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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 572. 



American college, which is historically 

 Protestant in origin and development, and 

 distinctly secular, though not irreligious.) 



The first likeness I wish to point out is 

 the likeness in the constitutions of the 

 bodies which own and govern the American 

 institutions of higher education. At first 

 sight these bodies seem unlike, and there 

 are certainly many diversities among them ; 

 but there is a strong tendency toward the 

 same constitution — a tendency which is due 

 to like desires or objects, and to like ex- 

 periences in the actual working of the 

 bodies originally set up. When the gen- 

 eral court of Massachusetts Bay created in 

 1642, by a natural inventive process, the 

 first governing board for Harvard College, 

 the act prescribed that it should be com- 

 posed of the governor and deputy gov- 

 ernor, the magistrates of the jurisdiction, 

 and the teaching elders of six adjoining 

 towns, with the president of the college. 

 That is, the general court entrusted the 

 infant college to a large group of the lead- 

 ing persons in the little colony. This same 

 sort of thing has since been done all over 

 the country. By skipping 225 years and 

 1,000 miles westward, I can take an illus- 

 tration of this truth from the University 

 of Illinois, which was established in 1867. 

 This university was placed under the 

 control of a board of trustees, consist- 

 ing of the governor, the superintendent 

 of public instruction, the president of 

 the state board of agriculture and twenty- 

 eight citizens appointed by the governor. 

 The twenty-eight citizens appointed by 

 the governor have since been changed 

 to nine elective members; but the idea 

 of the original structure was much the 

 same as that underlying the first Harvard 

 governing board, except that the churches 

 had no representation as such. Going on 

 to the Pacific, we find the University of 



California governed by a board of regents, 

 seven of whom — including the president of 

 the university — are ex officio regents and 

 sixteen are long-term appointed regents, 

 representing the various professions and 

 business occupations, and to some extent 

 the most important California communi- 

 ties. When Cornell University was in- 

 corporated in 1865 a very similar collection 

 of men was set up as trustees, eight of 

 them — including the president and libra- 

 rian of the university — being ex officio 

 members of the board, and the other thirty 

 being leading representatives of the various 

 professions and business occupations mostly 

 within the state of New York. The orig- 

 inal governing board of Yale University 

 was composed exclusively of Congrega- 

 tional ministers, and remained in that con- 

 dition for ninety-one years; but in 1772 

 there were added to this original board 

 the governor, lieutenant-governor and six 

 senior assistants in the council of Con- 

 necticut. These six senior assistants were 

 subsequently changed to six senior senators. 

 Thus, more than one hundred years ago the 

 governing board of Yale University was 

 brought into close resemblance to the orig- 

 inal Harvard board. These few illustra- 

 tions really cover all the essential varieties 

 in the single boards of trustees. 



Within eight years of the act that estab- 

 lished the overseers of Harvard College the 

 general court of Massachusetts established 

 a smaller board under the title of the presi- 

 dent and fellows of Harvard College, with- 

 out repealing the act that had established 

 the overseers of Harvard College. The 

 new board consisted of but seven men, in- 

 cluding the president and the treasurer of 

 the university ; and to this small board the 

 general power of initiation and all money 

 powers were committed, the overseers be- 

 coming a reviewing and examining body 

 whose consent was required to important 

 measures, but which had little power to 



