1002 
was needed by the well-to-do student, and 
local colleges were given little attention and 
secant support. The founders of our college 
system were obliged to meet adverse condi- 
tions which developed the same qualities 
that led their compatriots to the conquest 
of the continent. 
Early in the seventeenth century (1619) 
the Virginia Company granted ten thousand 
acres of land ‘ for the foundation of a semi- 
nary of learning for the English in Vir- 
ginia.’ At the suggestion of the King, the 
bishops of England, in the same year, raised 
fifteen hundred pounds to aid in the educa- 
tion of the Indians in connection with the 
proposed grant of land for the seminary. 
A portion of the land was occupied and the 
seminary was started under the direction of 
George Thorpe, a man of high standing in 
England. But the institution was short- 
lived. It, with its inmates and founder, 
perished in the Indian massacre of 1622. 
In 1624 an island in the Susquehanna 
river was granted for the founding and 
maintenance of a university, but the un- 
dertaking lapsed with the death of its pro- 
jector and of James I. and the fall of the 
Virginia Company. 
For a time the movement for higher edu- 
cation was delayed, but in 1686 Harvard 
was founded ; then William and Mary, in 
1660; Yale, in 1701; the College of New 
Jersey, in 1746; the University of Penn- 
sylvania, in 1751; Columbia, in 1754; 
Brown, in 1764; Dartmouth, in 1769; the 
University of Maryland, in 1784; the Uni- 
versity of North Carolina, in 1789-’95; the 
University of Vermont, in 1791, and Bow- 
doin, in 1794. 
The university spirit was well developed 
when the Constitutional Convention met in 
1787. Madison, who was a member of the 
convention, acting in harmony with the 
known wishes of Washington, proposed to 
give the National Legislature power— 
To establish a university. 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Vou. XIII. No. 339. 
To encourage, by premiums and provisions, the ad- 
vancement of useful knowledge and the discussion of 
science. 
Charles Pinckney also earnestly advo- 
cated a plan for the establishment of a 
national university, and Mr. Wilson sup- 
ported the motion; but the matter was 
dropped, on the ground that Congress al- 
ready had sufficient power to enact laws for 
the support of national education. 
John Adams, who agreed with Washing- 
ton in believing that ‘scientific institutions 
are the best lasting protection of a popular 
government,’ was always a strong advocate 
of the promotion of intelligence among the 
people. He secured the insertion in the 
constitution of Massachusetts of a provision 
recognizing the obligation of a State to pur- 
sue a higher and broader policy than the 
mere protection of the temporal interests 
and political rights of the individual. This 
provision read as follows : 
It shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates 
in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish 
the interests of literature and the sciences * * * to 
encourage private societies, and public institutions, 
rewards and immunities for the promotion of agricul- 
ture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, 
and a natural history of the country.* 
Washington sought to impress on Con- 
gress and the people his earnest conviction 
that the Government should establish and 
support a great national university. To 
this end he made a bequest in his will, 
and if Congress had treated it as the Legis- 
lature of Virginia treated his bequest for 
the endowment of Washington College, 
there would be to-day a fund sufficient to 
give adequate support to a great institu- 
tion for investigation and original research 
in the capital city. In his will Washington 
expressed the fears he entertained as to the 
effect of foreign education on the youth of 
America, and the desirability of having an 
American university. His language was as 
follows: 
* Massachusetts Public Statutes, 1882, p. 34. 
