300 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



of the American people, they could recognize no such distinction. We 

 have been told from high classical authority that " the proper study of 

 mankind is man;" but here the idea upon which the original form of 

 this bill seemed to stand was that the proper study of mankind is that 

 of animals, exotics, and plants only not including at all the great 

 moral and civil relations of man. Now, he took it upon himself to say 

 that if gentlemen would survey the field of moral science, they would 

 find that it embraced a much larger portion of knowledge than the 

 physical sciences, however important they may be. 



The honorable and venerable member from Ohio, as he had been 

 styled [Mr. Tappan], based his leading arguments upon the necessity 

 of making that institution a counterpart of the Jardin des Plantes in 

 Paris, where there were great collections of material elucidating natu- 

 ral history; but let him tell the honorable Senator that that institution 

 was sustained at a very great expense, and yet it afforded but a very 

 limited source of improvement for the increase and diffusion of knowl- 

 edge in its liberal sense. Was there no other institution in Paris than 

 the Jardin des Plantes which could be taken as a model ? He would 

 refer the honorable Senator to another institution, and one which would 

 better fulfill the design of the bequest. Look at the wide and compre- 

 hensive body of instruction delivered at the Sorbonne (the Faculte des 

 Lettres et Sciences), under the auspices of the University of France, 

 the great fountain of knowledge to which all enlightened strangers 

 repair and drink in copious libations of philosophical and practical 

 learning. He was not conversant with Mr. Smithson's peculiar tastes 

 or habits; but if he (Mr. Smithson) was the man of liberal and general 

 inquiry that he believed him to have been, he would venture to assert 

 that his resort was as much to the Sorbonne as to the Jardin des 

 Plantes. And what would he hear there? Would he not hear lectures 

 on the sciences of history, moral philosophy, and government, as 

 well as physics and mathematics? The present minister of France, 

 M. Guizot, had been, if he mistook not, a lecturer on history ancient 

 and modern history, comprehending all the phases of human society 

 in this institution. Others had become known there to the world as 

 much as lecturers, as ministers of state, worthy of being intrusted with 

 the destinies of nations and mankind. 



He would beg leave to ask the gentlemen who had charge of this 

 great subject, in looking for a model, to look at such an institution as 

 the Faculte des Lettres et Sciences at the Sorbonne rather than at a 

 special institution like the Jardin des Plantes. He had no disposition 

 to depreciate the value of the physical sciences, but he insisted upon 

 it that the moral and political sciences were equally important, and, 

 if any distinction was to be drawn, more important. At a very early 

 period of his life he was struck with a graphic remark made by the 

 great commentator on English law, in illustrating the fitness of asso- 



