14 The Smithsonian Institution. 
‘establishment.’ But even this does not fully express the point. — 
ad Smithson been a book-collector, and left the will he did, 
who would have allowed that a library was intended? Is it not, 
however, equally preposterous to place this construction on these ~ 
words of a man who had no library at all; whose twenty-seven. 
published memoirs, it has been truly said, might every one of © 
them have been prepared, and probably were prepared, without — 
consulting a library; who during his lifetime labored to increase 
knowledge solely by oe researches in chemical and physical 
science ; and who bequeathed his fortune so that it should continue 
to furnish the means of increasing and diffusing knowledge in the 
world after his removal from it? In our minds, the only question 
is, whether a diversion of this fund mainly toward a library be 
an allowable use of it ; and whether, in the eh? tor clause 
of the act which, by fixing so high a maximum, would legalise 
. this use of it, net ress did not unduly stretch its prerogative over 
the trust. We reat however, in the hope and expectation that 
this clause will continue to be construed by its terms, and by the — 
intention of the founder,—cordially agreeing as we do with the 
whole Judiciary committee of the Senate, that “ this section can- 
not, by any fair construction of its language, be deemed to im- 
ply that any appropriation to that [maximum] amount, or nearly 
so, was intended to be required. It is not a perier to the Re- 
gents to apply that sum, but a prohibition to apply more; and it — 
leaves it to the regents to decide what amount ae vie sum 
limited can be advantageously applied to a library, having adue 
regard to the other objects enumerated in the law.” And the — 
Judiciary Committee proceed to say : ; 
«Indeed, the eighth section would seem to be intended to prevent the 
absorption ‘of the funds of the Institution in = Cig Smt of books. 
And there would seem to be sound rea for giving it that construc- 
knowledge’ in any other country, not even among the countrymen 
the testator; very few even of the citizens of the United pat wed a | 
receive any benefit from it. And if the money was to. be so appropri- 
ated, it would have been far better to buy the books and pete them at 
Id fy 
@ proposition, or consented that the United States should take to itself — 
and for their own use the money which they rae ie asa trust for ‘the 
increase and diffusion of knowledge among me 
2. As to the intentions of members of Congress who promoted - 
the passage of the bill into a law in its actual form :—let all that | 
can be justly claimed for the library plan on this ground be con- — 
