54 The Smithsonian Institution 



this period," he said, "there will be ample time for consider- 

 ing the best means of appropriating the same income after- 

 ward to promote establishments for increasing and diffusing 

 knowledge among men. A botanical garden," he contin- 

 ued, "a cabinet of natural history, a museum of mineralogy, 

 conchology or geology, a general accumulating library — 

 all institutions of which there are numerous examples among 

 the civilized Christian nations, and of most of which our own 

 country is not entirely destitute — all are undoubtedly in- 

 cluded within the comprehensive grasp of Mr. Smithson's de- 

 sign — all may receive, in turn, and with progressive utility 

 and power, liberal contributions from the continually grow- 

 ing income of the trust. Nor did the committee believe that 

 the moral or political sciences, the philosophy of language, 

 the natural history of speech, the graces of polite literature, 

 the mechanic or the liberal arts, were to be excluded from the 

 benefits prepared for posterity by the perpetuation of this 

 fund." He did not desire that a permanent organization 

 should be formed, believing, though wrongly, as the event has 

 proved, that such an organization could not be kept efficient 

 and pure under the control of a government like ours ; and 

 his suspicions in regard to the motives of those who seemed 

 interested in the project undoubtedly lessened his power of 

 controlling it. 



His most important service was to establish the principle 

 that only the interest of the fund should be used, and that the 

 principal should be permanently invested in the Treasury of 

 the United States. This, after all, was his chief ambition — "to 

 secure, as from a rattlesnake's fang, the fund and its income, 

 forever, from being wasted and dilapidated in bounties to 

 feed the hunger or fatten the leaden idleness of mountebank 

 projectors and shallow and worthless pretenders to science." ^ 



1 Rhees, "The Smithsonian Institution: Documents," etc., page 849. 



