018 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



mo, any more than it is to the Smithsonian Institution — said that it 

 was a sort of l\'inu^-in hospital for literary valetudinarians. But, sir, it 



has a fund, I believe, of $500,000 



Mr. J. W. Grimes. Six hundred thousand dollars, 

 Mr. Hale. Six hundred thousand dollars, making an income, then, 

 of $36,000 a year "■ for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among 

 men," I believe. So far as I am concerned in the lot of humanity, 

 they have never distributed knowledge enough to me to let me know 

 what the thing is for or what it does. In addition to the $36,000 

 which it has of its annual income from its funds, you propose now 

 to appropriate $10,000 more for preserving the collections of the 

 exploring and surveying expeditions of the Government, and for the 

 distribution of the collections of the exploring expeditions, and 

 the construction of additional cases to receive such collections as may 

 be retained by the Government. We are to appropriate $10,000 to 

 this Institution, to keep and distribute these collections, in addition 

 to their annual income of $36,000. I am opposed to the whole of it. 

 I think it is wrong. 1 think the Institution itself is wrong, and based 

 upon one of the grossest misconceptions of plain English that any 

 institution ever was. 



Old Mr. Smithson — if the Senate do not want to hear me I will stop; 

 I know it is not a very good time to speak ["Go on! "J — old Mr. Smith- 

 son I suppose was a man of scientific attainments — no doubt of that — 

 a friend of science; a lover of science. He had seen the colleges and 

 the universities of England hitched on to the church and the state. 

 The yoking together of these three he thought was not favorable to 

 the advancement of science in the world. Then, sir, he had in his 

 brain the sublime conception of founding a democratic university; one 

 that should be free from the corruptions of the church and state, as 

 they existed in England. Looking abroad over the face of the earth 

 to see a place where this great and benevolent idea might be carried 

 out, he selected the United States as a place where democratic institu- 

 tions prevailed, and he gave this liberal fund that he might found an 

 institution under the benign influence of democratic institutions, that 

 should be devoted to the increase and diffusion of knowledge among 

 men, instead of having it harnessed to church and state. Well, sir, 

 our Government undertook the trust, and a grosser abuse of a trust 

 never was perpetrated on the earth. Some of the wisest men w^e had 

 at that day thought there was too vague a meaning in that phraseology 

 which said that it was to be for the increase and diffusion of knowl- 

 edge among men. They forgot that men were made of boys, and 

 they thought that if they devoted it, as poor old Smithson intended it 

 should be, for the education of boys, under the influence of such an 

 institution as he designed, it would not answer his purpose, because 

 he intended it for the increase and diffusion of knowledge "among 



