36 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 
These views, which have commanded the approval of unprejudiced 
and reflecting persons generally, and especially of men of science, to 
which class Smithson belonged, were fully shared from the first by 
Professor Bache, General Totten, Gideon Hawley, esq., and in whole 
or in part by other members of the board, and I was elected the 
secretary or principal executive officer, to develop and carry into 
practice, as I supposed, under the direction of the board, the plan I 
had suggested. 
The appointment was accepted with much and not causeless solici- 
tude as to the result. I soon found that although a number of the 
members of the board were in favor of the promotion of original 
researches, or of what has since, by way of discrimination, been 
called the active operations, neither a majority of the Regents nor 
perhaps the community in general was prepared to favor a plan of 
organization which should exclude the material representation of the 
Institution in the form of an extensive architectural structure calcu- 
lated to arrest the eye and embellish the national capital. 
It was in vain tourge the fact that alarge and expensive building was 
not only unnecessary to the realization of the purpose of Smithson, but 
that it would tend to defeat that object by absorbing the income, con- 
trolling the future policy of the Institution, and confining its influence 
principally to a single locality; that it was not the estimated first cost 
of the edifice which should alone be considered, but also the expense 
of keeping it in repair and the maintenance of the corps of assistants 
and employés which would be required in an establishment of this 
kind; that the increase of the collections of a miscellaneous library and 
public museum would, in time, require additional space; and that, 
finally, all the revenue of the bequest would be absorbed in a statical 
establishment, or in attempting to do that which can only be properly 
accomplished, as in other countries, by means of the government. 
Unfortunately the building committee had settled upon a design for 
the building in the Lombard style, and Congress had presented to the 
Institution the museum of the exploring expedition, then at the Patent 
Office, and directed that provision should be made on a liberal scale for 
its accommodation, neglecting, at the same time, to fill the blank in 
the act of organization, by which the cost of the building was to have 
been limited. It was this provision of the law which furnished a 
fulcrum for the influence exerted by the citizens of Washington, and 
persons pecuniarily interested, directly or indirectly, in contracts or 
otherwise, in favor of the erection of the present structuse. Thus 
