whatever in any of
the independent sciences, cultivated from time immemorial at academic
institutions, much less in the science of sciences, the very law and
indispensable condition of which is absolute freedom from all external
authority or restraint._ The law of intellectual freedom, of which the
Reader will find a short exposition in the concluding document of this
pamphlet (which I have extracted and translated from a distinguished
authority on the "Philosophy of Right") is recognized by the spirit and
the letter of the Constitution and by the political and social history
of the United States, by the Revised Statutes of the State of New-York,
by all the leading universities _of Protestant and Catholic Europe_, and
by a number of similar institutions in America, among which stands,
"professedly" at least, the University of the city of New-York. The
attempts of certain parties in connection with the institution and _ab
extra_ to "smother" (to use one of their own cant words) and to crush my
independence by gravely endeavoring to _coerce me into an alliance with
a questionable religionism, which is abhorrent to my ideas, my
habits and my sentiments, and by fomenting internal disorders for the
purpose of effecting an exclusion_, are an unconstitutional, an unjust,
an iniquitous invasion of my most sacred rights as a man, an American
citizen, a scholar and a professor. I repel, therefore, Dr. Ferris'
insinuation as a maliciously astute and as a false one, which of itself
declares the Dr. _incompetent to decide upon the merits of a real
scholar, and utterly unfit for the important trust of presiding over
the interests of any other but a sectarian institution of the narrowest
description, of the most painfully exclusive moral perversity_.

To this I may add, that in consideration of the many and various
disciplines, earnestly and steadily cultivated by me for several years
past, such as intellectual philosophy, the learned and modern
languages, linguistics and the history of literature generally, I could
in academic justice _demand the right_ to instruct in any one of the
departments for which I was fitted. That such a right exists, and that
it is applicable to my case, the reader may learn from Sir William
Hamilton's Essays on University Education, recently republished in
America, to which I refer _passim_. I can therefore confidently
challenge not only the chancellor, but, in case of a concurrence in his
sentiments, the