Apostle Paul is often misrepresented by being claimed among the authorities for this infringement of Christian independence. He does not teach that we are to be governed by the consciences of other people. He expressly repudiates this doctrine. No man is to find his rule of conduct in a neighbor's conscience. He says that if a practice-his example is the eating of meat offered in sacrifice to idols-which is guiltless, is yet thought to be wrong by a weak brother, and if he is to be led by my example into an act which his conscience mistakenly condemns, but which for him would be sin, then love will prompt me to refrain from the innocent practice for his sake. This is very different from saying that I am to be governed by the views of Christian duty which other people entertain, and follow their convictions instead of my own. The Apostle Paul was the last man to give his sanction to this galling species of servitude. Even the maxim which he does announce has its limitations, which common sense will suggest. We are not bound to foster by example more than by precept unfounded prejudice and superstitious belief, especially when the result will be to hold forth to the world a distorted image of Christian character and a perverted representation of Christian life.

We have been led into a train of remark which has a natural, though not a necessary, connection with the volume, the title of which stands at the head of this Article. We regard Mr. Mitchell's book as a story of real power and genuine pathos, and if his picture of New England country life might, with no violation of truth, have been filled out in some directions, so that the total impression left on the reader's mind would have been different, we are yet persuaded that he has not written in a captious or disingenuous spirit. We can not apply to him, born and bred in New England, the maxim, fas est ab hostibus doceri; and yet we think that his work may be profitably read by orthodox Congregationalists, for the reason that it emanates from a point of view quite outside of their system.

ARTICLE V.-DR. HEDGE'S ADDRESS TO THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD.

Address to the Alumni of Harvard at their Triennial Festival, July 19th, 1866. Printed in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1866.

THIS address of Dr. Hedge has been so widely diffused, by being published in the Atlantic Monthly, that we may assume that it has been read by a considerable portion of our readers. We notice it, not on account of its intrinsic excellence, for it is hardly equal to the occasion and the principal theme, but for the purpose of briefly discussing one or two of the subjects brought forward in it, which are of especial interest.

The first of these is the new form given to the Board of Overseers of Harvard, by a recent change of the charter, in virtue of which the classes of Overseers annually elected by the General Court of the State, are hereafter to be elected by the ballot of Bachelors of five years' standing, of Masters of Arts, and of persons who have received any honorary degree. The ballots are to be cast on Commencement Day, in the city of Cambridge, commencing with the year 1866. From this privilege of voting, if we are to interpret the term “honorary degree" in its ordinary sense, all bachelors in law and in science, all doctors in medicine, and all graduates who may be admitted to any new degree obtained on examination, which the authorities of the University may hereafter establish, are excluded. This exclusion may have been the result of carelessness and of the habit in times past of regarding the College as the whole of the University; if intended, we should ascribe it to a narrow spirit desirous of keeping all power within the ranks of the graduates in arts. The effect of the change will be to introduce in six years an entirely new element into the government of the university, to separate it altogether from

the control of the State, and to make graduates of Harvard its overseers and highest board of guardians.

Harvard has been, in our view, quite unfortunate in its constitution, and more particularly in these two respects: that it is governed by two boards rather than by one, and that one of these boards has been a political body.

The Board of Overseers was created in the very infancy of Harvard College, and consisted of the Governor and Deputy Governor, together with all the magistrates of the Massachusetts Colony, and also of "the teaching elders of the six next adjoining towns, viz.: Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester, together with the President of the College." All the law-making power and all management of the revenues were put into their hands. As yet, the College was not a corporation. In 1650, a corporation was created, consisting of seven persons—a president, five fellows, and a treasurer or bursar, having power, with the consent of the overseers, to elect a new president, fellows, or treasurer, in case of death or other removal from office, to hold property not exceeding five hundred pounds yearly rent, and, among other things, to choose such officers and make such orders as they should think fit, provided such orders were consented to by the overseers. These members of the corporation are not necessarily resident at the College according to the charter of 1650, or according to long usage; but inasmuch as the tutors were called Fellows of the House, and as several of the non-resident Fellows or members of the corporation were obnoxious to a party among the Overseers and in the Colony, an attempt was made, about the year 1721, to oust the nonresident members of that board, and to supply their places by the election of officers of the College. The quarrel which arose between the two boards, in which also the Legislature, taking the side of the Overscers, participated, is related fully, if not quite impartially, in the fourteenth chapter of President Quincy's History. The original intention at the very origin of Harvard was, we are inclined to believe, to have a corporation of resident fellows; and indeed as there was neither then, nor for a long time afterwards, any Faculty or subordinate governing body under that board, their entire non-residence

