On the 5th of March, 1840, Mr. Adams, as chairman of the select committee on the Smithsonian bequest, made a report, in which he recapitulated all the material facts which had previously occurred relative to the acceptance of this fund, and entered into the motives which prevailed with the former committee as to its disposal. It appeared from this report, which was accompanied by a publication of all the documents connected with the subject up to that period, that the fund had been received, and paid into the Treasury, and invested in state stocks, and that the President now invited the attention of Congress to the obligation devolving upon the United States to fulfil the object of the bequest. While this message was under consideration various projects for disposing of the funds had been presented by individuals, in memorials, concerning which the report states that they generally contemplated the establishment of a school, college, or university, proposing expenditures absorbing the whole in the erection of buildings, and leaving little or nothing for the improvement of future ages. "In most of these projects," says Mr. Adams, "there might be perceived purposes of personal accommodation and emolument to the projectors, more adapted to the promotion of their own interest than to the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."
While these memorials and the subject of the disposal of the whole Smithson fund were before the select committee, a resolution came from the Senate appointing "a joint committee, consisting of seven members of the Senate, and such a number as the House of Representatives should appoint, to consider the expediency of providing an institution of learning, to be established at the city of Washington, for the application of the legacy bequeathed by James Smithson, of London, to the United States, in trust for that purpose." The House, out of courtesy to the Senate, concurred in their resolution, and added on their part the members of that of which Mr. Adams was chairman.
The propositions of the committee on the part of the House and that on the part of the Senate were so widely at variance, that it was found that no result could be obtained in which both committees would concur. It was finally agreed that the committee on the part of the House should report their project to the House for consideration. Mr. Adams, thereupon, as chairman, reported a series of resolutions, substantially of the following import: That the whole Smithson fund should be vested in a corporate body of trustees, to remain, under the pledge of the faith of the United States, undiminished and unimpaired, at an interest yielding annually six per cent., appropriated to the declared purpose of the founder, exclusively from the interest, and not in any part from the principal,—the first appropriation of interest to be applied for the erection of an astronomical observatory, and for the various objects incident to such an establishment;—that the education of youth had not for its object the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, but the endowment of individuals with knowledge already acquired; and the Smithson fund should not be applied to the purpose of education, or to any school, college, university, or institution of education.
The chairman of the committee of the Senate, in their behalf, presented counter resolutions, disapproving the application of any part of the funds to the establishment of an astronomical observatory, and urging the appropriation of them to the establishment of a university. The bill prepared by the House is presented at large in this report, accompanied with the argument in its support, prepared by Mr. Adams with a strength and fulness to which no abstract can do justice. In this argument he illustrates the reasons for preserving the principal of the fund unimpaired, and confining all expenditures from it to the annual interest; also those which preclude any portion of it to be applied to any institution for education; showing, from the peculiar expressions of the testator, that it could not have been his intention that the fund should be applied in this manner. He then proceeds to set forth the reasons why the income of the fund should in the first instance be applied to an astronomical observatory, without intending to exclude any branch of human knowledge from its equitable share of this benefaction. The importance of this object he thus eloquently illustrates: "The express object of Mr. Smithson's bequest is the diffusion of knowledge among men. It is knowledge, the source of all human wisdom, and of all beneficent power; knowledge, as far transcending the postulated lever of Archimedes as the universe transcends this speck of earth upon its face; knowledge, the attribute of Omnipotence, of which man alone, in the physical and material world, is permitted to anticipate."
Why astronomical science should be the object to which the income of this fund should be first applied he thus proceeds to set forth:
"The express object of an observatory is the increase of knowledge by new discovery. The physical relations between the firmament of heaven and the globe allotted by the Creator of all to be the abode of man are discoverable only by the organ of the eye. Many of these relations are indispensable to the existence of human life, and perhaps of the earth itself. Who, that can conceive the idea of a world without a sun, but must connect with it the extinction of light and heat, of all animal life, of all vegetation and production, leaving the lifeless clod of matter to return to the primitive state of chaos, or to be consumed by elemental fire? The influence of the moon—of the planets, our next-door neighbors of the solar system—of the fixed stars, scattered over the blue expanse in multitudes exceeding the power of human computation, and at distances of which imagination herself can form no distinct conception;—the influence of all these upon the globe which we inhabit, and upon the condition of man, its dying and deathless inhabitant, is great and mysterious, and, in the search for final causes, to a great degree inscrutable to his finite and limited faculties. The extent to which they are discoverable is and must remain unknown; but, to the vigilance of a sleepless eye, to the toil of a tireless hand, and to the meditations of a thinking, combining, and analyzing mind, secrets are successively revealed, not only of the deepest import to the welfare of man in his earthly career, but which seem to lift him from the earth to the threshold of his eternal abode; to lead him blindfold up to the council-chamber of Omnipotence, and there, stripping the bandage from his eyes, bid him look undazzled at the throne of God.
