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the interest of the State, yet the movement toward the wider idea steadily grew until, in the act of 1787, the order of procedure was reversed. The university henceforth overshadowed the college and the system became a truly State system, of which Columbia was merely a part.

The policy of the ecclesiasts, to emasculate freedom of thought and to retain direction of education by test oaths and regulations as to the creed of professors and teachers, was likewise defeated by positive legislative provision.

Not only in these special practical matters had the new idea of popular political rights and duties in education become strong and aggressive, but an idea had impressed itself upon the imagination of the people, of a great educational system, coextensive with the political organization of the State, energized and controlled by the State, to be used for the good of the State. And this idea had taken form in an organization, which, while it was nominally a private corporation, had yet no private interests to serve, which was so constituted that its controlling members must always be among the foremost men in the State, and whose "franchises, immunities, and privileges" were simply the most important functions of a State department of education, and these it was obliged to perform by being made accountable to the legislature which created it. With all this radical innovation, the State claimed no monopoly of education. Complete freedom was left to private individuals to establish schools and colleges independent of the State system. Chairs of divinity of any sect could be freely established in the colleges subject to State control.

The principles of State education in New York were, that there should be a State system, that all who asked the benefits of the State system must submit to State control, and that the State regulations should be such as to permit and to secure the highest possible freedom to individual enterprise, both within and without the State system. Conservative as the founders of the university were by instinct and by tradition, they had yet grasped firmly the principle of the right and duty of State control in educational affairs. While to their conservatism is due the corporate form of the institution, and the fact that it actually included in its scope only the higher and secondary schools, yet it was not many years before the more democratic idea of primary schools for the whole people developed into a fixed policy of the State, and became realized in the State department of public instruction already described.

The revolutionary idea not English.-To one who recognizes continuity in the institutional life of a people, the question naturally suggests itself, "Whence came these new ideas?"

It is plain that they were not English in origin. The corporate form of the system, many details of its government, the leaning to clerical influence-these characteristics may well be considered Eng

lish. But the adaptation of the machinery to its un-English uses, the new motive power and directive energy and, above all, the idea of a symmetrical State system, freed from ecclesiastical influence-these were all foreign to the English character. The conservatism in the change was English. The progressive elements came from other sources. If any proof of this proposition is needed, it is readily furnished by the

Contrast between the University and the English universities.—It is commonly said that Oxford and Cambridge furnished the models for the University of the State of New York. Oxford and Cambridge were groups of colleges associated in one great whole, called the university. Such it is true was also the University of the State of New York, and there can be little doubt that the English university organization was the structural idea at the basis of the New York plan. But beyond this there is no real analogy. All the colleges of the English university were situated in one town. The natural application of the English idea to New York at that time would have been to establish a university at New York City, where alone there was much demand for colleges, leaving to the future the development of similar institutions in other parts of the State. Again, the English university was a great self-governing institution with jurisdiction and legislative control over territory; it was a corporation such as a chartered town, it had feudal immunities, it was a regnum in regno. The New York university, although a corporation with chartered rights, was yet a branch of the State government, created by the legislature, its membership maintained by the legislature, accountable to the legislature. If some special administrative committee of the privy council in England had been granted a corporate form, its duties and responsibilities remaining the same as before this would have furnished an analogy to the university in New York. "It had duties, not rights, in relation to the State."1 And this unique State department was adapted with such prophetic skill to the future growth of the State, that from 1787 until the present day it has expanded naturally, without essential change, to meet every need of the State, and has become the inspiration of somewhat similar systems in other States and countries. In this character of practical adjustment to new needs, it may be granted, the English spirit is indeed apparent.

Again, federation is the principle of union in the English university system. Mr. Bryce, in an appendix to his work on the American Commonwealth, draws a remarkable parallel between the federative system of English university government before their late reconstruction, and the government of the Federal Union of the United States. But federation did not describe at all the government of the New York colleges in the university. They were not represented in the board of 1 Buisson, M. L'enseignement supérieur aux États-unis. tionale de l'enseignement, Oct. 15, 1886.)

(Revue interna

regents. They governed themselves except for the supervision of the university, and this supervision was the authority of the State proceeding outward from its center. The mild government which is exercised by the regents is imperial in its character.

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New York created a new personage under the name of regent. This term seems to have been first used in the old University of Paris. It signified a master, who by his very character of master was qualified to teach. The name passed over to the English universities. A rule grew up that only those masters actually teaching the "regents," as distinguished from the nonregents, should have a right to vote in certain university assemblies. In the Oxford convocation and the Cambridge senate both regents and nonregents voted. The regent then combined the functions of teaching and governing. At Oxford by the Laudian Statutes of 1636, the government was practically put into the hands of the heads of colleges, and the colleges likewise in Cambridge acquired a larger control. New York seized the old officer and name and put them to a new use. The regents became the governing and not the teaching body. The teaching and governing functions became entirely distinct. This use of "regent" has been copied by Michigan, and generally by the State universities in the West.

Revolutionary idea in New York before 1784.-If the new revolutionary ideas wrought out in the founding of the university are not of direct English origin, they were at least partly indigenous to New York soil, and indirectly English. We have seen the idea of State education struggling to the light in the laws of 1702 and 1732 for the establishment of grammar schools. But it is specially in connection with the founding of King's College that the new idea came most strongly into view. The many nationalities and religious sects in the colony tended to produce jealousy of any domination by a particular national or sectional element.

