PROVISIONS RESPECTING EDUCATION IN THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE SEVERAL STATES. PRELIMINARY REPORT. THE following pages contain the provisions of the successive Constitutions of the several States, in reference to Education, Literature and Science, together with a series of propositions embracing the cardinal features of a system of public instruction, which the Constitution might make obligatory on the Legislature to establish. HENRY BARNARD, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, 1868. Commissioner. New York....... 1777 1822 Common school fund; literature fund; New Jersey..... 1776 1244 School fund not to be borrowed; income Pennsylvania... 1776 1790 Delaware.... Maryland... Virginia for equal benefit of all Legislature to establish schools and pro- Legislature to establish schools and pro- 1776 1831 1776 1864 Superintendent; board of education; school fund 1776 1851 North Carolina.. 1776 1776 Capitation tax on white males.. Legislature to provide education for the Principal of school fund inviolate; com- 88 90 90 91 Tennessee 100 1802 1802 Indiana....... 1816 1816 Superintendent; schools equally open 104 1818 none. 107 Schools to be encouraged; university 107 108 110 110 112 1848 1848 Superintendent; school fund; school li- California.... 1849 1849 Superintendent; school and university 113 Iowa... 1846 1846 Board of education; school funds and 115 Wisconsin 117 funds; public schools to be kept three 119 119 120 Superintendent common, normal, agri- 121 Superintendent; school fund 122 1864 1864 Superintendent; school fund; univer- 123 124 CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION RESPECTING EDUCATION. The past and present constitutional provisions of the several States of the Union relative to education exhibit the growth of the national sentiment in favor of, and the present strong attachment to, the public school system. In the early reconstruction of political organizations, rendered imperative by a separation from Great Britain, only a few States recognized in their rganic law the necessity of providing for the diffusion of intelligence among the people, and this recognition is expressed in general terms. But within the last half century the constitutions of the States, admitted from time to time in the Union, have become more and more emphatic in the declaration, that it is the wisest economy and the highest duty to provide for an efficient and uniform system of public schools. The New England States having incorporated a public school system with their earliest organizations, in emerging from their colonial condition, had no occasion to provide specially for it in their first State constitutions. In 1636, six years after the first settlement of Boston, the General Court of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, which met in Boston on the 8th of September, passed an act appropriating £400 toward the establishment of a college. The sum thus appropriated was more than the whole tax levied on the colony at that time in a single year, and the population scattered through ten or twelve villages did not exceed five thousand persons; but among them were eminent graduates of the University of Cambridge, in England, and all were here for purposes of permanent settlement. In 1638 John Harvard left by will the sum of £779 in money, and a library of over three hundred books. In 1640, the General Court granted to the college the income of the Charlestown ferry; and in 1642, the Governor, with the magistrates and teachers and |