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nance. In securing this double aim Manasseh Cutler was most influential. To him above all other men belongs the priceless honor of the introduction of the land system of educational endowment.

The system which was thus inaugurated has been ordinarily used by each state as it has been admitted to the Union. Ohio was the first to apply the method and to receive the benefits of its operation. In 1802 the legislature of the Northwest Territory passed an act establishing a university, and giving to it in trust the grant of two townships of land. The charter was prepared by Dr. Cutler, although he himself was never a permanent resident of Ohio. In the proposed charter Dr. Cutler recognized that institutions for the liberal education of youth are essential to the progress of the arts and sciences, important to morals and religion, and friendly to the best order and prosperity of society. He also proposed that the law-making body should establish a university to be known as the American University. It should be governed by a Board of Trustees, which Board should have power to appoint all teachers in the University, and to make all proper rules for its government. This Board should be a close corporation, choosing its own members. The establishing of the course of instruction should be committed, together with the president and vice-president, to the actual teachers. To the Board also was given authority to manage the two townships set aside for the purposes of the University. It also had authority for holding real estate, provided that the annual income should not exceed forty thousand dollars, or the income of their property fifty thousand. Such are the main provisions which Dr. Cutler included in the fundamental act chartering the American University.

The lawmaking body, however, altered one fundamental element in the proposed charter. The legislature determined that the corporation should not be a close one, and that the successors of the first incumbents should be chosen by the legislature, and also decreed that no limit was to be placed upon the amount of property which the corporation might hold. The first of these two alterations is profoundly significant. It transferred the relation of what came to be known as Ohio University, and located

at the spot significantly known as Athens, from belonging to the class of private colleges into an institution having direct relation to the state. The change thus embodied the beginning of a movement which has proved to be of the utmost value and of pregnant significance.

For the forty years from 1820 to 1860 appeals were frequently made to Congress from many states asking for aid for ✔ educational purposes; but these appeals were met with refusal. Congress made to each state at the time of its admission a liberal donation from the public domain. It has therefore declined to grant further aid for educational purposes more or less heterogeneous. It has declared that each state should provide for its educational needs from its own resources. Such has been the policy maintained with only infrequent and insignificant exceptions, and based upon what have seemed to be sufficient grounds. It should be added, however, that the Federal Government has from time to time made grants for general purposes to the individual states, as in the Swamp Land Act of 1849, and in the several acts giving three, five, and ten per cent of the land sales. Many of the states have devoted these revenues to educational purposes.

In the score of years, therefore, following the treaty of peace of 1783, the interest of the people in the higher education was manifest in at least three significant forms. The individual states were concerned with the establishment and endowment of their own colleges. The national government was interested in the promotion of the higher education as a concern for and of the people. This interest was largely manifest in the desire to establish a national university. The government also showed its regard for the endeavor through the granting of aid to the individual states for the promotion of education of every sort, especially for the endowment of universities. In these three forms and under these diverse conditions the American college and university came to occupy a large and impressive place. Its relation to the church became less intimate, its relation to the people far more intimate and important. It came to represent and to embody the democratic spirit of a democratic nation. It ceased to be the organ of a class; it became an institution of the republic.

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CHAPTER VIII

THE FRENCH PERIOD

THE English and the native forces making for the higher education were not the only forces at work; coöperating with them were other foreign influences. These influences were largely, in their origin, movement, and condition, French. For the second time in the history of America forces other than English moved upon its educational policy. Paris continued the work previously done by the graduates of Leyden and of. Utrecht.

The aid which France gave to the colonies in and after the year 1778 was not simply of men and of ships. Whatever was her motive in aiding in the establishment of the American Commonwealth, the result was an increase of her influence. This influence was rather of ideas, forms of government and of education, than of military prestige or of commercial advantage. For the projection of intellectual forces into the new world she was better fitted than for the transplanting of material potencies. France was, at the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, standing midway between the fading light of the careers of Voltaire and Rousseau, and the rising day of the Encyclopædists. She was moved at once by the pen of the historian and by the voice of the prophet. These intellectual influences were preeminently concerned with education. For France, overturning the church and its allied interests, seeking to make all things new, increased the attention paid to education. Education came to be recognized as the one comprehensive force which could create, nourish, and perpetuate the new Republic. Men of reasonableness, who could not accept extreme theories, who abhorred the excesses into which the Revolution with each turn was rapidly moving, found in education as a theory a subject for worthy contemplation, and in education as a move.

ment a resource and power for the restraining of men's thought and actions. Such men as Condorcet, among the ablest of all the promoters of the Revolution, who himself became a victim of its excesses, Sieyès, and others were appointed as committees on public instruction. They and many other citizens published papers upon education-primary, secondary, and university. Each of these papers gave rise to other papers. Literature concerning education from 1789 to 1795 is most voluminous as well as impressive.1 The education which was under diverse forms proposed was invariably an education by, of, and for the state. It represented the whole body of the people concerned. with this most serious endeavor and form of life. No subject was considered more important, no method demanded the wisdom of the people more constantly, and no force was regarded as so powerful for securing the richest results in the individual and in the community.

Such a conception of education united easily and naturally with the national conception maintained in the new American Commonwealth. The new American Commonwealth was concerned with its own existence, development, and perpetuity. It had come to know that no form of ecclesiasticism, however broad or forceful, was of breadth or power sufficient to secure the richest results. It therefore turned to education as the one human condition and force which was sufficiently ample in resource, wise in method, and high in aim to save and to enrich the state. An education of such character was naturally an education of, for, and by the whole people.

The method, purpose, and power, therefore, of the French nation were one with the method, purpose, and power of the new American nation.

It is impossible to estimate with justice the influence of the French condition over the American. The evidence indicates, however, that the influence for the last decades of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nineteenth centuries was vital, and in many respects formative.

"Proces-Verbaux du Comité d'Instruction Publique de la Convention - Nationale," publiés et annotés par M. J. Guillaume, Paris, 1891, tome

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French books were read somewhat in the states, and these books put into English were read largely. The Encyclopædia of Diderot and his associates was read more than other volumes. Both as cause and result of the presence of French books, instruction in the French language began to be offered in three or four colleges. As early as 1735, for a brief time French was taught at Harvard, but it was not till 1780 that the language secured a place of comparative permanence in the curriculum. In that year, the year that marked the adoption of the constitution of Massachusetts and the establishment of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Simon Poulin was authorized to teach French. The fee for the tuition was a special charge in the term bills. Two years after, Albert Gallatin was authorized also to teach the language. In 1797 students who were excused from the study of Hebrew were required to study French; but presently the courses offered were withdrawn, and it was not until the establishment of the Smith chair in 1815 that the instruction was renewed. A chair of French was established at Columbia in 1779, at William and Mary in 1793, and at Union in 1806.

In the midst of the Revolution, Silas Deane, who in 1776 had been sent to Paris in behalf of the new nation, proposed to President Stiles the establishment of a professorship of French in Yale and indicated his willingness to make a collection of French books. But the offer was without result. The corporation of the Rhode Island College, in 1784, made an endeavor to secure the establishment of a chair by Louis XVI. In the application, which is signed by the chancellor and the president of the College, it is said: "Ignorant of the French language, and separated as we were by more than mere distance of countries, we too imbibed the prejudices of the English-prejudices which we have renounced since we have had a nearer view of the brave army of France, who actually inhabited this College edifice; since which time our youth seek with avidity whatever can give them information respecting the character, genius, and influence of a people they have such reason to admire; a nation so eminently distinguished for polished humanity.

"To satisfy this laudable thirst for knowledge nothing was wanting but to encourage and diffuse the French language; and