TWENTY-SIXTH CONGRESS, 1839-1841. 203 



This committee concur entirely in the opinion of the committee of 

 the House at the last session of Congress, that the express language of 

 Mr. Smithson's will indicates a design not only distinct, but widely 

 different from the schooling of children. Besides the reasons assigned 

 in the resolutions of the former committee for withholding any por- 

 tion of these funds from any institute of education, it is apparent that 

 the fund itself, large and liberal as it is, could be applied only to an 

 establishment extremely partial and limited, not only with regard to 

 the instruction to be given, but to the persons who could be benefited 

 by it. For a national university, besides the utter inadequateness of 

 the fund for such an establishment, all its benefits would necessarily 

 be confined to a very small number of students from the city of Wash- 

 ington and its immediate vicinity, together with a number scarcely 

 larger, who, at an expense which none but tbe wealthy could afford, 

 might resort from distant parts of the Union to Washington for learn- 

 ing, which, after all, they could acquire with equal proficiency in the 

 colleges of their own respective States. A school devoted to any par- 

 ticular branch of science as, for example, a military or naval school, 

 a farm school, or school of mechanic arts, a school of law, physic, or 

 divinity, a school of mines, of natural history, of metaphysics, litera- 

 ture, morals or politics however effective for teaching these several 

 branches of science, would be available only for a very small number 

 of individuals, and very ill-adapted to promote the increase and diffu- 

 sion of knowledge among men. If education had been the peculiar 

 object of Mr. Smithson's solicitude, it is natural to suppose that he 

 would have been desirous of diffusing the benefits of his institution 

 among all classes of the community as extensively as might be possi- 

 ble; that he would have devoted it to the endowment of primary 

 schools, of infant or Sunday schools, of institutions, in fine, where 

 the recipients of his bounty would have been at once in great numbers, 

 and of the class of society which preeminently needs the blessing of 

 elementary instruction. It would, no doubt, have been an excellent 

 disposal of his ample fortune, and would indirectly have contributed 

 to the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. But had this 

 been his design, he could neither have located his institution at the 

 city of Washington nor have selected for trustees and agents to fulfill 

 his design the United States of America. 



In proposing that an astronomical observatory should be the first 

 object for the application of the annual income from the Smithsonian 

 bequest, and that the appropriations should be confined to that object 

 until an establishment of that character shall be completed, not inferior 

 for efficiency to any other devoted to the same science in any part of 

 the world, this committee have been not altogether uninfluenced by 

 anticipations of the impression which it will make upon the reputation 

 of these United States throughout the learned and scientific world. 



