The Smithsonian Institution. 15 
ceded. These claims are very elaborately presented in Mr. 
Meacham’s minority report (Doc. No. 5),-to which we refer our 
readers. ‘They amount substantially to this—First: Specific — 
plans of operation, se ih a in the original bill, or moved in 
amendments,—some of them prescribing the same ‘active oper- 
ations’ that the Hoatitntion has undertaken,—were voted out. 
Well and wisely done, no doubt. No one specific plan, no enu- 
merated set of operations, to be fixed once for all, could obtain 
the vote of a clear majority. Where various conflicting schemes 
are i Siege i is not difficult to outvote any one. ‘The ques- 
tion turns, u what is put in its place. We gather from ‘the 
parlimentary ee of the Act, that the real majority did not 
wish to anticipate experience, and fix details, but to found an Insti- 
tution, subject to a few general requirements; to give it able and 
responsible managers ; to devolve on them the duty of reconciling 
as far as they could the conflicting plans so vehemently ur urged b 
several different parties, and to apportion the income among the 
specified objects according to the dictates of their best judgment, 
enlightened more and more by a a So say the Judiciary 
Committee of the Senate. _ 
“It is very evident, by the law above ee to, that —— did 
not deem it advisable to prescribe any definite and fixed plan, and 
deemed it more proper to confide that duty “i a Board % Regents, 
carefully selected, indicating only in general terms the objects to which 
their attention was to be directed in executing the testator’s Ree 
“Thus, by the fifth section, the Regents were required to cause a 
halls, for the reception and arrangement, upon a liberal scale, of objects 
of natural pet including a geological and mineralogical cabinet, 
also a chemical laborato ory, a library, a galler y of art, and the neces- 
sons who might visit the Institution. It was by the express terms of the 
trust, which the At Batre was pledged to execute, to be diffused 
among men. This could be done in no other way than by publications 
at the. expense of ‘he Soak taton: Nor has Congress prescribed the 
sums which shall be appropriated to icant different objects. It is left to 
the discretion and judgment of the Regents 
And further, 
‘No fixed and immutable plan, prescribed by law or adopted by the 
Regents, would attain objects of the trust. It was evidently the in- 
