828 The Smithsonian Institution 



theory or the practice of our popular institutions and form 

 of government that any new bars should be placed in the path 

 of the widest diffusion of intelligence. When it is considered 

 that, from the nature of the case, the embarrassment of pro- 

 ducing books and information from these accumulated heaps 

 is constantly growing; that Congress, by the act of 1870, 

 requiring two copies of every publication protected by copy- 

 right to be deposited in the library of the government, 

 settled the question of its possible permanent shelter in the 

 Capitol in the negative ; that this building, overcrowded in all 

 its departments so that several committees have to occupy 

 the same room, is crowded worst of all in the library depart- 

 ment, to which no possible outlet or addition of room can be 

 procured ; that the mere arithmetical computation of the 

 growth of the country's literature proves that space must be 

 provided within the century for a building at least two thirds 

 the size of the Capitol ; that there is no large capital in Eu- 

 rope in which the library of the government can be or is 

 provided for under the same roof with its legislature ; that in 

 our case, and in ours alone, there is added to the great gov- 

 ernment library the extensive and growing bureau of copy- 

 rights and copyright business for the whole country ; that 

 the attempt to get along with this double difficulty has 

 already produced great injury to the books, with partial ex- 

 clusion from their benefits, and must ultimately curtail the 

 usefulness of the library to an incalculable degree ; that even 

 if the remedy authorizing new space to be provided were 

 immediately applied, some years must elapse before the 

 requisite building accommodations could be complete: the 

 case becomes one of such pressing emergency, not to say 

 distress, that argument upon it should be unnecessary. 

 Suffice it to say that it scarcely becomes a government repre- 

 senting a nation of such wealth, intelligence, and power to 

 treat the assembled stores of literature and art of the country, 

 which its own laws have caused to be gathered at the Capitol 

 and thrown open to the people, with such indignity as to 

 subject them to injury and destruction, or to equally repre- 

 hensible exclusion from their benefits. Of the mode and 



