Edward Duffield Neill
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 94
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt: ... which, a hundred years before, had enacted, in solemn assembly, that there should be a school in every parish, for the instruction of youth in Grammar, the Latin language, and the principles of religion; and at a later period, that the school should be so far supported by the public funds as to render education accessible to even the poorest in the community. Macaulay, in his History of England, referring to the school law of Scotland, says the effect of its passage was immediately felt: "Before one generation passed away it began to be evident that the common people of Scotland were superior in intelligence to the common people of any other country in Europe. To whatever land the Scotchman might wander, to whatever calling he might betake himself, in America or India, in trade or in war, by the advantage which he derived from his early training, he was raised above his competitors." A graduate of the University of Edinburgh in 16 73, and gifted with the "perfervidam vim Scotorum," he began WILLIAMSBURGH COLLEGE. 175 to agitate anew the scheme of a college, which had been so dear to Copland. The project met with opposition from the masses, who were too ignorant to appreciate its advantages, and from Sir Edmund Andros; but Blair did not shrink from a good fight, and at last obtained a charter for the College of William and Mary, at Williamsburgh. The preamble to the Statutes of the College gives the following sad account of the illiterate condition of Virginia at the commencement of the eighteenth century--"Nowhere was there any greater danger on account of ignorance and want of instruction than in the English colonies of America, in which the first planters had much to do in a country overrun with weeds and...