Mr. Allen concurred with his colleague. He objected to the bill because it placed the construction under the Commissioner of Public Buildings and Grounds, and being upon public ground, Congress must appropriate any deficiency or the people must be again visited by hosts of traveling agents. * * * These he thought sufficient reasons for rejecting the bill without division.
Mr. Clay deprecated the irregular discussion, and said that no newspaper in the country was conducted with more regard to propriety, decorum, truth, and faithfulness of report than the "National Intelligencer," and he could wish that the other journals of this city, and particularly the one connected with the Government, would look more to this point for example.
Notwithstanding the Society by its memorial had furnished the information requested by Mr. Morris, and stood ready for investigation of its affairs, the memorial was ultimately laid on the table and the matter was dropped.
This debate was noticed in the public press, local and elsewhere. It cannot be known what, if any, influence it had throughout the country to impair the efforts of the Society in the collection of funds or to weaken confidence in the enterprise. Such a result was not improbable.
December 10, 1818, the Society adopted and issued in pamphlet form—
"An Address
of the
Board of Managers
of the
Washington National Monument
Society,
with a statement of the
Receipts and Expenditures."
This address was sent to the Society's agents and friends of the Monument in all parts of the country, which address they were "requested," in an accompanying letter, "to diffuse as widely as may be without incurring expense."
The measure of the result of the Society's efforts at this period, the discouragement met with, and its faith in the work it had undertaken, is evidenced by language in this address, which recited, in part:
"The annexed statement of the sums received and accounted for by them (the agents) shows the measure of their success. This, though various, has, in no instance, equalled the least sanguine expectations. This may be ascribed in some degree to the fundamental feature of the plan itself, which, in limiting the individual subscriptions to one dollar, has been found, excepting in towns, to have involved an expense to the agent nearly, if not quite, equal to the amount collected; while in the larger towns the abortion heretofore of schemes for a like purpose has produced a general impression that this plan would share the same fate. Other causes, some of a temporary, others of a permanent nature, co-operated in leading to this result, of which, perhaps, the most powerful was the general derangement of the currency, and the real or apprehended evils that followed in its train, with the impression that it was the duty of the General Government, out of the vast resources at its command, to effect the object.
"In reviewing the course of measures pursued, the Board of Managers have satisfaction in perceiving no neglect or omission on their part in discharging the duties assigned them. If an assiduity proportioned to the dignity of the object, a devotion seeking no reward but in the gratification of honest feelings, and an economy attested by the small expenditures for contingent expenses, are the truest evidences of fidelity, they trust that they may, without unworthy imputations, lay claim to this humble virtue. * * * Upon the whole, however great the disappointment of the Board of Managers, they have not abandoned the hope that a plan which, at its inception, was hailed with universal approbation, may yet, with proper modifications, be effected."