TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-1847. 383 



all the experimental sciences owe to this one science, which in its 

 investigations appeals to no empiricism, calls in the aid of none of the 

 senses, none of the machinery of art or of nature. 



But, independent of this particular point, the aid which the physical 

 sciences may expect to derive from mere speculative knowledge, I 

 should hope that at this time, and in this place, one might safely venture 

 a plea in behalf of all that higher knowledge which serves to humanize, 

 to refine, to elevate, to make men more deeply wise, better, less 

 thoughtful of material interests, and more regardful of eternal truths. 

 And let it not be said that our own brief history proves that great 

 libraries are superfluous, because without them we have produced 

 statesmen, civilians, orators, and jurisprudents, nowise inferior to 

 the ablest of their European contemporaries. Without dwelling upon 

 the stimulus of popular institutions, and the stirring excitement of 

 our revolutionary and later history, which have tended to encourage 

 the development of this species of talent, the objection is sufficiently 

 answered by saying that, in the case of most of the American states- 

 men of the Revolution, as well as of many of later date, private wealth 

 has supplied the place of public provisions for the attainment of 

 knowledge. In the period of our colonial history, the sons of wealthy 

 families were often educated in the best schools of Europe, and the 

 framers of our Constitution were chiefly men of high education and 

 elegant attainments. Jefferson, whose writings are canonical with the 

 democracy, had the best private library in America, and was a man of 

 multifarious if not of profound learning. The State papers of that 

 remarkable era are, with few exceptions, obviously productions of men 

 not merely of inspired genius or of patient thought, but of laborious 

 acquisition; and they are full, not of that cheap learning which is 

 proved by pedantic quotation, but of that sound discipline which is 

 the unequivocal result of extensive reading and diligent research. 

 Who have been the men in all ages that have exercised the widest and 

 most permanent influence both on the moral and physical well-being 

 of man? The spirit of the crusades was roused by the preaching of 

 a thoughtful solitary; Columbus was a learned scholar, and Luther 

 but a studious monk. Watt, the great improver of the steam engine, 

 was a man of curious and recondite learning. Bonaparte was care- 

 fully educated at the school of Brienne, and was through life a liberal 

 patron of learning and the arts. The glorious rebellion of 1649 was 

 the work of men of the closet, and Milton, who to our shame is less 

 known among us by his prose than by his poetry, was its apostle. 

 Our own independence was declared and maintained by scholars, and 

 all men know that the French revolution had its germ in the writings 

 of the Encyclopaedists. All men, in fact, who have acted upon opinion, 

 who have contributed to establish principles that have left their impress 

 for ages, have spent some part of their lives in scholastic retirement. 



