456 PROCEEDINGS OF 



of never being used at ull ; and already has part of a generation of men been 

 deprived of its benefits. If not beneath the dignity of tho United States to accept 

 the trust, the duly of executing it follows. That duty ought to be performed with 

 reasonable promptitude. If nearly six years be not an ample allowance of time for 

 the wisdom of a nation to determine what is to be done under such a will, the task 

 of ever knowing seems discouraging. I say so with tho greatest deference to oilier 

 opinions, giving utterance only to my own; and having fully supposed, whilst 

 pleading two years ago for bringing tho fund into activity, that I was free then 

 from the error of haste. Acts of legislation upon momentous and complex sub- 

 jects often pass within periods more circumscriced, without being chargeable with 

 errors on this score. The most circumspect rule in legislation has seldom gone 

 beyond the requisition to publish a bill one year, that it might be understandingly 

 acted upon the next ; and if there may be exceptions to this rule, it is not believed 

 that the Smithsonian case forms one of them ; and, supposing that it did, more 

 than double the time implied by such a rule has run out. 



Not to use this fund promptly, seems an unfit return for tho comity of the tribunal 

 that surrendered it up to us promptly ; more promptly, it is believed, than was ever 

 before known in the case of so large a sum once in the meshes of chancery. Whether 

 this would have been done with a fore-knowledge of the delay already witnessed, 

 can only be a subject of conjecture. Non-user works forfeiture as well as mis- 

 use ; and it is hardly perhaps an overstrained inference to say, that an anticipation 

 of the former, such as has happened, might have forestalled the decree in our 

 favor, in the unrestricted manner in which it was made. It is at least known that 

 the English Court of Chancery is slow to part with trust funds under all ordinary 

 circumstances, without full security that they will not be diverted from their object, 

 or suffered to languish in neglect. That tribunal asked no such security from tho 

 United States. It would have implied the possibility of laches in the high trustee. 

 Least of all could that suspicion have existed where the trust bespoke upon its.faco 

 motives to exclude any other imagination than that of prompt performance. At 

 that epoch our public faith stood in all things unsullied. This thought forces itself 

 upon me. Would that I could drop it — would that it were not necessary to the 

 pursuit of my subject ! 



But, painful is the consideration, that, in the more recent circumstances of our 

 country, there exists cause for auguinentcd aensibility at our apathy under this 

 beneficent will. History may bo seen as well as read. Ours, under some aspects 

 at present, is indeed too painful. Tho charge upon us of dishonesty, has passed 

 into wide belief, too wide to bo effaced soon. To deny it will not efface it: we 

 can only live it down. The impression has not been confined to any one nation 

 among the great nations of the earth : it pervades entire and separate communities, 

 whose united voices will go far towards making up the opinion of mankind. 

 Affected by our intercourse, and smarting under losses, they have been little in- 

 clined to discriminate betwoen the demerit which denies just debts, and that which, 

 after contracting them deliberately, utterly fails to pay them ; and this in times of 

 peace and plenty, when the productive powers of our country are as great as ever, 

 and all its industry in oporation. In Il'iiland, where sensitiveness to pecuniary 

 honor is extremo, nothing excusing non-payment but insolvency brought on in ways 

 free from all exceptions, and accompanied by surrender of every thing — in that 

 old land of former commercial grandeur and constant probity, and in communi- 

 ties adjacent, tho taint upon our namo is perhaps the deepest, though we may hear 



