MEMOIRS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 769 



statement that the whole fund is now invested at an interest 

 of six per cent, a year ; that the principal sum received is 

 about five hundred and eight thousand dollars, and that it will 

 yield upwards of thirty thousand dollars a year. He said, 

 further, that a question had occurred whether the expenses 

 occasioned hy the recovery of the money were to be de- 

 ducted from the fund itself or to be paid by the public ; and 

 the Attorney General had just given an opinion that no de- 

 duction from the fund should be made. 



I told Mr. Woodbury that I was delighted to hear this ; 

 and I urged most earnestly upon him, as I had done this 

 morning upon the President, the duty of this Government, 

 to the honor of the nation and to the testator, to keep this 

 fund entire and unimpaired, and to devote its annual pro- 

 ceeds to the generous and glorious object to which it was 

 devoted by him to no purpose of common education, to 

 no school, college, university, or seminary of learning, but 

 to the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. 



Mr. Woodbury appeared to concur in these views, and I 

 have a faint hope that the fund may be so managed as to 

 produce some useful result. 



DECEMBER 8, 1838. 



Mr. Poinsett spoke to me of the exploring expedition, 

 which, he rejoiced to say, was departed upon its enterprise, 

 and he hoped we should ere long have a good account of it. 

 He spoke also of the Smithsonian bequest, and declared him- 

 self warmly in favor of appropriations for an observatory 

 upon the largest and most liberal foundation from it. But 

 he gave several intimations from which I could draw no 

 good augury. 1. He s*aid the President had not made up 

 his mind in favor of an observatory ; whence I infer that he 

 will ostensibly neither favor or oppose it, but that he will 

 underhandedly defeat it, taking care to incur no personal 

 responsibility for its failure. 2. He insisted that a salary of 

 eighteen hundred dollars a year would not be near enough 

 for the astronomer ; whence I infer that jobbing for favorites 

 is to be the destiny of the Smithsonian fund. And, 3. He 

 said that among the scientific men whom the President had 

 consulted for the disposal of the fund was the English atheist 

 South Carolina professor, Thomas Cooper, a man whose very 

 breath is pestilential to every good purpose. 



DECEMBER 10, 1838. 



In the House, two messages were received from the Pres- 

 ident, with a large mass of documents, relating to the 

 49 



