The First Harvard Union.

For the benefit of the new members of the University who desire to know something of the Harvard Union, its history and its aims, we print to-day the substance of an article which appeared in the CRIMSON last spring. To-morrow will appear an article giving the conditions of membership and other extracts from the constitution.

The Harvard Union has recently come into possession of the journal of the meetings of the first Harvard Union, a debating society which was formed in February, 1832, by certain members of the senior and junior classes, for improvement in the art of addressing considerable audiences, and which remained in existence until July 1839. The first officers of the society were Geo. Ticknor Carter, president; Daniel Fletcher Webster, vice-pres.; James A. Dorr, secretary; Francis (now professor) Bowen, treasurer. There was also an executive-committee which appointed a lecturer and one disputant for each side of the question for debate at each meeting. The society at one time "hired the old court house from the selectmen" for their meetings and voted to "ask the faculty to pay, as usual, half the cost of heating and lighting the same." At a later time, the faculty, at the joint request of the Institute of 1770 and the Union, repaired University 3 for their use. The college bell was rung for the meetings which were held every Monday at 6 p.m.

The society was never very heartily supported and one cause was, undoubtedly, the "lectures" with which each meeting was opened. The subject was chosen by the lecturer and judging from their titles, the lectures must have been very truile and dull. Questions bearing upon politics and slavery were rarely discussed, in spite of the strong political feeling at the time.

The excitement over the then recent abduction of Morgan by Free Masons (as it was charged) furnished the society material for a debate which showed that the feeling of the members was against the Masons. The vote on the two subjects for debate relating to the tariff shows that a large majority of the members of the society were protectionists. Much interest was manifested in questions relating to Phrenology which was then a new science. In 1836 sophomores and freshmen were invited to attend the meetings and vote on the questions for debate.

Among the officers of the society were, besides those already mentioned, James Russell Lowell, Edward Everett Hale, E. R. Hoar and Charles Theodore Russell. The last meeting was held July 8th, 1839, and was adjourned, the journal says, to the first Monday of the next term.

For a long time the society lay dormant. Various attempts were made to revive it, but not until 1880 was the attempt successful. The Union now enters upon the sixth year of its renewed existence under most favorable auspices, with every assurance that the present will be its most successful year.