494 OPINIONS OF THE EARLY REFORMERS 



was the only way by which Popery could be permanently 

 excluded from the countries in which Protestantism 

 had succeeded in securing an ascendency; and they 

 laboured, therefore, wherever they possessed sufficient 

 influence, to have means publicly provided for securing 

 such general education. 



In 1560, for example, when the Reformation was 

 established in Scotland, the compilers of the First Book 

 of Discipline u required that a school should be established 

 in every parish, for the instruction of youth in the prin 

 ciples of religion, grammar, and the Latin tongue.&quot; 

 This point they actually gained ; and, by a permanent 

 endowment, insured a competent salary to the school 

 master, and the continuance of the schools to the present 

 time. The influence of these schools upon the character 

 of the Scottish peasantry is sufficiently known. 



&quot; They proposed also that a college should be erected 

 in each notable town, in which logic and rhetoric should 

 be taught along with the learned languages. They 

 seem to have had it in their eye to revive the system 

 adopted in some of the ancient republics, in which the 

 youth were considered as the property of the public 

 rather than of their parents, by obliging the nobility and 

 gentry to educate their own children, and by providing 

 at the public expense for the education of the children of 

 the poor.&quot; The blame of not carrying this loJwle 

 scheme into effect is to be ascribed a not to the Reformed 

 ministers, but to the nobility and gentry, whose avarice 

 defeated the execution of their plans. &quot;* 



Here, then, in Scotland, eighty years before the first 

 act of the Council of Massachusetts in 1642, a system of 

 parish schools was established, sufficient for the wants of 

 the population of the time, but which contained within 

 itself no provision by which the holders of property in a 

 parish could be compelled to enlarge the provision as the 

 * MARIE S Life of Knox. 4th edition, (1818,) vol. ii. p. 10. 



