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their constitutions and laws, and the public treasury, free schools, open 
to every class of the community; and sometimes they endowed, in the 
same way, academies and colleges to teach higher branches of education 
and science. So, by their General Government, under its constitution, 
they have deemed it lawful, no less than useful, to shower over the 
whole west and southwest large donations of land, to assist in instilling 
some of the elements of science and letters into all ; to help to remove 
the forest and stir the soil, not only of that vast territory, but of every 
human intellect upon it, in order that each might be made to put forth 
a useful harvest, rather than thorns and thistles. 
To form some idea of our patronage in that way, Congress has already 
granted near half a million of acres of land for Universities and Semi- 
naries of learning ; and at the same rate for the other surveyed lands not 
yet sold, it would be increased to one and a half millions ; and besides this, 
Congress has reserved for the maintenance of schools in the townships 
sold, near six millions of acres more — swollen to twenty-one millions in 
the land already surveyed but not sold ; all of these are worth at least 
twenty-eight millions of dollars, equalling in value an annual appropria- 
tion of over a million and a half to these intellectual objects alone. No 
less constitutional and wise has been the policy of Congress to adojDt a 
course as to this District, under their exclusive jurisdiction, which en- 
courages the same interests by large grants to assist colleges here, and 
found valuable libraries ; and to go still further for science in another 
direction, by using it in the arts to build canals, construct bridges, 
macadamize streets, and erect splendid edifices at the public expense, 
and then adorn them with classical statuary and paintings, medals and 
engravings, and costly colonnades, and every variety of architectural 
embellishment. Statesmen of all parties, and from all quarters, whether 
Jeffersons or Adams’s, or from the once wilderness of the West, or the fair 
savannahs of the South, have vied with each other in measures so repu- 
table to the nation ; and also for completing elsewhere those buildings 
designed for objects within our granted powers — such as custom-houses, 
mints, and hospitals, and doing this, not in the style of barns or stables, 
but several of them in a manner worthy an Augustan age. 
Our mints, themselves, maintained from the public treasury, have 
likewise proved to be highly scientific establishments, most useful to the 
community and honorable to the country ; and the services of our Engi- 
neer corps, whether on public roads or improvements in harbors and 
rivers, or on fortifications, are overflowing with contributions to the use- 
