position of some importance? Is the evolution still in process?
Illustrate.
7. What were the motives behind the organization of the religious charity-
schools?
8. Show how tax-supported workhouse schools represented, for England, the
first step in public-school maintenance.
9. Show that teaching under the individual method of instruction was
school keeping, rather than school teaching.
10. How do you explain the general prevalence of harsh discipline well
into the nineteenth century?
11. Did any other country have, in the eighteenth century, so mixed a type
of elementary education as did England? Why was it so badly mixed there?
12. Show how the English Act of Conformity, of 1662, stifled the English
Latin grammar schools.
13. What reasons were there for the development of the more practical
Academy in America, rather than in England?
14. Compare the American Academy with the German _Realschule_.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections,
illustrative of the contents of this chapter, are reproduced:
226. Mulcaster: Table of Contents of his _Positions_.
227. Locke: On the Teaching of Latin.
228. Locke: On the Bible as a Reading Book.
229. Coote-Dilworth: Two early "Spelling Books."
230. Webster: Description of Pre-Revolutionary Schools.
231. Raumer: Teachers in Gotha in 1741.
232. Raumer: An 18th Century Swedish People's School.
233. Raumer: Schools of Frankfurt-am-Main during the Eighteenth Century.
234. Krüsi: A Swiss Teacher's Examination in 1793.
235. Crabbe; White; Shenstone: The English Dame School described.
236. Newburgh: A Parochial-School Teacher's Agreement.
237. Saint Anne: Beginnings of an English Charity School.
238. Regulations: Charity-School Organization and Instruction.
(a) Qualifications for the Master.
(b) Purpose and Instruction.
239. Allen and McClure: Textbooks used in English Charity-Schools.
240. England: A Charity-School Subscription Form.
241. Southwark: The Charity-School of Saint John's Parish.
242. Gorsham: An Eighteenth-Century Indenture of Apprenticeship.
243. Indenture: Learning the Trade of a Schoolmaster.
244. Diesterweg: The Schools of Germany before Pestalozzi.
245. England: Free School Rules, 1734.
246. Murray: A New Jersey School Lottery.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. State the main points in Mulcaster's scheme (226) for education.
2. Characterize Locke's criticism (227) on the teaching of Latin.
3. State Locke's ideas as to the use of the Bible (228).
4. Characterize the nature and contents of the so-called "Spellers" by
Coote and Dilworth (229).
5. Compare the Connecticut common school, as described by Webster (230),
with an English charity-school (238 b), or a Swedish popular school (232)
of the time.
6. Just what state of vernacular education in Teutonic lands is indicated
by the three selections (231, 232, 233)?
7. Compare the proprietary right of the teachers at Frankfort (233) with
the right of control claimed over song schools by the Precentor of a
mediaeval cathedral (83).
8. Do such conditions as Krüsi describes (234) exist anywhere to day?
9. Characterize the Dame School of England, as to instruction and control,
from the descriptions given in the selections (235) reproduced.
10. State the relationship of teacher and minister at Newburgh (236), and
indicate the nature and probable extent of his income.
11. State the purpose of the founders of Saint Anne of Soho (237), and
characterize the type of school they created.
12. What does the qualification for a charity-school teacher (238 a)
indicate as to the nature of the teacher's calling in such schools?
Outline the instruction (238 b) in such a school.
13. What instruction did the textbooks as printed (239) provide for?
14. Show the voluntary and benevolent character of the charity-school by
comparing the subscription form (240) with some voluntary subscription
form used to day.
15. How did the school in Saint John's parish (241) differ from
apprenticeship training?
16. What changes do you note between the mediaeval Indenture of
Apprenticeship (99) and the eighteenth-century English form (242)?
17. Compare Readings 201 and 242 on apprenticeship.
18. Compare conditions described in 244 with 231-233.
19. What do the Free School Rules of 1734 (245) indicate as to duties and
discipline?
20. What does the use of the lottery for school support (246) indicate as
to the conception and scope of education at the time?
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Allen, W. O. B., and McClure, E. _Two Hundred Years; History of the
S.P.C.K., 1698-1808_.
Barnard, Henry. _English Pedagogy_, Part II, The Teacher in English
Literature.
* Birchenough, C. _History of Elementary Education in England and
Wales_.
Brown, E. E. _The Making of our Middle Schools_.
Cardwell, J. F. _The Story of a Charity School_.
Davidson, Thos. _Rousseau_.
* Earle, Alice M. _Child Life in Colonial Days_.
Field, Mrs. E. M. _The Child and his Book_.
Ford, Paul L. _The New England Primer_.
Godfrey, Elizabeth. _English Children in the Olden Time_.
* Johnson, Clifton. _Old Time Schools and School Books_.
* Kemp, W. W. _The Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts_.
Kilpatrick, Wm. H. _Dutch Schools of New Netherlands and Colonial New
York_.
Locke, John. _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ (1693).
* Montmorency, J. E. G. de. _Progress of Education in England_.
Montmorency, J. E. G. de. _State Intervention in English
Education_.
Mulcaster, Richard. _Positions_. (London, 1581.)
* Paulsen, Friedrich. _German Education, Past and Present_.
* Salmon, David. "The Education of the Poor in the Eighteenth Century";
reprinted from the _Educational Record_. (London, 1908.)
* Scott, J. F. _Historic Essays on Apprenticeship and Vocational
Education_. (Ann Arbor, 1914.)
PART IV
MODERN TIMES
THE ABOLITION OF PRIVILEGE
THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY
A NEW THEORY FOR EDUCATION EVOLVED
THE STATE TAKES OVER THE SCHOOL
CHAPTER XIX
THE EIGHTEENTH A TRANSITION CENTURY
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY A TURNING-POINT. The eighteenth century, in human
thinking and progress, marks for most western nations the end of
mediaevalism and the ushering-in of modern forms of intellectual liberty.
The indifference to the old religious problems, which was clearly manifest
in all countries at the beginning of the century, steadily grew and
culminated in a revolt against ecclesiastical control over human affairs.
This change in attitude toward the old problems permitted the rise of new
types of intellectual inquiry, a rapid development of scientific thinking
and discovery, the growth of a consciousness of national problems and
national welfare, and the bringing to the front of secular interests to a
degree practically unknown since the days of ancient Rome. In a sense the
general rise of these new interests in the eighteenth century was but a
culmination of a long series of movements looking toward greater
intellectual freedom and needed human progress which had been under way
since the days when _studia generalia_ and guilds first arose in western
Europe. The rise of the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, the Revival of Learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the Protestant Revolts in the sixteenth, the rise of modern
scientific inquiry in the sixteenth and seventeenth, and Puritanism in
England and Pietism in Germany in the seventeenth, had all been in the
nature of protests against the mediaeval tendency to confine and limit and
enslave the intellect. In the eighteenth century the culmination of this
rising tide of protest came in a general and determined revolt against
despotism in either Church or State, which, at the close of the century,
swept away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers, and prepared the way
for the marked intellectual and human and political progress which
characterized the nineteenth century.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHANGE IN ATTITUDE. The new spirit and interests and
attitudes which came to characterize the eighteenth century in the more
progressive western nations meant the ultimate overthrow of the tyranny of
mediaeval supernatural theology, the evolution of a new theory as to moral
action which should be independent of theology, the freeing of the new
scientific spirit from the fetters of church control, the substituting of
new philosophical and scientific and economic interests for the old
theological problems which had for so long dominated human thinking, the
substitution of natural political organization for the older
ecclesiastical foundations of the State, the destruction of what remained
of the old feudal political system, the freeing of the serf and the
evolution of the citizen, and the rise of a modern society interested in
problems of national welfare--government in the interest of the governed,
commerce, industry, science, economics, education, and social welfare. The
evolution of such modern-type governments inevitably meant the creation of
entirely new demands for the education of the people and for far-reaching
political and social reforms.
