COLLEGES AND PROFESSORS IN THE STATES. 473 



Dr AVayland, who has presided over the institution 

 for twenty years, is a well-known writer on Moral Phi 

 losophy and Political Economy. He is a man of much 

 talent, full of energy, and earnest to introduce a refor 

 mation into the collegiate system of his own university, 

 with the view both of adapting it more to the wants of 

 the place and time, and of converting it from being in some 

 degree an eleemosynary, into a self-supporting institu 

 tion. His ideas upon this subject have an uncommon 

 degree of breadth and liberality, even for New England, 

 and if he is enabled to carry them out in his own 

 university, will tend very much to revolutionise the old 

 forms and courses of instruction adopted from Europe, 

 and so long followed in the other universities of the 

 United States. 



In the Union there are no less than 120 colleges, with 

 909 professors, besides 42 theological seminaries, 12 

 schools of law, and 35 of medicine. This is a vast array 

 of collegiate machinery, to impart high instruction to the 

 sons of a population of 23,000,000. It must be regarded, 

 however, as a provision for the future wants of the vast 

 region over which the institutions are scattered, rather 

 than an adaptation of educational means to the wants of 

 an existing people. Each new State being in theory an 

 independent sovereignty, organises, as a matter of course, 

 schools, academies, and colleges, upon, and for the use of, 

 its own territory. Thus divided among thirty States, 

 there are only four colleges, and thirty professors to 

 each. 



Many of these colleges are sectarian, and, in the pre 

 sent state of the Union, are not self-supporting ; so that 

 where they have not, like Harvard, large endowments to 

 fall back upon, they are obliged to rely upon the con 

 tributions of the members of the denomination to which 

 they belong, and upon yearly collections or subscriptions to 

 keep them in a solvent state. During the last few years, 



