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Livingston, in his zeal, should either have proposed or acceded to an arrangement, intended perhaps at the time to be merely a provisional one, and promising such immediate and incalculable benefits. It does not appear that a union of the Dutch and Presbyterian Churches was now even thought of, much less designed; but, that a certain connexion was to be formed with Princeton College, simply with a view to the preparation of pious youth of the Dutch Church for the ministry, under the superintendence of a man in whose talents, piety, and orthodoxy, the Church at home, and the Church abroad, would have the most entire confidence.

That this was the project in embryo, can hardly be doubted, after a few extracts from the letters of Mr. Livingston's friend to him upon the subject, shall have been perused. "At present," says Mr. Lott, in a letter of November, 1768, "from a superficial view of the plan you mention, it appears to me, it will meet with difficulty and objections from both parties. For I know them so well, that I think I may venture to prophecy, that as long as their present spirit of power and dominion remains with them, no plan will be accepted of, however reasonable and useful the same may be, unless the different congregations have good sense enough to agree, whether their ministers will or will not."

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In another of December, of the same year, after stating that the Rev. Mr. Ritzema had showed him a Dutch letter, which that gentleman had received from Mr. Livingston, communicating the outlines of the plan, the same correspondent adds, "The matter being still new to me, I cannot see how it can possibly take place. For, in the first place, I believe that the Conferentie and Coetus will never unite, their difference being of such a nature that they dare not trust each other, and thus a junction [is] morally impossible: and in the next place, I can't see how a local junction can be brought about with the Presbyterians, even should the jarring Dutch Churches agree."

To provide a suitable professor for the academy as it was then denominated, which was about to be erected, Mr. Livingston had, prior to the visit of Dr. Witherspoon to Holland, prevailed upon a number of liberal individuals there, to pay the expense of educating a poor youth of piety and talents, and of Dutch descent, if one should come from America, for the purpose of being qualified for the station — and had accordingly written to his friends in New-York, requesting them to select and send over a youth of this description, to be duly qualified. No better expedient could probably have been devised, at the time, to supply a deficiency which