This new eighteenth-century spirit, which so characterized the mid-
eighteenth century that it is often spoken of as the "Period of the
Enlightenment," [1] expressed itself in many new directions, a few of the
more important of which will be considered here as of fundamental concern
for the student of the history of educational progress. In a very real
sense the development of state educational systems, in both European and
American States, has been an outgrowth of the great liberalizing forces
which first made themselves felt in a really determined way during this
important transition century. In this chapter we shall consider briefly
five important phases of this new eighteenth-century liberalism, as
follows:
1. The work of the benevolent despots of continental Europe in trying
to shape their governments to harmonize them with the new spirit of
the century.
2. The unsatisfied demand for reform in France.
3. The rise of democratic government and liberalism in England.
4. The institution of constitutional government and religious freedom
in America.
5. The sweeping away of mediaeval abuses in the great Revolution in
France.
I. WORK OF THE BENEVOLENT DESPOTS OF CONTINENTAL EUROPE
THE NEW NATIONALISM LEADS TO INTERESTED GOVERNMENT. In England, as we
shall trace a little further on, a democratic form of government had for
long been developing, but this democratic life had made but little headway
on the continent of Europe. There, instead, the democratic tendencies
which showed some slight signs of development during the sixteenth century
had been stamped out in the period of warfare and the ensuing hatreds of
the seventeenth, and in the eighteenth century we find autocratic
government at its height. National governments to succeed the earlier
government of the Church had developed and grown strong, the kingly power
had everywhere been consolidated, Church and State were in close working
alliance, and the new spirit of nationality--in government, foreign
policy, languages, literature, and culture--was being energetically
developed by those responsible for the welfare of the States. Everywhere,
almost, on the continent of Europe, the theory of the divine right of
kings to rule and the divine duty of subjects to obey seemed to have
become fixed, and this theory of government the Church now most
assiduously supported. Unlike in England and the American Colonies, the
people of the larger countries of continental Europe had not as yet
advanced far enough in personal liberty or political thinking to make any
demand of consequence for the right to govern themselves. The new spirit
of nationality abroad in Europe, though, as well as the new humanitarian
ideas beginning to stir thinking men, alike tended to awaken a new
interest on the part of many rulers in the welfare of the people they
governed. In consequence, during the eighteenth century, we find a number
of nations in which the rulers, putting themselves in harmony with the new
spirit of the time, made earnest attempts to improve the condition of
their peoples as a means of advancing the national welfare. We shall here
mention the four nations in which the most conspicuous reform work was
attempted.
THE RULERS OF PRUSSIA. Three kings, to whom the nineteenth-century
greatness of Prussia was largely due, ruled the country during nearly the
whole of the eighteenth century. They were fully as despotic as the kings
of France, but, unlike the French kings, they were keenly alive to the
needs of the people, anxious to advance the welfare of the State, tolerant
in religion, and in sympathy with the new scientific studies. The first,
Frederick William I (1713-40), labored earnestly to develop the resources
of the country, trained a large army, ordered elementary education made
compulsory, and made the beginnings in the royal provinces of the
transformation of the schools from the control of the Church to the
control of the State. His son, known to history as Frederick the Great,
ruled from 1740 to 1786. During his long reign he labored continually to
curtail ancient privileges, abolish old abuses, and improve the condition
of his people. During the first week of his reign he abolished torture in
trials, made the administration of law more equitable, instituted a
limited freedom for the press, [2] and extended religious toleration. [3]
He also partially abolished serfdom on the royal domains, and tried to
uplift the peasantry and citizen classes, but in this he met with bitter
opposition from the nobles of his realm. He built roads, canals, and
bridges, encouraged skilled artisans to settle in his dominions, developed
agriculture and industry, encouraged scientific workers, extended an
asylum to thousands of Huguenots fleeing from religious persecution in
France, [4] and did more than any previous ruler to provide common schools
throughout his kingdom. By the general regulation of education in his
kingdom (chapter xxii) he laid the foundations upon which the nineteenth-
century Prussian school system was later built.
[Illustration: Fig 145 FREDERICK THE GREAT]
His rule, though, was thoroughly autocratic. "Every thing for the people,
but nothing by the people", was the keynote of his policies. He had no
confidence in the ability of the people to rule, and gave them no
opportunity to learn the art. He employed the strong army his father built
up to wage wars of conquest, seize territory that did not belong to him,
and in consequence made himself a great German hero. [5] He may be said to
have laid the foundations of modern militarized, socialized, obediently
educated, and subject Germany, and also to have begun the "grand-larceny"
and "scrap-of-paper" policy which has characterized Prussian international
relationships ever since. Frederick William II, who reigned from 1786 to
1797, continued in large measure the enlightened policies of his uncle,
reformed the tax system, lightened the burdens of his people, encouraged
trade, emphasized the German tongue, quickened the national spirit,
actively encouraged schools and universities, and began that
centralization of authority over the developing educational system which
resulted in the creation in Prussia of the first modern state school
system in Europe. The educational work of these three Prussian kings was
indeed important, and we shall study it more in detail in a later chapter
(Chapter XXII).
THE AUSTRIAN REFORMERS. Two notably benevolent rulers occupied the
Austrian throne for half a century, and did much to improve the condition
of the Austrian people. A very remarkable woman, Maria Theresa, came to
the throne in 1740, and was followed by her son, Joseph II, in 1780. He
ruled until 1790. To Maria Theresa the Austria of the nineteenth century
owed most of its development and power. She worked with seemingly tireless
energy for the advancement of the welfare of her subjects, and toward the
close of her reign laid, as we shall see in a later chapter, the
beginnings of Austrian school reform.
Joseph II carried still further his mother's benevolent work, and strove
to introduce "enlightenment and reason" into the administration of his
realm. A student of the writings of the eighteenth-century reform
philosophers, and deeply imbued with the reform spirit of his time, he
attempted to abolish ancient privileges, establish a uniform code of
justice, encourage education, free the serfs, abolish feudal tenure, grant
religious toleration, curb the power of the Pope and the Church, break the
power of the local Diets, centralize the State, and "introduce a uniform
level of democratic simplicity under his own absolute sway." He attempted
to alter the organization of the Church, abolished six hundred
monasteries, [6] and reduced the number of monastic persons in his
dominion from 63,000 to 27,000. Attempting too much, he brought down upon
his head the wrath of both priest and noble and died a disappointed man.
The abolition of feudal tenure and serfdom on the distinctively Austrian
lands, of all his attempted reforms, alone was permanent. His work stands
as an interesting commentary on the temporary character of the results
which follow attempts rapidly to improve the conditions surrounding the
lives of people, without at the same time educating the people to improve
themselves.
THE SPANISH REFORMERS. A very similar result attended the reform efforts
of a succession of benevolent rulers thrust upon Spain, during the
eighteenth century, by the complications of foreign politics. Over a
period of nearly ninety years, extending from the accession of Philip V
(1700) to the death of Charles III (1788), remarkable political progress
was imposed by a succession of able ministers and with the consent of the
kings. [7] The power of the Church, always the crying evil of Spain, was
restricted in many ways; the Inquisition was curbed; the Jesuits were
driven from the kingdom; the burning of heretics was stopped; prosecution
for heresy was reduced and discouraged; the monastic orders were taught to
fear the law and curb their passions; evils in public administration were
removed; national grievances were redressed; the civil service was
improved; science and literature were encouraged, in place of barren
theological speculations; and an earnest effort was made to regenerate the
national life and improve the lot of the common people.
