•458 
PROCEEDINGS OF 
exalted conditions. Our freedom will subserve them, but subordinate forever will 
be our fame unless we comply with them. 
The Smithsonian fund is small in reference to the greatness and prospects of 
this country; but it is a germ above price. It may be made a foundation in the 
intellectual career of our country. And here I come to a main purpose of this 
paper. 
If it be asked in what way shall the fund be brought into activity, an answer is 
at hand. Let it be engrafted upon the National Institute. This is no original pro. 
position of mine. It has been a well-considered opinion. It came first from the 
venerable Duponceau, and has met the concurrence of so many judgments entitled 
to respect as now to form what may almost be called an enlightened public opi¬ 
nion. Standing behind such leaders, I only come in with humble but earnest 
co-operation. I would say, then, clothe this Institute with it; it is now suffering 
for want of funds—the only want that it knows. It is rich in zeal, rich in charac¬ 
ter, and already abundantly ripe in experience. 
If allowed to touch upon only some of its claims, I would go on to say, that it 
is an Institute which, through the spontaneous and honorable zeal of its members, 
and in a space more brief than has passed since the fund has been lying dead, has 
made advances in scientific and literary usefulness creditable to itself and to the 
country; an Institute composed of responsible public functionaries intermingling 
with eminent private individuals, and under this, as other features in its organiza¬ 
tion, a safe depository of the fund, whilst the practice of its own duties has given 
assurance that it would administer it with ability; an Institute which has nobly 
toiled for a name and earned it, loving science for its own sake, and which now sees 
upon its list, as members or correspondents, distinguished men and learned associa¬ 
tions of foreign countries, in addition to those of our own. Confer it, then, I 
would repeat, upon an Institute thus already recommended in so many cardinal 
points to the public confidence and favor, and upon which Congress could imposo 
all further conditions and guaranties necessary. 
Besides the advantages in taking this Institute as a basis for giving effect to the 
will, fears start up that the fund may otherwise fall through. Delays produce 
delays. Long inaction deadens the mind to its duties and energies, or cause it to 
halt in indecision, or to be distracted by contrariety. An eminent judge, in deli¬ 
vering an opinion from the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States not 
long ago, remarked, that it had been with him “ a subject of deep regret, that, not¬ 
withstanding the numerous, consistent, most solemn, and (with some few excep¬ 
tions) to his mind satisfactory adjudications of that court in expounding the Con¬ 
stitution, its meaning yet remained as unsettled in political, professional, and 
judicial opinion as it was immediately after its adoption; and that if we were to 
judge of the next by the results of the past half century, there was but slight 
assurance that that instrument would be better understood at the expiration than it 
was at the beginning of the period.” 
To make the application in no irreverent sense to the constitution—for much 
might be said to modify the ingenious extract—but under anxious feelings for the 
Smithsonian fund, if the founding of an entirely new and independent institution 
is thrown open as a debatable question at this time of day, in its whole compass 
and details, a long interval may pass before we hear of a final decision. After the 
procrastination and supineness already experienced, we should too probably see 
postponed through long years the consummation desired. Let us rather rejoice 
