IBS'/.] Convention of Ohio College Officers. 313 



ers, defrauders of the custom-house or post-office, — these, in their 

 several departments, league together, and form conspiracies to com- 

 mit crimes beforehand, and to protect each other from punishment 

 afterwards. But honest farmers, faithful mechanics, upright mer- 

 chants, the high-toned professional man, — these have no occasion for 

 plots and perjuries ; for they have no offenses to hide and no puni^- 

 ment to fear. The first aspect of the case, then, shows the pater- 

 nity of this f\ilse idea of " Honor" among students. It was borrow- 

 ed from rogues and knaves and peculators and scoundrels generally, 

 and not from men of honor, rectitude and purity. As it regards 

 students, does not the analogy hold true to the letter? 



When incendiaries, or burglars, or the meaner gangs of pick- 

 pockets are abroad, is not he, by whose vigilance and skill the perpe- 

 trators can be arrested and their depredations stopped, considered a 

 public benefactor? And if he had been the victim of arson, house- 

 breaking, or pocket-picking, what should we think of a witness who, 

 on being summoned into court, should refuse to give the testimony 

 that would convict the offender ? Could we think anything better 

 of such a dumb witness than that he was an accomplice, and sympa- 

 thized with the villany ? To meet such cases, all our courts are in- 

 vested with power to deal with such contumacious witnesses in a 

 summary manner. Refusing to testify, they are adjudged guilty of 

 one of the grossest offenses a man can commit, and they are forth- 

 with imprisoned, even without trial by jury. And no community 

 could subsist for a month if everybody, at his own pleasure, could 

 refuse to give evidence in court. It is equally certain that no col- 

 lege could subsist, as a place for the growth of morality, and not for 

 its extirpation, if its students should act, or were allowed to act, on 

 the principle of giving or withholding testimony at their own op- 

 tion. The same principle, therefore, which justifies courts in cut- 

 ting off recusant witnesses, from society, would seem to justify a 

 College Faculty in cutting off recusant students from a college. 



Courts, also, are armed with power to punish perjury, and the 

 law justly regards this offense as one of the greatest that can be 

 committed. Following close after the offense of perjury in the 

 courts, is the offense of prevarication or falsehood in shielding a 

 fellow-student or accomplice from the consequences of his miscon- 

 duct. For. as the moral growth keeps pace with the natural, there 

 is infinite danger that the youth who tells falsehoods will grow into 

 the man who commits perjuries. 