All these reforms, though, were imposed from above, and no attempt was
made to introduce schools or to educate the people in the arts of self-
government. The result was that the reforms never went beneath the
surface, and the national life of the people remained largely untouched.
Within five years of the death of Charles III all had been lost. Under a
native Spanish king, thoroughly orthodox, devout, and lacking in any broad
national outlook, the Church easily restored itself to power, the priests
resumed their earlier importance, the nobles again began to exact their
full toll, free discussion was forbidden, scientific studies were
abandoned, the universities were ordered to discontinue the study of moral
philosophy, and the political and social reforms which had required three
generations to build up were lost in half a decade. Not meeting any well-
expressed need of the people, and with no schools provided to show to the
people the desirable nature of the reforms introduced, it was easy to
sweep them aside. In this relapse to mediaevalism, the chance for Spain--
a country rich in possibilities and natural resources--to evolve early
into a progressive modern nation was lost. So Spain has remained ever
since, and only in the last quarter of a century has reform from within
begun to be evident in this until recently priest-ridden and benighted
land.
THE INTELLIGENT DESPOTS OF RUSSIA. The greatest of these were Peter the
Great, who ruled from 1689 to 1725, and Catherine II, who ruled from 1762
to 1796. Catching something of the new eighteenth-century western spirit,
these rulers tried to introduce some western enlightenment into their as
yet almost barbarous land. Each tried earnestly to lift their people to a
higher level of living, and to start them on the road toward civilization
and learning. By a series of edicts, despotically enforced, Peter tried to
introduce the civilization of the western world into his country. He
brought in numbers of skilled artisans, doctors, merchants, teachers,
printers, and soldiers; introduced many western skills and trades; and
made the beginnings of western secondary education for the governing
classes by the establishment in the cities of a number of German-type
_gymnasia_. [8] Later Catherine II had the French philosopher Diderot (p.
482) draw up a plan for her for the organization of a state system of
higher schools, but the plan was never put into effect. The beginnings of
Russian higher civilization really date from this eighteenth-century work.
The power of the formidable Greek or Eastern Church remained, however,
untouched, and this continued, until after the Russian revolution of 1917,
as one of the most serious obstacles to Russian intellectual and
educational progress. The serfs, too, remained serfs--tied to the land,
ignorant, superstitious, and obedient.
By the close of the eighteenth century Russia, largely under Prussian
training, had become a very formidable military power, and by the close of
the nineteenth century was beginning to make some progress of importance
in the arts of peace. Just at present Russia is going through a stage of
national evolution quite comparable to that which took place in France a
century and a quarter ago, and the educational importance of this great
people, as we shall point out further on, lies in their future evolution
rather than in any contribution they have as yet made to western
development.
II. THE UNSATISFIED DEMAND FOR REFORM IN FRANCE
THE SETTING OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE. Eighteenth-century France, on
the contrary, developed no benevolent despot to mitigate abuses, reform
the laws, abolish privileges, temper the rule of the Church, [9] (R. 247),
curb the monastic orders, develop the natural resources, begin the
establishment of schools, and alleviate the hard lot of the serf and the
peasant. There, instead, absolute monarchy in Europe reached its most
complete triumph during the long reigns of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and Louis
XV (1715-74), and the splendor of the court life of France captivated all
Europe and served to hide the misery which made the splendor possible.
There the power of the nobles had been completely broken, and the power of
the parliaments completely destroyed. "I am the State," exclaimed Louis
XIV, and the almost unlimited despotism of the King and his ministers and
favorites fully supported the statement. Local liberties had been
suppressed, and the lot of the common people--ignorant, hard-working,
downtrodden, but intensely patriotic--was wretched in the extreme.
Approximately 140,000 nobles [10] and 130,000 monks, nuns, and clergy
owned two fifths of the landed property of France, and controlled the
destinies of a nation of approximately 25,000,000 people. Agriculture was
the great industry of the time, but this was so taxed by the agents of
King and Church that over one half of the net profits from farming were
taken for taxation.
CHURCH AND STATE WERE IN CLOSE WORKING ALLIANCE. The higher offices of the
Church were commonly held by appointed noblemen, who drew large incomes
[11] led worldly lives, and neglected their priestly functions much as the
Italian appointees in German lands had done before the Reformation.
Between the nobles and upper clergy on the one hand and the peasant-born
lower clergy and the masses of the people on the other a great gulf
existed. The real brains of France were to be found among a small
bourgeois class of bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, minor officials,
lawyers, and skilled artisans, who lived in the cities and who, ambitious
and discontented, did much to stimulate the increasing unrest and demand
for reform which in time pervaded the whole nation. A king, constantly in
need of increasing sums of money; an idle, selfish, corrupt, and
discredited nobility and upper clergy, incapable of aiding the king, many
of whom, too, had been influenced by the new philosophic and scientific
thinking and were willing to help destroy their own orders; an aggressive,
discontented, and patriotic bourgeoisie, full of new political and social
ideas, and patriotically anxious to reform France; and a vast unorganized
peasantry and city rabble, suffering much and resisting little, but
capable of a terrible fury and senseless destruction, once they were
aroused and their suppressed rage let loose;--these were the main elements
in the setting of eighteenth-century France.
THE FRENCH REFORM PHILOSOPHERS. During the middle decades of the
eighteenth century a small but very influential group of reform
philosophers in France attacked with their pens the ancient abuses in
Church and State, and did much to pave the way for genuine political and
religious reform. In a series of widely read articles and books,
characterized for the most part by clear reasoning and telling arguments,
these political philosophers attacked the power of the absolute monarchy
on the one hand, and the existing privileges of the nobles and clergy on
the other, as both unjust and inimical to the welfare of society (R. 248).
The leaders in the reform movement were Montesquieu (1689-1755), Turgot
(1727-81), Voltaire (1694-1778), Diderot (1713-84), and Rousseau (1712-
78).
[Illustration: FIG. 147. MONTESQUIEU(1689-1755)]
_Montesquieu_. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's famous book, the _Spirit of
Laws_. In this he pointed out the many excellent features of the
constitutional government which the English had developed, and compared
English conditions with the many abuses to which the French people were
subject. He argued that laws should be expressive of the wishes and needs
of the people governed, and that the education of a people "ought to be
relative to the principles of good government." Montesquieu also stands,
with Turgot as the founder of the sciences of comparative politics [12]
and the philosophy of history--new studies which helped to shape the
political thinking of eighteenth-century France.
_Turgot_. Two years after the publication of Montesquieu's book, Turgot
delivered (1750) a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, in Paris, in which
he virtually created the science of history. Looking at human history
comprehensively, seeing clearly that there had been a hitherto
unrecognized regularity of march amid the confusion of the past, and that
it was possible to grasp the history of the progress of man as a whole, he
saw and stated the possibility of society to improve itself through
intelligent government, and the need for wise laws and general education
to enable it to do so. [13]
[Illustration: FIG. 148. TURGOT (1727-81)]
[Illustration: FIG. 149. VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)]
In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance by the new King, Louis
XVI, and during the two years before he was removed from office he
attempted to carry out many needed political and social reforms. Duruy
[14] has summarized his suggested reforms as follows:
1. Gradual introduction of a complete system of local self-government.
2. Imposition of a land tax on nobility and clergy.
3. Suppression of the greater part of the monasteries.
4. Amelioration of the condition of the minor clergy.
5. Equalization of the burdens of taxation.
6. Liberty of conscience, and the recall of the Protestants to France.
7. A uniform system of weights and measures.
8. Freedom for commerce and industry.
9. A single and uniform code of laws.
10. A vast plan for the organization of a system of public instruction
throughout France.
