THE STATE AND HIGHER EDUCATION. 701 



lier interest, and every family paid its peck of coin to make, as it were, 

 hoe-cake for President Dimster and his faculty. Harvard College has 

 had more than $500,000 from the public treasury of Massachusetts. 

 Yale has had about $200,000 from the State of Connecticut. While 

 uiuloubtedly the most generous gifts have come to New Englatid colleges 

 from private sources, yet every one of them, in time of emergency, has 

 come boldly before representatives of the people and stated the want. 

 They have always obtained State aid when it was needed. Last year 

 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became somewhat embar- 

 rassed financially, and asked the legislature for $100,000. The institu- 

 tion got $200,000, twice what it asked for, upon conditions that were 

 easy to meet. 



Turning now from historic examples of State aid to the higher edu- 

 cation by individual American commonwealths, let us inquire briefly 

 concerning the attitude of the United States Government towards in- 

 stitutions of science and sound learning. 



Washington's grand thought of a National University, based upon 

 individual endowment, may be found in many of his writings, but the 

 clearest and strongest statement occurs in his last will and testament. 

 There he employed the following significant language : 



" It has been my ardent wish to see a plan devised on a liberal scale 

 which would have a tendency to spread systematic ideas through all 

 l)arts of this rising empire, thereby to do away local attachments and 

 State [)rejudices, as far as the nature of things would, or indeed ought 

 to, admit from our national councils. Looking anxiously forward to 

 the accomplishment of so desirable an object as this is, in my estima- 

 tion, my mind has not been able to contemplate any plan more likely to 

 effect the measure than the establishment of a 'university in a central 

 part of the United States, to which the youths of fortune and talents 

 from all parts thereof may be sent for the completion of their education, 

 in all branches of polite literature, in arts and sciences, in acquiring 

 knowledge in the principles of politics and good government, and as a 

 matter of infinite importance in my judgment, by associating with each 

 other, and forming friendshii)S in juvenile years, be enabled to free 

 themselves in a proper degree from those local prejudices and habitual 

 jealousies which have just been mentioned, and which, when carried to 

 excess, are never-failing sources of disquietude to the public mind, and 

 pregnant of mischievous consequences to this country. Under these 

 impressions, so fully dilated, 1 give and bequeath, in perpetuity, the 

 fifty shares which I hold in the Potomac Company ■ - - towards 

 the endowment of a university, to be established within the limits of 

 the District of Columbia, under the auspices of the General Govern- 

 nient, jfthat Government should incline to extend a favoring hand 

 towards it." 



Here was the individual foundation of a National University. Here 

 was the first suggestion of that noble line of public policy subsequently 

 adopted in 1816, by our General Government in relation to the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. The will of James Smithson, of England, made in 

 182G, was " to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, an establishment for the inqren-se q,ud diflfusjoii of knowledge 