would have destroyed all discipline. But the principle being settled, and the growth of a Faculty having at length rendered the necessity of a resident corporation unnecessary, no serious attempts were afterwards made, if we are correctly informed, to interfere with the corporation's rights, and the constitution of that body has continued unchanged until the present time. In 1780, a new practice, not involving an alteration of the constitution, of electing a non-resident layman, was introduced to advantage, only non-resident clergymen having been adopted into the board before.

The Board of Overseers, however, has undergone several more or less important modifications. It was necessary in 1779, when a new constitution took the place of the royal charter, to decide who should be the successors of the former political functionaries in the board, and accordingly, with the consent of the corporation, they were made to consist of the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Council, and Senate, the other members remaining the same as before. Far more important was the measure of the year 1810, by which the Senate of the State, except its President, was shut out of the board, the Speaker of the House became one of its members, and fifteen ministers of Congregational Churches, with fifteen laymen, were substituted for the ministers of the six towns. This act was accepted by both boards of the College, and yet, in 1812, it was repealed by the Legislature, and the provisions of the charter previously in force were restored. The boards refused to submit to this legislative usurpation, and for a time there were two boards of Overseers, until, in 1814, by a compromise between the contending parties, the Senate of the State was readmitted to its former place, the act of 1810 in other respects continuing in force. In 1834, "any stated minister of the Church of Christ might be elected among the fifteen." When President Quincy published his History in 1840, this was the constitution of the Board of Overseers; but by an act of May, 1851, to which the legal assent of the boards was given, the Senate and Council disappear from the board, which is now made to consist of seven persons, taking their places ex officio-the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, President of the Senate, Speaker of the House, Secretary of the Board of Education, and the President

and Treasurer of the University-together with the thirty members who belonged to it before. These members were now divided into six classes, one of which gave place annually to a new set, five in number, elected by the General Court and holding their office for six years. Finally, by the alteration in the charter of 1865, all the State officers who had ex officio belonged to the board ceased to be members of it, and the thirty were to be elected by graduates of the College, as has been already mentioned.

The constitution of the governing boards at Harvard has contained, in our judgment, several pretty serious defects. In the first place, the corporation is too small. Being a compact body, the members of which naturally live in the neighborhood of the University and can be easily assembled, it cannot fail, we should suppose, to exercise an undue control over the Faculties, to overrule their decisions and thwart their wishes, under the impression of being intimately and personally acquainted with the state of affairs at Cambridge. Moreover, as a body capable, on account of its size, of acting with vigor, secrecy and settled policy, it would naturally excite the jealousy of the more unwieldy Board of Overseers. Still greater fault may be found with the existence of two boards, and with the constitution of the larger one. Two boards besides a Faculty, which must, in order to do any good and act with any efficiency, have the power of making by-laws, form a very cumbrous machinery, nor can we see any sufficient reason for the existence of a Board of Overseers except in the fact that the corporation is too small. One board and a Faculty, responsible, yet having a somewhat independent action, are surely enough for healthy legislation, enough for vigorous discipline, enough for the election of the best officers, and enough to secure the confidence of the public. But apart from this, the Board of Overseers has heretofore been an unhappily constituted body. It contained the elements of strife with the corporation whenever the elections went against the political party to which they were supposed to belong; and its members, especially the clerical portion, might easily bring with them into their official position the jealousies or animosities of religious creeds and sects. Add to this that it is a public body,