This list is indicative of the reform philosophy in the light of which he
worked. Arousing the natural hostility of the nobility and higher clergy,
he was soon dismissed, and the reforms he had proposed were abandoned by
the King.
_Voltaire._ The keenest and most unsparing critic of the old order was
Voltaire. In clear and forceful French he exposed existing conditions in
society and government, and particularly the control of affairs exercised
by the most ancient and most powerful organization of his day--the Church.
For this he was execrated and hated by the clergy, and in return he made
it the chief task of his life to destroy the reign of the priest. Having
lived for a time in England, he appreciated the vast difference between
the English and French forms of government. With a keen and unsparing pen
he exposed the scholasticism, despotism, dogmatism, superstition,
hypocrisy, servility, and deep injustice of his age, and poured out the
vials of his scorn upon the grubbing pedantry of the Academicians who
doted upon the past because ignorant of the present. In particular he
stood for the abolition of that relic of feudalism--serfdom--which still
seriously oppressed the peasantry of France; for liberty in thought and
action for the individual; for curbing the powers and privileges of both
State and Church; for an equalization of the burdens of taxation between
the different classes in French society; and for the organization of a
system of public education throughout the nation. He died before the
outbreak of the Revolution he had done so much to bring about, but by the
time he died the "Ancient Régime" of privilege and corruption and
oppression was already tottering to its fall. His conception of the
relations that should exist between Church and State are well set forth in
a short article from his pen on the subject (R. 248) reprinted from the
_Encyclopaedia_ of Diderot.
[Illustration: FIG. 150. DIDEROT (1713-84)]
_Diderot._ Another able thinker and writer was Diderot. Besides other
works of importance, he gave twenty years of his life (1751-72) to the
editing (with D'Alembert) of an _Encyclopaedia_ of seventeen volumes of
text and eleven of plates. Many of the articles were written by himself,
and were expressive of his ideas as to reform. Many were frankly critical
of existing privileges, abuses, and pretensions. Many interpreted to the
French the science of Newton and the discoveries of the age, and awakened
a new interest in scientific study. Because of its reform ideas the
publication was suppressed, in 1759, after the publication of the seventh
volume, and had to be carried on surreptitiously thereafter. Viscount
Morley, writing recently on Diderot, summarizes the nature and influence
of the _Encyclopaedia_ in the following words:
The ecclesiastical party detested the _Encyclopaedia_, in which
they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophical enemies. To any
one who turns over the pages of these redoubtable volumes now, it
seems surprising that their doctrine should have stirred such
portentous alarm. There is no atheism, no overt attack on any of the
cardinal mysteries of the faith, no direct denunciation even of the
notorious abuses of the Church. Yet we feel that the atmosphere of the
book may well have been displeasing to authorities who had not yet
learnt to encounter the modern spirit on equal terms. The
_Encyclopaedia_ takes for granted the justice of religious
toleration and speculative freedom. It asserts in distinct tones the
democratic doctrine that it is the common people in a nation whose lot
ought to be the chief concern of the nation's government. From
beginning to end it is one unbroken process of exaltation of
scientific knowledge on the one hand, and pacific industry on the
other. All these things were odious to the old governing classes of
France. [15]
_Rousseau._ The fifth reform writer mentioned as exercising a large
influence was Rousseau. In 1749 the Academy at Dijon offered a prize for
the best essay on the subject: _Has the progress of the sciences and arts
contributed to corrupt or to purify morals?_ Rousseau took the negative
side and won the prize. His essay attracted widespread attention. In 1753
he competed for a second prize on _The Origin of Inequality among Men_, in
which he took the same negative attitude. In 1762 appeared both his
_Social Contract_ and _Émile_. In the former he contended that early men
had given to selected leaders the right to conduct their government for
them, and that these had in time become autocratic and had virtually
enslaved the people (R. 249 a). He held that men were not bound to submit
to government against their wills, and to remedy existing abuses he
advocated the overthrow of the usurping government and the establishment
of a republic, with universal suffrage based on "liberty, fraternity, and
equality." The ideal State lay in a society controlled by the people,
where artificiality and aristocracy and the tyranny of society over man
did not exist. Nor could Rousseau distinguish between political and
ecclesiastical tyranny, holding that the former inevitably followed from
the latter (R. 249 b).
Crude as were his theories, and impractical as were many of his ideas, to
an age tired of absurdities and pretensions and injustice, and suffering
deeply from the abuses of both Church and State, his attractively written
book seemed almost inspired. The _Social Contract_ virtually became the
Bible of the French Revolutionists. In the _Émile_, a book which will be
referred to more at length in chapter XXI, Rousseau held that we should
revert, in education, to a state of nature to secure the needed
educational reforms, and that education to prepare for life in the
existing society was both wrong and useless.
A REVOLUTION IN FRENCH THINKING. These five men--Montesquieu, Turgot,
Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau--and many other less influential
followers, portrayed the abuses of the time in Church and State and
pointed out the lines of political and ecclesiastical reform. Those who
read their writings understood better why the existing privileges of the
nobility and clergy were no longer right, and the need for reform in
matters of taxation and government. Their writings added to the spirit of
unrest of the century, and were deeply influential, not only in France,
but in the American Colonies as well. Though the attack was at first
against the evils in Church and State, the new critical philosophy soon
led to intellectual developments of importance in many other directions.
At the death of Louis XIV (1715) France was intellectually prostrate.
Great as was his long reign from the point of view of the splendor of his
court, and large as was the quantity of literature produced, his age was
nevertheless an age of misery, religious intolerance, political
oppression, and intellectual decline. It was a reign of centralized and
highly personal government. Men no longer dared to think for themselves,
or to discuss with any freedom questions either of politics or religion.
"There was no popular liberty; there were no great men; there was no
science; there was no literature; there were no arts. The largest
intellects lost their energy; the national spirit died away." Between the
death of Louis XIV and the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) an
intellectual revolution took place in France, and for this revolution
English political progress and political and scientific thinking were
largely responsible.
GREAT ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON FRANCE. In 1715 the English language was almost
unspoken in France, English science and political progress were unknown
there, and the English were looked down upon and hated. Half a century
later English was spoken everywhere by the scholars of the time; the
English were looked upon as the political and scientific leaders of
Europe; and the scholars of France visited England to study English
political, economic, and scientific progress. Locke, an uncompromising
advocate of political and religious liberty; Hobbes, the speculative moral
philosopher; and the great scientist Newton were the teachers of Voltaire.
More than any other single man, Voltaire moulded and redirected
eighteenth-century thought in France. [16] Numerous French writers of
importance--Helvetius, Diderot, Morellet, Voltaire, Rousseau, to mention
but a few--drew their inspiration from English writers. In the eighteenth
century England became the school for political liberty for France. [17]
The effect of the work of Isaac Newton (p. 388), as popularized by the
writings of Voltaire, was revolutionary on a people who had been so
tyrannized over by the clergy as had the French during the reign of Louis
XIV. An interest in scientific studies before unknown in France now flamed
up, and a new generation of French scientists arose. Physics, chemistry,
zoölogy, and anatomy received a great new impetus, while botany, geology,
and mineralogy were raised to the rank of sciences. Popular scientific
lectures became very common. The classics were almost abandoned for the
new studies.
