242 [Assembly 



recommendation of award, and see it laid before Congress at a 

 proper time. In many cases, men of science would only require 

 recognition of their rights of discovery, and then give the results 

 of their labors to the world. In other cases, where the inventor 

 required payment, it should be honorably made. 



This system once introduced, we should see the end of those, 

 impositions that are too frequently practised upon government 

 and the people ; and science and art would walk in open day, 

 honored by all men, and America would march rapidly in the 

 way of scientific improvement. 



It will be understood that my object in proposing the estab- 

 lishment of a National Academy of Sciences, entrusted with the 

 executive powers of a legal tribunal is to promote the cultivation 

 of the useful sciences and arts, and to afford just protection to 

 the rights of discoverers and inventors. The transactions of this 

 body would give to the public the most valuable knowledge of 

 new discoveries, and in a reliable form, and thus save the world 

 from the artful tricks of impostors, and our courts of justice from 

 the labor of investigations which should not be required of gen- 

 tlemen devoted to the practice of the law, who are not always 

 the most competent persons to pass upon questions of science 

 and of scientific discovery. 



You have, I doubt not, understood that this method would 

 augment our means of scientific education ; and I trust that ere 

 long the practical arts will receive a new impulse, in their march 

 of improvement, from accumulated power derived from scientific 

 methods of study. 



Science is systematized knowledge ; and, as you well know, is 

 power of the most valuable kind applicable under new conditions, 

 and in cases often of great importance to the arts, to manufa§- 

 tures and agriculture j while, at the same time, this high power 

 of the human mind is capable of saving the country from the 

 horrors of war, by warning all nations that there is not a means 

 wanting for our most eifective defence against the aggressions of 

 an enemy. Napoleon knew that science was full of resources 

 applicable to war; and had he possessed a fleet of steamships in 



