45ti CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



The reason why he had opposed the printing of this report at the 

 last session, and proposed the appointment of a committee, was that 

 there were rumors about the city in relation to the contract for erect- 

 ing the buildings; it had been charged that there had been bribery 

 going on; cards had been published that there was maladministration 

 in all these matters; that there was corruption in the very incipiency 

 of this Institution. They had been told that the building was bad, 

 that the materials furnished were perishable, while he understood it 

 was the design of the donor to have it made fireproof a substantial, 

 enduring building. He wanted all these facts ascertained. Let the 

 committee take the whole matter under their charge and report the 

 facts, and let the House and the country determine whether it was all 

 right or not. 



He referred, a;; another objection, to the question of the incompati- 

 bility, under the Constitution, of the same individuals holding at the 

 same time the office of members of Congress, drawing per diem and 

 mileage as such, and the office of Regents of this Institution, drawing 

 also mileage and expenses from it expenses which, when they came 

 to look into these reports, they saw were extraordinary. 



The gentleman had gravely charged that he had manifested hostility 

 to the institution. Suppose he had; suppose he was determined to 

 oppose it in eveiy mood and tense; why, if the Institution was 

 right if the object of the individual who gave the mone3 T was being 

 carried out in the name of common sense, would not a committee, 

 by their investigation, convince the House and the country that his 

 objections were not well founded, if such was the fact? Would not 

 such investigation put the Institution and the Regents on a better, a 

 more enduring foundation? Then let them have a committee. If the 

 Institution was right if the Regents were carrying out the design of 

 James Smithson let it be ascertained by the committee and be 

 published to the House and the country. 



Mr. H. W. HILLIARD resumed. The gentleman now said he had no 

 hostility to the Institution. And how did he prove it? Why, he said 

 they had put a fictitious sum into the Treasury, and therefore he would 

 repeal the law and replace the money in the Treasury. It was well 

 known that this Government had received the fund from the trustees 

 of James Smithson as a sacred trust. The Government had thought 

 proper to loan the money to the State of Arkansas, he believed. The 

 money had been squandered, and now the gentleman from Tennessee 

 was opposed to the use of a single dollar by the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion until the State of Arkansas was made to refund the money. Was 

 he not opposed to the Institution, and was not the very object of his 

 motion to uproot the whole establishment, on the ground that the 

 Government had loaned the money to the State of Arkansas and that 

 it had never been returned? By every moral, by every equitable con- 



