1678 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
the Vice-President, shall preside. Such meetings, which were for- 
merly held, have of late years been discontinued, the last one having 
been held at the Smithsonian Institution on May 5, 1877. The by- 
laws of the Institution provide that the stated meetings are to be held 
on the first Tuesday of May, annually, and also that special meet- 
ings will be convened by the direction of the President. 
The business of the Institution is conducted by a Board of Regents, 
composed of the Vice-President, the Chief Justice, three members of 
the Senate, and three members of the House, together with six_per- 
sons other than members of Congress. The Senators are appointed 
by the President of the Senate, and members of the House by the 
Speaker. The six other persons (no two of whom shall be residents 
of the same State) are appointed by joint resolution of Congress. The 
Chancellor of the Institution is elected by the Board of Regents. 
The Secretary of the Institution is also elected by the Board of 
Regents, and he is at the same time the Secretary of the ‘‘ Establish- 
ment,” and the Secretary of that board. 
As the non-Congressional Regents reside in all parts of the Union, 
the Regents meetings, though regular, are not frequent, and the 
duty of carrying out their wishes in the interim falls chiefly upon the 
Secretary. But the board elects three of their own body as an Exec- 
utive Committee, whose relations to the Secretary are not defined, 
but with whom, as a matter of fact, he advises on any important mat- 
ters outside of the established conduct of the Institution. 
The object of Congress in founding the Smithsonian Institution, 
as inferable from the prolonged debates which preceded the fixing its 
constitution, as well as from the language of the act, was, primarily, 
to open a way for the encouragement of art as well as science without 
the expenditure of public money. Consistently with this, the policy 
of the Institution, inaugurated by its first Secretary, Joseph Henry, 
approved by the Regents, and continued by them through subsequent 
Secretaries, has been, in the words of its founder, to provide ‘*‘ for the 
increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”’ It may be said, 
consequently, ‘‘to have taken all knowledge to be its province,” 
looking to increase it by the encouragement of creative art and origi- 
nal discovery, and to diffuse it by publication and exchange with its 
body of correspondents in every country. ; 
It is not, then, a local institution, nor even only a national one, but 
an‘ international one, reaching out in its operations to every portion 
of the world. 
While the Institution’s charter is thus ample, however, it has natu- 
rally been more occupied in furthering the useful ends which are 
1These few important words, which form the spirit of the Institution, appear to 
have been taken from Washington’s farewell address (‘‘ Promote, as an object of 
primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge’’). 
