Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-06-29

life, on a day like this, expressly devoted
to its contemplation, can hardly be avoided,
however familiar through the better quail.
fed labors of others.
Doubtless the people of the district of
Maine, possessing distinctive characteristics
derived from the situation, nature and capa-
bilities of the Province; the circumstances
of its original settlement; and the character
of its immigration d, sired their own es-
tablishment for the acquisition of higher
education, while, moreover, distance had
not then been annihilated nor the cost of
travel reduced, and such an establishment
appeared to be an absolute necessity.
When that desire, springing from the spirit
of independence and attachment to locality
as well as the pressure of necessity, took
formal shape is matter of speculative inter-
est, but the movement is said to have begun
before the Revolutionary War, and probably
speedily ensued upon the close of the
French and Indian hostilities.
We know that the attempt in 1887 was
earnestly renewed in the fall of 1788 through
petitions to the General Court, after which
the legislative journals show unremitting
effort to attain the end, in spite of inevita-
BILE differences as to name and location.
In the proposed act of 1871, still to be
found in the Massachusetts archives, "the
particular place and site" was to be there
after "ascertained and fixed b, the Legisla-
ture;" and while the college was styled
Maine" it was provided that the corpora
ton might change the name "in honor of
the greatest benefactor;" and the power to
acquire and hold property was subjected to
the limitation that "the annual income
of the whole estate, both real and
personal, for the use of said college shall
never exceed six thousand pounds" The
ever, abandoned, perhaps because, as in
timated by our latest historian, some assur-
ance rendered it unnecessary; but we pre-
fer to believe, because general conviction
determined the final choice.
And while the apprehension of too great
opulence still induced the General Court to
retain limitation on the income, the six
thousand pounds was increased to ten thou
sand, which it took nearly hundred years
to render an inconvenient restraint.
When on the oath of June, 1894, Samuel
Adams approved the charter of Bowdoin
College, he must have recalled the ancient
friend with whom, for so many years, he
had been associated in the struggle for
American liberty and American indepen-
dence.
The annals of the time record the har-
monious action of these two patriots as re-
spectively members of the Massachusetts
council and House of Representatives, and
Hutcbinson's complaints we're deep and Bit
ter over the reciprocity of communication
between them, which kept both BRAN
ches of the Legislature in steady
and consistent opposition. They were
elected together to the Continental
Congress, family illness preventing
Bowdoin's attendance, thereby giving
Hancock the opportunity to sign the Decla-
ration in his place; they were fellow men,
bers Of the convention which framed the
of Massachusetts, and of that
by which the Federal constitution was rati-
fed; and in the suppression of agrarian
outbreak the man of the town meeting stood
by the Governor of the state in the estab-
lishment of order and the restoration of
peace by the vigorous exercise of the States
whole civil and military power.
Bowdoin's Iluguenot descent, that stock,
whose virtues cast
"Such healthful Ieaven mid the elements
That peopled the new world;'