ing this name for the present,
collect as many students as will join us, and instruct them as private
but associated individuals; or else we must give all up and disperse.
Will you give us your opinion, what may be duty or what expedient, as
soon as convenient? Particularly, will you give us your opinion
whether, supposing this oppressive act to be judged constitutional, we
should be liable to the fine, if we instruct as the officers of
Dartmouth College, relinquishing, however, the college buildings, the
library, apparatus, etc."

The Faculty of the college issued the following:

"ADDRESS OF THE EXECUTIVE OFFICERS OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE TO THE PUBLIC.

"As the undersigned, after the most serious and mature consideration,
have determined to retain the offices which they received by the
appointment of the Trustees of Dartmouth College, and not voluntarily
to surrender, at present, any property committed to them, nor to
relinquish any privileges pertaining to their offices, they believe it
to be a duty, which they owe to the public no less than to themselves,
to make an explicit declaration of the principles by which they are
governed.

"They begin by stating the two following positions, as maxims of
political morality, which they deem incontrovertible:

"1. It is wrong, under any form of government, for a citizen or
subject to refuse compliance with the will of the sovereign power,
when that will is fully expressed, except in cases where the rights of
conscience are invaded, or where oppression is practiced to such an
extreme degree that the great ends of civil government are defeated or
highly endangered.

"2. Under a free government, where the sovereignty is exercised by
several distinct branches, whose respective powers are created and
defined by written constitutions, cases may arise in which it will be
the duty of the citizen to delay conforming to the ordinances of one
branch until the other branches shall have had opportunity to act. If,
for example, the legislative branch should transcend its legitimate
power, and assume to perform certain acts which the Constitution had
assigned to the province of the judicial branch, a citizen,
injuriously affected by those acts, might be bound, not indeed
forcibly to resist them, but, in the manner pointed out by law, to
make an appeal to the judiciary and to await its decision.

"The undersigned deem it unnecessary, in this place, to detail the
provisions of the acts o