None so healthy and orderly as our children, and some promise great
talents for learning."[34] Still, "all was not well there," and on
October 2, 1793, he "found matters in a poor state at college; L500 in
debt, and our employes L700 in arrears." A year later, matters were
desperate and the good Bishop wrote that "we now make a sudden and dead
pause--we mean to incorporate and breathe and take some better plan. If
we can not have a Christian school (_i.e._ a school under Christian
discipline and pious teachers), we will have none."[35] The project of
incorporation was not favored by some, who feared that the College would
not be thereby so directly under the control of the Conference, but was
carried through, and the charter bears date, December 26, 1794.[36] By
it, the institution was allowed to have an income not exceeding L3,000.
How a charter was to avoid increased indebtedness does not appear and
the College's debt had so increased, that the Conference in 1795 decided
to suspend the Collegiate Department and have only an English Free
School kept in the buildings.[37]
Misfortunes never come singly: an unsuccessful attempt to burn the
buildings had been made in the fall of 1788, and now, on December 4,
1795, a completely successful one was made, and the building and its
contents were consumed.
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