Economic questions now also began to be discussed, such as questions of
money, food, finance, and government expenditure. In 1776 the Englishman,
Adam Smith, laid the foundations of the new science of political economy
by the publication of his _Wealth of Nations_, and this was at once
translated into French and eagerly read. In 1781 a French banker by the
name of Necker published his _Compte Rendu_, a statistical report on the
finances of France. So feverishly eager were men to study problems of
government that six thousand copies were sold the day it was published,
and eighty thousand had to be printed before the demand for it was
satisfied. A half-century earlier it would have been read scarcely at all.
In the meantime taxes piled up, reforms were refused, the power and
arrogance of the clergy and nobility showed no signs of diminution, the
nation was burdened with debt, commerce and agriculture declined, the lot
of the common people became ever more hard to bear, and the masses grew
increasingly resentful and rebellious. As national affairs continued to
drift from bad to worse in France, a series of important happenings on the
American continent helped to bring matters more rapidly to a crisis.
Before describing these events, however, we wish to sketch briefly the
rise of government by the people and the extension of liberalism in
England--the first great democratic nation of the western world.
III. ENGLAND THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC NATION
EARLY BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. The first western nation created from
the wreck of the Roman Empire to achieve a measurement of self-government
was England. Better civilized than most of the other wandering tribes, at
the time of their coming to English shores, the invading Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes early accepted Christianity (p. 120) and settled down to an
agricultural life. On English shores they soon built up a for-the-time
substantial civilization. This was later largely destroyed by the
pillaging Danes, but with characteristic energy the English set to work to
assimilate the newcomers and build up civilization anew. The work of
Alfred (p. 146) in reëstablishing law and order, at a time when law and
order scarcely existed anywhere in western Europe, will long remain
famous. Later on, and at a time when German and Hun and Slav had only
recently accepted Christianity in name and had begun to settle down into
rude tribal governments, and when the Prussians in their original home
along the eastern Baltic were still offering human sacrifices to their
heathen gods (p. 120), the English barons were extorting _Magna Charta_
from King John and laying the firm foundations of English constitutional
liberty. In the meadow at Runnymede, on that justly celebrated June day,
in 1215, government under law and based on the consent of the governed
began to shape itself once more in the western world. Of the sixty-three
articles of this Charter of Liberties, three possess imperishable value.
These provided:
1. That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except
by his peers, or the law of the land, which secured trial by jury.
2. That justice should neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.
3. That dues from the people to the king could be imposed only with
the consent of the National Council (after 1246 known as
Parliament).
So important was this charter to such a liberty-loving people as the
English have always been, and so bitterly did kings resent its hampering
provisions, that within the next two centuries kings had been forced to
confirm it no less than thirty-seven times.
By 1295 the first complete Parliament, representative of the three orders
of society--Lords, Clergy, and Commons--assembled, and in 1333 the Commons
gained the right to sit by itself. From that time to the present the
Commons, representing the people, has gradually broadened its powers,
working, as Tennyson has said, [18] "from precedent to precedent," until
to-day it rules the English nation. In 1376 the Commons gained the right
to impeach the King's ministers, and in 1407 the exclusive right to make
grants of money for any governmental purpose. Centuries ahead of other
nations, this insured an almost continual meeting of the national assembly
and a close scrutiny of the acts of both kings and ministers.
In 1604 King James I, imitating continental European precedents,
proclaimed his theory as to the "divine right of kings" to rule, [19] and
a struggle at once set in which carried the English into Civil War (1642-
49); led to the beheading of Charles I (1649); the overthrow and
banishment of James II (1688); and the ultimate firm establishment,
instead, of the "divine right of the common people." [20] In an age when
the autocratic power and the divine right of kings to rule was almost
unquestioned elsewhere in Europe, the English people compelled their king
to recognize that he could rule over them only when he ruled in their
interests and as they wished him to do. Though there was a period of
struggle later on with the German Georges (I, II, and III), and especially
with the honest but stupid George III, England has, since 1688, been a
government of and by the people. [21] France did not rid itself of the
"divine-right" conception until the French Revolution (1789), and Germany,
Austria, and Russia not until 1918.
GROWTH OF TOLERANCE AMONG THE ENGLISH. The results of the long struggle of
the English for liberty under law showed itself in many ways in the growth
of tolerance among the people of the English nation. At a time when other
nations were bound down in blind obedience to king and priest, and when
dissenting minorities were driven from the land, the English people had
become accustomed to the idea of individual liberty, regulated by law, and
to the toleration of opinions with which they did not agree. These
characteristically English conceptions of liberty under law and of the
toleration of minorities have found expression in many important ways in
the life and government of the people (R. 250), and have been elements of
great strength in England's colonial policy. One of the important ways in
which this growth of tolerance among the English showed itself was in the
extension of a larger freedom to those unable to subscribe to the state
religion.
Though the Reformation movement had stirred up bitter hatreds in England,
as on the Continent, the English were among the first of European peoples
to show tolerance of opposition in religious matters. The high English
State Church, which had succeeded the Roman, had made but small appeal to
many Englishmen. The Puritans had early struggled to secure a
simplification of the church service and the introduction of more
preaching (p. 359), and in the seventeenth century the organization of
three additional dissenting sects, which became known as Unitarians,
Baptists, and Quakers, took place. These sects divided off rather quietly,
and their separation resulted only in the enactment of new laws regarding
conformity, prayers, and teaching.
During the latter half of the seventeenth century, after the execution of
Charles I (1649), the Puritans had temporarily risen to power, and during
their control of affairs had imposed their strict Calvinistic standards as
to Sabbath observance and piety on the nation. This was very distasteful
to many, and from such strict observances the people in time rebelled. The
standards of the English in personal morality, temperance, amusements, and
manners at the beginning of the eighteenth century were not especially
high, and in the reaction from Puritan control and strict religious
observances the great mass of the people degenerated into positive
irreligion and gross immorality. Drunkenness, rowdyism, robbery,
blasphemy, brutality, lewdness, and prostitution became very common. This
moral decline of the people the Church of England seemed powerless to
arrest.
[Illustration: FIG. 151. JOHN WESLEY (1707-82)
Founder of Methodism.]
About 1730 a reform movement was begun under the able leadership of a
young Oxford student by the name of John Wesley, ably seconded by George
Whitefield (1714-70), with a view to reaching the classes so completely
untouched by the high State Church. By traveling over the country and
preaching a gospel of repentance, personal faith, and better living, these
two young men made a deep emotional appeal, and soon gained a strong hold
on the poorer and more ignorant classes of the people. Forbidden to preach
in Anglican churches, and at times threatened with personal violence,
these two men were in time forced into open rebellion against the
Established Church. Finally they founded a new Church, which became known
as the Methodist. [22] This new organization bore the same relation to the
Church of England that the Anglican Church two hundred years before had
borne to the Church of Rome. Thus was accomplished a second spiritual
reformation in England, and one destined in time to spread to the colonies
and deeply affect the lives of a large portion of the English people. [23]
That such a well-organized sect could arise, such a moral reformation be
preached, and the power of the Established Church be challenged so openly
and without serious persecution, speaks much for the growth of religious
tolerance among the English people since the days of the great Elizabeth.
