regents have the power to make such an appropriation, or so to limit it? And is there any reason why they might not limit the appropriation to a still smaller sum? They might, indeed, be liable to the charge of evading the law, if those appropriations were for mere nominal sums, so that in the course of a series of years no sensible progress could be made in the gradual formation of a library. But this is an extreme case, from which no argument can be drawn against their discretion to limit the appropriation for a library, while intending in good faith to provide for its gradual formation.

Then suppose them to apply an amount sufficient to meet all the expenses necessarily resulting from the provisions of the act, still there would remain a considerable sum not applied to any purpose. If the Board of Regents believe that its application to scientific researches and their publication be "best suited for the promotion of the purposes of the testator," can it be doubted that they would have the right so to apply it?

The ninth section of the act gives this power in full. When they have met the current expenses of the institution, from time to time. made the necessary appropriations for the buildings in process of erection, and, exercising their discretion within the limit prescribed to them, have made an annual appropriation for a library, what remains is placed at their "disposal," to promote the purposes of the testator by the use of such means as "they (the Board of Regents) shall deem best suited" to accomplish this object. In construing the act of Congress the committee confine themselves to the act itself-to the plain import of the terms in which it is expressed, and to the necessary results of the provisions which it contains. They do not resort to what is called its parliamentary history. The reported speeches of members upon the bill while pending in Congress, and even votes upon amendments made or rejected, do not answer this purpose. The first only disclose the individual opinions of the speakers-the second frequently do not exhibit the object of those who voted for or against the particular amendment. A speech made by one member is often at variance with the views of those who unite with him in voting for a particular provision. They frequently sustain it on other and different grounds. So too the majority or intermediate vote is frequently composed of the friends and opponents of the bill; the latter advocating a particular amendment with the hope and on the belief that it will prove an incumbrance to the measure in the view of some of its advocates, and thus contribute to its defeat; or they may think that a particular proviso proposed to be stricken cut is unnecessary as being comprehended in some other part of the act.

A careful scrutiny of the proceedings of the House of Representatives, while this law was pending before them, would show how unsafe a guide the resort to the parliamentary history of a bill would be in the ascertainment of its true construction. This may reconcile us to an adherence to those rules which the wisdom of ages has devised for the interpretation of statutes. We are endeavoring to ascertain the powers. and duties of the Board of Regents, and to do this we seek to discover the true interpretation of the act of Congress and the will of Mr. Smithson, which, taken together, confer their powers and prescribe their du

ties. These two sources of power and duty are spoken of as necessa rily connected; for, although the Smithsonian Institution was created by act of Congress, and will cease to exist whenever Congress shall think proper to repeal that act, yet both Congress and the institution, so long as it continues to exist, are bound to carry the intention of the testator into effect.

The trust has been accepted by Congress in behalf of the United States, and the faith of the United States has been pledged for its faithful execution "according to the will of the enlightened and liberal donor." While, therefore, Congress, acting as agents of the United States, have the power to divert the fund to purposes other than those which may be according to "the will of the liberal and enlightened donor," their right to do so can never be affirmed; and though the Board of Regents cannot and do not claim a right to place themselves in an antagonistical position to the Congress of the United States, whose sub-agents they are, yet in construing the act of Congress, if it will admit of two constructions, one of which seems to be most conformable to the purposes of the will of Smithson, the regents would not hesitate to accept such construction in preference to the other, which does not conform to the will of the testator. This is merely the application of a principle universally recognized in the interpretation of statutes.

In the present case two constructions are given to the act of Congress. If the Board of Regents consider one of them to be more consonant to the purposes of Mr. Smithson's will, which was the source of the authority of Congress to legislate on the subject for any purpose, it ought to be adopted, since the act was passed evidently for the purpose of carrying into execution "the will of the donor," and especially when this interpretation affects two provisions of the act, which otherwise would be without object or operation.

