312 [Assembly 



< that all the brethren should teach their children and appren- 

 tices to read, and that every township of fifty householders should 

 appoint one to teacli all the children." Very different was the 

 state of things in the contemporary colony of Virginia, to which 

 the cavaliers and members of the established church were throng- 

 ing. Even fifteen or twenty years later, Sir Wm. Berkeley, who 

 was Governor of Virginia for nearly forty years, and Avas one of 

 the best colonial rulers, spoke thus, in the full sincerity of his 

 heart, of his own province, in a letter written after the restora- 

 tion of Charles the second : — 



" I thank God there are no free schools or printing, and I 

 hope we shall not have them these hundred years ; for learning 

 has brought heresy, and disobedience, and sects into the world, 

 and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best go- 

 vernment. God keep us from both." 



Such are two opposite views of the value of learning which 

 still agitate the world. — Edinburgh Review^ October^ 1850, p. 185. 



These peculiarities of origin and education between the extreme 

 parts of our country, had given character to the inhabitants, 

 shaped their minds, their habits and their pursuits. They have 

 produced results of rare and curious diversity, and marked the 

 great truth that 



" 'Tis education forms the common mind, 

 Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." 



Unjust legislation, with continued taxation and oppression by 

 the parent country, aroused colonial sympathies. This school of 

 adversity led to the Confedekation of the Colonies, sustained the 

 war of Independence, and produced the glorious Union of tliese 

 States. In the Convention for the forming of the Constitution, 

 the bias of early education soon became apparent, and marked 

 the course of its proceedings. One of the first measures received 

 and kindly entertained by that Convention, was a proposition, 

 that no law regulating Commerce^ should be passed by Congress, 

 but by votes of two-thirds of each branch of that body. It was 

 lonof debated, and came ^xe\\ nigh producing an explosion of the 

 Convention. At length Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New^- 

 Hampshire voted against any law to prohibit the slave trade be- 

 fore 1808, as a coMPaoMisE ; provided the southern States would 



