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Legislature, whenever they shall see fit to require it, of all their proceedings, and the manner of disposing of the funds of said [University] College.

Section 12th—And be it further enacted—That there be and hereby is granted, a tract of land, twelve miles square, or four Townships, either seperate or adjoining each other of the contents of six miles square each, either the one or the other as the Corporation of the said College may judge to be most conducive to the prosperity and interest of the same, to be laid out and assigned from any of the unappropriated land belonging to this Commonwealth in the District of Maine, under the same restrictions, reservations & limitations as other grants for similar purposes are usually made. The same to be vested in the Corporation of the said College and their successors forever, for the use benefit and purpose of suporting said College, to be by them holden in their Corporate capacity, with full power and authority to settle divide, and manage the same tract of land or townships, or any part thereof, or to sell, convey or dispose of the same for settlement only, and to no one person a larger quantity than one thousand acres, in such way and manner as shall best promote the welfare of said College, the same to be laid out under the direction of the Committee for the sale of Eastern Lands, and a plan or plans thereof returned into the Secretary's office.

(The spelling throughout the above copy is that of the original.)

If there had been any room for doubt in the earlier stages of the movement as to its real purpose, this draft of the proposed charter would dispel it. It is essentially a college charter. Indeed, it was more than that in its first form, for originally the word "University" was used in every place where the word "College" now appears. The change was made by erasure (the traces are still plainly visible in the manuscript) except in two cases: At the top of page three of the draft the word "University" is merely crossed out, as indicated by the [] in the above copy, and the word "College" was written beside it. The same change is found again on the fifth page. In addition to this indication of the broad character of the original draft, the seventh section in its first form gave the proposed institution the power to confer "such degrees as are usually conferred by Universities established for the education of youth". Evidently there was some objection to this and the power to grant degrees was restricted to those of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts. How any one can read this draft of the proposed charter and maintain that the petitioners had in mind primarily a theological school, it is hard to understand.

The charter seems to have met with no great opposition in the Senate, for in the Journal we read, under date of Saturday, February 8th: