36 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



These views, which have commanded the approval of unprejudiced 

 and reflecting persons generally, and especially of men of science, to 

 which class Smithson belonged, were fully shared from the first by 

 Professor Bache, General Totten, Gideon Hawley, esq., and in whole 

 or in part by other members of the board, and I was elected the 

 secretary or principal executive officer, to develop and carry into 

 practice, as I supposed, under the direction of the board, the plan I 

 had suggested. 



The appointment was accepted with much and not causeless solici- 

 tude as to the result. I soon found that although a number of the 

 members of the board were iu favor of the promotion of original 

 researches, or of what has since, by way of discrimination, been 

 called the active operations, neither a majority of the Regents nor 

 perhaps the community in general was prepared to favor a plan of 

 organization which should exclude the material representation of the 

 Institution in the form of an extensive architectural structure calcu- 

 lated to arrest the eye and embellish the national capital. 



It was in vain to urge the fact that a large and expensive building was 

 not only unnecessary to the realization of the purpose of Smithson, but 

 that it would tend to defeat that object by absorbing the income, con- 

 trolling the future policy of the Institution, and confining its influence 

 principally to a single locality; that it was not the estimated first cost 

 of the edifice which should alone be considered, but also the expense 

 of keeping it in repair and the maintenance of the corps of assistants 

 and employes which would be required in an establishment of this 

 kind; that the increase of the collections of a miscellaneous library and 

 public museum would, in time, require additional space; and that, 

 finally, all the revenue of the bequest would be absorbed in a statical 

 establishment, or in attempting to do that which can only be properly 

 accomplished, as in other countries, by means of the government. 

 Unfortunately the building committee had settled upon a design for 

 the building in the Lombard style, and Congress had presented to the 

 Institution the museum of the exploring expedition, then at the Patent 

 Office, and directed that provision should be made on a liberal scale for 

 its accommodation, neglecting, at the same time, to fill the blank in 

 the act of organization, by which the cost of the building was to have 

 been limited. It was this provision of the law which furnished a 

 fulcrum for the influence exerted by the citizens of Washington, and 

 persons pecuniarily interested, directly or indirectly, in contracts or 

 otherwise, in favor of the erection of the present structure. Thus 