"An act for vesting in trustees the sum of £3,443 18s., raised by way of lottery, for erecting a college within this colony," 1 passed November 25, 1751, appointed ten trustees for the fund. The members of the Church of England predominated, however, and Trinity Church proposed to grant the college the use of land for its buildings. William Livingston, a Presbyterian and a graduate of Yale, a cultured and able lawyer, a writer of sprightly verse and vigorous prose, afterwards governor of New Jersey, led a determined crusade against the plan of procuring a royal charter for the college. He was afraid of the influence of the English Church, since that church so largely controlled the movement. His articles, published in the Independent Reflector in 1753, speak with all the fervor and passion of the French writers of that period about the divinity of "reason" and the curse of ecclesiasticism. This William Livingston was spoken of by Presi

'Pratt's Annals (see Conv. proc., 1873, p. 191).

These are printed in Pratt's Annals (see Conv. proc., 1873, pp. 194-234).

He was

dent Timothy Dwight as a man of most versatile ability. nicknamed the "Don Quixote of the Jerseys." He was delegate from New Jersey to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Henry Brockholst Livingston, one of the regents, was his son, and John Jay married his eldest daughter. He was a cousin of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston.

The germ of the whole modern reform in education is contained in his arguments. This brilliant man represents at once the movement for positive knowledge of practical value, and for civil as against ecclesiastical control in education. "This, therefore, I will venture. to lay down for a capital maxim, that unless the education we propose be calculated to render our youth better members of society and useful to the public in proportion to its expense we had better be without it." Education, he claims, "is to improve their (the youth) hearts and understandings, to infuse a public spirit and love of their country, to inspire them with the principles of honor and probity, with a fervent zeal for liberty and a diffusive benevolence for mankind, and, in a word, to make them the more extensively serviceable to the Commonwealth." 991 He refers to Plato, Aristotle, and Lycurgus as making "the education of youth the principal and most essential duty of the magistrate." It is thus to the old Hellenistic spirit that the modern world is ultimately indebted for the new education, an education which strives to be free from traditional bondage of every sort, which is organized upon state rather than church foundations, and which seeks a knowledge practical rather than scholastic.

It is interesting to compare Livingston's words with what Montesquieu has said:

"Political virtue, or virtue proper in a republic." writes Montesquieu, "is the love of country and of equality. It is in a republican government that the whole power of education is needed, for all depends upon the establishment of this political virtue, this love of the laws and of the country, this love which demands an habitual preferment of the public weal to one's own interest, and which is the source of all special virtues, for they are all nothing but this preferment."

And the Frenchman, like the American, mounts to Greek sources for his doctrine.

Livingston has harsh words for the old colleges. "Freedom of thought rarely penetrates those contracted mansions of systematical learning." They are the source of "those voluminous compositions and that learned lumber of gloomy pedants which has so long infested and corrupted the world." The proposed college, he claims, is to be a "public academy," and "a public academy is or ought to be a mere civil institution, and can not with any tolerable propriety be monopolized by any religious sect." His plan for the charter and govern1 Independent Reflector, No. 13, March 23, 1753. 'Esprit des lois, v. 4, ch. 5.

3 Independent Reflector, No. 17.

ment of the proposed college contains several provisions which, while ignored in King's College as established, were triumphant in the organization of the university. Several features of his plan resemble strongly the French schemes of the next decade, which we shall presently notice.

1. He argues against a royal charter as being subject to the caprice of one man's will to change or repeal.

2. "Societies have an indisputable right to direct the education of their youthful members." He bases this proposition upon the social nature of man and the obligations of civil government. "Sensible of this," says he, "was the Spartan lawgiver, who claimed the education of the Lacedæmonian youth as the inalienable right of the Commonwealth."

3. He claims that, therefore, the "legislatures are the lawful guardians" of the college, and that it should be incorporated by "act of assembly" and "be under the inspection of the civil authority." He urges that private contributions will be inadequate to erect a university which would "arrive at any considerable degree of grandeur or utility. The expense attending the first erection and continual support of so great a work requires the united aid of the public." If thus supported by the public, it ought to be created and superintended by the legislature.

4. The advantages from such an institution are general and for the public good, and should be the public care. He asks: "Are the rise of arts, the improvement of husbandry, the increase of trade, the advancement of knowledge in law, physic, morality, policy, and the rules of justice, and civil government subjects beneath the attention of our legislature?"

5. He claims that the public control would prevent both domination by any sect or party and corruption in the officials, and that larger private donations may be expected than if the college were under royal control.

6. He would have no establishment of any particular religious profession in the college. No Protestant was to be disqualified on account of his religious persuasion from sustaining any office in the college. There was to be no chair of divinity.

7. "All the trustees are to be nominated, appointed, and incorporated by the act, and whenever an avoidance among them shall happen the same [shall] be reported by the corporation to the next sessions of assembly and such vacancy supplied by legislative act." The governor, the council, and the general assembly are all to concur in these elections.

8. The election and deposition of the president by the trustees are to require legislative confirmation to be valid. "By this means the president, who will have the supreme superintendency of the education of our youth, will be kept in a continual and ultimate dependence upon the public."

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