18 



the President will meet with prompt and serious attention at the hands 

 of the members, I deem it highly important to urge the public to give 

 particular notice to the progress of this interesting business as one of the 

 utmost importance to the Republic. 



' Being, then, of opinion that during the present session Congress may 

 be pursuaded to take the matter in hand, and do justice to themselves 

 and the nation, I shall allude to some few of the plans proposed by 

 several of the most eminent men in this country for the execution of 

 the will of Mr. Smithson. 



The Hon. John Quincy Adams having been applied to, in conse- 

 quence of the desire of the then President to consult the views of per- 

 sons versed in science and in matters relating to public education, as to 

 the modes of applying the Smithsonian bequest, by the Hon. Johu 

 Foray th, Secretary of State, by letter dated July 19, 1838, answered 

 October 6th, of same year, as follows : 



" This, (the investment in State stocks, which he disapproved of,) 

 ' however, was a temporary investment of the fund, which I was wil- 



* ling to hope would, under no consideration, be made permanent. In 



* the report of the committee to the House of Representatives, accom- 

 1 panying the bill which authorized the President to take the necessary 

 4 measures for recovering the fund, I had set forth in very explicit lan- 

 ' guage my sense of the duties which devolved upon the Government 



* of the United States by their acceptance, in behalf of the nation, of 



< this bequest; and with the same views I introduced into the bill a 

 1 pledge of the faith of the United States that the fund should be 

 1 applied to the generous purpose of the testator." 



Mr. Adams then goes on to suggest that annual courses on the 

 principal sciences, physical and mathematical, moral, political, and lit- 

 erary, to be delivered not by permanent professors, but by persons an- 

 nually appointed, with a liberal compensation for each course, were 

 among the means well adapted to the end of increasing and diffusing 

 knowledge among men. 



" But the great object of my solicitude," he continues, "would be to 

 1 guard against the canker of almost all charitable foundations jobbing 

 ' for parasites and sops for hungry incapacity. For the economical 

 ' management of the fund, and the periodical application of it to appro- 



< priate expenditures, it should be invested in a board of trustees, to 

 ' consist partly of both Houses of Congress, with the Secretaries of the 



* Departments, the Attorney General, the Mayor of the city of Wash- 



