456 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



proper administration of the establishment. The general tenor of 

 his views may be summed up in two practical propositions : 



(1.) The Institution should undertake nothing which could be 

 done by other agencies. A paper or report which would naturally 

 find its outlet in some other channel was never to be published by 

 the Institution. A research made for a commercial object would 

 find plenty to engage in it without his encouragement. It was the 

 duty of the Government to provide room for its own collections and 

 to make them accessible to investigators, rather than to draw upon 

 the Smithson fund for this purpose. As a natural corollary of these 

 views the Institution should not engage in competition with other 

 organizations in any enterprise whatever. 



( 2.) Objects of merely local benefit, which no one could avail 

 himself of except by a visit to Washington, were to be regarded as 

 of subsidiary importance, as not well fitted to carry out the views 

 of Smithson to the wide extent he would have desired, and as 

 properly belonging to the local authorities. 



Putting both these principles together, the library, the museum, 

 the art gallery, the courses of lectures and the Smithsonian building 

 were looked upon as things only temporarily undertaken by the 

 Institution, to be turned over to other agencies whenever such could 

 be found ready to assume the responsibility of the operations con- 

 nected with them. 



The aifairs of the Institution went on for several years without 

 any interruption. The general policy of the Secretary was to keep 

 the expenditure upon those objects which he considered least germane 

 down to the lowest limit consistent with the law and with the reso- 

 tions of the Board of Regents, hoping gradually to win the Board 

 over to his views. Among the accessories on which he wished to 

 retrench, the library was the only one which gave serious trouble. 

 In the act organizing the establishment, the Regents were authorized 

 to make an annual expenditure, not exceeding an average of $25,000, 

 " for the gradual formation of a library composed of valuable works 

 pertaining to all departments of human knowledge." This sum was 

 two-thirds of the whole annual income, and had the provision been 

 mandatory, would have left little for any active operations. At a 

 meeting of the Board the day after the election of Professor Henry 



