Further remarks on the memorial of the officers of Harvard College / by an alumnus of that college.

  • John Lowell, Jr.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Further remarks on the memorial of the officers of Harvard College / by an alumnus of that college. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the reputation of having a fair proportion of the talents, learning and wisdom of the republic.—Nor is this all. The Overseers may justly feel a delicacy, especially in such a case, in charging all their prede- cessors with ignorance and wanton negligence. They may think, that the charter being silent on this head— the facts very imperfectly settled, they should be justified in deciding that the construction put upon the charter at so early a day, and acted upon by five or six generations of learned and able men, is enti- tled to high respect; and even if in their private opinions there seemed to be some colour for the po- sition here assumed, after a century and a half; yet they are bound to respect such a constantly repeated, and so ancient a construction. Let us see by whom this construction has been put upon the charter? 1st. By the resident Fellows themselves—the per- sons interested, as it is said, to resist it. In 1672, three non-residents were chosen at once. By the charter, four members of the corporation are ne- cessary to an election. It is demonstrable therefore, that all the resident Fellows and Tutors first put this construction upon the charter, and that too, in twenty-two years only after its date, when all the facts were perfectly known to them. 2dly. By the Board of Overseers, who are obliged to act positively in every election. In 1672 Samuel Danforth was a member of the Overseers, and had been named one of the first Fellows. He, and the major part of the Overseers then knew, perfectly \