Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/375

Rh College from a helpless to a flourishing State had an undoubted Demand on us for all the returns of Gratitude. Yet we could not, we durst not, divert the streams of Learning from their Sacred Course. Our country, nay all America, had a Right to expect that they should be directed pure along to water the goodly TREE OF LIBERTY, nor ever be suffered to cherish any rank Weed that choaks its Growth. In this most difficult Conjuncture, we rejoice to behold you in your early years, exercising all the Temper and Prudence of the most experienced Patriots, We rejoice that ever we had the least Share in forming Sentiments which have led you so powerfully to shew, that in the everlasting Basis of reciprocal Interest and a participation of constitutional privileges, our Union shall be perpetuated, and our bleeding Wounds healed up without so much as a Scar by Way of Remembrance. Here you have Shewn yourselves entitled to the Name of true SONS OF LIBERTY. SONS OF LIBERTY indeed! neither betraying her sacred Cause on the one Hand, nor degenerating into Licentiousness on the other.

Young William White, a few days after, writes to his nephew:

as the Glorious News of the Repeal of the Stamp Act reach' d Philadelphia the Day before Commencement, Dr. Smith, the Provost congratulated the Audience on the joyful occasion. His Piece will soon be publish' d together with a few of the Performances for the Medal. 4

A delay had occurred, it has been seen, in awarding the Sargent Medal for this political essay; but how opportune and singular it was that its final award came contemporaneously with the tidings of the repeal of the Stamp Act, which allayed a crisis in the life of the colonies, and seemed to give renewed assurances of the perpetuation of their Union with the Mother Country; and the donor of this significant prize was a Member of that Parliament against whose encroachments the people of the colonies through all their channels of utterance, their halls of learning as well as in other ways, were now in earnest protesting; and this happy coincidence placed the young College in the forefront of and in sympathy with the great thought of the day.

Of Mr. Sargent we know but little beyond the record of his public services. 5 He renewed his correspondence with Dr. Frank 4 MS. Letter, Bp. White to his nephew Benedict Edward Hall of Baltimore County, 31 May, 1766.

5 Mr. John Sargent was appointed Store Keeper of the King's Yard at Deptford in 1746, afterwards was Merchant in London and a Director of the Bank of Eng-