and the government have repeatedly been given, either to pay off the debts of these colleges, or to provide for particular necessities or to go into a general fund. The effect of all these donations and we may add their avowed object was to cheapen tuition for the public good, that more persons might be enabled to receive a liberal education. It is true, that the method of realizing this object by raising funds to be specially appropriated to the use of the indigent and meritorious, was a thought of more recent times, but the effect of these funds, is so far from cheapening tuition in general, that it rather sustains the ordinary price to those who can afford to pay it. But we are told that these funds were raised, because the means of the colleges were diminishing. The means of colleges are always diminishing, i. e., its capital stock being derived from the benefactions of the public, must be now and then replenished, as new buildings, new books and new apparatus are required, and as the advance of science demands a new outlay. But that this expedient was devised because the number of students was falling off, and the treasuries of the colleges were becoming empty, seems to us to be idle affirmation. This class of funds were primarily the fruit of religious zeal. They were first raised to defray the expenses of students for the ministry. Afterwards they were enlarged to meet the wants of all those that are meritorious and indigent, that the public good might be promoted thereby.

But the authors of this report would have us believe, that it was because inducements to enter the learned professions were becoming far less, and those to enter the active professions far greater. Nay they would persuade the public, that it was to reduce the price of tuition, in order to draw students to a particular college, when there were not students enough for all, that these funds were primarily contributed. We can not think that facts will warrant a single one of these representations, and we are at loss to understand, how they should have been made or endorsed by the signers of this report.

But the report proceeds. The colleges finding their customers leaving the shops, might have provided themselves with wares to attract a large number, or they might have altered the system of education to suit the demands of the community, but this they did not choose to do, but rather forced the community by appeals to their generosity, to pay the expense of the commodity which they did not need.' Whatever competition or feeling of rivalry may have existed among the colleges of New England we believe to be owing to the fact that more of these colleges were founded than were really required. Local attachments, religious or denominational preferences, have occasioned this multiplication of their number, with its disastrous and depressing influences upon the cause of sound learning. These local aud

religious preferences united to a strong desire to do the public a service are sufficient to account altogether for the readiness with which these funds were raised, without the fancy of a supposed alarm, at the diminution of the number of those who desired an education.*

"But in this" fancied "dilemma, two courses were again open before the colleges. The first was to adapt the article produced, to the wants of the community. Inasmuch as a less number desired to enter the learned professions, and those who were entering them, did not, in many cases, prefer this mode of preparation, the sources from which students were supplied to the colleges seemed to be drying up. But here were large and intelligent classes of citizens who needed education, though not such education as the colleges afforded. These institutions might then have been at once modified, and their advantages extended, not to one class, merely, but to every class which needed a scientific and liberal education. In this manner, they might probably have been enabled to support themselves. The other course was to appeal to the charity of the public, and thus provide funds by which the present system might be sustained. The second course was adopted." But was not the first course also attempted? No one who is familiar with the experiments which were made in this direction a few years since in two or three of the leading colleges of New England, will hesitate for an answer. But what was actually done, and with the actual result, has been so well described by Pres. Wayland himself in a previous work that we can not do better than to quote his own language.

"It has been said that the course of study in our colleges was formed in a remote age, and that it is adapted only to a state of society very different from our own. Specially has it been urged that the study of the classics is at best but useless, that it has no relation to our present duties and every day engagements, and that the time devoted to it had much better be employed upon the study of the Modern Languages. Besides, it has been said that our collegiate course should extend its benefits to merchants, manufacturers, and

We can not refrain in passing, from remarking upon the following statements. "It is a remarkable fact, especially among such a people as that of New England, that colleges are the only corporations intrusted with funds, either by public or private liberality, which are not required to make an annual exhibit of their property and the mode in which it is appropriated. The receipts and disbursements, even of a mite society, are always made public, but of the colleges in New England, there is but one, [i. e., Harvard,] which publishes its Treasurer's annual report." The authors of the report were not aware that the Treasurer's report of the funds in Yale College is required to be made public every year to the Legislature of Connecticut, who can print it or not as they choose and that it is also printed for the use of the Corporation and can be had by applying to the Treasurer. This mistake may be trivial but it seems to us that the most scrupulous accuracy is desirable in collecting data for inferences as important as those of this document, and especially in using them to the real if not the intended disparagement of institutions in which the public generally confide.

every class of citizens. These persons desire the honors of a degree as much as others. They do not however wish to waste their time in the study of the classics, and therefore the studies required of the candidate for a degree should be accommodated so as to meet their reasonable wishes. It was predicted that as soon as this change should be made, our colleges would be crowded with those who were anxious to avail themselves of these advantages and to obtain the honor of a degree.

"In obedience with these suggestions a change was made some years since in the studies of some of our colleges. Both a classical and scientific course were established, the first requiring the study of the Learned and the other substituting in their room the Modern languages. Teachers were engaged, classes were divided, each student had his option, and all who wished were invited to become candidates for a degree upon these modified conditions. But what was the result? No one came to accept of what was thus freely offered. The system dragged for a few years, and then perished from mere inanition. "Very much the same course has been pursued in regard to the higher mathematics. The same objections were made to this branch of a liberal education, and it has been proposed to substitute in their place the study of history or of natural science. To a considerable degree this experiment has been combined with the other, and with very much the same result. The colleges so far as I know, which have obeyed the suggestions of the public, have failed to find themselves sustained by the public. The means which it was supposed would increase the number of students in fact diminished it, and thus things gradually after every variety of trial have generally tended to their original constitution. So much easier is it to discover faults than to amend them; to point out evils than to remove them. And thus have we been taught that the public does not always know what it wants, and that it is not always wise to take it at its word."-Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System in the United States. By Francis Wayland. 1842. pp. 12, 13.

