1779] ^^^' ^VILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 27 



he could hope for no redress in Pennsylvania, as its Government was 

 then constituted, he went to Chestertown, in Maryland, and became 

 Rector of a church there. He found at that place an Academy with 

 a few pupils. He was made Principal of it, and in a short time one 

 hundred and forty scholars were in attendance. He then applied to 

 the Legislature of Maryland for a Charter, erecting this Academy into 

 a College, modelled upon the plan of the College of Philadelphia, to 

 be called "Washington College." The charter was granted in the 

 spring of 1782, and within one year from that time this indefatigable 

 man collected, principally from the planters of the Eastern Shore of 

 Maryland, nearly ten thousand three hundred pounds towards its 

 endowment. General Washington contributed fifty guineas, and Gen- 

 eral Cadwalader headed the Maryland subscriptions. This was, of 

 course, before the close of the Revolutionary war, and it is very evident 

 that these gentlemen did not hold the opinion entertained by the party 

 in power in Pennsylvania in regard to Dr. Smith's disaffection to the 

 American cause. 



But that party ceased to reign in 1783, and Dr. Smith lost no time in 

 seeking justice at the hand of those who took its place. At the Sep- 

 tember session, 1784, the Trustees and Dr. Smith presented their 

 petition to the Assembly, asking that so much of the Act of 1779, 

 which took away their estates and franchises, should be repealed. The 

 Committee to whom the matter was referred made a report favoring the 

 application, and brought in a bill granting it. But when the bill was 

 about to pass, the minority left the House (in modern phrase, ^^l)olted^^), 

 and thus dissolved the Assembly. The matter lingered for several years, 

 and until March 6, 1789, when the Assembly passed the bill, the pre- 

 amble to it stating as the reason for its action that the Act of 1779 was 

 "repugnant to justice, a violation of the Constitution of this Common- 

 wealth, and dangerous in its precedent to all incorporated bodies, and 

 to the rights and franchises thereof." 



'&' 



But of all this I shall speak at the proper time. 



The act of confiscation, u^hich the Provost Stille describes, has 

 been justly considered a stigma upon the Revolutionary Legisla- 

 ture of Pennsylvania, and still more so upon the name — now much 

 better remembered than are those of most in the Legislature — of 

 General Joseph Reed, the President of the State. Along with his 

 much-suspected disloyalty to his Commander-in-Chief, and his 

 being charged by that patriotic man, General Cadwalader, in a 

 printed pamphlet — of a disregard of truth, that offence which ends 

 the character of a gentleman, and which, truly considering, was 

 the gist of Cadwalader's accusation — this his conduct in regard to 



