566 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



those who are admitted to the favored circle; one man has the grati- 

 fication of seeing his works printed at the public- charge in a splendid 

 style and circulated, without trouble or expense on his part, to all the 

 learned societies and persons of Christendom, and of feeling that a 

 world-wide reputation is secured to him; but others, whose treatises 

 have been condemned by a secret tribunal and returned with the 

 stigma of rejection, are brooding in sullen, or breaking out in vehe- 

 ment, resentment and indignation. 



Men of genius are sensitive scientific authors and discoverers par- 

 ticularly so. To attain to great excellence in any department it must be 

 studied and prosecuted with exclusive and all-absorbing zeal. There 

 is a divinity in truth, and whoever attains any portion of it is prone to 

 worship it with a concentrated devotion, and to cherish it as more 

 precious than all things else. However minute the objects, or narrow 

 the provinces, or apparently useless the results of the researches of the 

 man of science, he is wholly wrapt up in them, and feels, to his very 

 heart's core, that nothing transcends them in importance. This makes 

 him sensitive to reputation, tenacious of rights, and morbidly alive to 

 any encroachment upon his labors or attainments. No office is more 

 thankless than to attempt to arbitrate the differences of men of sci- 

 ence no offense more keenly resented than to discredit their claims or 

 slight their productions. It is a curious circumstance, and most 

 instructive in this connection, strikingly illustrating the fact we are 

 presenting, that James Smithson, who was a fellow of the Royal Soci- 

 ety, had made a will, leaving his whole fortune to that institution, 

 which had honored many of his productions by publishing them in its 

 Transactions. At length, certain papers offered to them for publica- 

 tion were refused. Under the sting of resentment and wounded pride, 

 he changed his will, and left his fortune to the United States of America. 

 In this way a harvest of dissatisfaction and animosities is constantly 

 maturing. Patronage in politics is the fatal bane of parties. In litera- 

 ature and science it works disastrously, in all directions upon him 

 who dispenses, upon those who receive, and upon all from whom it is 

 withheld. 



The organization of the Smithsonian Institution is as follows: 

 The "Establishment," by the name of the "Smithsonian Institution." 



FRANKLIN PIERCE, President of the United States. 



, Vice-President of the United States. 



WILLIAM L. MARCY, Secretary of State. 



JAMES GUTHRIE, Secretary of the Treasury. 



JEFFERSON DAVIS, Secretary of War. 



JAMES C. DOBBIN, Secretary of the Navy. 



JAMES CAMPBELL, Postmaster-General. 



CALEB CCSHING, Attorney-General. 



ROGER B. TANEY, Chief Justice of the United States. 



CHARLES MASON, Commissioner of Patents. 



JOHN T. TOWERS, Mayor of the city of Washington. 



