FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS, 1889-1891. 1379 
within the control of the Government. I want it to be a part of the 
Smithsonian Institution. I am not willing that it shall come under the 
control of the Commissioners of the District. I do not want it mixed 
up with any possible self-interests ring or syndicate that may be in 
this District. I want it as a scientific enterprise, asa part of that great 
public institution of which the Smithsonian fas been so honorable a 
part. I know it will be honestly administered in connection with that 
Institution. I know it will be wisely maintained, and I know that it 
will be of advantage. 
Mr. McComas. I now yield three minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Morse]. 
_ The Spraxer. Mr. Morse is recognized. 
Mr. E. A. Morsr. Mr. Speaker, I desire to meet one single objection 
raised to this bill by the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Blount]. He 
complains that the expenditures for adorning and beautifying the cap- 
ital, for streets and parks and statuary, have largely increased in the 
last quarter of a century, and are growing larger every year. I under- 
stood him to say that for seventy-one years scarcely more than $1,000,- 
000 was expended by the General Government for such purposes. It 
is easy to explain the increased expenditures for adorning and beau- 
tifying this capital city complained of by the gentleman from Georgia. 
Prior to the war and prior to 1861, when the Republican party came 
into power, the doctrine of State rights prevailed; the doctrine pre- 
vailed that we were a loose-jointed confederacy of sovereign States, 
bound together by slender ties, and that the national capital was a 
city of no great importance, and though it was laid out by a French 
engineer, who must have had prophetic wisdom of the future great- 
ness and glory of the country, laid out, I say, on a colossal scale—the 
gentleman from Georgia is correct—almost absolutely nothing was 
done to develop the plan of the capital and seat of Government. 
In 1861, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, a change came over 
the spirit of the dream. The people in that election rebuked the doc- 
trine of the State rights and declared that we were a nation, and 
though the Republican party had on its hands the most gigantic civil 
war of all history, calling for the expenditure of untold millions of 
money, they began immediately to emphasize the fact that we were a 
nation by the macadamizing of the streets, by costly additions to this 
Capitol, by the laying out of parks, and the erection of statuary to 
commemorate the heroes of the Republic, and that policy has been 
pursued for a quarter of a century, until this city has come to be the 
finest capital city-in the world, and the bill now under consideration 
is in the direct line of that policy inaugurated by the Republican 
party when it assumed control of the Government, and that policy 
shall never be reversed by my vote. 
The gentleman from Georgia complains that these improvements 
