Page:The History of the University of Pennsylvania, Wood.djvu/50

44 house, the trustees were allowed to appear by council in their defence: but the committee seems to have been chosen rather to search for matter of accusation than to investigate the truth; and it was but a show of justice to hear the representations of the accused, when the resolution was already firmly taken to disregard them.

The charges brought forward by the committee in their report, from which two out of their number were sufficiently conscientious to express their dissent, were chiefly the following:—that an oath of allegiance to the British government was, by the charter, a necessary prerequisite to any official act; that several of the trustees, having joined the British army, stood attainted as traitors, and others had not, by taking the test, qualified themselves legally to fulfil the duties of their office; that the corporation had shown in its conduct an evident hostility to the government and constitution of the state; that its funds were utterly inadequate to the proper support of a seminary of learning; and, finally, that the original and fundamental principle of the college, by which it was bound to afford perfect equality of privileges to all religious denominations, had not been fully maintained.

The frivolity of these charges will be rendered evident by the slightest examination. The oath of allegiance demanded by the charter was abrogated by the revolution, with all other oaths which connected the provinces with the mother country. The political conduct and opinions of individual members of the board could operate only to their own disfranchisement, not to the injury of those who remained, nor to the destruction of the corporate rights of the whole body. The alleged hostility of the corporation to the government and constitution of the state was a matter altogether of feeling, and could not be proved by any public or private act of the body accused. A careful examination of the minutes of the board will on the contrary evince, that care was taken to