INTRODUCTION. 
5 
sent of the proprietor to the institution of a representative assembly.* After 
that period, restricted legislative powers were vested in the governor and council 
“ and the people met in general assembly.” 
Although the States General of the Netherlands were at the zenith of com¬ 
mercial power, and learning and the arts were cherished in that country, when 
the colony was planted, its inhabitants seem not to have been distinguished by 
intellectual acquirements ;f and although the conquest occurred at a time when 
the English people had attained even an higher supremacy in literature than in 
arms, yet that event seems not to have resulted in an improvement of the con¬ 
dition of society.! Knowledge dawned upon the colony about the year 1754,§ 
but was obscured during the civil commotions which a little more than twenty 
years afterwards resulted in its political independence. 
Columbia College was established by royal charter, under the name of King’s 
College, in 1754, under the care of doctor Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, as 
president. The governors of the college were the archbishop of Canterbury, 
the first lord commissioner for trade and plantations, the lieutenant-governor of 
the province, and several other public officers, together with the rector of T rinity 
Church, the senior minister of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, the 
ministers of the German Lutheran Church, of the French Church and of the 
Presbyterian Church, the president of the college, and twenty-four of the prin¬ 
cipal gentlemen of the city. The college was endowed with funds derived from 
lotteries, and voluntary contributions of private individuals in this country, and in 
England and France. Dr. Johnson was succeeded as president in 1763, by the 
reverend Miles Cooper, D.D. of Oxford. He, in 1767, acknowledged that the 
institution had recently received great emoluments from his majesty king George 
III., from liberal contributions by many of the nobility and gentry in the parent, 
country, from the Society for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts, and 
from several public spirited gentlemen in America and elsewhere. He gave also 
I Id. § Id 
* Bancroft. 
t Clinton, Introductory Discourse. 
