AND The University of Pennsylvania 177 



decisions of the Day of Judgment. He saw that of all 

 sorts of tyranny, the most insupportable was ignorance; 

 that of all injustice, the greatest was that of neglect of 

 youth; that of all follies, the rankest was that of indif- 

 ference to the future. He looked beyond and beneath 

 the varied phenomena of the present and he saw the 

 transformation of the open country into a town ; the 

 conversion of farms into town lots, the rise of wharves 

 and yards and factories; the erection of workmen's 

 houses; the coming of the usual accessories to supply 

 the calls of the population, merchants, traders, me- 

 chanics, butchers, bakers, grocers, and he saw towns con- 

 verted into counties, and counties into states, and states 

 into a nation, and a nation into a unit in the great con- 

 federacy of the world. Were citizens to be an aggre- 

 gation of untrained animals, or highly trained and 

 educated men? Hence he was led to his Proposals 

 Relating to the Education of Youth. 



Out of these proposals, conceived in the spirit of 

 Defoe's Essay upon Projects, which he had read when 

 a boy of twelve, and modestly stated as the act of "some 

 publick spirited gentlemen," avoiding as much as he 

 could, according to his usual rule, the presenting him- 

 self to the "publick" as the author of any scheme for 

 their benefit, came the academy which was incorporated 

 by Thomas and Richard Penn, proprietors and gover- 

 nors of the province, on the thirteenth of July, 1753, 

 13 



