ADDRESS. 



Friends and Fellow-Citizens: 



It has been deemed proper that, at a ceremony so interesting 

 as the present to the Smithsonian Institution, its chief officer 

 should make to you a few general remarks explanatory of its 

 origin, its purposes, its plans, and its prospects. Let me, there- 

 fore, ask your attention while I undertake that duty. 



The Congress of the United States, by an act passed on the 

 10th of August last, organized "an establishment" through the 

 instrumentality of which to apply faithfully to its directed objects 

 a legacy of five hundred thousand dollars, received by our Gov- 

 ernment under the will of a philosophic and benevolent English- 

 man. This "establishment" is composed of our highest public 

 functionaries for the time being — the President, the Vice Presi- 

 dent, the Chief Justice, and the Heads of the six Executive 

 Departments, with the Commissioner of the Patent Office, and 

 the Mayor of Washington; and, as the active council of manage- 

 ment, a board is created of fifteen, known in the act by the 

 scholastic name of "Regents " one-fifth of them chosen by the 

 Senate, another fifth by the House of Representatives, and of the 

 remainder, two-fifths by the joint action of both legislative cham- 

 bers. It is to accommodate this imposing agency, to give it 

 permanent and suitable means with which to effectuate its 

 important and various purposes, and to shelter as well as exhibit 

 its collections and property, that Congress enjoined to be erected, 

 "of plain and durable materials and structure, without unneces- 

 sary ornament," the edifice whose corner-stone you have seen 

 deposited. 



James Smithson, a Londoner born, and claiming to be the 

 son of a distinguished nobleman, gave his life exclusively to intel- 

 lectual pursuits, and especially to researches in physical and 

 experimental science. Supplied with larger means than his wants 



