578 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



and especially when this interpretation affects two provisions of the 

 act which otherwise would be without object or operation. 



The committee will now proceed to inquire whether the scientific 

 researches and the publication of their results are, in the languag-e of 

 the acts of Congress, "best suited to promote the purpose of the tes- 

 tator." The question is between such researches made and pul)lished 

 at Washington, or examined under the authority of the Institution 

 and circulated throughout the civilized world, and a great national 

 library to be established in this city. Mr. Smithson was a scholar, a 

 man of science, an author of scientific memoirs, a contributor to the 

 Transactions of the Royal Society of London, familiar with the lan- 

 guage in which his will is written, and perfectly competent to decide 

 upon the aptitude of words to convey the ideas they were intended to 

 express. 



It might well be expected that the language of such a man would be 

 characterized by simplicity, by the absence of circumlocution and 

 periphrasis, which is well described as the use of many words to 

 express the meaning of one. If he had intended to furnish to the 

 people of the United States, and especially to the citizens of Wash- 

 ington, a great library, comprehending all that was then known in 

 every department of human knowledge and culture, he would have 

 said so in terms not to be misunderstood. The committee can not 

 doubt that if he had merely designed to provide for the purchase of 

 books to become, through the agency of the United States, the founder 

 of a library, he would have used the simple language appropriate to 

 such an intention. He would have said: "I bequeath the whole of 

 my property, subject, etc., to the United States of America to found, 

 at Washington, a library, under the name of the Smithsonian Library." 



It is difficult to believe that any man having such an object in view 

 would have abandoned the plain, simple, intelligible language, in 

 which no difference of construction could by any possibility have 

 arisen, and have substituted for it the sentence which is found in his 

 will, namely: "To found at Washington, under the name of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of 

 knowledge among men." 



Again, Mr. Smithson was, as the committee have before said, a man 

 of science, the author of scientific memoirs, a member of the Royal 

 Society, and a contributor to its Transactions. What is more natural 

 than that such a man should, when about to pass away from the scene 

 of action, dedicate his property to the continued prosecution of those 

 researches to which his life had been principally devoted. The words 

 of the bequest are strongly corroborative of this view. It is for the 

 "increase of knowledge," not merely for the acquirement of that 

 which now exists. A librar}^ would subserve the latter purpose, but 

 could only indirectly aid in the accomplishment of the former by ena- 