In 1778 the Roman Catholic Relief Act was adopted, and in 1779 dissenting
ministers and schoolmasters were relieved from the disabilities under
which they had so long remained. These acts indicate a further marked
growth in religious tolerance on the part of the English nation. [24]
NEW EMANCIPATING AND EDUCATIVE INFLUENCES. In 1662 the first regular
newspaper outside of Italy was established in England, and in 1702 the
first daily paper. Small in size, printed on but one side of the sheet,
and dealing wholly with local matters, these nevertheless marked the
beginnings of that daily expression of popular opinion with which we are
now so familiar. [25] After about 1705 the cheap political pamphlet made
its appearance, and after 1710, instead of merely communicating news, the
papers began the discussion of political questions.
By 1735 a revolution had been effected in England, and papers and presses
began to be established in the chief cities and towns outside of London;
the freedom of the press was in a large way completed, and newspapers, for
the first time in the history of the world, were made the exponents of
public opinion. The press in England in consequence became an educative
force of great intellectual and political importance, and did much to
compensate for the lack of a general system of schools for the people. In
1772 the right to publish the debates in Parliament was finally won, over
the strenuous objections [26] of George III. In 1780 the first Sunday
newspaper appeared, "on the only day the lower orders had time to read a
paper at all," and, despite the efforts of religious bodies to suppress
it, the Sunday paper has continued to the present and has contributed its
quota to the education and enlightenment of mankind. In 1785 the famous
London _Times_ began to appear. In the middle of the eighteenth century
debating societies for the consideration of public questions arose, and in
1769 "the first public meeting ever assembled in England, in which it was
attempted to enlighten Englishmen respecting their political rights" was
held, and such meetings soon became of almost daily occurrence. All these
influences stimulated political thinking to a high degree, and contributed
not only to a desire for still larger political freedom but for the more
general diffusion of the ability to read as well (R. 250).
Still other important new influences arose during the early part of the
eighteenth century, each of which tended to awaken new desires for schools
and learning. In 1678 the first modern printed story to appeal to the
masses, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, appeared from the press. Written,
as it had been, by a man of the people, its simple narrative form, its
passionate religious feeling, its picture of the journey of a pilgrim
through a world of sin and temptation and trial, and its Biblical language
with which the common people had now become familiar--all these elements
combined to make it a book that appealed strongly to all who read or heard
it read, and stimulated among the masses a desire to read comparable to
that awakened by the chaining of the English Bible in the churches a
century before (R. 170). In 1719 the first great English novel, Defoe's
_Robinson Crusoe_, and in 1726 _Gulliver's Travels_, added new stimulus to
the desires awakened by Bunyan's book. All three were books of the common
people, whereas the dramas, plays, essays, and scholarly works previously
produced had appealed only to a small educated class. In 1751 what was
probably the first circulating library of modern times was opened at
Birmingham, and soon thereafter similar institutions were established in
other English cities.
SCIENCE AND MANUFACTURING; THE NEW ERA. England, too, from the first,
showed an interest in and a tolerance toward the new scientific thinking
scarcely found in any other land. This in itself is indicative of the
great intellectual progress which the English people had by this time
made. [27] At a time when Galileo, in Italy, was fighting, almost alone,
for the right to think along the lines of the new scientific method and
being imprisoned for his pains, Englishmen were reading with deep interest
the epoch-making scientific writings of Lord Francis Bacon, Earlier than
in other lands, too, the Newtonian philosophy found a place in the
instruction of the national universities, and English scholars began to
employ the new scientific method in their search for new truths. The
British Royal (Scientific) Society [28] had begun to meet as early as
1645, and ever since has published in its proceedings the best of English
scientific thinking. By the reign of George I (1714-27) scientific work
began to be popularized, and the first little booklets on scientific
subjects began to appear. These popular presentations of what had been
worked out were sold at the book stalls and by peddlers and were eagerly
read; by the beginning of the reign of George III (1760) they had become
very common. In 1704-10 the first "Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" was
printed, and in 1768-71 the first edition (three volumes) of the now
famous _Encyclopedia Britannica_ appeared. In 1755 the famous British
Museum was founded.
As early as 1698 a rude form of steam engine had been patented in England,
and by 1712 this had been perfected sufficiently to be used in pumping
water from the coal mines. In 1765 James Watt made the real beginning of
the application of steam to industry by patenting his steam engine; in
1760 Wedgwood established the pottery industry in England; in 1767
Hargreaves devised the spinning-jenny, which banished the spindle and
distaff and the old spinning-wheel; in 1769 Arkwright evolved his
spinning-frame; and in 1785 Cartwright completed the process by inventing
the power loom for weaving. In 1784 a great improvement in the smelting of
iron ores (puddling) was worked out. These inventions, all English, were
revolutionary in their effect on manufacturing. They meant the
displacement of hand power by machine labor, the breakdown of home
industry through the concentration of labor in factories, the rise of
great manufacturing cities, [29] and the ultimate collapse of the age-old
apprenticeship system of training, where the master workman with a few
apprentices in his shop prepared goods for sale. They also meant the
ultimate transformation of England from an agricultural into a great
manufacturing and exporting nation, whose manufactured products would be
sold in every corner of the globe.
By 1750 a change in attitude toward all the old intellectual problems had
become marked in England, and by 1775 attention before unknown was being
given there to social, political, economic, and educational questions.
Religious intolerance was dying out, the harsh laws of earlier days had
begun to be modified, new social and political interests [30] were
everywhere attracting attention, and the great commercial expansion of
England was rapidly taking shape. With England and France leading in the
new scientific studies; England in the van in the development of
manufacturing and the French to the fore in social influences and polite
literature; England and the new American Colonies setting new standards in
government by the people; the French theorists and economists giving the
world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on
the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the
hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many,
about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in
methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era
and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change
came, but not in quite the manner expected.
IV. INSTITUTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN
AMERICA
[Illustration: FIG. 152. NATIONALITY OF THE WHITE POPULATION, AS SHOWN BY
THE FAMILY NAMES IN THE CENSUS OF 1790.]
ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA ESTABLISH A REPUBLIC. Though the early settlement of
America, as was pointed out in chapter xv, was made from among those
people and from those lands which had embraced some form of the Protestant
faith, and represented a number of nationalities and several religious
sects, the thirteen colonies, nevertheless, were essentially English in
origin, speech, habits, observances, and political and religious
conceptions. This is well shown for the white population by the results of
the first Federal census, taken in 1790, as given in the adjoining figure.
This shows that of all the people in the thirteen original States, 83.5
per cent possessed names indicating pure English origin, and that 91.8 per
cent had names which pointed to their having come from the British Isles.
The largest non-British name nationality was the German, with 5.6 per cent
of the whole, and these were found chiefly in Pennsylvania where they
constituted 26.1 per cent of the State's population. Next were those
having Dutch names, who constituted but 2 per cent of the total
population, and but 16.1 per cent of the population of New York. No other
name-nationality constituted over one half of one per cent of the total.
The New England States were almost as English as England itself, 93 to 96
per cent of the names being pure English, and 98.5 to 99.8 per cent being
from the British Isles.
We thus see that it was from England, the nation which had done most in
the development of individual and religious liberty, that the great bulk
of the early settlers of America came, and in the New World the English
traditions as to constitutional government and liberty under law were
early and firmly established. The centuries of struggle for representative
government in England at once bore fruit here. Colony charters, charters
of rights and liberties, public discussion, legislative assemblies, and
liberty under law were from the first made the foundation stones upon
which self-government in America was built up.
