TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-1847. 385 



to England; still less at this crisis, when some are seeking to raise a 

 whirlwind of popular indignation against that country upon which 

 they may themselves float to power, would I join in any vulgar denun- 

 ciations of a people from whom we have borrowed so much. We 

 owe to England much of our political principles, many of the founda- 

 tions of our civil and religious liberties, many of the most valuable 

 features of our jurisprudence. Something, indeed, we have repaid. 

 England, in common with all Europe, has profited by our experience. 

 The grasp of feudal oppression has been relaxed, the atrocious severity 

 of the criminal law has been mitigated, judicial proceedings have been 

 simplified, the subject has been admitted to a larger participation in 

 the concerns of government, monopolies are becoming obsolete, and 

 the responsibilities of rulers are felt to be more stringent. To the 

 credit of many of these ameliorations we may fairly lay claim; while 

 in science and its application to the arts we have sustained no dis- 

 graceful rivalry with our trans- Atlantic brethren. But no generous 

 man thinks his debt of gratitude canceled till it is thrice repaid, and 

 we have therefore yet much to do before we can say that America is 

 no longer the debtor of England. Let us then seize this one oppor- 

 tunity which a son of her own has offered us and build with it a pharos, 

 whose light shall serve as well to guide the mariner in the distant 

 horizon as to illuminate him who casts anchor at its foot. 



But what are we offered instead of the advantages which we might 

 hope to reap from such a library as I have described? We are prom- 

 ised experiments and lectures, a laboratory, and an audience hall. 

 Sir, a laboratory is a charnel house, chemical decomposition begins 

 with death, and experiments are but the dry bones of science. It is 

 the thoughtful meditation alone of minds trained and disciplined in 

 far other halls that can clothe these with flesh, and blood, and sinews, 

 and breathe into them the breath of life. Without a library, which 

 alone can give such training and such discipline, both to teachers and 

 to pupils, all these are but a masked pageant and the demonstrator is a 

 harlequin. This is not a question of idle speculation, it is one that 

 experience has answered. There are no foci which are gathering and 

 reflecting so much light upon the arcana of natural science as the 

 schools of Paris and of Germany, and all scholars are agreed that the 

 great libraries of those seminaries, and the mental discipline acquired 

 by the use of them are, if not the sole means, at least necessary condi- 

 tions of their surpassing excellence. 



But we are told that these experimental researches will guide us to 

 the most important of all knowledge, that, namely, of common things. 

 Sir, what are common things ? Is nothing common but these material 

 frames of ours; nothing but the garments we wear, the habitations that 

 shelter, and the food that nourishes us; nothing but the air we breathe, 

 the fowls of heaven, the beasts of the field, the herbs, the trees, and 

 H. Doc. 732 25 



