DECEMBER MEETING, 1883.

The monthly meeting was held in the Dowse Library on Thursday afternoon, the 13th instant; the Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP Occupying the chair.

The record of the previous meeting was read by the Secretary and was approved.

The donations to the Library for the past month were reported by the Librarian.

The PRESIDENT then spoke as follows:

I was congratulating you, Gentlemen, at our last meeting, that with the great celebration at Newburgh the series of Revolutionary Centennials had come to an end. But I reckoned without my host. Ouly a day or two later an invitation came for the Society as well as myself to attend the ceremonies on the one hundredth anniversary of the evacuation of New York. As that anniversary came upon Sunday, the celebration was held on the 26th of November, and seems to have been the occasion of as brilliant and imposing a spectacle as the unfortunate weather would allow. I returned to the Committee a grateful acknowledgment of the invitation with which we were favored, and I now present the letter to be placed on our files.

Meeting our associate and friend, Mr. Robert Bennett Forbes, casually in a horse-car a few days ago, he mentioned that he had applied to our Librarian for the loan of the model, given by himself to our Cabinet some years ago, of the "Midas," the first American steamer which passed the Cape of Good Hope, for the purpose of illustrating a lecture which he is to deliver to-morrow evening at the Institute of Technology. I found yesterday that Dr. Green had already taken the responsibility of complying with the request of Mr. Forbes, and I am sure we shall all sanction the loan. Our friend, Mr. Forbes, in his seventy-ninth year, is still a leading authority on all matters relating to ships and navigation, whether by wind or steam. He reminded me that forty years ago he was laughed at by old salts for predicting that propellers, at no distant day, would altogether supersede side-wheels in steamers, as they have done. His earnest advocacy of iron carriages for cannon, though at first derided, has also everywhere prevailed. I may be

allowed to recall his great service in carrying corn to Ireland, in the famine there of 1847, in command of the "Jamestown;" and I may be pardoned for not forgetting that it was my privilege, as a member of Congress, to be mainly instrumental in securing for him the use of that United States vessel for his philanthropic purpose. His lecture is on "The Rig of Ships, and matters relating to them;" and he invites the members of our Society to come and hear him.

I have received, from different sources, two copies of an interesting pamphlet entitled "Education in South Carolina prior to and during the Revolution." One of the copies I am glad to deposit in our Library. Perhaps there is a copy here already; but Dr. Green knows what to do with a duplicate or even a triplicate.

It is a paper read before the Historical Society of South Carolina, last August, by General Edward McCrady, Jr., and published by the Society. It was called forth by some passages in the "History of the People of the United States," by John Bach McMaster. This History, as we all know, is not a Massachusetts work. It comes from New York or Princeton; and we have certainly no share in the responsibility of its alleged misstatements in regard to education in South Carolina a hundred years ago.

The author of the paper would seem almost to make the controversy a matter between South Carolina and Massachusetts, and occasionally indulges in a strain which partakes of the old sectional spirit, which we heartily hope has almost passed away. In the comparison which he institutes between South Carolina and Massachusetts, he speaks more than once of Massachusetts being "settled in 1607," and of "the Colony of Massachusetts established about 1607." He has been misled by the date of the Jamestown Colony. Plymouth and Massachusetts, as we all remember, were not settled until 1620 and 1630.

But the paper is one of much interest, and presents a valuable record of the schools and the libraries and the literary culture of South Carolina at that early period of her history. It unquestionably exhibits a very different picture from that of Mr. McMaster's History. It abounds, too, in welcome reminiscences of the great men of Carolina — the Rutledges and Pinckneys and Middletons and Gadsdens and Laurenses of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods. We readily concur in the passage quoted from Dr. Ramsay's History of South Carolina in 1808, in which he says, "With the exception of Virginia, no State in the Union has obtained

a greater or even an equal proportion of national honors." And we accept Dr. Ramsay's reason: "This was in some degree the consequence of the attention paid by the earlier settlers of Carolina to the liberal education of their children."

Let me not conclude this brief allusion to General McCrady's paper, without referring to the interest of the appendix, which contains a letter from Dr. Gabriel E. Manigault, President of the Carolina Art Association, giving a list of the London artists who were employed to paint portraits during the last century by South Carolinians who were in England for educational or other purposes. This list contains two portraits by Allan Ramsay, one by Zoffany, one by Sir Joshua Reynolds, three by Benjamin West, one by Romney, one by. Gainsborough, seven by Copley, and two by Gilbert Stuart while he was in London. The letter of Dr. Manigault states the subjects of these portraits, and tells what has become of them. It is a valuable contribution to art history, and might help our associate Mr. Augustus Perkins in completing the catalogue of Copley's portraits.

