THE following pages contain the provisions of the successive Constitutions of the several States, in reference to Education, Literature and Science, together with a series of propositions embracing the cardinal features of a system of public instruction, which the Constitution might make obligatory on the Legislature to establish. HENRY BARNARD, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, 1868. Commissioner. Massachusetts... 1780 1780 Cambridge University; duty to cherish Connecticut.... 1818 1818 New Hampshire. 1784 1784 literature, arts, science... Yale College; interest of school fund for Duty to promote literature, arts, and Town and county grammar schools 1842 Schools to be promoted; school fund not Vermont. 1777 1793 Rhode Island.... 1842 New Jersey 1776 1844 1776 1790 1776 1831 1822 Common school fund; literature fund; School fund not to be borrowed; income Legislature to establish schools and pro- Legislature to establish schools and pro- Capitation tax on white males. Legislature to provide education for the Principal of school fund inviolate; com- 100 1802 1802 1812 1845 Superintendent; schools equally open 104 1817 1817 Schools to be encouraged; university.. 107 108 110 110 112 113 CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION RESPECTING EDUCATION. The past and present constitutional provisions of the several States of the Union relative to education exhibit the growth of the national sentiment in favor of, and the present strong attachment to, the public school system. In the early reconstruction of political organizations, rendered imperative by a separation from Great Britain, only a few States recognized in their rganic law the necessity of providing for the diffusion of intelligence among the people, and this recognition is expressed in general terms. But within the last half century the constitutions of the States, admitted from time to time in the Union, have become more and more emphatic in the declaration, that it is the wisest economy and the highest duty to provide for an efficient and uniform system of public schools. The New England States having incorporated a public school system with their earliest organizations, in emerging from their colonial condition, had no occasion to provide specially for it in their first State constitutions. In 1636, six years after the first settlement of Boston, the General Court of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, which met in Boston on the 8th of September, passed an act appropriating 400 toward the establishment of a college. The sum thus appropriated was more than the whole tax levied on the colony at that time in a single year, and the population scattered through ten or twelve villages did not exceed five thousand persons; but among them were eminent graduates of the University of Cambridge, in England, and all were here for purposes of permanent settlement. In 1638 John Harvard left by will the sum of £779 in money, and a library of over three hundred books. In 1640, the General Court granted to the college the income of the Charlestown ferry; and in 1642, the Governor, with the magistrates and teachers and |