The Oahu College at the Sandwich IslandsPunahou School
History
The Oahu College at the Sandwich Islands
Punahou School
Education -- Hawaii -- History; Punahou School -- History -- 19th century
The Trustees propose to raise the sum of _fifty thousand dollars_. This
is not too large a beginning. Of this sum the Hawaiian government
engages to give ten thousand dollars, or one fifth part; on condition
that the remaining forty thousand dollars be raised before July 6, 1858,
and that the King have the right of nominating two of the twelve
trustees of the College. The Prudential Committee have voted to
subscribe five thousand dollars towards the endowment, on behalf of the
American Board, payable in the year 1858.
It should be understood that, excepting the duty of approval or
disapproval in respect to the election of members on the Board of
Trustees, laid upon the American Board by the Charter for the space of
twenty years, that Board has no connection whatever with the College,
or control of its proceedings. The College is an independent
institution, sustaining no other relation to the Board, than it does to
every other benefactor.
* * * * *
The Colleges of New England had generally some benevolent patron
provided for them by Divine Providence;--a Harvard, a Yale, a Dartmouth,
a Brown, a Bowdoin, a Williams; and the Colleges very properly took and
embalmed their names in memory of an enlightened and refined Christian
community. These provided the general endowment. Many liberal men also
funded particular professorships; or gave funds for the education of
young men of talents and character, without the means of obtaining a
liberal education. May the Lord raise up such benefactors for the Oahu
College. That has grown, as the New England Colleges did, out of a great
religious movement and the wonderful blessing of God on that movement.
It has a religious object, and is controlled by a religious influence.
The funds have every practicable guard from perversion. The permanent
necessity for such an institution is apparent in the certainty of a
permanent, rising, influential community on those admirably situated
Islands. The independence of the Hawaiian Nation,--which, under present
circumstances, is most favorable to its development,--is guaranteed by
the United States, Great Britain and France; and the presumption of its
falling under the dominion of a power foreign to us, is too small to
deserve notice; and the influence of the College itself, as already
described, will be one of the most effectual guards against such a
result. There is not a finer climate in all the world. Were it true,
that the native population is still wasting away, the effect of corrupt
commerce in old heathen times, still greater would be the need of such
an institution. A flourishing community of some kind at the Sandwich
Islands, then certainly will be; and the religious influences now at the
Islands will be as available for that community, as hereafter developed,
with whatever elements, as it will be for the one now existing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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