TWENTY-SIXTH CONGRESS, 1839-41. 211 



They are variously graduated, and adapted to the capacities 

 and wants of the expanding mind, from the moment when 

 the child becomes capable of receiving instruction to the 

 full formation of adult age, and the preparation of the 

 citizen for the performance of the duties of active life, and 

 the exercise of the faculties thus acquired for the benefit of 

 the individual himself and of his fellow creatures in the 

 social relations of life. The ultimate object of them all is 

 instruction the communication of knowledge already pos- 

 sessed, and not the discovery of new truths, or the inven- 

 tion of new instruments for the enlargement of human 

 power. This was evidently the purpose of Mr. Smithson : 

 and this the committee of the House, which reported their 

 bill at the last session of Congress, unanimously believed 

 to be entirely distinct from that of the establishment of 

 any institution whatever devoted to the education of chil- 

 dren or of youth. 



In this point of view, the bequest of Mr. Smithson 

 assumed, in the opinion of the committee, an interest of 

 the highest order, peculiar to itself, most happily adapted 

 to the character of our republican institutions, and destined 

 if administered in the spirit in which it was bestowed, to 

 command the grateful acclamations of future ages, and to 

 illuminate the path of man upon earth with rays of knowl- 

 edge still gathering with the revolving lapse of time. 



They believed that an institute of learning for education 

 in the city of Washington was in nowise needed, there 

 being already there a college with a charter from Congress, 

 founded at great expense, provided with all the apparatus 

 for scientific instruction, furnished with learned, skilful, and 

 assiduous professors and teachers in every department of 

 university studies, and yet scarcely able to sustain its own 

 existence. In the adjoining town of Georgetown there is 

 also a college ; and there is, perhaps, no part of the United 

 States where there is less occasion for the institution of a 

 new university or college. By the express terms of the 

 bequest, the Smithsonian Institution must be located at the 

 city of Washington. A new university here could not fail 

 either to prove useless itself, or to destroy the existing 

 college, and materially to injure the neighboring college at 

 Georgetown. 



If, indeed, an institution of learning were a suitable 

 object for the application of the Smithsonian fund, it w r ould 

 doubtless be practicable to engraft the existing Columbian 

 College upon it, and thereby, instead of affecting injuri- 

 ously its interests and prospects, to enlarge its sphere of 



