1889

These Class Notes bring to each member of our Class-family-group your secretary's best wishes for the year just begun, and express his appreciation of your greetings received by him at Christmas.

For those who may not have read it, attention is called to the Class Notes of Class of 1916 in the December issue, in which is told of an outstanding honor recently conferred upon Edward C. Riley 16, long affiliated with General Motors Corporation, and now vice-president and general manager of its overseas operations division. Mr. Riley is a son of our classmate Edward S. Riley, who died January 31, 1927.

Alexander S. Warden '19, publisher of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune, has been reappointed a member of the North Montana State Fair Board for a two-year teim beginning January 1, 1953. He first became a fair commissioner in March 1951, to fill a vacancy created by the death of his father O. S. Warden '89, who for many years was president of the board.

The American Bar Association, of which your secretary has been a member for many years, published in its Journal for December an article by Harold H. Burton, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, entitled "The Dartmouth College Case." The article, although dramatized in form, is authentic in its essential details. The principal characters are John Wheelock, second president of Dartmouth College and son of Eleazar Wheelock, its founder and first president, Daniel Webster, class of 1801, counsel for the Trustees of the College and John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The events take place in New Hampshire and Washington, D. C., between 1800 and 1820. For want of space, reference to that part of the article leading up to Webster's argument of the case before the Supreme Court of the United States is omitted. On March 10, 1818, the case is called in court and Webster rises. It is his first major case before the Supreme Court. In the course of his three-hour legal argument he demonstrates, among other things, that the Trustees of Dartmouth College constitute a private eleemosynary corporation rather than a public corporation, and argues that a state legislature, which cannot repeal its grant of such aprivate corporate charter, likewise cannot impair or essentially alter that charter, withoutthe assent of the corporation. Following hislaw argument, tradition has it that he addressed a famous peroration to Chief JusticeMarshall. It seems fitting to include that peroration here. Its best authenticated versionfollows:

"This, sir, is my case. It is the case not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our country,— of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more. It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped, for the question is simply this:—shall our state legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own to turn it from its original use and apply it to such ends and purposes as they, in their discretion, shall see fit? Sir, you may destroy this little institution —it is weak, it is in your hands. I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out, but if you do, you must carry through your work. You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land. It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it."

The article then goes on to say that at this point of the peroration Webster's feelings, which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered, his firm cheeks trembled with emotion. His eyes were filled with tears, his voice choked. He seemed to be struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. In a few broken words of tenderness he went on to speak of his attachment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the trials and privations through which he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and tears. The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle, Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheeks expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears; at his side, Mr. Justice Washington, with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance like marble, leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while those in the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas, those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster, as he then stood in the midst, it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence.

Secretary and Treasurer 108 Mt. Vernon St., Boston 8, Mass.