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mends itself to all tyrants, because it delights to retain and ex- 

 ercise an arbitrary power and control over the minds and bo- 

 dies of men, long after they are, or might be, fitted to govern 

 themselves, or should be managed only by the exhibition of 

 moral motives and moral restraints. We have even, in some 

 instances, carried the act of imitation so far, as to create the 

 most odious distinctions of rank and degrees, where none 



dents to the condition of servants, to fetch and to carry, and 

 to perform the most menial offices for their fellow students of 

 another class.* Nor have we been content with imitations in 

 matters of pohce and discipHne only. The same servile spirit 

 is manifest enough, not merely in the adoption of the same 

 methods and subjects of study, for this was originally excusa- 

 ble enough, but in the astonishing pertinacity with which we 

 adhere to them. At a time when the world possessed no 

 learning but what was contained in Latin and Greek, it was 

 well enough to make a knowledge of these languages the test 

 of learning. But, at this day, it does not seem to be quite so 

 clear a proposition, that the lay members of a college must 

 study these tongues, because it is proper that such as are de- 

 stined for holy orders should do so. To hear an individual 

 read or quote a scrap of Greek or Latin at this day, is not half 

 as good evidence that he is a man of learning, as the ability 

 to read the first verse of the fifty-first psalm was, in the time of 

 Edward the First, that the reader was actually a clerk in or- 

 ders, and therefore a learned man. 



I have referred to the false position and the errors of our col- 

 legiate system, in order that what I have to say of these in- 

 stitutions, in connection with the subject of endowment and 

 support, may be correctly understood. We nuist learn to form 

 a just estimate of our colleges, of the true position they occu- 

 py in the general system of education, and what may be rea- 

 sonably expected to be accomplished by them, before we can 

 be prepared to offer an opinion how many of them should 



* These odious regulations existed for a very long period in Yale college, and, 



