to analyze different kinds of soils, and to learn and teach how to enrich them; the professor of natural history is to deal with noxious or useful animals and insects; the professor of geology is to illustrate the working of mines; the professor of astronomy is to teach navigation; the professor of architecture and domestic science is charged with the theory and practice of building, lighting, and ventilating all manner of edifices; and the professor of agriculture, horticulture, and domestic economy is to make experiments to see what exotics will grow and what will not, all over the United States. And, in pursuance of the same theory of administration of the fund, it is provided that not a book is to be purchased for the institution except "works on science and the arts, especially such as relate to the ordinary business of life, and to the various mechanical and other improvements and discoveries which may be made."

Now, I say, that this creates a college or school-such as it is on the basis of a somewhat narrow utilitarianism - to be sure, erroneously so called- but a college or academical institution. Who is to be taught agriculture, architecture, domestic science, rural economy, and navigation? Not you, Mr. President, I suppose; not congress; not the government; not men at all. Students, pupils, youths, are to be brought hither, if you can find them; "rules and regulations," (so runs the eighth section of the bill,) are to be made "for the admission into the various departments of the institution, and their conduct and deportment while they remain therein," and instruction is to be given them by professors and lecturers. This, surely, is a school, a college, an academical institute of education such as it is or nothing.

Well, Sir, in reviewing, as I have had occasion to do, the proceedings of congress upon this subject heretofore, I have received the impression that it had become quite your settled judgment, settled on the most decisive reasons, that no school, college, or academical establishment, should be constituted. It seems that, in the session of 1838, a joint committee of the two branches was charged with this deliberation. The chairman of the committee from this body was Mr. Robbins, and the chairman, on the appointment of the house, was Mr. Adams, both of them, I may pause to say, persons of the most profound and elegant acquisition, both of them of

that happy, rare class who "grow old still learning." The two committees differed on this very question, whether a school or college should be established. The opinion of the committee of the house is expressed in the fourth section of the bill (No. 293, Senate,) which they desired to report, and which is in these words:

"Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That no part of the said Smithsonian fund, principal or interest, shall be applied to any school, college, university, institute of education, or ecclesiastical establishment."

That of the committee of the senate is distinctly enough intimated in the beautiful speech with which Mr. Robbins introduced the subject in January, 1839. I find it in the appendix to the "Congressional Globe: "

"I could wish, if all were agreed in it, that this institution should make one of a number of colleges, to constitute a university to be established here, and to be endowed in a manner worthy of this great nation and their immense resources. But as opinions are divided upon this subject, not, I should hope, as to the great desirableness of such an establishment, but as to the constitutional competency of congress to undertake it, I will not embarrass my present object by involving it with that subject. This, as an independent institution, may hereafter be made a part of such a university, should one be established; but it is now to be looked at only as an independent institution."

It was to embody and execute this conception that Mr. Robbins drew the senate bill, No. 292.

Finding themselves unable to agree, it was determined that each committee should report both of these bills to their respective houses. On the twenty-fifth February, 1839, the bill drawn by Mr. Robbins was taken up in this body, and, after an animated discussion, was laid on the table by a vote of twenty to fifteen. This vote is regarded, I perceive, by Mr. Adams in his subsequent reports of 1840 and 1842, as expressing the judgment of the senate against the establishment of such academical institute of learning. He says,

"It is, then, to be considered as a circumstance propitious to the final disposal of this fund, by the organization of an institution the best adapted to accomplish the design of the testator, that this first but erroneous impression of that design-an institute of learning, a university, upon the foundation of which the whole fund should be lavished, and yet prove inadequate to its purpose, without large appropriations of public moneys in its aid should have been presented to the consideration of congress,

referred to a numerous joint committee of both houses, there discussed, reported for the deliberation of both houses, fully debated in the house where it originated, and then decisively rejected."

