Cont. 2-7-25 11150 PREFACE BY THE PRESIDENT As president of the LITERARY AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF QUEBEC in this year (1924) when we are celebrating the completion of a century of existence, it has fallen to me to write the preface to this Centenary Volume. It is a grateful task to commemorate the good labours of past generations. The present officers and members of the Society well know that the real glory of the institution was the splendid pioneer historical work that was accomplished in the first fifty or sixty years after its foundation in 1824. It was in that earlier period that the ideas and intentions expressed in the three letters by Lord Dalhousie in 1823 printed in this volume were so extensively carried out by successive bands of capable and indefatigable workers. It was their essential task to gather the documents and other information throwing light upon different features of early Canadian history. In doing this they not only gathered and preserved many valuable sources but their activities also served to stimulate like research elsewhere. Within the last forty or fifty years, however, the task of gathering historical data has been rightly taken over, and carried on with increasing assiduity, by the Archives departments or branches of the Dominion and Provincial Governments. But if the LITERARY AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF QUEBEC basks to-day in a reflected glory from the past, as far as historical research is concerned, it has functions at the present time of an important character. It is the custodian of many original documents which it freely places at the disposal of authorized persons, and from time to time the Society has published valuable material that might otherwise have failed to reach the hands of the general student. This has been possible by means of a special endowment to that end given by a former president, the late Dr. James Douglas of New York. Dr. Douglas also left other endowments (the total amounting to twenty thousand dollars)—Five thousand of which is held in trust, by the Governors of Morrin College, under deed of gift by Dr. Douglas, for special lectures, under the joint auspices of this Society and Morrin College, and enables them to provide a series of educational lectures during the Winter months, which are entirely free to the general public: another five thousand of the amount provides for the purchase of books on History, Geography, and Science exclusively. The Society's habitat is Morrin College, Quebec; the rooms occupied being supplied through the courtesy of the Governors of Morrin College, free of rental while this Society continues in its present efforts to spread enlightenment on educational matters of popular and scientific interest. A monthly meeting of the Society is held on the second Wednesday, followed by a meeting of the Council; the election of members, the receiving Reports from the Treasurer and the Committees, and the |
