18 INTRODUCTION. 
native authors, on subjects in the various departments of science and literature, 
and especially designed for these libraries. Mr. Wadsworth, already honorably 
mentioned, continues to favor the enterprise by an annual contribution to the 
writers of such works as are approved by the superintendent of common schools. 
By a law of 1841, each academy receives from the treasury a sum of about two 
hundred and fifty dollars; which, together with an equal amount contributed by 
the founders and patrons of the institutions, is applied to the purchase of text 
books, globes, maps and philosophical apparatus. 
During the Dutch government, no press was established ; and so late as 1686, 
Governor Dongan was instructed to allow no such establishment in the colony.* 
The great English revolution of 1688, and the accession of William and Mary, 
were hailed with enthusiasm in the colonies, and awakened in New-England and 
New-York an earnest desire to repossess the rights and franchises which had 
been wrested by the Stuarts, or tamely yielded to their rapacity. The popular 
mind did not then suspect that the despotism of absolute monarchy had only given 
place to the omnipotence of parliament. Although a press had been established 
for scientific and literary purposes at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, about the 
middle of the seventeenth century, printing was not commenced in Boston, Phi- 
ladelphia or New-York, until near the close of that century ; nor was any news- 
paper printed in the American colonies before the year 1700. Dr. Cadwallader 
Colden, often mentioned in this memoir, in a letter written in 1743 to Dr. Frank- 
lin, minutely explained an improvement he had conceived in the art of printing, 
which was identical with the stereotype process introduced into France nearly 
sixty years afterwards by Mr. Herhan, under letters patent from Napoleon. Dr. 
Colden’s letter was published in Hosack and Francis’ American Medical and 
Philosophical Register, in 1810. But it is only just to say, that subsequent re- 
searches have resulted in showing that a bible was printed by Gillett, with ste- 
* CuinTon’s Introductory Discourse. 
