inclined to be taxed for such purposes, and, save the erection of one school-house by the joint action of the town and private citizens, nothing was done. Nor was anything done till 1800, when the General Assembly placed on the statute-book the first law providing for the establishment of at least one free school in every town in the State. Four were at once organized at Providence and opened with all possible speed. But elsewhere the law was bitterly denounced. When the General Assembly met again instructions from town after town were read against it, and in 1803 it was repealed. During a quarter of a century the people of Rhode Island went on educating their children in the old way; but at last, in 1828, the State once more came to the rescue, and the free school was permanently established.*

New York, at the close of the Revolution, had done less in the cause of education than Rhode Island. There were, indeed, private schools, some parish schools, a few academies, and the remains of King's College; but no common schools within the reach of the great mass of the people. What this meant to a State whose government depended for its stability on the intelligence and good sense of the citizens was fully understood by Governor Clinton. Scarcely a month had passed since the last of the British troops sailed away from Staten Island. The effects of eight years of warfare were weighing heavily on the tax payers, who were in no condition to bear increased expenses. Yet so important and so pressing did the matter seem that the Governor, in his message to the Legislature when it assembled in the half-ruined city of New York, urged it to provide a system of education worthy of the State and the emergency. "Neglect," said he, "of the education of youth is among the evils consequent on war. Perhaps there is scarce anything more worthy your attention than the revival and encouragement of seminaries of learning." The response of the Legislature was the creation of " the Regents of the University of the State of New York," a huge and cumbersome body of perpetual regents, county

History of Higher Education in Rhode Island. William Howe Tolman, Bureau of Education Circular of Information, No. 1, 1894.

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regents, clerical regents, founder regents, and regents of colleges yet to be created, to whose care was confided the development of an educational system for the State. But the work was not done. The board was too large, the members too widely scattered to attend, and it quickly fell under the control of the friends of the old King's College, now revived and renamed Columbia. The old college had been a distinctly English institution, controlled by the Established Church, serving private interests, and owing no educational duty to the colony, though coming to it time and again for help when its treasury was depleted or its privileges and immunities needed to be extended. In the attempt to restore this old-time condition and make Columbia the educational ruler, the interests of the State at large was utterly neglected, a strong opposition was developed, and in 1787 the law of 1784 was radically altered and the University of the State of New York established in much the same form as it exists to-day. The details need not concern us; it is enough to know that back of this movement was the idea of a system of education for the people, aided by the State, and controlled by the State for the good of its citizens.

But how was money for its support to be raised? Taxation was impossible. Resort was therefore had to public lands and lotteries, and in 1789 the Legislature ordered the surveyor-general to set apart certain lots in each township within the military district and reserve them for the use of churches and schools. The help thus afforded settlers, who were already pouring into central New York and pushing up the Mohawk Valley, was indeed considerable, but towns elsewhere derived no benefit. They were yet to be provided for, and in their behalf, and as an experiment, a temporary school fund was created in 1795. For five years to come the State pledged itself to distribute fifty thousand dollars annually among the towns on the basis of population, and bade the supervisors of each county raise, by taxation, in each town a sum one half that it received from the State. With the money so provided thirteen hundred and fifty schools, in which fifty-six thousand children were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, were opened in sixteen of the twenty-three counties

before 1799. As the five-year limit was then fast expiring, with no prospect of renewal, a lottery was chartered to raise one hundred thousand dollars in four drawings.

By this time the school system had utterly collapsed, and Clinton, the steady friend and unflinching advocate of free education for the people, once more appealed to the Legislature. The system of common schools," said he, "having been discontinued and the advantage to morals, religion, liberty, and good government arising from the general diffusion of knowledge being universally admitted, permit me to recommend this subject to your deliberate attention. The failure of one experiment for the attainment of an important object ought not to discourage other attempts." But failure did discourage other attempts, and though Clinton returned to the subject year after year till he ceased to be Governor, and though his successor took up the good work where he laid it down, every appeal went unheeded till 1805. In that year Governor Morgan Lewis urged the Legislature to set apart the State lands as a school fund, give the management of the fund to the Regents of the University, authorize them to mark out schooldistricts, appoint trustees, and levy taxes when needed to supplement the fund. The plan was far too radical for the ideas of the time. Nevertheless the Legislature made bold to take one step, and ordered five hundred thousand acres of vacant land to be sold and the proceeds invested till the annual interest should amount to fifty thousand dollars, when it should be used for the support of free schools.

