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the during no administration has he not been found to be a trouble and a pest. He has been known to boast that in the time of Mr Kerr while he put on the appearance of quelling any disturbances that arose in the administrations he always so managed as to leave every one in the full persuasion that he disliked and despised the man. While the person was here that suc = ceeded as principal, it was well known that he was ever effect consistant with his own safety to underine his influence, and to ar =rogate to himself merit & excellence superior in every aspect to him under whom he was bound to act. As soon as the next suc =cession took place, he started in the full purpose and with great advantages of exciting and promoting as much as should lie in his power, discontent, disturbance, and every species of irregularity that could bring discredit upon the government of the university and contribute to his own importance. This clandestine & insidious method of proceeding, united with the kind of Faculty that was then in of=fices enabled him to be successfull.. It is no doublt in the power of one or two mem =bers of the board to remember the dissatisfaction which the undersigned professor of mathematics to be occasion more than once to
industriously circulated ever where and par = ticularly among the students on whom it was to act. We might have enumerate facts which would become tedious both on account of their nature & the time they would take up. This therefore we shall forbear to do; pledging ourselves that they shall be produced in sufficient numbers should occasion ever require it.
(one general statement for the sake of illustrating the general nature of them. Nothing was more common The faculty was in meeting then for the undersigned professor of mathematics to meet with. It is confirmed by a [crowd?] of testimony that said Holmes spared no pains to affirm every where to students of the university as well as to strangers that said undersigned professor was perpetually aimng at tyrannical and unjust measures against the rights that students must always claim and defend in the face of any authority, that were it not for said Holmes the business of the place must be totally neglected; that indolencec & ignorance were the true characters of said professor and that it was a notorious act of injustice int he board to place a man over his head as
had been done, and that the more effectually the students should run against the established authority the better, In short that said undersed professor was an unprin = cipled man, governed by narrow prejudice & mean motives, and was certainly addicted to the crime of drunkeness. By such representations since proved to the satis = faction of all to be palpably false and said Holmes at length bring the character of the university into public disrepute, and introduce too great a spirit of discontent to permit an expectation that with the existing authori = ty the laws could be carried into effect so as to render the institution capable of the important ends for which it had been erected. Said Holmes always earnestly embraced ever opportun = nity of openly insulting every other mbmeber of the faculty and placing himself in opposition against him in defence of students who might feel uneasy under punishement, or be receiving moral or scientific instruction It may be of consequence to inform the board that last year Both the undersigned had come to a resolution to present said Holmes
to the board as unfit for the station he held, and proceeded to inform him of it, and of the causes of such a determination- that upon apparently sincere conviction of the crimina -lity of his conduct, on manifestations of contrition and repntance, & most solemn promises of reformation the faculty concluded to make still further experi = ment, and to avoid if possible so disa = greeable a proceeding. The undersigned have now to state that notwithstanding all the promises of different conduct, the only change has been in said Holmes' acting on the same system with a little more reserve, and altho' the members of the faculty evinced a desire of reposing confin = dence in said Holmes they soon found that it was no less readily betrayed, and abused for the purposes of keeping up somewhere a spirit of discontest. That the undersigned therefore soon discovered that they must depend on themselves for all they were to expect is supporting the order the reputation and the usefulness of the institution entrusted to our care That we have accordingly been obliged to act as
much as possible apart and so as to exclude said Holmes from such measures as our thought of consequences to be adopted. And we now declare with firm conviction founded on experience and our knowledge of the man, that we should never in any further time be able to upon trust is how ever in matters of the smallest moment.