(371) 
assistance granted to other necessitous institutions.* By the 
Legislative committee of 1819 the grant of 1814 is referred to 
in the same manner —as bounty or assistance intended to 
be equal to the $40,000 given to Hamilton College, with no 
suggestion of compensation for Vermont lands; + and the 
$10,000 given by the Act of 1819 to make good the erroneous 
estimate of value of the Garden grounds, were given as a 
bounty and not as compensation for the loss of land, as 
further appears plainly from the preamble of that Act.t 
then was the conclusion of the whole matter — ‘‘to 
inter pose with the public patronage for her effectual relief”; 
not to make ‘*‘ compensation” for the loss of land-claims ex- 
cluded by law 25 years previously, again specifically barred 
20 years before, and finally in 1805 and 1806, on Columbia’s 
petition urging the claim on exceptional grounds, rejected. 
The references to the meagre gifts Columbia had received, 
as compared with other institutions, and to the disappoint- 
ment of her expectations from her landed property in Ver- 
mont, served the purpose intended. They awoke the sym- 
pathy of the Legislature, and aided in securing a land grant 
of the supposed value of $40,000 by the State’s bounty, of 
which Columbia had received nothing since 1802. 
But from the considerations above recited, that grant cannot 
rationally be ascribed to any intent of the Legislature to 
make compensation or ‘‘ retribution” for any injury inflicted, 
or for any obligation to Columbia, through the treaty of 1790. 
That idea, so far as I can discover, is of comparatively recent 
origin, perhaps growing out of the later appreciation of the 
immense ultimate value of the grant of 1814, so far sur- 
*Trustees’ Min., 2: 477, as 
+ Assembly Journal, 1819: 123, 124. 
tIt recites that, ‘‘ Whereas it is of the first importance that seminaries of 
learning should be carefully protected and receive from time to time the /os- 
tering aid of the Legislature: and Whereas, with these views, all the right, 
title and interest of the people of the State .. in the Botanic Garden were 
by the Act of April 4, 1814, granted to Columbia College . . . and Whereas 
the said graut has not been productive of the benefit intended, Therefore be 
it enacted” etc. — giving $10,000 and repealing the condition of the Act cf 
1814. This Act affected Columbia College alone. See ante, pp. 15-16. 