If such may be inferred to have been the judgment of the senate, it may be defended on the most decisive reasons. It is hardly worth while to move the question, whether it would be expedient to apply the fund as far as it would go to the founding of a great university deserving of the name, — a national university, in which all the branches of a thorough education should be taught; which should fill the space between the college and professional schools, which should guide the maturer American mind to the highest places of knowl edge; for such should be the functions of such a university. It is not worth while to move this question; because no such proposition is before us. I am afraid, with Mr. Adams, that to found such a university would consume the whole fund, interest and principal, almost at once, and reduce you to the alternative of a signal failure, or of occasional and frequent application to the government for aid which could never be granted. But the Senator from Ohio contemplates no such thing. He constructs his college on a far more moderate model; and of this college of his I am constrained to say, that I think it, in the actual state of academical education, wholly unnecessary, and in a great degree useless. Why, Sir, there are in the country more than a hundred colleges; I have seen them estimated at one hundred and seventy-three. These are distributed all over the United States; two are in this District. They are at the doors of the people. I suspect that every one of them has a professor for every department provided for in this bill, except architecture and domestic science, and agriculture and rural economy. In every one, without any difficulty, that special attention here recommended to the application of science" to the ordinary business of life," may be, if it is not now, secured, if in the judgment of those who are intrusted with their management it is thought expedient. Why, Sir, I recollect that navigation was taught in one at least of our common, free district-schools of Massachusetts thirty years ago. I cannot concur with the honorable framer of the bill, therefore, that his school is to "furnish facilities for the acquisition of such branches of knowledge as are not taught

It will

in the various universities." It will do no such thing. injure those universities, rather, if it has any effect, by withdrawing from them some portion of the patronage for which they are all struggling, and of which so few get a full meal. Such a school, then, I think, is scarcely now necessary. In this city it would be, to say no more, very far from generally useful. It would hardly appear to be an instrumentality coming up to the sonorous promise of "increasing and diffusing knowledge among men. Who would its pupils be? Who could afford to come all the way to Washington from the South, West, and North, to learn architecture, navigation, and domestic science? Certainly only the sons of the wealthy, who would hardly come, if they could, to learn any such branch of homely knowledge. You might collect some few students in the District and the borders of the adjacent States; but for any purpose of wide utility the school would be no more felt than so much sunshine on the poles. Meantime, here would be your professors, their salaries running on, your books and apparatus and edifices, a show of things, pretty energetic diffusing of the fund, not much diffusion of knowledge.

a

I shall venture, then, to move to strike out all those parts of the bill which indicate the particular mode in which the bequest is to be applied to the increase and diffusion of knowledge. I except the provision for experiments in seeds and plants, on which I will say a word hereafter. If this motion prevails, the whole question will recur, What shall we do with the fund? It has seemed to me that there are two applications of it which may just now meet with favor.

In the first place, to begin with the least important, I adopt, with some modifications, the suggestion in the bill that lectures be delivered in this city for two or three months during every session of congress. These lectures should be delivered not by professors permanently fixed here, upon annual salaries, to do nothing in the recess of congress, or to do nothing that cannot be as well done at one hundred and fifty other places; but by gentlemen eminent in science and literature, holding situations elsewhere, and coming hither under the stimulations and with the ambition of a special and conspicuous retainer. They might be professors of colleges, men of letters, persons dis

tinguished in the professions, or otherwise. Names will occur to you all which I need not mention; and their lectures should be adapted to their audiences. Who would their audiences be? Members of congress with their families, members of the government with theirs, some inhabitants of this city, some few strangers who occasionally honor us with visits of curiosity or business. They would be public men, of mature years and minds; educated, disciplined to some degree, of liberal curiosity, and appreciation of generous and various knowledge. Such would be the audience. The lectures should be framed accordingly. I do not think they should be confined to three or four physical sciences in their applications to the arts of life,—navigation, useful or hurtful insects and animals, the ventilation of rooms, or the smoking of chimneys.

This is knowledge, to be sure; but it is not all knowledge, nor the half of it, nor the best of it. Why should not such an audience hear something of the philosophy of history, of classical and of South American antiquities, of international law, of the grandeur and decline of States, of the progress and eras of freedom, of ethics, of intellectual philosophy, of art, taste, and literature in its most comprehensive and noblest forms? Why should they not hear such lectures as Sir James Mackintosh delivered when a young man to audiences among whom were Canning, and such as he? Would it not be as

instructive to hear a first-rate scholar and thinker demonstrate out of a chapter of Greek or Italian history how dreadful a thing it is for a cluster of young and fervid democracies to dwell side by side, independent and disunited, as it would to hear a chemist maintain that to raise wheat you must have some certain proportion of lime in the soil? But the subjects of lectures would of course be adapted to time, place, and circumstances, and varied with them. Whatever they should treat of, they would be useful. They would recreate and refresh and instruct you. They would relieve the monotony and soften the austerity, and correct all the influences of this kind of public service.

But, Mr. President, all this is no administration of the fund; all this ought to cost less than $5,000 a year. We could not sustain more than one lecture in a week, nor that for more than three months of any session. Here is an accumulated