Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/420

416 Commissioners how you are laying out the Money and on what securities and that it will be preserved as a Capital. I have often been interrogated on these Heads and if Mr Penn had not kindly promised for you in all these points, we should not have got our Money so fast into our hands. These questions you will not think impertinent from Men of high rank whose countenance has procured us this great collection and whom the King has made Trustees in the appropriation of the Money to the uses for which it was given, viz: as a Capital towards bringing us ^400 per annum, as the Brief of my commission sets forth. This you will not think any hard request Mr Penn, Mr Allen, and every body think we are bound to keep it as a Capital and ought to do it even if we had not asked for it as such. I have wrote you often on this head, and I wonder you have not enabled me to say what is proper on your behalf. I have a difficult part to act between you and those under whom I act here. They desire to intermeddle no further, than to be ascertained how the money here committed to them, is laid out with you, and that it will be made a lasting Capital. They would scorn, even if they could, to abridge us of one single right which we hold under our Charter, and after the Money is remitted, and they assured that it is laid out to its true uses, they will perhaps never inquire more after us. For my part, whatever silly Notions may enter jealous minds, I would sooner have come to you without a shilling than have been subjected to any terms inconsistent with our present liberal plan. You may see this by my anxiety to remit such large sums, without a single condition, but enabling us to shew the Commissioners of the Brief and the good people of England that their cash is faithfully remitted and on undoubted security (which I presume must be land security) to answer the purposes for which we are entrusted with it.

There were reasons, undoubtedly, for this urgency, which we cannot now fathom; whether the desires of the Trustees to realize on the Perkasie gift of Mr. Penn had led him to doubt their wisdom while at the same time he was wanting in confidence as to the stability of their purposes, we cannot say. Certain it is that the occasion of Dr. Smith's visit was the wish to complete their new buildings, though its cause lay deeper than that, namely, in the annually diminishing resources of the institution. An echo of this distrust may have found lodgment in Dr. Smith's mind as well, as Dr. Franklin was now at home, and his influence might be again felt among the Trustees and some scheme might be formulated foreign to his own views of the government of the College. Whatever may have been the