"In the history of the human species, so far as it is known to us, astronomical observation was one of the first objects of pursuit for the acquisition of knowledge. In the first chapter of the sacred volume we are told that, in the process of creation, 'God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years.' By the special appointment, then, of the Creator, they were made the standards for the measurement of time upon earth. They were made for more: not only for seasons, for days, and for years, but for signs. Signs of what? It may be that the word, in this passage, has reference to the signs of the Egyptian zodiac, to mark the succession of solar months; or it may indicate a more latent connection between the heavens and the earth, of the nature of judicial astrology. These relations are not only apparent to the most superficial observation of man, but many of them remain inexhaustible funds of successive discovery, perhaps as long as the continued existence of man upon earth. What an unknown world of mind, for example, is yet teeming in the womb of time, to be revealed in tracing the causes of the sympathy between the magnet and the pole—that unseen, immaterial spirit, which walks with us through the most entangled forests, over the most interminable wilderness, and across every region of the pathless deep, by day, by night, in the calm serene of a cloudless sky, and in the howling of the hurricane or the typhoon? Who can witness the movements of that tremulous needle, poised upon its centre, still tending to the polar star, but obedient to his distant hand, armed with a metallic guide, round every point of the compass, at the fiat of his will, without feeling a thrill of amazement approaching to superstition? The discovery of the attractive power of the magnet was made before the invention of the alphabet, or the age of hieroglyphics. No record of the event is found upon the annals of human history. But seven hundred years have scarcely passed away since its polarity was first known to the civilized European man. It was by observation of the periodical revolution of the earth in her orbit round the sun, compared with her daily revolution round her axis, that was disclosed the fact that her annual period was composed of three hundred and sixty-five of her daily revolutions; or, in other words, that the year was composed of three hundred and sixty-five days. But the shepherds of Egypt, watching their flocks by night, could not but observe the movements of the dog-star, next to the sun the most brilliant of the luminaries of heaven. They worshipped that star as a god; and, losing sight of him for about forty days every year, during his conjunction with the sun, they watched with intense anxiety for his reäppearance in the sky, and with that day commenced their year. By this practice it failed not soon to be found that, although the reäppearance of the star for three successive years was at the end of three hundred and sixty-five days, it would, on the fourth year, be delayed one day longer; and, after repeated observation of this phenomenon, they added six hours to the computed duration of the year, and established the canicular period of four years, consisting of one thousand four hundred and sixty-one days. It was not until the days of Julius Cæsar that this computation of time was adopted in the Roman calendar; and fifteen centuries from that time had elapsed before the yearly celebration of the Christian paschal festivals, founded upon the Passover of the Levitical law, revealed the fact that the annual revolution of the earth in her orbit round the sun is not precisely of three hundred and sixty-five days and one quarter, but of between eleven and twelve minutes less; and thus the duration of the year was ascertained, as a measure of time, to an accuracy of three or four seconds, more or less—a mistake which would scarcely amount to one day in twenty thousand years.
"It is, then, to the successive discoveries of persevering astronomical observation, through a period of fifty centuries, that we are indebted for a fixed and permanent standard for the measurement of time. And by the same science has man acquired, so far as he possesses it, a standard for the measurement of space. A standard for the measurement of the dimensions and distances of the fixed stars from ourselves is yet to be found; and, if ever found, will be through the means of astronomical observation.
"The influence of all these discoveries upon the condition of man is no doubt infinitely diversified in relative importance; but all, even the minutest, contribute to the increase and diffusion of knowledge. There is no richer field of science opened to the exploration of man in search of knowledge than astronomical observation; nor is there, in the opinion of this committee, any duty more impressively incumbent upon all human governments than that of furnishing means, and facilities, and rewards, to those who devote the labors of their lives to the indefatigable industry, the unceasing vigilance, and the bright intelligence, indispensable to success in these pursuits."
These remarks are succeeded by others on the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, on the connection of astronomy with the art of navigation, on the increase of observatories in the British Islands, in France, and in Russia; and, after repeating the objections to applying the fund of Mr. Smithson to a school devoted to any particular branch of science, or for general education, Mr. Adams, in behalf of the committee, submitted a bill for the consideration of the house, embracing the principles maintained in his report.