Finally, I take pleasure in laying on the table, agreeably to the request accompanying it, a prospectus of a new Historical Society, called "The Oxford Historical Society," just instituted at Oxford University, and founded on the principles suggested by our late Corresponding Member, the lamented John Richard Green. The prospectus gives a large view, extending over many pages, of the wealth of material awaiting publication by this Society. Early Oxford, from 912 to 1216; Mediæval Oxford, from 1216 to 1485; Oxford under the Tudors, from 1485 to 1603; Oxford under the early Stuarts and during the Commonwealth, from 1603 to 1660; Oxford under the later Stuarts, from 1661 to the death of Queen Anne, 1714; the Georgian Oxford, from 1714 to 1830; and the Modern Oxford, from 1830,- make up together a wide field of research and labor which cannot fail to bring forth most interesting and valuable fruits. The Society contemplates no mere academic or local history. The prospectus truly says that "in Oxford there is probably more concentration of historical interest, and that of no insignificant kind, than in any spot of similar size in the British Isles." But I leave the prospectus to speak for itself, with its appended invitation to membership by an annual payment of one guinea.

I observe the names of Froude and Freeman and S. R. Gardiner, with that of Matthew Arnold also, on the list of

the Council. And there is another name on the list, marked with a printer's dagger to indicate "assent not yet obtained," which has a special interest for us this afternoon, the name of one of our foreign Corresponding Members who is present with us and whom we are glad to recognize,-Professor Bryce, the author of "The Holy Roman Empire,” and now a member of Parliament. At a later stage of our Proceedings I hope we may hear as well as see him. Meantime, I turn for a moment to a more serious communication.

Since I came to these rooms this afternoon, I have learned that another of our venerable associates has suddenly passed away, and I am called on to announce the death of the Rev. William S. Bartlet, A.M., of Chelsea, whom we have so long been accustomed to see, day by day, in the quiet enjoyment of our Library. He has been well known as a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was successively the rector of churches in New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, and Registrar of the Diocese of the latter State. His principal contribution to history was a Memoir of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, published under the title of "The Frontier Missionary," in 1853, - a work which received high commendations at the time. He has also contributed historical papers to several periodicals, and to the Memorial of the late Bishop Burgess of Maine. Born at Newburyport, April 8, 1809, he has died in his seventyfifth year.

I am instructed by the Council to submit the following Resolution :

Resolved, That we have heard with regret that the Rev. William S. Bartlet, our associate for twenty-five years, died yesterday after a brief illness, and that the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter be requested to prepare the customary memoir for our Proceedings.

Mr. DEANE then read the following communication from the Hon. Peleg W. Chandler in regard to the witchcraft trials in 1692:

Since my letter of August 24 to Mr. Deane,* I have seen the full text of Mr. Goodell's ingenious argument in relation to the proceedings in 1692, and now refer to the subject because I am more than ever convinced that the heretofore

universal denial by historians of the legality of the special court held at Salem for the witchcraft business is sound. At the same time some of the interesting documentary evidence so industrially sought out and submitted, requires a brief comment, notably that relating to the actual practice, for a brief period, of erecting tribunals of oyer and terminer by the governor and council.

It appears from the records referred to by Mr. Goodell, that from 1692 to 1713-about twenty years—commissions of this sort were issued, when the legislature passed an Act for holding special courts of assize and general gaol delivery, after which "no commission of oyer and terminer seems to have been issued without the concurrence of the General Court." That is, for a short time the governor and council assumed a power which was effectually taken from them, and they never exercised it solely afterwards. This fact standing alone would seem to show that the exercise of this power at all by the governor and council was an error which was effectually cured by the General Court. Besides, the previous action of the governor and council amounts to very little as a precedent. It is safe to admit that they thought they had the power by the charter. The question is, not what power they supposed the charter conferred, but what it actually did confer. On this point their opinion is not so valuable as that of well-trained lawyers and historians of a later period, who were not affected by the passions and prejudices of the crew that got possession of Governor Phips as soon as he arrived with the charter, and held their influence in public affairs for a generation. The charter was a grant, and is to be construed according to well-established rules of legal interpretation, one of which is that the instrument must be considered as a whole in order to ascertain the meaning of particular clauses; and another is that it must be construed strictly. There is no room here for implications or latitudinarian construction; and when a member of the Society at the September meeting stated that " Dr. Palfrey and others had been misled by their warm attachment to republican and American ideas," and further remarked that "the charter was intended, doubtless, to produce a kind of reflection of the English Constitution, the General Court reflecting Parliament, and the governor and council representing the king in council," "and even if the charter gave co-ordinate power to the General Court to appoint the regular tribunals, no publicist of William and Mary's reign could imagine it took away from the king, or his deputy, his undoubted prerogative of appointing spe