To the justice of these last remarks we fully subscribe, and it will require more argument than is afforded or suggested in this report, to prove that the material and fatal defects that marred these efforts of the colleges to please the community was that this "popular and practical course," as it was called, was extended through four years and was rewarded with the usual academical degree.

But to return to the argument: after stating the dilemma in which the colleges found themselves, and the mistaken course which was adopted to escape from it, the question is then asked what success attended these efforts, in the three following particulars. "Has the present mode of supporting the existing collegiate system, increased the number of educated men in New England? Has the standard of professional ability been raised. within the last thirty years? Have our efforts in this direction increased the number of the ministers of the Gospel?"

In respect to the first question, we remark, that the most important inquiry is not whether the number of educated men has increased, but whether the quality of the education received has been improved, and this though answered in part under the second of the questions proposed, is not wholly determined by a correct answer even to this last. Many of our educated men do not now enter the professions. Of those who do not enter the professions, a considerable portion are our very best trained scholars.

But in order to answer the first question, whether the number of our educated men has increased, the report gives us the statistics of the number of students in the New England colleges, at intervals of four years each, from 1830 to 1850. 'During this period our population has greatly increased, a general interest in education has increased also, and large endowments have been bestowed upon the colleges, and we ought to expect that the number of our students should bear at least as great proportion to the number of inhabitants, in 1850 as in 1830. But in point of fact we find that in 1830, one in 13,650 was pursuing a collegiate education, while in 1849 there was only one in 14,080.'

On this calculation we have only to remark that those persons who judge of such matters by figures alone, might perhaps reflect, that other causes come into consideration, which greatly affect the number of students in our colleges at a given period, as the given commercial prosperity of the community, a great degree of which has a tendency to withdraw students, a less degree to increase them, and a still less degree to diminish them again. During this interval also, a large foreign population has come into New England, each thousand of whom if they can do nothing. else for the argument of the report, or the cause of education, can at least figure in its columns of statistics, and thus argue strenuously against the college system. During the same time, the relative proportion of students who come from out of New England to its colleges may have been increased or it may have been diminished. The prosperity of the Baptist college and Theological seminary at Hamilton might very naturally figure against the result at Brown University and at Newton. Or if the question is to be decided by statistics, the commonest maxims plied to inductions of this sort, should at least be observed. One of these is that a longer interval of time than twenty years should be selected. Another is that notice should be taken of the fact, whether or not, during the period taken there was a steady tendency in the direction of the final result.

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Neither of these rules has been observed in this case. The interval of time is not long enough to be made the basis of any inference of this kind. Nothing is more easily proved, than that for the last century and a half, the number of students in the colleges of New England, has borne no steady proportion to the number of inhabitants. At one time the colleges have been full for several years in succession. At another, the classes are smaller. Let an advocate, who wished to establish any conclusion whatever in regard to the state of education, or of confidence in the colleges, during the last century, take periods of twenty years, of each of which the beginning should show a few larger classes and the termination several classes that are smaller, or the

reverse, and he might make figures prove whatever he should choose.

The second of these rules has been violated very grossly. From 1830 to 1844, three-fourths of the time, there was a steady increase, from an aggregate of 1560 students to one of 2063, an increase of nearly thirty-three per cent., which was more rapid than that of the population, while it is only from the accidental diminution in the remaining five years that these sweeping conclusions have been induced, which are set forth as the failure of a plan to resuscitate the colleges, which plan itself is nothing but a figment of the inquirer's brain.

We pass to the second question, concerning the consequences of this unfortunate condition of colleges and of collegiate education. "Has the standard of professional ability been raised within the last thirty years?" For an answer, the report gives a random guess, then an assertion that is wholly irrelevant if it were true, and winds up with a conclusion in which nothing is concluded. The random guess is expressed as follows. "It is however, we think, a very general opinion that the average of professional talent is declining." The assertion, which if true, has no bearing on the argument, is that the "productive professions" attract young men away from the learned professions, and enable them to rise to the highest stations in society, which "would indicate that the professions certainly had not advanced as rapidly as society around, so that relatively they had retrograded." Whether the professions have relatively retrograded in the public estimation is one question, "whether the standard of professional ability has been raised is quite another." The conclusion in which nothing is concluded is this. "But without pressing the argument further, it will probably be conceded, and this is sufficient for our purpose, that no noticeable effect upon the intellectual character of the professions has been produced by the efforts which we have made to reduce the price of tuition in our colleges." We believe that the standard of professional ability has on the whole been raised within the last twenty years. The period is too short, to authorize us to expect a very noticeable improvement, but we believe in some of the professions it is distinctly visible. It is true the circumstances of society have been such, that quackery and charlatanism have been successful, and sometimes conspicuously so, particularly in the medical and the clerical professions, but we are not aware that the reduced price of tuition in the colleges, or the influences which have emanated from the colleges have had anything to do with this result. Rather do we believe, that it is because the colleges and the training imparted at the colleges have had so little influence in guiding and correcting the popular judgment and taste, that this charlatanism has been so successful.