ed opinions and suggestions on necessary amendments. The Board was
slow to answer. The delay was preventing the appointment of Professors
and the growth of the College. The hands of the Governors were tied. On
August 11, 1839, the Principal wrote to Sir John Colborne, the
Governor-General, protesting against the continued failure to decide the
issue. "When I agreed to the appointment of another Principal in my
room," he said, "it was in the confident expectation that the amended
Charter would have been in our possession before this period. By that
Charter I should retain my office of Governor of the College even if
vacated by my resignation of the Office of Principal, but as obstacles
are thrown in the way of a speedy accomplishment of the wishes of the
Governors in respect of the amended Charter, I feel myself constrained
to retain the office of Principal until the Charter shall have been
procured." He also objected on behalf of the Governors to the
appointment of any Professors and to the opening of the College, except
the Medical Department, until approval was given to the Charter.
Possibly the fact that the amended Charter permitted the
acting-Principal, after his retirement, still to be a Governor of the
College as Rector of Christ Church, Montreal, influenced the Board in
their disapproval of it. For the quarrel was not always above personal
prejudices, to which the advancement of the College was often
unfortunately sacrificed.

On August 17th, 1839, the Board at last broke their silence, and in a
letter to Sir John Colborne they gave utterance to their reasons for
opposition. They blamed the Governors for not having first submitted the
Charter to them before sending it to the Colonial Office,--and in this
they were well within their rights. They had not, they said, even seen a
certified copy of the document. They now agreed, however, that the
existing Charter required alteration. They suggested that all the
Governors of the College should be residents of the Province, but they
objected to giving the Governors power to fill vacancies as they
occurred, as this would lead in the end to a clique or cabal rule which
would lead to abuses in the management of the Institution. The number of
Professorships should, they thought, be left unlimited, at the joint
discretion of the Governors and the Board. The Governors were to be
subservient in power to the Board, and all appointments were to be
ratified by the Crown. There s