provisions were in harmonious accord with the general spirit of the 

 time, and that it was fraught with the means of incalculable advan- 

 tage to the nation. To these three considerations, then, I briefly in- 

 vite your attention. 



Within the last twenty-five years the policy of rendering national 

 and state aid to educational institutions has sometimes been gravely 

 questioned. It has been asserted that the work of education, in any 

 other than a purely elementary sense, should be left to the care of 

 private benevolence. This, however, was not the doctrine of the 

 fathers. As was so eloquently shown fifty years ago, when the ora- 

 tor selected to represent Harvard, and Amherst, and Williams plead- 

 ed the cause of the colleges before the Legislature of Massachu- 

 setts, it was the states acting in their organized capacity, that pro- 

 vided for the means of higher education as well as for the common 

 schools. 



Look at the facts of that early history. Years before the famous 

 common school law was passed, provision had been made for the 

 founding of a college, by means of a tax levied upon the whole peo- 

 ple of the Colony. As Mr. Everett said, scarcely had the feet of 

 the Pilgrims taken hold of Plymouth Rock, when a year's rate of the 

 Colon} 7 was levied in order that the higher learning might have a 

 home in the New World. Nor was the child of this parentage left 

 to any such precarious support as might be afforded by private be- 

 nevolence. The Court Records of Massachusetts in the colonial 

 period are sprinkled over with evidences of the most solicitous care. 

 It was in the days of poverty. The subsistence of the president 

 and the professors or tutors, as they were then called, was immedi- 

 ately dependent on the bounty of the commonwealth. Appropria- 

 tions for buildings and for lands were from time to time made. The 

 income of the ferry between Boston and Cambridge was appropriated 

 by the General Court to the use of the college. The legislature se- 

 lected the controlling board. In short, Harvard College was an in- 

 stitution of the government, founded by.it, supported by it and con- 

 trolled by it. Before the days of independence arrived, more than 

 a hundred different statutes had been spread upon the legislative 

 record for the purpose of guiding and assisting this child of the in- 

 fant state. Even in the constitution of 1780 it was declared forever 

 to be the duty of the legislature to encourage higher learning and 

 especially the University at Cambridge. And it was not until the 

 sons of the college had multiplied and grown rich, that the legisla- 



