36 The Smithsonian Institution 



The interest of the public became much greater; earnest 

 discussions were printed in the newspapers and reviews ; 

 letters urging speedy action were written to Congress by 

 persons in all parts of the country, and the Corporation 

 of the City of Washington also presented a vigorous me- 

 morial to the national legislature. 



Soon after the Twenty-sixth Congress convened, President 

 Adams again introduced his bill for the establishment of a 

 national observatory, accompanied by a learned and exhaust- 

 ive report upon the importance of astronomical work, sup- 

 plemented by a statement from the Astronomer Royal of 

 Great Britain concerning the observatories at Greenwich and 

 elsewhere. His ideas did not meet with favor. In his jour- 

 nal for 1843 ne records with much disgust that the Secretary 

 of the Treasury said to him in conversation that the prejudice 

 against his plan of an astronomical observatory was insur- 

 mountable because he had once called observatories "light- 

 houses in the skies." 



Strenuous as was his desire for an observatory, it was fee- 

 ble in comparison with his apprehension lest the fund should 

 be "squandered upon cormorants, or wasted in electioneering 

 bribery," and his desire to save it "from misapplication, di- 

 lapidation, and waste." His dread became almost morbid, and 

 he looked with suspicion upon every one who was interested 

 in the disposition of the bequest, even those whose names are 

 now remembered in connection with his own as the most 

 public-spirited promoters of the interests of the Institution in 

 its days of embryonic existence. He would cooperate with 

 no one, and his influence must be characterized as conserva- 

 tive rather than formative, his most important service being 

 his opposition to the bill for investing the fund in State 

 stocks, which, in 1841, he succeeded in having repealed. 



While these things were happening at the Capitol, new 