From an early date the American Colonies showed an independence to which
even Englishmen were scarcely accustomed, and when the home government
attempted to make the colonists pay some of the expenses of the Seven
Years' War, and a larger share of the expenses of colonial administration,
there was determined opposition. Having no representation in Parliament
and no voice in levying the tax, the colonists declared that taxation
without representation was tyranny, and refused to pay the taxes assessed.
Standing squarely on their rights as Englishmen, the colonists were
gradually forced into open rebellion. In 1765, and again in 1774,
Declarations of Rights were drawn up and adopted by representatives from
the Colonies, and were forwarded to the King. In 1774 the first
Continental Congress met and formed a union of the Colonies; in 1776 the
Colonies declared their independence. This was confirmed, in 1783, by the
Treaty of Paris; in 1787, the Constitution of the United States was
drafted; and in 1789, the American government began. In the preamble to
the twenty-seven charges of tyranny and oppression made against the King
in the Declaration of Independence, we find a statement of political
philosophy [31] which is a combination of the results of the long English
struggle for liberty and the French eighteenth-century reform philosophy
and revolutionary demands. [32] This preamble declared:
We hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD HISTORY. The American Revolution and its
results were fraught with great importance for the future political and
educational progress of mankind. Before the close of the eighteenth
century the new American government had made at least four important
contributions to world liberty and progress which were certain to be of
large political and educational value for the future.
In the first place, the people of the Colonies had erected independent
governments and had shown the possibility of the self-government of
peoples on a large scale, and not merely in little city-states or
communities, as had previously been the case where self-government had
been tried. Democratic government was here worked out and applied to large
areas, and to peoples of diverse nationalities and embracing different
religious faiths. The possibility of States selecting their rulers and
successfully governing themselves was demonstrated.
In the second place, the new American government which was formed did
something new in world history when it united thirteen independent and
autonomous States into a single federated Nation, and without destroying
the independence of the States. What was formed was not a league, or
confederacy, as had existed at different times among differing groups of
the Greek City-States, and from time to time in the case of later Swiss
and temporary European national groupings, but the union into a
substantial and permanent Federal State of a number of separate States
which still retained their independence, and with provision for the
expansion of this national Union by the addition of new States. This
federal principle in government is probably the greatest political
contribution of the American Union to world development. In the twentieth-
century conception of a League of Nations it has borne still further
fruit.
In the third place, the different American States changed their old
Colonial Charters into definite written Constitutions, each of which
contained a Preamble or Bill of Rights which affirmed the fundamental
principles of democratic liberty (R. 251). These now became the
fundamental law for each of the separate States, and the same idea was
later worked out in the Constitution of the United States. These were the
first written constitutions of history, and have since served as a type
for the creation of constitutional government throughout the world. In
such documents to-day free peoples everywhere define the rights and duties
and obligations which they regard as necessary to their safety and
happiness and welfare.
Finally, the Federal Constitution provided for the inestimable boon of
religious liberty, and in a way that was both revolutionary and wholesome.
At the beginning of the War for Independence the Anglican (Episcopal)
faith had been declared "the established religion" in seven of the
Colonies, and the Congregational was the established religion in three of
the New England Colonies, while but three Colonies had declared for
religious freedom and refused to give a preference to any special creed.
This religious problem had to be met by the Constitutional Convention, and
this body handled it in the only way it could have been intelligently
handled in a nation composed of so many different religious sects as was
ours. It simply incorporated into the Federal Constitution provisions
which guaranteed the free exercise of their religious faith to all, and
forbade the establishment by Congress of any state religion, or the
requirement of any religious test as a prerequisite to holding any office
under the control of the Federal Government. The American people thus took
a stand for religious liberty at a time when the hatreds of the
Reformation still burned fiercely, and when tolerance in religious matters
was as yet but little known.
IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS-LIBERTY CONTRIBUTION. The solution of the
religious question arrived at was only second in importance for us to the
establishment of the Federal Union, and the far-reaching significance to
our future national life of the sane and for-the-time extraordinary
provisions incorporated into our National Constitution can hardly be
overestimated. This action led to the early abandonment of state
religions, religious tests, and public taxation for religion in the old
States, and to the prohibition of these in the new. The importance of this
solution of the religious question for the future of popular education in
the United States was great, for it laid the foundations upon which our
systems of free, common, public, tax-supported, non-sectarian schools have
since been built up. How we could have erected a common public-school
system on a religious basis, with the many religious sects among us, it is
impossible to conceive. Instead, we should have had a series of feeble,
jealous, antagonistic, and utterly inefficient church-school systems,
chiefly confined to elementary education, and each largely intent on
teaching its peculiar church doctrines and struggling for an increasing
share of public funds.
How much the American people owe to the Fathers of the Republic for this
most enlightened and intelligent provision, few who have not thought
carefully on the matter can appreciate. To it we must trace not only the
great blessing of religious liberty, which we have so long enjoyed, but
also the final establishment of our common, free, public-school systems.
The beginning of the new state motive for education, which was soon to
supersede the religious motive, dates from the establishment with us of
republican governments; and the beginning of the emancipation of education
from church domination goes back to this wise provision inserted in our
National Constitution.
This national attitude was later copied in the state constitutions, and as
a preamble to practically all we find a Bill of Rights, which in almost
every case included a provision for freedom of religious worship (Rs. 251,
260). After the middle of the nineteenth century a further provision
prohibiting sectarian teaching or state aid to sectarian schools was
everywhere added.
V. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SWEEPS AWAY ANCIENT ABUSES
NEW DEMANDS FOR REFORM THAT COULD NOT BE RESISTED. More than in any other
continental European country France had, by 1783, become a united nation,
conscious of a modern national feeling. Yet in France mediaeval abuses in
both State and Church had survived, as we have seen, to as great an extent
almost as in any European nation. So determined were the clergy and
nobility to retain their old powers, not only in France but throughout the
continent of Europe as well, that progressive reform seemed well-nigh
impossible. The work of the benevolent despots had, after all, been
superficial. By the last quarter of the eighteenth, though, a progressive
change was under way which was certain to produce either evolution or
revolution. The influence of the American experiment in nation-building
now became pronounced. In 1779 Franklin took a copy of the new
Pennsylvania Constitution with him to Paris, and in 1780 John Adams did
the same with the Massachusetts Constitution. Frenchmen instantly
recognized here, in concrete form, the ideas with which their own heads
were filled. In 1783 Franklin published in France a French translation of
all the American Constitutions, and the National Constitution of 1787 was
as eagerly read and discussed in Paris as in New York or Philadelphia or
Boston. America appeared to the French of that stormy period as an ideal
land; where the dreams of Rousseau about the social contract had been
transformed into realities. Two years later the _cahiers_ of the Third
Estate demanded a written constitution for France. The French, too, had
aided the American Colonies in their struggle for liberty, and French
soldiers returning home carried back new political ideas drawn from the
remarkable political progress of the new American Nation. By 1788 the
demand for reform in France had become so insistent, and the condition of
the treasury of the State was so bad, that it was finally felt necessary
to summon a meeting of the States-General--a sort of national parliament
consisting of representatives of the three great Estates: clergy,
nobility, and commons--which had not met in France since 1614.
