1779] '^^^' ^^'ILLIAM SMJ'IH, D. D. 23 



-O 



The minority of the Committee reported tliat "no evidence had arisen 

 during the inquiry to support the same, but that much the contrary had 

 appeared." The House refused a motion that the evidence upon which 

 the report was founded should be laid before it, and also voted against 

 taking the opinion of the Judges of the Supreme Court upon the legal 

 questions involved, although they had been summoned for that purpose. 



A Bill was accordingly brought in, and on the 27th of November, 

 1779, was enacted into a law, declaring the charter of 1755 void, dis- 

 solving the Board of Trustees and the Faculty, and vesting the College 

 estates in a new Board of Trustees composed of certain State officials, of 

 the senior Clergyman of each of the principal religious denominations 

 in the City, and of sundry other persons who were conspicuous members 

 of the political party which at that time controlled the State. The Act 

 provided also that the Council should reserve for the use of the new 

 Institution, which was called "The University of the State of Pennsyl- 

 vania," ^1500 a year from the proceeds of the confiscated estates. 



As this Act of the Legislature was the severest blow which the higher 

 interests of learning in this State ever received (as no one who has read 

 the foregoing account of Dr. Smith's services, and who knows anything 

 of the history of the Institution during the years which followed can 

 doubt"), and as it appears on its face to be a simple act of spoliation, 

 transferring the property of one set of men to the pockets of another, 

 we must examine somewhat minutely the reasons given for this extra- 

 ordinary proceeding. Upon looking at the Preamble of the Act, v»-e 

 find the most frivolous and unfounded of all the pretexts which had 

 been alleged in the report of the Committee and the message of the 

 President as reasons for the abrogation of the Charter, made the basis 

 of the Assembly's action. It is there stated that the Trustees by a vote 

 or by-law adopted June 14, 1764, " departed in the management of the 

 Institution from the free and unlimited Catholicism of its original 

 founders." On turning to the by-law referred to we find that it was 

 the fundamental Declaration adopted by the Trustees in regard to the 

 use of the money then recently collected by Dr. Smith in England, the 

 very object and intention of that Declaration, as has been before stated, 

 being to perpetuate the "free and unlimited Catholicism" of the 

 Founders of the College.''' Anything more i)reposterous than such a 

 reason for so grave an act (strangely ranked by the biographer of 

 President Reed as a trophy of his administration of the government 

 with the Act abolishing slavery in Pennsylvania) it would be difficult 

 to conceive. 



The only other cause of incapacity alleged in the Act against the 

 Trustees was that provision in the Charter of 1755 which required them 

 before entering upon their office to take certain oaths of allegiance. 



* See Vol. I., pp. 350, 351— II- ^^'- ^- 



