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Excerpt from Report Upon the Constitutional Rights and Privileges of Harvard College: And Upon the Donations That Have Been Made to It by the Commonwealth It appears soon to have been found, that a great inconvenience arose from holding all orders, by laws and acts of the Corporation in suspense, until the pleasure of the Overseers could be known, and on that account, /on the application of the Overseers, a supplemental charter was granted, in 1657, by which all orders, by-laws and other acts of the President and Fellows were to have immediate forceand effect; subject, however, to be reversed, or re scinded by the Overseers, if they should not approve them. By these charters, all the property, ap pertaining to the College, became vested in the President and Fellows, for the purposes of the In stitution; and all powers of superintendence and control were in like manner conferred on them, sub ject, as before mentioned, to the approbation or dis approbation Of the Overseers. The Government of the Colony was the Founder of this Institution; not in consequence of having granted the Charter, but in consequence of having made the first endowment. As Founder, it was entirely competent to the gov ernment to prescribe the terms of the Charter, to grant the property, subject to such limitations as it saw fit, and to vest the power of visitation and con trol, wherever it judged most expedient. This power, the Government thought proper to vest, to the extent, and in the manner before mentioned, in the 'board of Overseers; and subsequent donors had a right, of course, to'expect, that donations, made by them, would be managed, and applied to their intended objects, by the College Government, thus constituted, without substantial variation. Between the year 1657, (the dateof the Supplemental Char ter) and the time of the Provincial Charter of Wil liam and Mary, sundry alterations were proposed in the Charter of the College; such as, among other things, to give the College Government civil juris diction, in certain cases, after the manner adopted in other Institutions. None of these alterations, how ever, took place. By the Provincial Charter, in 1691, the Crown of England confirmed to the Col lege, as well as to other bodies, corporate'and politic, all its property, powers, rights, privileges and immunities. At subsequent periods, .atten1pts were again made, for further alterations of the Charter, but without success. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
