Year: 1869

ment, in accordance with provisions Of the benev-
olent Frenchmans will We ought to say that
the Philadelphia management is cahddly
pure compared to what it would be il our own
Aldermen had their hands upon its purse-strings.
Nor are we certain that the charges made
against the direction of the Girard funds are
in any way so plausible as those WITCH might
have been made years ago, when the Demo-
cratic party managed that great trust in their
own blind, bad way. We have heard that
double saving has been effected for the reve-
nues of the institution under their present
handling; and, though we conceive it to be
a great shame that an institution of the
Importance and sacredness of Girard Col
lege should be at the mercy of politics,
STILL matters might be much worse than they
are now. The College is in charge Of the
worthiest President it ever had. This
is especially why we are surprised at the
attacks just made upon its domestic manage
ment Judge Allison, the other day, charged
his grand jury that it was their duty to investi-
gate rgidly the conduct tof the public institu-
tions; and we heartily trust that they will be
less lazy and stupids than some grand juries
within easy memory. But the testimony which
the Judge repeats that delinquent Girard boys
are kept in "Glthy dens," which one Mr.. Horne
says are not fit for dogs, and are otherwise
deprived of comforts the absence Of which is
nightmare and despair to the heart OF shlver-
ing small boys strikes us as a shade sensational.
Indeed this testimony at best, if altogether true,
belongs to period three years back, when
Democrats were the NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. of Gil


II ,e foi
unscrupulous, in the Philadelphia Judge to quote
it as fact in any existing circumstances.
There has never been any reason to suppose
that the College, upon the whole humanely
and well-meaningly if sometimes blundenngly
managed, has had even remote resemblance
to the DothebOys Hall immortalized by Dickens.
The character of its graduates is in the main
about as good as that of almost any alumni Of
the large popular schools. Among them are
doctors, lawyers, chemists, engineers, army
officers bankers, brokers' editors, beside the
commOner classes of tradesmen. This does not
speak ill for our present highly democratic
civilization, but it also speaks well for Girard
College. We could have no objection to seeing
this favOrite and sacred trust directed by ap-
pOintees of the judges, under some kind OF legis-
lative or gubernatorial check, or in any way
that might be deemed Eonester and safer than
the present plan. We would better like to see
it controlled by its own alumni; one or
two of whom are, by the way, men,
bers of the Philadelphia Councils, and
who ought to know best its tenderest wants
1t is by no means impossible for a rather
respectable city like Philadelphia to give an
institution in which it takes a proper pride
something better than general Pumblechook
direction at the expense of the general Pip in
tellect and welfare. At all events, no amount of
added care and earnestness can work harm to
the noble experiment made in Girard College.
The more teachers and gOvernesses Of zeal it
can have, the more concern its direction can
show in preparing its pupils for binding out,
the better for them and all. It is measurably
true that charity may defeat itself by making
the beneficiary too much used to dependence
on benefits but that is almost as true of She
common schools as of other public philanthro-
pies, and it urges us all the more to put earnest


ness and sagacity into our plans of education,
and not to be weary of well-dOng because we
find point at which the best devised benev-
olences may come to a halt-just for want,
perhaps, of that stimulant of earnestness
whereof we speak.