Page:An Examination of Certain Charges - Alfred Stillé.djvu/6

 4th. "That this committee be instructed to publish the above preamble and resolutions in our daily papers, and to adopt such measures as may be best calculated to give extensive circulation to this statement of our present opinions, and past actions.

5th. "That this committee be constituted a "standing committee" to answer, or otherwise treat all communications of a libellous or otherwise injurious character, tending to lower the high standing of this class in the estimation of the public."

In accordance with the third resolution the undersigned were constituted a standing committee, and their duty defined, viz: "to treat the article in the Pennsylvanian of 21st February, in such manner as they may think best to comport with the dignity of this class, and the probable importance of the communication alluded to."

To enter into a set review of the above named article, would answer but imperfectly the ends for which we were appointed. Falsehood must excite indignation in the honorable bosom; and hence to reply paragraph by paragraph would beget a heat of discussion, altogether unworthy the dignity of our constituents, and unbecoming the champions of justice. We stand the historians of truth, rather than the antagonists of error; we claim an elevation superior to that our assailant has chosen to occupy, and we pledge ourselves with the Roman inflexiblityinflexibility [sic] of him who uttered the sentence which heads this address, "to assert no falsehood, and suppress no truth." Every fact hereinafter mentioned we publish only on the authority of direct testimony, and that of a plurality of witnesses; every inference we believe to be fully warranted, but this we cheerfully submit to our impartial judges, claiming only for ourselves an equality of judgment with individuals, conversant as ourselves with the details of the case. In the article of 'a Physician,' much pains and ingenuity are exerted to implicate the Faculty of the University, as efficient causes, in the events of the past winter, as well as to excite suspicion of their anterior agency in the session of 1831–32. With the former of these only have we any direct concern, inasmuch as we deem our characters for independence involved by the artful hints, insinuations, and suppositions, resorted to as a basis, however frail, for the propositions of 'a Physician.' The undersigned conceive the best mode of establishing the validity of their cause, is to relate minutely and distinctly, but with all expedient brevity, the history of the transactions of this session, in chronological order, explaining the causes which led to them, and the consequences emanating from them, contrasting as they proceed, their own account, with the garbled, exaggerated, or unfounded narrative of the anonymous historian. Having thus established the authority on which they act, and sketched the principles which shall guide them in the discussion, the committee at once proceed to their more immediate duty.

The first occurrence, which has a connexion with the chain we are now about to examine, will be found as far back as the delivering of the introductory lecture to the course of Materia Medica and Pharmacy, early in the month of November last. Several times during the progress of the lecture, the speaker was interrupted by sounds, which though usually employed to express approbation, were in this case,