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before the Honorable House [of the New Hampshire Legislature], the
provisions of which, should they go into effect would set aside the
Charter of the college, and wholly change the administration of its
concerns, beg leave respectfully to remonstrate against its passage.
The provisions of the bill referred to change the name of the
corporation; enlarge the number of Trustees; alter the number to
constitute a quorum; render persons living out of the State, who are
now eligible, hereafter ineligible; vacate the seats of those members
who are not inhabitants of the State; deprive the Trustees of the
right of electing members to supply vacancies; and give to the new
Board of Trustees an arbitrary power of annulling everything
heretofore transacted by the Trustees; and this last without the
concurrence of the proposed Board of Overseers. The consent of the
present Board of Trustees is in no instance contemplated as necessary
to give validity to the new act of incorporation.

"In the opinion of the undersigned, these changes, modifications, and
alterations effectually destroy the present Charter of the college and
constitute a new one.

"Should the bill become a law, it will be obvious to our fellow
citizens that the Trustees of Dartmouth College will have been
deprived of their Charter rights without having been summoned or
notified of any such proceeding against them. It will be equally
obvious to our fellow citizens that the facts reported by the
committee of investigation [of the last Legislature] did not form the
ground and basis of the new act of incorporation; and that no evidence
of facts of any sort, relating to the official conduct of the
Trustees, other than the report of the committee of investigation, was
submitted to your Honorable Bodies.

"To deprive a Board of Trustees of their Charter rights, after they
have been accused of gross misconduct in office, without requiring any
proof whatever of such misconduct, appears to your remonstrants
unjust, and not conformable to the spirit of the free and happy
government under which we live. If the property has been misapplied,
if there has been any abuse of power upon the part of the Trustees,
they are fully sensible of their high responsibility; but they have
always believed, and still believe, that a sound construction of the
powers granted to the Legislature, gives them, in this case, only the
right to order, for good cause, a prosecution in the judicial court