Meanwhile a band of public-spirited men in New York city, deeply sensible of the importance of educating the horde of children growing up as outcasts in the slums, and weary of waiting for the State to act, formed a society and applied for a charter. "Your memorialists," they assured the Legislature," have seen with painful anxiety the many evils which have arisen from the neglected education of the children of the poor." Especially deplorable was the condition of such as did not belong to any church and were not provided for by any religious organization. Cared for by no one, neglected by parents who were too indifferent, too intemperate, or too poor to even seek to give them an education, they were growing up

1805.

LANCASTRIAN SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK.

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in the densest ignorance, a prey to every vice. That something might be done to save these unfortunate little ones it seemed expedient to establish free schools in the city for their education, and for this laudable purpose the petitioners asked to be incorporated. The prayer was willingly granted, and in 1805 "The Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York for the Education of such Poor Children as do not belong to or are not provided for by any Religious Society" was created.

An appeal was next made to the public, with such success that it soon became necessary to decide on some scheme of education, and, after due consideration, what was then known as the Lancastrian method was adopted and put in operation for the first time in this country. Joseph Lancaster was born in London in 1778 of well-to-do parents. By nature he be longed to that class of men whose mission it is to labor unrequited for the welfare of their fellows. For one so constituted no better field existed than that afforded by the great city of London. The misery, vice, and crime fostered by ignorance that was itself the product of abject poverty deeply affected him, and, prompted by a strong love of children, he opened a free school in his father's house for the instruction of those whose parents could not pay the cost of education. cess with a few attracted others and still others, till the little room became too small and a school-house was built, in which, it is said, as many as a thousand boys and girls were often gathered.

Suc

Increase in numbers of scholars made necessary an increase. in the teaching force; but to employ many teachers was beyond the limited means of Lancaster, who therefore met the need by an expedient which at once became the peculiarity of his system. Selecting the brightest of the advanced pupils, he made them monitors and sent them to teach little classes of younger children the rudiments of such knowledge as they had acquired.

In later years, when Lancastrian schools were high in publie favor a hot dispute was waged over the merits and defects of the "monitorial or pupil-teacher system." The faults were many; but it should never be forgotten that Lancaster suc

VOL. V.

ceeded in deeply interesting in the cause of popular education large numbers of men to whom no other system appealed; that he provided a way of doing the greatest amount of good at the least expense, and that he gave an impetus to the movement in behalf of the public schools at the very moment an impetus was most needed.

Such was the experience of the society at New York. The work done was manifestly good; the Legislature, the city, and the people helped it on, and in 1808 the name was changed to the Free-School Society of New York, and its doors opened to all children who were proper objects of free education.

While the State fund was slowly growing the Legislature bade the Governor appoint five commissioners to plan a general system of State schools, and from them came a report which led to the law of 1812. Electors in each town were authorized to choose three commissioners to mark out as many school-districts as seemed proper. The voters of each district were then to elect three trustees to manage the local school, which was to be supported by the State and the people, for each town was required to raise as much money by taxation as it received from the literary fund. At the head of the system was placed a Superintendent of Education. To the office thus created Gideon Hawley was appointed, and on him, in 1813, fell the duty of putting the system in operation. The task was a hard one, for town after town refused to tax itself, lost its share of the State fund by so doing, and failed to establish a free school. At the urgent request of the Superintendent the tax was therefore made compulsory. Then success attended his efforts, and when, in 1821, the office of State Superintendent was abolished and the free schools placed under the charge of the Secretary of State, three hundred thousand children were receiving instruction in six thousand three hundred school-districts, at an annual cost of two hundred thousand dollars.

*

In New Jersey there were no common schools. There

The American Common School in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the First Half Century of the Republic. Rev. A. D. Mayo. Report, Commissioner of Education, 1895-'96, chap. vi. University of the State of New York. Sidney Sherwood.