Sect. III.] United States of America. 19J 



restrictions, during a part of this period, in Mas- 

 sachusetts*. In the province of New York, for a 

 considerable time, the introduction of a press was 

 entirely prohibited. And it is believed similar 

 restraints took place in some of the other colonies. 

 The influence of such restrictions on the general 

 progress of liberal information could not be 

 otherwise than highly unfavourable. 



At the commencement of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, an important seminary of learning rose in 

 Connecticut. A number of the clergy, anxious 

 more particularly that means might be adopted 

 for supplying the churches with a succession of 

 learned and able ministers, conceived the design 

 of erecting a college. This was accordingly soon 

 attempted, and Avith the most happy success. An 

 act of incorporation was obtained from the gene- 

 ral assembly in the year 1701, and the first com- 

 mencement took place in Saybrook in lyoSf. 



* In 1662, twenty- four years after a printing press had been 

 established at Cambridge, the general court of Massachusetts ap- 

 pointed two persons as supervisors of the press, and prohibited 

 the publishing any books or papers until after they had been 

 examined and approved by them. In 1668 the supervisors hav- 

 ing allowed the celebratetl work of Thomas a Kempis, De Imita- 

 tione Christi, to be printed, the court interposed, alleging that it 

 "had been written by a popish minister, and contained some 

 things less safe to be diffused among the people." 



t Most of those who graduated on this occasion in Yale col- 

 lege had previously taken their master's degree at Cambridge, 

 in IVIassachusetts. This accounts for a commencement taking 

 place so soon after the erection of the college, and before stu- 

 dents could have been carried regularl}'^ througli an academic 

 coyrse. It must bd acknowledged, however, that the American 

 colleges early began to discover that fondness for dealing out 



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