Clinton's introductory discourse. 25 



They settled here under the auspices of a Dutch West-India Company, 

 and when the province was surrendered to the English, in 1674, no 

 advantages resulted to the cause of knowledge. Charles II. was a witty 

 sensualist — James II. was a contracted bigot — William of Orange was a 

 mere soldier. The constellation of intellectual luminaries which shone 

 in the Augustan age of England diffused but little light across the Atlan- 

 tic : the two first of the Brunswick kings had neither knowledge them- 

 selves, nor did they value it in others ; and with the third of that dynasty 

 we measured swords, and a severance of the empire ensued. 



There is something in the nature of provincial government which 

 tends to engender faction, and to prevent the expansion of intellect. It 

 inevitably creates two distinct interests ; one regarding the colony as sub- 

 servient in every respect to the mother country, and the other rising up 

 in opposition to this assumption. The governor and principal magistrates, 

 who derive their appointments from an extrinsic source, feel indepen- 

 dent of the people over whom they are placed. The operation of this 

 principle has been powerfully experienced in our territorial governments, 

 which have been the constant theatre of intestine divisions ; and when 

 the human mind is called away from the interests of science to aid, by 

 its faculties, the agitations of party, little can be expected from energies 

 thus perverted and abused. The annals of our colonial state present a 

 continual controversy between the ministers of the crown and the repre- 

 sentatives of the people. What did the governor and judges care for 

 a country where they were strangers ; where their continuance was tran- 

 sient, and to which they were attached by no tie that reaches the human 

 heart. Their offices emanated from another country — to that source 

 they looked for patronage and support, to that alone their views ex- 

 tended; and having got what Archimedes wanted, another world on 

 which to erect their engines, they governed this at pleasure. 



6 



