The Smithsonian Institution. 7 
average of $25,000 annually, for the gradual formation of a library, 
to limit their otherwise full discretion in one direction only,— 
to limit it upwards, not downwards. ‘Their course of action from 
the first shows this. However diverse the yiews that have been 
entertained in the Board as to the propriety of large or small ap- 
propriations for the library, we are not aware that this full power 
nd 
f a committee on the library (consisting of Messrs. Choate, 
Hawley, and Rush) appointed at the first session of the Board of 
Regents, declares, “that they see in the language of the act 
which the Regents are created to administer, and in the history 
of the passage of that act, a clear intimation that such a library 
was regarded by Congress as prominent among the more import- 
ant means of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men. 
This intimation they think should control in a great degree the 
acts of the Regents.” “ And, without pausing to inquire what 
precise average amount should be expended, the committee will 
at they have become satisfied that there would be no diffi- 
culty in judiciously expending, for a limited period, if it is other- 
wise desirable to do so, the entire sum indicated as the maximum 
in the act.” And the resolution they reported for the appropria- 
tion of $20,000 for a library was at that time adopted. Thus, 
in advocating the largest views in respect to the library that have 
ever been presented by a committee or sanctioned by the Board, 
—at the time and place when those, if such there were, who be- 
lieved the law to require the Institution to be made “almost en- 
tirely a library” would surely put forth the whole strength of their 
cause,—no claim is made for it as the “paramount object,” no 
right whatever is asserted to the maximum sum mentioned in 
the act; but the large appropriation they sought to devote to the 
library “ for a limited period,” is recommended solely on grounds 
of expediency ; although motives found in an intimation gather 
from the history of the act are introduced as sanctioning the pro- 
priety of their recommendation. We seek in vain for any inti- 
mation that they were bound to propose so large a sum as the 
did, or that they would have dene so had they believed a smaller 
appropriation more expedient at the time. 
e next action of the Board of Regents, a month later, when 
the committee raised “to digest a plan to carry out the provisions 
of the act to establish the Smithsonian Institution,” had made it 
us 
, * 
Institution, to aiding stimulating original researches in all 
se 
publication of transactions reports, and other publications of the 
and i 
