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In the review of my past connection with the institution, I have much to lament of deficiencies and error in the discharge of my duties; yet justice to myself leads me to state that I have performed services out of school for which a compensation might reasonably have been asked, and that the actual amount of time and labor, which for twelve years I have expended in order to promote the prosperity of the school, is fully equal to what any president or professor or tutor in any of our colleges has devoted in the same length of time to a similar object, while the kind of labor, that of teaching the deaf and dumb, is more exhausting, and makes deeper encroachments upon the constitution and bodily health than that endured in almost any other pursuit or profession. I ought to state also that from the first moment when I concluded to go to Europe on my responsible and difficult undertaking to this hour, I have never urged any pecuniary claims, nor received any thing for any extra services. I have taken just what the directors have seen fit to allow me, and with this have always been contented.

When I allude, therefore, to the fact that some of the instructors have been receiving for years past a much larger compensation than myself, and that others have found it perfectly consistent with their duties to add by other labors to their income; while it was impossible for me, when confined to the daily instruction of a class, and to the duties both of an instructor and the other peculiar ones connected with the office of principal, to engage in any pursuit by which to add to my income: when I allude to these facts, and also to one other of a striking nature known to every body, that the presidents and professors in colleges, and also many settled clergymen, find time, after discharging the appropriate duties of their stations, to publish books and to do other things as means of increasing their resources, -- I hope, gentlemen, I shall be considered as presenting for your consideration only what I owe to myself and family, when I state that after having spent the very prime of my life in your service, I have deemed it but reasonable to be released from the instruction of a class, and also to have sufficient leisure to command enough of my time to devote to some objects by which to add to my means of providing for my family and educating my children, and of laying up a little something for the exigencies of those future days rapidly approaching, when the life and animation of an actor of pantomime, calling into artificial exercise the most intense effort of thought and of feeling through the mysterious medium of the eye and the countenance and the gestures and attitudes of the body, must settle down into the tranquillity and even feebleness of declining years.

It ought not to be concealed, that I entertain views, with regard to what the principal of such an institution might accomplish, if released from the instruction of a class, so as very much to promote its welfare, with which those of most, perhaps all, of the other instructors, do not coincide. They think, as I am informed by the chairman of the committee, and this without any reference to myself personally, that the true interests of the school require, that the principal should, in addition to his other peculiar duties, be engaged in the instruction of a class. They also think that the peculiar duties of the principal, out of school, need not occupy more than one hour daily. Consider this estimate as correct, though in my opinion it is far from being so, taking into account the performance of all that I have stated to have been performed by me, in addition to the instruction of a class -- and what time will be left for the principal to devote to the general progress of the classes, to the training up of instructors, to the delivering of lectures on signs, to the maturing improvements in the course of instruction, to the religious instruction of the lower classes, to the preparation of suitable books, to the general good order and prosperity of the institution, both in the school-room and the workshops, and to the publication of the annual reports. Are such objects worthy of the active and zealous efforts of such a person as is fit to be held up to the public as competent to discharge the duties of principal; and if so, how can he justly be held responsible for the faithful discharge of the duties growing out of this important trust, while he is obliged to exhaust a great portion of his strength, and consume the most considerable part of his time, in the daily instruction of a class? It is to be recollected, also, that he needs time to attend to his family concerns, -- to take a sufficient degree of relaxation and exercise for the preservation of his health, and surely to enjoy the opportunity of keeping pace with his cotemporaries in the improvement of his intellectual powers, which is, through him, to affect the reputation of the institution.

My confinement, for years past, to the daily instruction of a class -- an employment, in itself, quite as exhausting as the whole amount of the daily duties performed by the presidents or professors in our colleges -- while numerous responsibilities, connected with the state of other classes and the general concerns of the institution, have, for want of any other appropriate person, been constantly referred to myself, and yet no adequate time allowed me to discharge them; this, together with the wide field of enterprise for promoting the prosperity and elevating the character of the school opening before me, could I but have been released from the care of a particular class, has tended very much, I am free to confess, to damp the former ardor which I had during the early progress of my work; has had no trifling effect upon my general health and spirits, and has furnished reasons, at times, for my friends to fear that the spirit of resolution and of effort had quite forsaken me. And yet I have held on my course, and may I not be permitted to ask, referring to all the past history of the institution, when has your principal once failed in the accomplishment of any great object connected with its prosperity? It was an ardent and enthusiastic spirit which first led him to embark in an undertaking considered by many as wholly visionary, and the same spirit has always been ready to kindle whenever any important object has been proposed by which to add to the usefulness or the reputation of the institution. But for any one to plod on in the same round of elementary instruction to twelve or fifteen infantile minds for twelve years, with no hope of being released from it, while, at the same time, he sees various ways in which his time and talents could be brought to bear with a hundred-fold more effect upon the prosperity of an institution, which under Providence he has been one of the principal instruments of raising up to usefulness and reputation, -- all this is calculated, especially where a feeble constitution has to contend with the pressure of nervous disease, while engaged in one of the most exhausting of all employments -- to weaken, to dishearten, nay to paralyze hope, -- although once the brightest, and resolution the strongest, and enterprise the most undaunted.