96 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Your memorialists will not trouble you with any scheme or plan of the Charter 

 prayed for, but submit the whole to your judgment and discretion. 

 And as in duty bound, etc. 



(Signed) WILLIAM PAINE, JOHN COFFIN, WILLIAM WANTON, 

 WARD CHIPMAN, GEO. SPROULE, A. PADDOCK, 

 ZEPH. KINGSLEY. 



This memorial was laid before the Governor in Council on the 

 13th December, 1785, and it was ordered that Attorney-general Bliss 

 and Solicitor-general Chipman be directed to prepare, with all con- 

 venient speed, the draft Charter of the said Institution. 



The signers of the memorial were eminent men. Paine and 

 Chipman were Harvard graduates. Wanton was a son of the Governor 

 of Rhode Island and first collector of customs at St. John. Sproule 

 was a native of Long Island, N.Y., and afterwards for many years 

 Surveyor-general of New Brunswick. Kingsley was an eminent 

 merchant of Charleston, S.C., a Quaker by religion. Coffin belonged 

 to a well known Boston family, distinguished in the King's service 

 during the war, and at the time of his delfth was a general in the army. 

 Paddock was also a native of Boston and an eminent physician, as 

 were several of his descendants. Ward Chipman was successively 

 solicitor-general, judge of the Supreme Court, member of Council and, 

 at the time of his death, administrator of the provincial government 

 of New Brunswick. 



The memorial was in Doctor Paine's handwriting, but it would 

 seem, from his private correspondence, that "a woman was leader in 

 the deed." Paine obtained from Governor Parr in 1783 a grant of Le 

 Tète Island in Passamaquoddy Bay. Writing from thence in August, 

 1784, he says: — "My situation I like very much; my lands are cer- 

 tainly well located, and if Mrs. Paine could content herself I should 

 be well pleased. Her objection is that the children cannot be properly 

 educated. This Island will soon be a place of consequence, and ulti- 

 mately the principal port, in British America.'" 



Paine's expectations were based upon the proximity of the fine 

 harbor known as L'Etang, near the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. 

 Mrs. Paine was a remarkably clever woman. It is said that at one 

 of her dinner parties in Worcester, Mass., not very long before the 

 outbreak of the Revolution, some of the Whigs demurred at drinking 

 the King's health until John Adams advised them to do so, saying, 

 sotto voce, "We shall be able to return the compliment." Accordingly 

 after Dr. Paine had proposed the health of his Royal Majesty, Adams 

 rose and proposed the health of his Satanic majesty! The doctor 

 was extremely indignant, but his wife saved the situation by saying, 



