18 INTRODUCTION. 



native authors, on subjects in the various departments of science and literature, 

 and especially designed for these libraries. Mr. Wadsworth, already honorably 

 mentioned, continues to favor the enterprise by an annual contribution to the 

 writers of such works as f are approved by the superintendent of common schools. 

 By a law of 1841, each academy receives from the treasury a sum of about two 

 hundred and fifty dollars ; which, together with an equal amount contributed by 

 the founders and patrons of the institutions, is applied to the purchase of text 

 books, globes, maps and philosophical apparatus. 



During the Dutch government, no press was established; and so late as 1686, 

 Governor Dongan was instructed to allow no such establishment in the colony.* 



The great English revolution of 1688, and the accession of William and Mary, 

 were hailed with enthusiasm in the colonies, and awakened in New-England and 

 New- York an earnest desire to repossess the rights and franchises which had 

 been wrested by the Stuarts, or tamely yielded to their rapacity. The popular 

 mind did not then suspect that the despotism of absolute monarchy had only given 

 place to the omnipotence of parliament. Although a press had been established 

 for scientific and literary purposes at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, about the 

 middle of the seventeenth century, printing was not commenced in Boston, Phi- 

 ladelphia or New- York, until near the close of that century ; nor was any news- 

 paper printed in the American colonies before the year 1700. Dr. Cadwallader 

 Colden, often mentioned in this memoir, in a letter written in 1743 to Dr. Frank- 

 lin, minutely explained an improvement he had conceived in the art of printing, 

 which was identical with the stereotype process introduced into France nearly 

 sixty years afterwards by Mr. Herhan, under letters patent from Napoleon. Dr. 

 Colden's letter was published in Hosack and Francis' American Medical and 

 Philosophical Register, in 1810. But it is only just to say, that subsequent re- 

 searches have resulted in showing that a bible was printed by Gillett, with ste- 



* Clinton's Introductory Discourse. 