The committee will now proceed to inquire whether the scientific researches, and the publication of their results, are, in the language of the act of Congress, "best suited to promote the purpose of the testator." The question is between such researches, made and published at Washington, or examined under the authority of the institution, and circulated throughout the civilized world, and a great national library, to be established in this city. Mr. Smithson was a scholar, a man of science, an author of scientific memoirs, a contributor to the transac tions of the Royal Society of London, familiar with the language in which his will is written, and perfectly competent to decide upon the aptitude of words to convey the ideas they were intended to express.

It might well be expected that the language of such a man would be characterized by simplicity, by the absence of circumlocution and periphrasis, which is well described as the use of many words to express the meaning of one. If he had intended to furnish to the people of the United States, and especially to the citizens of Washington, a great library, comprehending all that was then known in every department of human knowledge and culture, he would have said so in terms not to be misunderstood. The committee cannot doubt that if he had merely designed to provide for the purchase of books, to become, through the agency of the United States, the founder of a library, he would have used the simple language appropriate to such an intention.

He would have said: "I bequeath the whole of my property, subject, &c., to the United States of America, to found, at Washington, a library, under the name of the Smithsonian Library."

It is difficult to believe that any man having such an object in view would have abandoned the plain, simple, intelligible language in which no difference of construction could, by any possibility, have arisen, and have substituted for it the sentence which is found in his will, namely: "To found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”

Again, Mr. Smithson was, as the committee have before said, a man of science, the author of scientific memoirs, a member of the Royal Society, and a contributor to its transactions. What is more natural than that such a man should, when about to pass away from the scene of action, dedicate his property to the continued prosecution of those researches to which his life had been principally devoted. The words of the bequest are strongly corroborative of this view. It is for the "increase of knowledge," not merely for the acquirement of that which now exists. A library would subserve the latter purpose, but could only indirectly aid in the accomplishment of the former by enabling those who had mastered its contents to do what the Board is now doing, namely to prosecute researches for the increase of knowledge. But the terms of the bequest require not merely that it should be applied to the increase of knowledge, but also to its diffusion, and to its diffusion

AMONG MEN.

The benevolent purposes of Mr. Smithson were not limited to the citizens of Washington, nor yet to the people of the United States. They had a far wider scope. A man of science belongs exclusively to no particular country. He is in one sense a cosmopolite, at home in all places where the votaries of science dwell, and under every clime they are the objects of his benevolence. They are men among whom he desires the increase and diffusion of knowledge.

And he has provided for this in his will. How could a vast library established here accomplish this object? At most it would be accessible to the people of Washington, to casual visiters, and to those who came here for the purpose of consulting its volumes. How infinitely short would this fall of the purpose of the testator, which was first the increase and then the diffusion of knowledge among men of whatever country or whatever clime.

If a national library be a national want, who should supply it? Cannot Congress, which represents a population of twenty-five millions, with resources almost incalculable, and with a treasury not exhausted or impoverished, but overflowing with revenue? Can it not spare out of this abundance whatever may be necessary? Is it not now supplying that want in the great library of Congress, to which in the last three years they have appropriated more than ninety thousand dollars? It is accessible now to every scholar who may be at Washington, and will in a few years be so increased under the policy of its present administration as to supply many of the wants of the student and the scientific investigator. Shall a nation such as ours depend for this na

tional want upon the bounty of a stranger? The generous impulse of the American heart will quickly prompt the answer-no.

The resolutions of compromise, as they were called, to which the committee have before alluded, were repealed by the Board of Regents before the period when by their terms they were to go into operation. What has been already said will show that the committee think that they were properly repealed. Their effect was to tie up the hands of the Board of Regents, to deny to the successors of those who passed them the exercise of that discretion with which the law invested the Board, and thus to defeat the act of Congress by taking away that discretion in regard to the disposal of the fund which the law made it not only the right but the duty of the regents to exercise. Nor can there be any breach of faith in this repeal. The faith which the regents owe is to the law and to the purpose of the will of Smithson, and any arrangement of their own which should restrain them from promoting this purpose by the means which they deem best suited to it, would itself, in the opinion of the committee, approach more nearly to a breach of faith.

