uests and the benefit to result from
them, I trust that my fellow-citizens will observe and
evince especial care and anxiety in selecting members for
their City Councils and other agents,'

"What appeal could have been more emphatic than this? How
could the testator have more delicately, but clearly,
indicated his anxiety that his estate should be regarded as
a sacred provision for poor orphans, and not 'spoils' for
trading politicians?

"In this city, however, as almost everywhere else, to the
public discredit and injury, our social affairs had been
long mingled with the party questions of the Republic. At
each rise or fall of one or the other party, the 'spoils'
were greedily sought for. Even scavengers, unless of the
victorious party, were deemed unworthy to sweep our streets.
Mr. Girard's estate, therefore, very soon became an object
of desire with each party, in order to increase its strength
and favor its adherents. Instead of selecting for the
Councils the best men of the whole community, as Mr. Girard
evidently desired, the citizens of Philadelphia persisted in
preserving factious distinctions, and in October, 1832, the
Federal candidates prevailed.

"The triumphant party soon manifested a sense of their newly
acquired power. Without making any trial whatever of the
efficiency of the rules prepared by their predecessors for
the management of the Girard trusts, they at once abolished
them; and there were various other analogous evidences of
intolerance.

"Without asserting that party passions actuated them,
certain it is, that those who were now in power placed none
of Mr. Girard's intimate friends in any position where they
could aid in carrying out his views. No serious application
was ever made, to my knowledge, to one of them for
explanation on any point deemed doubtful. On the contrary,
objections made by myself and others to the erection of a
gorgeous temple, instead of a plain building for orphans,
were utterly disregarded.

"A majority of the citizens of Philadelphia as a political
class, and not a majority, as a social community, as
trustees of a fund for orphans, having thus got entire
control of the Girard estate, they turned their attention to
the plans of a College collected by their Democr