nions might have found plausible support. To determine
whether it was a fit matter for State or national legislation, or
judicial control, we must revert to the history of the Charter. There
we find that it was the unvarying purpose of the founder, adhered to
through a long period of severe and persistent effort, to obtain a
Charter which would enable him to locate his school or schools in any
of the American colonies. He was determined to be as free as possible
from local obligations and local control. There can be no doubt that
in securing the Charter of the college he believed that he had
accomplished a similar purpose. The Charter appointed as a majority of
the first Board of Trustees residents in Connecticut,--making it for
the time being, by design of the founder, for good and sufficient
reasons, in a sense, a Connecticut institution,--with a provision that
after the lapse of a brief period a majority of the Board should be
residents in New Hampshire. In writing upon this subject to a business
correspondent, in June, 1777, President Wheelock says, referring to a
third party: "Let him see how amply this incorporation is endowed, and
how independent it is made of this government or any other
incorporation," and adds that "a matter of controversy" relating to
the township granted by the king to the college nearly at the same
time with the Charter, "can be decided by no judicatory but supreme,
or one equal to that which incorporated it, _i. e._, the Continental
Congress."

The views of no one person will be received by all, as conclusive on
a subject of so much importance. But certainly, Eleazar Wheelock had a
right to construe the provisions of an instrument which in almost
every line bore his impress, never possessed by any other individual.

Had John Wheelock presented his grievances to the National
Legislature,--only in a limited sense, it is true, if at all, the
successor of that king, whose grant of Landaff, in addition to the
College Charter, made him, in a sense, according to Coke, the founder
of the college,--he might, in all probability, have obtained what he
desired in a peaceful manner, although an important judicial decision
might never have occupied its present place in American law.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT BROWN.--TRIBUTES BY PROFESSOR HADDOCK AND RUFUS
CHOATE.

In Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit," we find, in substance,
the following notice of President Brown:

F