"May it therefore please Your Excellency to use your influence with Her Majesty's Government to refuse to sanction Dr. Bethune's appointment, and to give, as speedily as possible, a Supplementary Charter, making an addition to the number of resident Governors in Montreal. The Board are persuaded that the result of such action on the part of Her Majesty's Government would be to rescue the College from its present disorderly and inefficient state, and to render it, according to the intentions of the benevolent founder, a public benefit." Against the justice of this report the Governors entered a vigorous and emphatic protest. They denied the right of the Royal Institution as Visitors to investigate College conditions. They contended that McGill University was a private foundation, and as such might only be "visited by the legal representatives of James McGill and not by the Sovereign Lady the Queen, her heirs or successors, or by any person or body appointed by the Crown as supposed and assumed in the Royal Charter incorporating the College." As the Statutes had not yet been approved, they forwarded at the same time a resolution to the Colonial Office declaring that "the College being a private foundation has the undoubted right and power as such to make its own Statutes, Rules, etc.," and that they would therefore no longer wait for the Royal sanction. They also made representations to the Legislative Assembly asking support for their contention that "the provision of the Charter by which the right of the Crown is reserved to disallow the appointments made by the Governors is an assumption of power inconsistent with the very nature of the Foundation and is absolutely null and void in Law." They sought legal means for obtaining from the Royal Institution all rights and titles to the properties and monies in their possession belonging to McGill University. Their main argument was that the University was a "private institution." But their protests were of no avail.