26o 



NATURE 



[January i6, 1896 



can attempt to say what the condition of the United States 

 would have been to-day without his bequest ? Well did John 

 Quincy Adams say : — 



" Of all the foitndatious of estahlishvients for pious or charit- 

 able uses which ci<er signalised the spirit of the age or the com- 

 ■t>rehensive heneficetice of the founder, none can be named more 

 deserving the approbation of fnanktnd." 



In 1835, six years after Smithson's death, the United States 

 legation in London was notified that his estate, amounting 

 in value to about ;^ioo,ooo, was held in possession of the 

 accountant-general of the British Court of Chancery. 



As soon as the facts became public, great opposition to the 

 acceptance of the gift arose in Congress. Eminent statesmen, 

 led by Calhoun and Preston, argued that it was beneath the 

 dignity of the United States to receive presents, and that the 

 donor was seeking immortality for too moderate an equivalent. 

 The wise counsels and enthusiastic labours of John Quincy 

 Adams, who seems to have had from the first a thorough ap- 

 preciation of the importance of the occasion, finally prevailed, 

 and the Honourable Richard Rush was sent to England to pro- 

 secute the claim. He entered a friendly suit in the Courts of 

 Chancery in the name of the President of the United States, and 

 obtained, in less than two years, an event unparalleled in the 

 history of Chancery, a favourable decision. The legacy was 

 brought over in the clipper ship Mediator, in the form of 104,960 

 gold sovereigns. These were dehvered September i, 1838, to 

 the Philadelphia Mint, and immediately recoined into American 

 money, yielding 508,318.46 dols. as the first instalment of the 

 legacy. This was soon after increased to 515,169 dols., and in 

 1867, by a residuary legacy of 26,210.63 dols., the total sum 

 derived from the founder's beneficence, which by careful manage- 

 ment had been in 1867 increased to 650,000 dols., a sum which, 

 as has already been shown, derives its significance, not from its 

 own magnitude, but from the manner in which it has been 

 utilised to stimulate the interest of the Government, and to draw 

 to itself larger amounts through special appropriations from 

 Congress. At one time in the early history of the Institution a 

 large portion of its fund was in certain State bonds which be- 

 came worthless. Congress appropriated money to make good 

 the loss, and the permanent fund, which, swelled by recent 

 bequests, now amounts to 911,000 dols., is held as a deposit at 

 6 per cent, in the United States Treasury. 



For eight years the original legacy lay in the Treasury, while 

 the wise men of the nation tried to decide what to do with it. 

 At the time, the adage that in a multitude of counsellors there 

 is wisdom, did not appear to be applicable ; yet the delay, though 

 irksome to those who desired to see immediate results, proved 

 to be the best thing for the interests of the trust. Every im- 

 aginable disposition of the legacy was proposed and discussed in 

 Congress ; the debates fill nearly three hundred and fifty pages 

 of Rhees' compilation of Smithsonian documents. Hundreds 

 of letters advisory, expostulatory, and dissuasive were received 

 from representative thinkers and from societies at home and 

 abroad. Every man had a scheme peculiar to himself, and op- 

 posed all other schemes with a vigour proportionate to their 

 dissimilarity to his own. Schools of every grade, from a 

 national university to an agricultural school, a normal school and 

 a school for the blind, were proposed. A library, a botanical 

 garden, an observatory, a chemical laboratory, a popular publish- 

 ing house, a lecture lyceum, an art museum, any and all of these 

 and many more were proposed and advocated by this voluntary 

 congress of many men of many minds. 



The Three Secretaries. 



The successful organisation of the Institution has been the 

 result of long-continued effort on the part of men of unusual 

 ability, energy, and personal influence. No board of trustees 

 or regents, no succession of officers serving out their terms in 

 rotation could have developed from a chaos of conflicting 

 opinions, a strongly individualised establishment like the 

 Smithsonian Institution. Especially effective in this respect 

 has been the influence of the three men who have in succession 

 held the office of " Secretary." The name of " Secretary," it 

 should be stated, is that which in Washington designates the 

 highest grade of executive responsibility. The Secretary of the 

 Institution makes all appointments on the staff, is responsible for 

 the expenditure and disbursement of all funds, is the legal cus- 



odian of all its property, and, ex officio, its librarian and the 



eeper of its museum. 



NO. 1368, VOL. ^l\ 



The names of Henry and Baird are so thoroughly identified 

 with the history of the Institution during its first four decades, 

 that their biographies would together form an almost complete 

 history of its operations. A thirty-two years' term of uninter- 

 rupted administrative service was rendered by one, thirty-seven 

 years by the other. Perhaps no other organisation has had the 

 benefit of so uninterrupted an administration of forty years, be- 

 ginning with its birth and continuing in an unbroken line of 

 consistent policy a career of growing usefulness and enterprise. 



The first meeting of the Board of Regents took place on 

 September 7, 1846. and before the end of the year the policy of 

 the Regents was practically determined upon, for, after deciding 

 upon the plan of the building now occupied, they elected to the 

 secretaryship Prof. Joseph Henry, and thus approved his plan 

 for the organisation of the Institution which had previously been 

 submitted to them. 



Henry was a man greatly distinguished in science through his 

 epoch-making discoveries, which had already given to the world 

 the electro-magnetic telegraph, and which form the foundatio 



-Spencer Fullerton Baird, Second Secietar\ of the Smiths 

 Ins ■ ■ 



Fig. 4.- 



of all systems of electric lighting and power. ^ From the age 

 of forty-seven to that of seventy-nine, he merged his life in that 

 of the Institution. Prof. Asa Gray has shown so clearly the 

 deep impression which he made upon the organisation while 

 it was yet plastic, that I quote his words as the best explanation 

 of the character of this element in its history : 



" Some time before his appointment," writes Prof. Gray, "he 

 had been requested by the members of the Board of Regents to 

 examine the will of Smilhson, and to suggest a plan of organisa- 

 tion by which the object of the bequest might, in his opinion, 

 best be realised. • He did so, and the plan he drew was in their 

 hands when he was chosen Secretary. The plan was based on 

 the conviction ' that the intention of the donor was to advance 

 science by original research and publication ; that the establish- 

 ment was for the benefit of mankind generally, and that all un- 

 necessary expenditure on local objects would be violations of the 



1 Self-induction, and the intensity magnet, with which Henry and 

 Faraday subsequently discovered magneto-electricity 



