Such is the difference between England and America as to the distribution of land. Speaking of this subject, Daniel Webster summed up the case in his great speech at Plymouth, when he said of the New England settlers that "the character of their political institutions was determined by the fundamental laws respecting property."

These laws, he said, provided for the equal division of the estate of an intestate among his children, while the establishment of public registration and the simplicity of our forms of conveyance have facilitated the change of real estate among the living.

Next comes the subject of popular education. This is, perhaps, more important than any question of the distribution of property. "Give light, and the darkness. will dispel itself." Give education, and everything else will right itself in time. Still, some of the nations of the Old World may discover to their cost that unless other reforms go with the education of the masses, the righting process will seem like the first breaking of light over chaos.

The history of popular education in America is a familiar story. All the early settlers of New England paid great attention to instructing their children; first at home, or in the ministers' houses, and then in public schools. In 1647, the Massachusetts Colony passed a law providing that every township of fifty householders should appoint a schoolmaster to teach the children to read and write; and that his wages should be paid by the parents, or the public at large, according to the decision of the majority of the inhabitants. By 1665, every town in Massachusetts had a common school, and, if it contained over one hundred inhabitants, a grammar school. The other New England colonies followed in the wake of Massachusetts. In Connecticut every

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town that did not keep a school for three months in the year was liable to a fine. Meantime the Dutch had established free schools in New York. This was the beginning of the educational system of the United States.

When the Puritan spirit began to decline there was a falling-off in the schools and an increase of illiteracy; but the love of learning never died out, and the free schools never were abandoned. At the close of the Revolution there was donated to the Union the vast domain north of the Ohio and west of the Alleghany Mountains, New York leading off in this generous cession.* In 1785, Congress passed an act reserving for educational purposes the sixteenth section of each township in this public territory. The policy then established has been followed in regard to all subsequent acquisitions, and in 1858 an additional section was granted by the government.+ Up to the present time these grants aggregate over seventyeight million acres, a territory larger than the whole of Great Britain and Ireland combined. In 1880, the United States spent eighty-two and a half million dollars on her common public schools, which were estimated to number one hundred and seventy-seven thousand, and in 1889 the expenditure had risen to over a hundred and thirty millions, while the schools had increased to two hundred and sixteen thousand. The census of 1880 showed that in the Northern States only five per cent. of the native population were unable to read and write.

Now, does any one imagine that America is indebted to England for its free-school system or general scheme

* Magazine of American History, March, 1888, p. 200.

Each township contains thirty-six sections, one mile square. The allotment for educational purposes is therefore, since 1858, one eighteenth of the national domain. Census Bulletin No. 53, 1891.

for the education of the masses? Let us see. While New York was settled by Hollanders, and New England, as we shall see hereafter, largely by Puritans from England tinctured with Dutch ideas, Virginia had a different class of colonists. It is absurd to speak of them as of a better blood than the settlers in the North, for the latter came of the best old Anglo-Saxon stock, and they were made up of the most intelligent as well as the most sturdy and virtuous of their race. But Virginia was settled from a different class of the community. Her colonists, when not convicts or indented servants, were mostly average Englishmen of the Established Church, and, like the average Englishmen, opposed to all innovations in Church or State. So it came about that, in 1671, Sir William Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, could write to England: "I thank God there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years. For learning has brought heresy, and disobedience, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!" There spoke simply the typical English Tory, and the type was to remain unchanged in England for two hundred years to come.

Now turn to the mother country itself, and look at her record. During the reign of Edward VI., some grammar schools-we should now, perhaps, call them Latin or high schools-eighteen for the whole kingdom, were established by the reformers of his government. At various times a few more were added by private individuals. One of these rare schools, founded at Stratford-on-Avon by a native of that town who had gone up to London and become Lord Mayor, bore the name of William Shakespeare on its rolls. But for the good fortune of his townsman he might have died mute and

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inglorious. These were purely charitable institutions where learning, such as it was, was doled out as an alms. The government did nothing further in the cause of education for nearly three centuries, until the year 1832, when Parliament made for this object the munificent appropriation of twenty thousand pounds. This was the first recognition in England of the principle that the State owes any duty to its children. In 1839, the annual grant was raised to thirty thousand, and then was increased from time to time until 1869, when it amounted to half a million pounds, about one fifth as much as the sum spent annually by the State of New York alone. This money was used not to found or support free schools, but to aid those of a voluntary character. At these state-aided schools about one million three hundred thousand children were instructed, two millions more were receiving no education at all, and another million were being taught at private adventure schools, where the education was of the most defective character.*

The English governing classes seem until a very recent date to have felt the same reluctance to educating the working people that they still feel to giving them land. Keep a man landless, and you make him dependent; keep him in ignorance, and you make him subservi ent. It was urged in England, and the argument has been heard in America, that if all classes are educated the rich cannot secure good servants, and that hired laborers will be discontented with their lot. This is all very well for the masters, but how about the servants? America does not believe that the English lackey, much as he contributes to one's comfort, is the type of man

*"Fifteen Years of National Education in England," Westminster Review, Oct., 1886.

hood that civilization is intended to develop, and it has found from practical experience that a farm-laborer works no worse because he looks forward to being a proprietor himself.

In 1870, England, for the first time, entered upon a system of national education by establishing common schools for the masses. Since that time great progress has been made, although the education is yet defective, is of only an elementary character, and not wholly free.*

In view of the state of education in England at that time, we can appreciate the surprise felt by Charles Dickens when, in 1842, he visited the manufacturing town of Lowell, in Massachusetts. Upon his return

* In 1886, Matthew Arnold made a report to the Educational Department of England on the elementary schools of the Continent, which he had examined in an official capacity. Strangely enough, he discovered, what every foreigner knew before, that the English system was much behind that of other countries. He found the school-children of France, Germany, and Switzerland looking "human." Those who have seen the look on the faces of the English peasantry will appreciate his meaning. But what can be expected when we consider how recent has been the effort to raise them up? Matthew Arnold, Nineteenth Century, Oct., 1886. Still, backward as it is, the system is intended only for the very poor and very young. For the middle classes no provision is made at all. On this subject Mr. Arnold wrote, in 1885: "I have often said that we seem to me to need at present in England three things in especial-more equality, education for the middle classes, and a thorough municipal system: a system of local assemblies is but the natural complement of a thorough municipal system."-Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1885, p. 231. In 1891 the English budget showed a surplus, caused by the increased consumption of intoxicating liquors in the kingdom. Of this surplus, £2,000,000 were, after a long parliamentary debate, devoted to the cause of elementary education, in addition to the appropriations made before. This will make education for the very poor substantially free.