PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 913 



that the professorships in such an institution in the city of 

 Washington would be sinecures, and its halls solitudes. 

 Life, in America, is thought to be too short to admit of a 

 university course between the collegiate and professional 

 studies. It would be the most thoroughly exclusive and aristo- 

 cratic institution of learning in the world. None but the opulent 

 and the learned would enjoy its advantages; whereas this 

 legacy was not intended for the exclusive benefit of an aris- 

 tocracy of wealth and learning, but of the comparatively 

 uneducated masses " To increase and diffuse knowledge 

 among men." 



The Hon. John Q. Adams repudiated the plan of endow- 

 ing a school of any sort, because the American people are 

 sacredly bound, he says, to provide for education at their 

 own expense, and ought not to be indebted for such a pro- 

 vision to the eleemosynary donation of a foreigner; and yet 

 Mr. Adams advised the erection of an astronomical observa- 

 tory, the appointment of an astronomer, assistants, and at- 

 tendants, and the publication of a nautical almanac. This 

 application of the fund is clearly open to his own objection, 

 that the Government should furnish such an institution at 

 its own charge. It is open to the still more fatal objection, 

 that it would be a violation of the national faith. Mr. Smith- 

 son could not have contemplated any such use of his money. 

 He was thinking of men, not of the planets; and designed to 

 diffuse among them something more than nautical almanacs. 

 All knowledge, it is true, benefits man; and he that counts 

 the stars, and he that counts the spawn of the cod, adds some- 

 thing to the common stock; but neither the one nor the 

 other was the thing intended by Mr. Smithson. Fortunately, 

 this plan has been superseded by the erection of an astro- 

 nomical observatory at the public expense a bill for that 

 purpose having been smuggled through Congress under the 

 pretense of erecting a building to keep maps in. 



The Hon. Mr. Tappan proposed a botanical garden, like 

 the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris; agricultural experiments 

 on a farm to be provided for that purpose; conservatories, 

 chemical laboratory, cabinets of natural history; lectures, 

 somewhat on the plan of Mr. Rush, for the benefit of mem- 

 bers of Congress with their families; members of the Gov- 

 ernment with their's; inhabitants of the city, and strangers 

 visiting it. A library was to be created, at the expense of 

 $5,000 per annum; and, finally, an establishment for print- 

 ing scientific treatises, tracts, &c. This scheme would have 

 produced a college without students; professors to teach 

 members of Congress gratis; a flower garden to supply 

 58 



