, as interest upon the said Smithsonian fund, not herein appropri- 

 ated, or not required for the purposes herein provided, the said managers are hereby 

 authorized to make such disposal as they shall deem best suited for the promotion 

 of the purpose of the testator, anything herein contained to the contrary notwith- 

 standing. 



The discretion allowed to the managers in the latter part of this 

 section must be considered as limited in some sense by the word 

 ""other," applied to "moneys," and more definitely and more al)so- 

 lutely by the clauses "not herein appropriated" and "not required 

 for the purposes herein provided." 



The meaning of the ninth section seems to us to be simply this — that 

 if, after all has been done required by the foregoing provisions of the 

 act — that is, for the maintenance and preservation of a geological and 

 mineralogical cabinet, a laboratory, library, gallery of art, lecture 

 room, lectures, the purchase of books on the scale indicated in the 

 eighth section, and the discharge of all current obligations — an unex- 

 pended balance of the annual income remains, the managers may do 

 with it just what they please; may expend it upon books if they like, 

 even although the expenditures for that object may have already 

 reached the assigned limit, or upon any objects not named or alluded 

 to in the act, if, in their judgment, "suited for the promotion of the 

 purpose of the testator." 



The committee are wholly unwilling to enter at all into the discus- 

 sion of the private grievances or personal controversies or official 



