TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-1847. 399 



Mr. ADAMS. If the gentleman will point me to the power in the 

 Constitution of the United States to annex Texas, I will answer his 

 question. 



Mr. SIMS. If the gentleman finds the power under the same clause, 

 it is certainly a novel clause under which to claim it that which, in 

 express terms, permits new States to be admitted into the Union. 



Mr. ADAMS. I presume the gentleman considers that a constructive 

 power; and if so, it will answer for what it is worth. He (Mr. Adams) 

 could find in the Constitution many clauses besides that authorizing 

 Congress to provide for the common defense and general welfare. 

 What means more efficient to this end than the increase and diffusion 

 of knowledge among men ? 



Mr. Adams further opposed the application proposed by the bill 

 under consideration to the ordinary purposes of education, on the 

 ground of inequality of the benefits it would confer the State of 

 Massachusetts (a fact of which he was proud), the State of New York 

 (the "Empire State"), and Virginia, another empire State (to whose 

 citizens our present minister to Brazil, before he left the country, 

 addressed a letter. calling on them to tax themselves for the education 

 of their children for which he should honor him, if he had never 

 done anything else in his life), and other States, having themselves 

 made provision for the education of their children, so that they would 

 not thank Congress for making this application of this fund. The 

 State of Indiana, from which the gentleman [Mr. Owen] came who 

 reported this bill, had property enough to take care of her own chil- 

 dren without wasting this fund for such a purpose. 



He would say nothing further of other provisions of the bill. Some 

 of them were proper, others were not. But an experience of eight or 

 ten years, since we received this money, had shown him that whenever 

 distinguished scientific men were called upon for their opinions, 

 scarcely two agreed. 



In addition to the application of a portion of this fund to the science 

 of astronomy, there was another provision which he found and which 

 he was happy to see this bill made, viz, that no portion of the fund 

 should be appropriated that it should be a perpetual fund. It was 

 the interest which was to be applied. 



But in the meantime, while this delay had taken place, he was 

 delighted that an astronomical observatory not perhaps so great as 

 it should have been had been smuggled into the number of the 

 institutions of the country under the mask of a small depot for charts, 

 etc. There was not one word about it in the law. He would like to 

 ask the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Sims], where was the 

 power under the Constitution to make this appropriation ? 



Mr. SIMS said he did not know; but since the doctrine promulgated 

 by a distinguished President of the United States of erecting light- 