The regents, by pledging their faith to one another, cannot escape from the obligation to apply the funds at their control to the objects which they deem best suited to promote the purpose of the testator. The act of Congress, according to the plain import of its terms, authorizes the Board of Regents to employ all monies arising from the income of the endowment not therein appropriated nor required for the purpose therein provided, in such manner as they shall deem best suited for the promotion of the "purpose of the testator," namely, "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," and this authority is rendered incontestible, in the judgment of the committee, by the concluding clause of the section which empowers the Board of Regents to exercise their discretion in the disposal of the surplus income, ANYTHING HEREIN (in the act of Congress) CONTAINED TO THE CONTRARY NOTWITHSTANDING."

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This grant of the power imposes the obligation to exercise the discretion which it confers. Judicial tribunals would never reverse the construction of a statute, the terms of which were so plain and unmistakeable, by what is at all times dangerous, a resort to speeches made by a few of the lawgivers who framed it, or the votes of members actuated by motives beyond the scrutiny of the expounder. Looking, therefore, to the act of Congress itself, which, as was said by a senator in a recent discussion, is best construed "by the examination and comparison of its various provisions and the admitted purpose of its enactment," the committee found no difficulty in coming to these conclusions on this point. They find in the law directions to the Board of Regents to erect, on a liberal scale, a building in which can be arranged col lections of natural history, a geological and mineralogical cabinet, a museum, a library, chemical laboratory, gallery of art, a lecture room; and, of course, to use these various means of increasing knowledge in the manner and for the purpose to which they are adapted, and for which they are required. In effect the law says: "All other portions of the income dispose of as you may think best calculated to promote the purpose of the testator." A larger discretion can hardly be conceived.

It is absolutely unlimited in relation to every one of its objects except a library, and to this the appropriations which the regents are authorized to make are limited to a maximum amount which they are not at liberty to exceed. It would seem to be most singular, if this had been the primary and cherished object of Congress, that it should be the only one subjected to such a limitation.

It might be thought, if this had been their primary purpose, that the restrictions would have been imposed upon the appropriations for other objects, leaving that for the library unfettered. If we turn from the act of Congress to the will of Smithson to determine the manner in which the trust should be executed, if we look to his antecedents and find that he was himself a searcher into the mysteries of nature which science is laboring to develop-not so much employed in studying the pages of those who have written as striving to read the unwritten pages of nature's book-if we consider the plain and obvious import of the simple language in which his wishes are expressed, and contemplate the benefits to result from one or the other scheme of appropriation which have been in controversy, if we consider these things, we cannot doubt that it is both the right and the duty of the regents, resulting from the will of Smithson, and enjoined by the act of Congress, to appropriate such portion of his funds as they can advantageously employ in scientific researches and the publication and circulation of the results "among men" wherever men exist capable of appreciating them, while, at the same time, they apply another portion of the fund, according to a sound and honest discretion, to the particular purposes specified in the act.

Thus they will not depart from any plan devised by Congress and prescribed in the act, as Mr. Choate seems to have erroneously supposed, but will fill up and develop that very plan, of which only some of the outlines were sketched in the law.

It would be impracticable, within the limits proper to this report, to go into the examination of the minute outline of organization of the institution submitted to the Board of Regents by the secretary, and approved by them. It will be found reprinted in detail in the appendix to the eighth annual report of the Smithsonian Institution, published by Congress in 1854.

A brief notice of the plan, and of its results, is all that we can here present.

The object of the plan is, first: To increase knowledge by stimulating original research by the rapid and full publication of results; by aid in procuring the materials and appliances for investigation; and, if necessary, by direct rewards.

How

Experience has shown that no other means are so effective in stimulating research as the rapid publication of results; not in a stinted form of abstract, and without illustrations, (too often the necessary condition of the publication of scientific labors,) but in full, with illustrations drawn, engraved, and printed in the best style of art. many investigations are stopped for the want of instruments, of specimens, and general appliances for research? How many are laid aside, because, first of all, men must live? What more noble or useful object for the Smithsonian Institution than to remove these difficulties from Rep. 141-3