192 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



this the committee of the House, which reported their bill at the last 

 session of Congress, unanimously believed to be entirely distinct from 

 that of the establishment of any institution whatever devoted to the 

 education of children or of youth. 



In this point of view the bequest of Mr. Smithson assumed, in the 

 opinion of the committee, an interest of the highest order peculiar to 

 itself, most happily adapted to the character of our republican institu- 

 tions, and destined, if administered in the spirit in which it was 

 bestowed, to command the grateful acclamations of future ages and to 

 illuminate the path of man upon earth with rays of knowledge still 

 gathering with the revolving lapse of time. 



They believed that an institute of learning for education in the city 

 of Washington was in no wise needed, there being already there a col- 

 lege with a charter from Congress, founded at great expense, provided 

 with all the apparatus for scientific instruction, furnished with learned, 

 skillful, and assiduous professors and teachers in every department of 

 university studies, and yet scarcely able to sustain its own existence. 

 In the adjoining town of Georgetown there is also a college, and there 

 is, perhaps, no part of the United States where there is less occasion 

 for the institution of a new university or college. By the express 

 terms of the bequest the Smithsonian Institution must be located at 

 the city of Washington. A new university here could not fail either 

 to prove useless itself or to destroy the existing college and materially 

 to injure the neighboring college at Georgetown. 



If, indeed, an institution of learning were a suitable object for the 

 application of the Smithsonian fund, it would doubtless be practicable 

 to ingraft the existing Columbian College upon it and thereby, instead 

 of affecting injuriously its interests and prospects, to enlarge its sphere 

 of usefulness and relieve it at the same time from the embarrassment 

 under which it labors. But while it would be manifestly unjust to 

 that college to establish in its immediate vicinity a rival institution 

 more richly endowed from foreign funds, it might be deemed an appli- 

 cation not less exceptionable of those funds to the relief or assistance 

 of one particular establishment in this city, narrowing down the gen- 

 eral purpose of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men to 

 the special benefit and emolument of one overburdened seminary of 

 learning. 



Among the reasons for discarding all institutions of education from 

 the purview of the Smithsonian bequest, the committee of the House 

 at the last session were not insensible to the consideration that the 

 acceptance of a bequest, coupled with a trust for the increase and dif- 

 fusion of knowledge among men, by the United States of America, 

 imported a career of action in the execution of the trust more compre- 

 hensive in its object, more extensive in its design, and therefore more 

 appropriate for the exercise of national powers than the mere educa- 

 tion of children. 



