, shall forever be an indispensable requisite
for continuing to enjoy the benefits of this institution. I now most
earnestly entreat each and every one of the students of this
institution, through all coming time, to whom I have intrusted this
great responsibility of framing laws for the regulation of their conduct
in their connection with the institution, and by which any of the
members may lose its privileges, to remember how frail we are, and how
liable to err when we come to sit in judgment on the faults of others,
and how much the circumstances of our birth, our education, and the
society and country where we have been born and brought up, have had to
do in forming us and making us what we are."

In this scheme Mr. Cooper anticipated the plan of self-government now
followed in some of our colleges; and while he expected too much of the
students of the Cooper Union, and was himself afterwards obliged to
consent to the restriction of their autonomy, it may be fairly said that
the spirit of his hope and exhortation has never ceased to be felt; and,
to the great honor of the Cooper Union, it may be recorded that
questions of discipline have been well-nigh unknown within its walls.

This noble trust was accepted by a body of men who have discharged it
with unwearied fidelity, zeal and wisdom. The original board consisted
of Mr. Cooper, his son Edward Cooper, his son-in-law Abram S. Hewitt,
and John E. Parsons, Wilson G. Hunt, and Daniel F. Tiemann. Three of
these, Messrs. Cooper, Hewitt, and Tiemann, have been mayors of the city
of New York. All of them were well-known and eminent citizens, burdened
with the duties of active business; and the time they gave so freely to
the management of the Cooper Union was not the superfluity of leisure.
The difficulty with "business men" too often is, that, when nominally
charged with the administration of organized charities, they slight the
work because they have not time to attend to it. But the United States
can show not a few instances in which the affairs of religious,
educational, or benevolent institutions are carefully managed by the
active directors of great private enterprises; and their management,
when it is thus thorough, is generally much better than that of literary
or philanthropic amateurs. This is conspicuously shown in the history of
the Cooper Union.[10]

This is not the place for a detailed account of the development of the
Cooper Union, or even of its present