association of public spirited gentlemen, for such good end, offers bet- 

 ter inducements and fitter subject for popular favor and support. Ex- 

 amine every circular, bulletin, or other official publication of the Society; 

 attend its regular and extraordinary meetings ; investigate all its plans, 

 proposals, and operations, and I venture to assert that a spirit of true 

 patriotism and a strong desire of extending the limits and blessings of 

 human knowledge and improvement, will be found to prevail amongst 

 its members individually and collectively. As in the course of human 

 events and the constant changes daily occurring in the views and for- 

 tunes of its members, a concurrent alteration is ever going on in those 

 who are annually elected to preside over the destinies of the National 

 Institute, no reasonable fear should ever possess the public mind that 

 any permanent or serious abuse of power or trust could happen in the 

 administration of its concerns. The officers of one year are often not 

 those of the succeeding. An unceasing supervision is exercised over 

 the acts of the Society by those members who are on the spot; and it 

 is not at all probable that among so many highly respectable and disin- 

 terested individuals, not one of whom have any thing to gain or hope 

 for, in a pecuniary point of view, by any impulse to the prosperity of 

 the Institute, any set of men should be found to dream of putting their 

 privileges or power to bad use. The hope and the wish of each mem- 

 ber is, or ought to be, if he be worthy of the honor, to aid as far as in 

 him lies in winning for his country a reputation for liberality in the pat- 

 ronage of the arts and sciences, and for a laudable ambition and success 

 in the march of mind. He believes, or ought to believe, that every step 

 taken in the onward path of civilization and refinement, is so much 

 added to the strength and salutary operation of republican institutions. 

 He desires to aid in erecting a neutral platform on which the citizens of 

 of ther epublic may meet as friends and rivals in the intellectual struggle 

 only, having cast from them as a load those political animosities which 

 keep them so much estranged in the public arena. In a word, every 

 member longs to make of his Institute a republic of letters, where the 

 genial influence of an enlarged and liberal spirit shall reign supreme, and 

 prove the assertion false of those who say that the muses, the sciences, 

 and the arts cannot flourish under the sway of popular institutions. 



It will be indeed a sad mistake, and cause for future regret and re- 

 morse, if we suffer such a noble institution as that which exists in our 

 midst to pine away for want, of notice and support. Now is the fit 

 time for a well informed and intelligent community to come to the 

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