The Smithsonian Institution. 11 
ready shown that no trace of it is found in the published proceed- 
ings of the Board until about a year ago. The whole course of 
action has ignored it; and no menems has ee a protest against 
that course as illega al. 
e are at a loss to know whether Mr. Chioate Cae s this 
view of the law or not. His letter of resignation (Doc. No. 7), 
the only record of his views that has been pitbetaads ryt 
implies that he does. He declares that Congress matured a plan, 
and sketched its general features with great clearness and com- 
pleteness, in the law, the substantial meaning of which is palpa- 
ble and unequivocal in its terms, and that this plan has been vio- 
lated, and the law in effect repealed, by the action of the Board 
of Regents. Yet he dates the violation, not in January, 1847, 
when the compromise resolutions were passed, “ according to 
which [only] a full half of the annual income was to be eventu- 
ally applied in permanence to what I deem the essential parts of 
the plan of Congress,” but in January, 1855, when these reso- 
\adors were rescinded, and the annual appropriations required to 
be made specifically for each object, ‘according to its intrinsic 
importance and in compliance in good faith with the law.” It is 
hard to say how “henceforward the discretion of the Regents, 
and not the act of Congress, is to be the rule ' 80h iegemecci 
the income from what he “deems the essential parts of the plan 
of Congress,” while that which he denounces renders practicable 
the appropriation of the whole available income to what he con- . 
tends Congress meant it should be applied. Surely it is not the 
discretionary power of the Regents that is here complained of, 
but the direction in which they were about to exercise it. But 
what an anomalous discretion that must be which can be exer- 
cised only in one direction! 
These newly developed claims of “ the library plan,” however 
based, it is understood were eloquently argued by Messrs. Choate 
and Meacham before the full Board of Regents, at the annual 
session in January last, the Chief Justice in the chair; and the 
Mr. P. 
decision was strongly adverse to them r. Pearce’s resolutions, 
rescinding the so-called compromise, pete requiring s as annual 
appropriations, were carried by votes, the first of 8 to 6; the sec- 
ond of 9to 5. This was not the test question; for they Gant with 
propriety have been opposed, and indeed were opposed, by Re- 
ents who do not regard ite library as the paramount interest of 
the Institution ; while those who do so regard the library,—not 
on grounds of general Sepsdioncy, but on the ground that the law 
enjoins it,—would seemingly have been constrained to vote in 
the affirmative. The actual vote here is very important, and we 
must think decisive as to the true interpretation of the law, since 
