hands of the State, and so continues. In 1876 eight thousand dollars were appropriated' for expenses and debts, and in the following year, for outstanding indebtedness, instruction, and building purposes, $15,218. Not succeeding in shifting the responsibility of the college upon others, the Legislature renewed its efforts for the successful management of the institution.

Again, in 1880 three thousand dollars were voted for the payment of liabilities, and in 1881 the sum of three thousand five hundred dollars was voted for contingent expenses and instruction.

The last appropriation3 that we have to record was made in 1885, for that year and the following, of the amount of $12,400.

Other minor appropriations were made for different objects, among which was the payment of the traveling expenses of the visiting committee, appointed by the Legislature.

The total amount appropriated by the Legislature to the end of the fiscal year of 1888 is $247,218. The value of the property, including land, libraries, buildings, stock, etc., is $165,000; the permanent fund is $131,300, which yields an annual income of $7,438.

BOWDOIN COLLEGE.

An act of the Legislature of the province of Maine, approved in 1794, incorporated the above-named institution. The management of the college was placed under a board of trustees, with full powers of control. Subsequently the number was changed and their powers more closely defined. That the institution might not want for proper support, it was further enacted, "That the clear rents, issues, and profits of all the estate, real and personal, of which the said corporation shall be seized or possessed, shall be appropriated to the endowment of the said college, in such manner as will most effectually promote virtue, piety, and the knowledge of such of the languages and the useful and liberal arts and sciences as shall hereafter be directed from time to time by said corporation."4 Five townships of land, each six miles square, were granted to the college for its endowment and vested in the trustees, provided that fifteen families be settled in each of the said townships within a period of twelve years, and provided further that three lots containing three hundred and twenty acres each be reserved, one for the first settled minister, one for the use of the ministry, and one for the support of schools within the township where it is located. These townships. were to be laid out and assigned from any of the unappropriated lands belonging to the commonwealth of the district of Maine.

The first money endowment was instituted by a general law of Mas

1

sachusetts, approved February 24, 1814, which reads as follows: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court now assembled, That the tax which the president, directors and cómpany of the Massachusetts Bank are and shall be liable to pay to the commonwealth, shall be and hereby is granted to and appropriated as follows, viz ten-sixteenths parts thereof to the president and fellows of Harvard College; three-sixteenths parts thereof to the president and trustees of Williams College; and three-sixteenths thereof to the presi dent and trustees of Bowdoin College." The author has no means of knowing the amount of money received from this grant, except that Harvard received ten thousand and Williams three thousand, and at the same rate Bowdoin would have received three thousand per annum, or the sum of thirty thousand dollars. One other thing that would lead us to suppose that this is the amount received, is that in 1820 a law was enacted 2 granting to Bowdoin College, or the presi dent, trustees, and overseers, the sum of three thousand dollars per annum for seven years, beginning with the fourteenth day of Febru ary, 1824, the sum to be paid out of moneys arising from the tax on certain banks not otherwise appropriated. This was a continuance of the general act of Massachusetts, and was to be null and void at such time when the said tax yielded less than four thousand dollars per annum. In each of the above acts one-fourth of the grants was to be devoted to defraying the expenses of indigent students in attendence at the college.

The exact amount realized from the sale of land grants can not be ascertained. "The townships chosen are now known as Dixmont, Sebec, Guilford, Foxcroft, and Abbot. Foxcroft was sold in 1800 for seven thousand nine hundred and forty dollars; Sebec apparently brought upwards of eleven thousand dollars in 1803, and Dixmont is said to have been sold for twenty thousand dollars." 3

In 1820 the medical department of Bowdoin was created by an act of the Legislature, and the school placed under the direction of the president, trustees, and overseers of Bowdoin College. In order to carry out the organization of the new school, to purchase books, plates, and apparatus, the Legislature granted the sum of one thousand five hundred dollars.1

SUMMARY.

The total grants by the Legislature to the colleges of Maine are as follows: Bowdoin, five townships of land.

3 Letter from Professor Little, of Bowdoin, December 27, 1888.

4 Laws of Maine, II, 856.

$52,500

14,000

247, 218

313,718

VERMONT.

THE FIRST SCHOOLS.

The first schools of Vermont existed before any legislative enactment was made by the State for the control of education. The systems which had existed in other parts of New England obtained here, and the town schools, similar to those in New Hampshire, were especially in vogue before and after the separation of Vermont from that province. Schools were supported and controlled by the communities in which they were situated, although the central legislative authority sanctioned by law as early as 1782 these local institutions. Even in the Constitution of 1793 the responsibility is thrown upon the local authorities, as it declares that "a competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town for the convenient instruction of youth and one or more grammar schools to be incorporated and properly sup ported in each county."

1

In 1794 the towns were authorized to support schools by a local tax, and at the same time a general law2 was passed to aid such schools by a landed endowment. The law provided that the lands heretofore granted by the British Government to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts should be granted for the purposes of education to the respective towns wherein they lay, to be leased for the support of schools, the leases to extend "as long as water runs or wood grows." Likewise certain glebe lands were in the same year confirmed for the support of religious worship; subsequently the law was repealed, in 1805, and the lands were appropriated to schools. It was not until 1797 that the Legislature assumed any direct control of the town schools, which it did by enacting that each town should support a school or schools, and that any town failing to comply with the law should forfeit its right to its proportion of the general tax. But the chief action of the State in educational affairs was directed toward the maintenance of a State university.

THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT.

The State took a decided course in regard to the supervision and support of higher education. At the time of the organization of the State government, in 1798,5 the University of Vermont was endowed with lands which proved subsequently to amount to twenty-nine thousand acres. In 1791 the university was organized; the preamble of the act of incorporation shows forth the spirit and intent of the found

1 Chap. II, sec. 41; A Revision of the Frame of Government of 1786.

2 Laws of Vermont (1808), I, 227.

3 Ibid., 234.

Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1876, 391.

Address by Hon. Justin Morrill, 8.

ing as follows: "Whereas the education of youth is necessary for the advancement of morality, virtue, and happiness, and tends to render a people or State respectable; to promote which establishments for seminaries and colleges have been patronized by all good governments; and whereas several grants of land have already been made by this State, and private and liberal donations have been offered for promoting so. useful an establishment within the same, which demand the attention of the Legislature for laying the foundation for an institution so beneficial to society: Therefore, SEC. I., It is hereby enacted, That there be and hereby is a college instituted at such a place in the township of Burlington * as the corporation herein names," etc. It was incorporated further that "the estate of said university, both real and personal, to the extent of one hundred thousand pounds sterling ($333,3331), shall be exempt from taxation," and that all persons, officers, and students belonging to the university shall be exempt from taxes and military duty.

* *

This law was modified, in respect to property, in 1802, so that the estates of the president and professors lying within the town of Burling. ton should be exempted from taxation to the amount of one thousand dollars each.3

It was further provided in the charter that the university could hold land to the extent of seventy thousand acres.

The early years of the university, planted as it was in the wilderness, were full of struggles and misfortunes. The State was generous in the extreme at the beginning, but failed to support the university it had created. The land was poor and brought little income, the whole tract bringing but twenty-five hundred dollars at that time.*

In 1813 the buildings of the university were seized by the Government and used for the storage of United States arms, by which much damage was suffered, and the houseless students all left, most of them to shoulder muskets against the British invaders. The buildings were rented in 1814 for the United States Army. Worse misfortunes occurred in 1824, the buildings being consumed by fire, but were restored by the citizens of Burlington in the following year. For the first ninety-five years of the corporate existence of the university the State never gave anything toward the support of it more than has been set forth in the above statements.

The trustees in their report of 1886, realizing this, after speaking of the resources of the university, state: "Of the above the only item which includes any gift or grant from the State to the university is value of lands.' The reservation of lots for the benefit of the university in the later grants to townships resulted in securing to the university about twenty-nine thousand acres of land scattered throughout

1 Laws of Vermont, Slade, 581. 2 Ibid., 583.

3 Ibid., 586.

4 Letter from President M. H. Bartlett, Decem

ber 20, 1888.

5 Biennial Report, 1886, 5-6.

the State, mostly wild mountain land of little value. From the 'public lands' included in the above item an annual rental of about twentyseven hundred dollars is received, making the gift to the university from the State to be of the value of about forty-five thousand dollars. As most of these lands were at an early day leased in perpetuity, their rental value can never be greatly increased. A portion of the original grants still remain unleased, the land being either worthless or inaccessible. When it is remembered that the Legislature of Vermont granted to Dartmouth College, before the chartering of the University of Vermont, the entire township of Wheelock, consisting of twenty-three thousand acres, from which, or from the capital arising therefrom, that institution still derives a revenue, and that the above grant of wild lands and the remission in 1852 of a small debt due the State for borrowed money, constitute the sum total of the gifts, grants, donations, and largesses of the State of Vermont to the University of Vermont, during the entire history of both, it will be seen how deficient the State has been in that care and interest and support by which institutions of learning are built up, and which the university had every right to expect from the State which called it into existence."

THE CONGRESSIONAL GRANT.

Vermont sold one hundred and fifty thousand acres of land scrip granted by the Federal Government, which yielded the sum of $122,626, which at present gives an income of $8,130. An attempt was made in 1863 to form a new institution by consolidating Norwich University, Middlebury College, the University of Vermont, and an agricultural college not then created. It is needless to say that such a scheme failed. In the following year the State chartered the Agricultural College of Vermont, thinking that a separate institution would be in demand by some wealthy town. "Accordingly the college went up and down the State offering itself to the highest bidder." In 1865 the Legislature, finding that the former plans failed, proposed a union with the University of Vermont.

It asked that the University curriculum be enlarged so as to include departments of agriculture and the mechanic arts, and that one-half of the trustees be appointed by the Legislature. The proposition was acceded to, and in 1865 the law forming the University of Vermont and the State Agricultural College was enacted. Each corporation was to elect nine trustees, who with their successors were to constitute thereafter the board of trustees, with the addition of the ex-officio members, the Governor of the State and the president of the college. In speaking of this new partnership of the university and the college, Judge Powers says: "The firm assets were made up by the contributions on the part of the university of all its lands, buildings, libraries, and appliances, worth

1 Biennial Report of University of Vermont, 1886, 5-6.