24 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE 1^7/9 



But these oaths were precisely the same which had been exacted of 

 every one called to fill any civil office in the province prior to the 

 Revolution, and their obligation was always understood to have ceased 

 upon the establishment of a new government. The Trustees were 

 therefore precisely in the same position as any one who had ever held 

 office under the Crown. Test oaths, and oaths of allegiance, are, as we 

 all know, favorite devices in revolutionary times. The Assembly, as a 

 means most probably of discovering the disaffected, directed on the 

 13th of June, 1777, that every white person above the age of eighteen 

 should take an oath of allegiance to the State, and by another act 

 passed on the first of April, 1778, enacted that all Trustees, Provosts, 

 Professors, and ?.Iasters (among others) .should take the same oath 

 before the first of June of that year, or forfeit their offices. The follow- 

 ing is the form of tlie oath : 



"I, A. B., do swear that I renounce and refuse all allegiance to George III., King 

 of Great Britain, liis licirs and successors, tliat I will be faithful and bear true alle- 

 giance to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as a free and independent State, that I 

 will not at any time do or cause to be done any matter or thing that will be prejudicial 

 or injurious to the freedom and independence thereof as declared by Congress ; and 

 also that I will discover and make known to some one Justice of the Peace of said 

 State all treasons or traitorous conspiracies which I now know or hereafter may know 

 to he formed against this, or any other of the United States of America." 



Twelve of the Trustees, the Provost, and all the Professors, took this 

 oath as required by law, before June i, 1778. By November, 1779, 

 when the Charter was taken away, the Board was full, and twenty-one 

 out of the twenty- four Trustees had previously taken the oath, the three 

 who had not done so being Richard Penn, William Allen, and Dr. 

 Bond. It is a little remarkable as showing how different were the real 

 reasons for taking away the Charter from those which were assigned in 

 the Act, that notwithstanding his alleged disqualification. Dr. Bond 

 was named in it as a Trustee of the new corporation, as were also three 

 others, who had not only never taken the oath to the State, but had just 

 before taken it to the King, one of whom had served as Chaplain in the 

 British Army while it occupied Philadelphia. 



The grounds upon which the Assembly proceeded, as stated in the 

 Act itself, being thus wholly without foundation, it is only necessary to 

 add that the action it took was expressly forbidden by the provisions of 

 the Constitution of the State, in regard to property held for the use of 

 churches, colleges, and hospitals, by the well-known doctrine that, no 

 misconduct of a Trustee can work a forfeiture of his trust, and by the 

 equally well-settled rule that, alleged infractions of a Charter are to be 

 determined by judicial proceedings, and not by the Legislature, 



It has been sometimes said that, although the abrogation of the 

 Charter was made without legal authority, yet that it may have been 



