TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-1847. 373 



however widely apart we ma}' be at first, we shall probably find our- 

 selves in the end obliged to settle down upon the parallel of 49. The 

 bill is reported by the special committee as a compromise, and proba- 

 bly no one of the gentlemen concerned in its preparation is quite satis- 

 fied with its provisions; no one believes it to be the best plan that 

 could be devised; but they felt the necessity of deferring to each other, 

 as well as to the probable opinion of Congress, and were nearly unan- 

 imous in thinking it more likely to harmonize discordant views than 

 any other plan suggested. It was in this belief, and in consideration 

 of the importance and the duty of early action, that I, as a member of 

 that committee, assented to the report, regarding the scheme, how- 

 ever, not merely as a necessary compromise, but as rather an experi- 

 ment, which admitted, and which I trusted would hereafter receive, 

 great changes in its conditions, than as a complete working model. 



It has all along been assumed as 'a cardinal principle that we ought 

 to follow implicitly the will of the liberal donor, and it has been 

 thought unfortunate that he was not more specific in the appropria- 

 tion of his bounty. But he has given a proof of a generous and 

 enlightened spirit, and at the same time has paid this nation the high- 

 est possible compliment, by using the largest and most comprehensive 

 language in his bequest; thus in effect saying that he preferred rather 

 to intrust the disposal of this great fund to the wisdom and intelli- 

 gence of a free and enlightened people than to limit its use to pur- 

 poses accordant with his own peculiar tastes. Some gentlemen have 

 thought that inasmuch as the testator has not specified the particular 

 mode by which he would have the great ends of his charity accom- 

 plished we are bound to infer his wishes from the character of his 

 favorite pursuits and to conform to his supposed views by confining 

 the fund to the promotion of objects to the cultivation of which his 

 own time and researches were devoted; but this would be no true 

 conformity to the enlightened liberality which prompted so munifi- 

 cent a gift. It would be a disparagement to so generous a spirit to 

 imagine that while saying so much he meant so little. It would be 

 so wide a departure from his large and wise purposes as fairly to 

 defeat his noble aims. Had he been in fact a person of so narrow 

 views as this argument supposes, he would have guarded against the 

 possible misapplication of his charity by express words of direction 

 or restriction; and it is a proof of rare generosity in an enthusiastic 

 lover of an engrossing pursuit that in a bequest appropriating his 

 whole estate to the high purpose of increasing and diffusing knowl- 

 edge among men he made no special provision for the promotion of 

 those sciences which were to him the most attractive of studies. 



After all, however, he was not a student of so limited a range of 

 inquiry as has been sometimes assumed. He was a man of studious 

 and scholastic habits and of large and liberal research, specially 



