EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
116 
duty and gratitude, to make him a return, and the least return 
we can thus publicly render him is, to offer him our warmest 
acknowledgments and thanks. His presidential functions have 
proved any thing but “a bed of roses” to him. We have seen 
him buffeted by the storm of party; harassed by conflicting 
opinions; vexed and irritated at the unlooked-for and untoward 
turn matters in discussion have taken, both at Council and 
General Meetings. Indeed, the scenes we have witnessed have 
been calculated to excite no other feelings than those of pain 
and disgust, while they have left impressions upon the mind 
which, for our own part, we would fain banish for ever from 
our memory. 
The cry with some among our body has all along been, 
and indeed is still heard in some quarters — “ What has the 
charter done for us 1 ” — “ What are we the better for it V ’ Per- 
sons who make such unmeaning exclamations and complaints 
would seem as though they were in entire ignorance of the 
nature of a charter. Rightly considered, the charter is rather a 
means to an end than itself the accomplishment of an end. 
By virtue of our charter, we — who afore were unrecognised by 
the state — have become a body corporate and politic, governed 
by a Council, ruled over by a President, possessing certain pri- 
vileges, either actually expressed in or else obtainable through it. 
Insomuch as an organised and well-regulated body is preferable 
in every way to a set of men who, though of the same calling, 
possess no common bond of fraternity or rights or laws among 
them, so far is a corporate body to be preferred to one having no 
such recognition ; and if ours be not a well-governed and thriving 
corporation, the fault rests with ourselves, seeing the charter 
has placed all government and means of improvement in our 
own hands, and is on that account a Charter of other corporate 
bodies the envy. But do not let us lose sight of the fact that “ the 
Charter is rather the means to an end than itself the accomplish- 
ment of ends ;” while we stedfastly remember, that it must 
depend upon the working of the Charter how far such objects, 
whatever they may be, are carried into or towards execution. 
