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community than has hitherto been the case, this disreputable disregard 

 to our solemn pledge and sense of duty shall endure and be tolerated, 

 is beyond my means of imagining. 



I write advisedly and calmly when I assert that this neglect of trust 

 on the part of our Government is a national disgrace, and should not be 

 allowed to soil .our name one hour longer than is absolutely necessaiy. 

 I say to the members of both Houses, why waste precious days in the 

 discussion of local and abstract questions, whereof the large proportion 

 can produce no good fruit, when a subject of deep interest, not to these 

 States merely, nor to this continent, but to the whole civilized world, is 

 at your doors asking for admission, and clamorous for action? Why 

 spend your time in the rabid contest of factions, the debating of ques- 

 tions which must be confined in their operations, and little calculated 

 to add to the durable fame of those who discuss them, when you here 

 have a subject which, if settled without further delay, and that in a 

 spirit of liberality, judgment, and an intelligent intendment of the 

 wishes of the testator, will distinguish the present Congress among its 

 fellows, as the honest performer of a solemn trust and the friend and 

 patron of education, that best and most enduring bulwark and support 

 of republican institutions? I envy no man who raises himself to tem- 

 porary, and but too often undeserved, popularity, by identifying himself 

 with some local and insignificant subject, of little or no interest to the 

 public at large ; but I do envy that servant of the people who, adopting 

 and carrying into practice the opinions of such great and true patriots as 

 Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and John Q-uincy Adams, in relation 

 to education and science, soars far above paltry questions, and estab 

 lishes his claim to the gratitude of posterity by enlarged views and 

 generous acts. That the present Congress have it in their power to do 

 a just and honorable act, in carrying out as soon as practicable the 

 Smithsonian bequest, is a high and an enviable privilege, which they 

 ought not, if they be wise and patriotic, to lose by neglect. That they 

 will take speedy steps to redeem the national honor from the reproach 

 which for so many long years has clung to it, I do not allow myself to 

 doubt ; and I believe that the following motion of the Hon. JOHN 

 Q.UINCY ADAMS, in the House of Representatives last Wednesday, is a 

 premonitory symptom of such a laudable intention on the part of that 

 body to redeem the plighted faith of the nation : 



" Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to report to this House the 

 present state and condition of the funds bequeathed by James Smithson to the United 

 States, for the establishment, at the city of Washington, of an institution for the increase 



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