on the one hand, the public archives were known to be defective in many important respects, on the other hand the State should have been supposed to be less rich in historical records than it really was ; and that the attention of those whose minds had long been given to the subject should have been earnestly directed towards the best means of securing and increasing the literary property of the people by adding to it those materials for the illustration of their history which were preserved in the

offices of Euroj^ean governments. The income of the deposit with the State of certain surplus moneys of the Federal government having then recently been set apart for the

promotion of public education, it was thought by many that a portion of this revenue might be properly applied towards the accomplishment of the object which had been originally suggested to the Legislature in 1814, in the memorial of the New -York Historical Society.

Accordingly, at a meeting of that Society on the 10th of April, 1838, a committee was appointed to solicit from the Legislature an annual grant, out of the income of the United States' Deposit Fund, to defray the expenses of procuring materials in Europe for the illustration of the history of the State. In pursuance of this action, a memorial was presented to the Legislature in behalf of the Historical Society ; but owing to the lateness of the period of the session, it was not judged expedient to press the application