by Franklin were not realized, the institution, which was afterward called "The University of Pennsylvania," offered the most liberal curriculum of any college in the colonies up to the Revolution.

The human motive was uppermost also in the establishment of King's College in 1754. The colonial assembly desired its establishment to enhance the welfare and reputation of the colony, and the only connection between the college and the Church of England lay in the requirement that the president should be a communicant of that church and that the morning and evening service of the college should be performed out of the liturgy of that church. But the religious motive again comes to the fore in the establishment of Brown University at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764, primarily to train ministers for the Baptist churches; of Queens, afterwards named Rutgers, in 1766, to provide ministers for the Dutch Reformed churches; and of Dartmouth, in 1769, from which it was hoped at first that the evangelization of the Indians would proceed.

Character of the

college

These colonial colleges in their histories bear a great resemblance to one another. They were almost all born in colonial poverty and led a desperate financial existence for many years. In some cases survival was possible only as the result of the untiring self-sacrifice of some great personality like Eleazar Wheelock, the first president of Dartmouth; in all cases, of the devotion of teachers and officers. Their beginnings were all small; in some cases the president was the only member of the instructing staff and taught all the subjects of the curriculum. The students were few in number, the equipment was simple, the buildings usually consisting of a house for the president, in which he often heard recitations, a dormitory for the students, and a college hall. Libraries, laboratories, and recreational facilities were usually conspicuous by their absence. In fact, as the curriculum consisted almost exclusively of philosophy, Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and a little mathematics, there was no great need of much equipment. The classics were taught by the intensive grammatical method; in philosophy there was

French influence

a great deal of dialectical disputation; rhetoric was studied as an aid to oratory; mathematics included only arithmetic and geometry. The aim of instruction was, not to give a wide acquaintance with many fields of knowledge for cultural and appreciative purposes, but rather to develop power through intensive exercise upon a restricted curriculum. But the value of the materials utilized to produce power which would function in oratory, debate, and diplomacy is splendidly illustrated in the decades before the Revolution. The contest between the colonies and the mother country was essentially a rational contest in which questions of constitutional law and, indeed, of the fundamental principles of civil and political existence were debated. Splendidly did the leaders of public opinion in the colonies, almost every one of whom was a graduate of a colonial college, defend the cause of the colonists in pamphlet and debate. And when debate was followed by war, twenty-five per cent of the twenty-five hundred graduates of the colonial colleges were found in the military service of their country. At the close of the struggle for independence, it was again upon the shoulders of the men who had gained vision and character in the colonial colleges that the burden fell of organizing the mutually suspicious and antagonistic colonies into one nation. Space will not permit even of the enumeration of the great leaders who graduated from all the colonial colleges, but an idea of the service rendered by those institutions to the new nation may be obtained by mentioning the names of a few statesmen who received their instruction in one of the least of them, William and Mary. In its classrooms were taught Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Randolph, James Monroe, and John Marshall.

2. THE NATIONAL ERA

French influence upon American political and intellectual life had become quite pronounced as the result of the contact between the leaders of the two peoples during and after the Revolution. That influence was reflected in the colleges.

Instruction in the French language was offered in several of the colleges before the close of the eighteenth century, and a chair of French was established at Columbia as early as 1779 and at William and Mary in 1793. The secularizing influence of the French united also with the democratizing influence of the Revolution in diminishing the influence of the church upon the colleges and emphasizing the influence of the State and especially the relations between college and people. Of the fourteen colleges founded between 1776 and 1800, the majority were established upon a non-sectarian basis. These included institutions of a private nature like Washington and Lee, Bowdoin, and Union, as well as institutions closely related to the state governments like the Universities of North Carolina and of Vermont. There can hardly be any doubt that the French system of centralized administration in civil affairs influenced the establishment of the University of the State of New York. The University of the State of New York is not a local institution, but a body of nine regents elected by the legislature to control the administration of education throughout the State of New York. Though organized by Alexander Hamilton, it was in all probability much influenced by John Jay, who returned from France in 1784. But the most potent factor in the spread of French influence in the early history of our country was Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson was American minister to France, he studied the French system of education and embodied ideas taken from it in the organization of the University of Virginia. This occupied much of his attention during the last two decades of his life. The University was to be entirely non-sectarian and had for its purpose (1) to form statesmen, legislators, and judges for the commonwealth; (2) to expand the principles and structure of government, the laws which regulate the intercourse of states, and a sound spirit of legislation; (3) to harmonize and promote the interests of all forms of industry, chiefly by well-informed views of political economy; (4) to develop the reasoning faculties of youth and to broaden their minds and develop their character; (5) to enlighten them

The state universities system

with knowledge, especially of the physical sciences which will advance the material welfare of the people. These progressive views of what the college should aim to do were associated with equally advanced views of college administration, such as the elective system and the importation of professors from abroad. The remarkable vision, constructive imagination, courage, and faith of Jefferson in his break with what was traditional and authoritative in education has been justified by the fine career of the university which he founded.

All the colleges that were established before the Revolution, and most of those between the Revolution and the year 1800, had received direct assistance from the colonial or state government either in grants of land, money, the proceeds of lotteries, or special taxes. Most of them, however, were dependent upon private foundations and controlled by denominational bodies. The secularizing influence from France, the growing interest in civic and political affairs, and the democratic spirit resulting from the Revolution combined to develop a distrust of the colleges as they were organized and a desire to bring them under the control of the state. This was apparent in 1779, when the legislature of Pennsylvania withdrew the charter of the college of Philadelphia and created a new corporation to be known as "The Trustees of the University of the State of Pennsylvania "; it was shown in 1787 when Columbia College was granted a new charter by the state legislature, under which the board of trustees were all drawn from the Board of Regents of the State; it was made most evident in 1816 when the legislature of New Hampshire transformed Dartmouth College into a university without the consent of the board of trustees and empowered the governor and council to appoint a Board of Overseers. In the celebrated Dartmouth College case, 1819, the old board of trustees, when defeated before the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in their suit for the recovery of property which had been seized, carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States and engaged Daniel Webster as their counsel. The Court

declared the act of the New Hampshire legislature in violation of the provision of the Constitution of the United States which reads that "No state shall pass any . . . law impairing the obligation of contracts." The decision drew a sharp distinction between public and private corporations, and a necessary inference was that most of the existing institutions for higher education were in the latter class. The result was to strengthen the rising demand for publicly controlled institutions. The Southern and Western states across the Alleghanies that were on the point of framing state constitutions made provision for state universities under state control.

The intention to provide higher education freely for the people had already received its greatest impetus in an Act of Congress passed shortly after the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, providing for the organization of the Northwest Territory. By that act two entire townships of public land were reserved to the states to be erected out of the territory, the proceeds of the sale of which were to be devoted to the establishment of a state university. These universities followed swiftly upon the establishment of new states, and the democratic ideal that prevailed is shown in the determination that the state university was to be the crown of the public educational system of the state. This is well illustrated in the provision of the constitution of Indiana, adopted in the very year of the Dartmouth College decision, 1819, which reads, "It shall be the duty of the General Assembly, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide by law for a general system of education, ascending in regular gradation from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all." Circumstances did permit in the following year, and the provisions of the bill materialized. The national policy of granting public lands for educational purposes to new states was continued, and one or two townships were devoted in each case to the establishment of a state university. National assistance to higher education was given on an immense scale in 1862, when the Morrill Act was passed pro