When the fact of the bequest became known, some six years after Smithson’s death, much opposition was shown in Congress toward its acceptance. Eminent statesmen like Calhoun and Preston argued that it was beneath the dignity of the United States to receive presents, and that it was too cheap a way of conferring immortality on the donor. The wise counsels and enthusiastic labors of John Quincy Adams, who seems to have had from the first a thorough appreciation of the importance of the matter, finally prevailed, and the Hon. Richard Rush was sent to England to prosecute the claim. He entered suit in the Courts of Chancery, in the name of the President of the United States, and in less than two years—an event unparalleled in the Court of Chancery—had obtained a favorable decision. The legacy was brought over in the form of 104,960 gold sovereigns which were delivered September 1st, 1838, to the Philadelphia mint, where they were immediately recoined into American money, producing $508,318.46, as the first installment of the Smithsonian legacy. This was increased in 1861 to $534,529.09. For eight years the legacy lay in the Treasury, while the wise men of the nation tried to decide what to do with it. In this instance the adage that in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom did not appear to be applicable in the ordinary interpretation. The delay, though irksome to those who desired to see immediate results, was, however, the best thing in the end for the interests of the trust. Every imaginable disposition of the legacy was proposed and discussed in Congress; the debates fill nearly three hundred and fifty pages of Rhees’s compilation of Smithsonian documents. Letters by the hundred, advisory, expostulatory and dissuasive were received from representative thinkers and from societies at home and abroad. Every man had a scheme peculiar to himself, and opposed all other schemes with a vigor proportionate to their dissimilarity to his own. Schools of every grade, from a national university to an agricultural school, a normal school and a school for the blind were proposed. A library, a botanical garden, an observatory, a chemical laboratory, a popular publishing house, a lecture lyceum, an art museum, any and all of these and many more were proposed and advocated by this voluntary congress of many men of many minds. It is not necessary in this place to discuss the history of the period at length, nor to relate the manner in which the prevalence of wiser councils was brought about. It is sufficient to say that though the new institution was burdened from the start with various undertakings which have since proved unprofitable or better suited to the capacity of other institutions, such have been the flexibility of its organization and the vitality of its membership that it has been able to work out a career for itself unparalleled in the history of benevolent foundations.