[Illustration: FIG. 153. THE STATES-GENERAL IN SESSION AT VERSAILLES
(After a contemporary drawing by Monnet)]
Besides electing its representatives, each locality and order was allowed
to draw up a series of instructions, or _cahiers_ (+R. 252+), for the
guidance of its delegates. These _cahiers_ are a mine of information as to
the demands and hopes and interests of the French people, [33] and it is
interesting to know that the _cahiers_ of nobility, clergy, and commons
alike included, among their demands, the organization of a comprehensive
plan of education for France. [34]
FRANCE ESTABLISHES CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. The States-General met May
5, 1789, and soon (June 20) resolved itself into the National or
Constituent Assembly. Terrified by the uprisings and burnings of châteaux
throughout France, on the night of August fourth, in a few hours, it
adopted a series of decrees which virtually abolished the _Ancien Régime_
of privileges for France. The nobility gave up most of their old rights,
the serfs [35] were freed, and the special privileges of towns were
surrendered. Later the Assembly adopted a "Declaration of Rights of Man
and of the Citizen" (R. 253), much like the American Declaration of
Independence. This declared, among other things, that all men were born
free and have equal rights, that taxes should be proportional to wealth,
that all citizens were equal before the law and have a right to help make
the laws, and that the people of the nation were sovereign. These
principles struck at the very foundations of the old system.
Soon a Constitution for France, the first ever promulgated in modern
Europe, was prepared and adopted (1791). This abolished the ancient
privileges and reorganized France as a self-governing nation, much after
the American plan. Local government was created, and the absolute monarchy
was changed to a limited constitutional one. Next the property of the
Church was taken over by the State, the monasteries were suppressed, and
the priests and bishops were made state officials and paid a fixed state
salary. The Jesuits had been expelled from France in 1764; and in 1792 the
Brothers of the Christian Schools were not allowed longer to teach. Among
other important matters, the Constitution of 1791 declared that:
There shall be created and organized a system of public instruction
common to all citizens, and gratuitous, with respect to those branches
of instruction which are indispensable for all men.
Up to this point the Revolution in France had proceeded relatively
peacefully, considering the nature of the long-standing abuses which were
to be remedied. In August, 1792, the King was imprisoned, and in January,
1793, he was executed and a Republic proclaimed. [36] Then followed a
reign of terror, which we do not need to follow, and which ended only when
Napoleon became master of France.
BENEFICENT RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION. The French Revolution was not an
accident or a product of chance, but rather the inevitable result of an
attempt to dam up the stream of human progress and prevent its orderly
onward flow. The Protestant Revolts were the first great revolutionary
wave, the Puritan revolution in England was another, the formation of the
American Republic and the institution of constitutional government and
religious freedom another, while the French Revolution brought the rising
movement to a head and swept away, in a deluge of blood, the very
foundations of the mediaeval system. Along with much that was disastrous,
the French Revolution accomplished after all much that was of greatest
importance for human progress. The world at times seems to be in need of
such a great catharsis. Progress was made in a decade that could hardly
have been made in a century by peaceful evolution. The old order of
privilege came to an end, mediaevalism was swept away, and the serf was
evolved into the free farmer and citizen. One fifth of the soil of France
was restored to the use of the people from the monasteries, and an
additional one third from the Church and nobility. The new principles of
citizenship--Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity--were for France
revolutionary in the extreme, while the assertion that the sovereignty of
a nation rests with the people rather than with the king, here
successfully promulgated, ended for all time the "divine-right-of-kings"
idea for France. After political theory had for a time run mad, the
organizing genius of Napoleon consolidated the gains, gave France a strong
government, a uniform code of laws, [37] and began that organization of
schools for the nation which ultimately meant the taking over of education
from the Church and its provision at the expense of and in the interests
of the nation.
THE NATIONAL IDEA EXTENDS TO OTHER LANDS. The reform work in France,
together with the examples of English and American liberty, soon began to
have their influence in other lands as well. People everywhere began to
see that the old régime of privilege and misgovernment ought to be
replaced. Other countries abolished serfdom, introduced better laws, and
made reforms in the abuses of both Church and State. French armies and
rulers carried the best of French ideas to other lands, and, where the
French rule continued long enough, these ideas became fixed. In particular
was the _Code Napoléon_ copied in the Netherlands, the Italian States, and
the States of southern and western Germany. The national spirit of Italy
was awakened, and the Italian liberals began to look forward to the day
when the small Italian States might be reunited into an Italian Nation,
with Rome as its capital. This became the work of nineteenth-century
Italian statesmen. For the first time in Spanish history, too, the people
became conscious, under French occupation, of a feeling of national unity,
and similarly the national spirit of German lands was stirred by the
conquests of Napoleon.
A constitution was obtained in Spain, in 1812, and between 1815 and 1821
all of Spain's South American colonies--Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela--revolted,
became independent, and set up republics with constitutional governments,
some of the larger ones based on the federal principle, as in the United
States. Brazil similarly freed itself from Portugal and set up a
constitutional and federated monarchy, in 1822. The Kingdom of Naples
obtained constitutional government in 1820, and Sardinia in 1821. In 1823,
when Spain with Austria's aid prepared to reconquer the Spanish South
American Republics, President Monroe transmitted to the American Congress
his message in which he declared that any attempt on the part of European
nations to suppress republicanism on the American continent would be
considered by the United States as an unfriendly act. This has since been
known as the _Monroe Doctrine_. In 1829 Greece obtained her independence
from Turkey, and in 1843 a constitutional form of government was obtained.
IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT. Since the closing
decades of the eighteenth century, when democratic government and written
constitutions began, the sweep of democratic government has become almost
world wide. Nation after nation has changed to democratic and
constitutional forms of government, the latest additions being Portugal
(1911), China (1912), Russia (1917), and Germany (1918). New English
colonies, too, have carried English self-government into almost every
continent. The World War of 1914-18 gave a new emphasis to democracy, and
there is good reason to believe that government of and by and for the
people is ultimately destined to prevail among all the intelligent nations
and races of the earth.
With the development of democratic government there has everywhere been a
softening of old laws, the growth of humanitarianism, the wider and wider
extension of the suffrage, important legislation as to labor, a previously
unknown attention to the poor and the dependents of society, a vast
extension of educational advantages, and the taking over of education from
the Church by the State and the erection of the school into an important
institution for the preservation and advancement of the national welfare.
These consequences of the onward sweep of new-world ideas we shall trace
more in detail in the chapters which follow.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Show the importance, for human progress, of each of the meanings of the
new eighteenth-century liberalism, as enumerated on pages 471-72.
2. How do you explain the lack of any permanent influence on Spanish life
of the work of the benevolent despots in Spain?
3. Show the liberalizing influence of the rise of scientific investigation
and economic studies, for a nation still oppressed by mediaevalism and bad
government.
4. Enumerate the new sciences which arose in the eighteenth century.
5. Indicate the importance of the freedom of the press in the development
of English political liberty.
6. Explain how the religious-freedom attitude of the American national
constitution conferred an inestimable boon on the States in the matter of
public education.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following illustrative
selections are reproduced:
247. Dabney: Ecclesiastical Tyranny in France.
248. Voltaire: On the Relation of Church and State.
249. Rousseau: Extract from the Social Contract.
250. Buckle: Changes in English Thinking in the Eighteenth Century,
251. Pennsylvania Constitution: Bill of Rights in.
252. Clergy of Blois: _Cahier_ of 1779.
253. France: Declaration of the Rights of Man.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Explain why ecclesiastical tyranny should have awakened such a spirit
of rebellion in France (247), and not in Spain or in Italian lands.
2. Just what attitude toward religion is shown in the extract from
Voltaire (248)?
3. Bolshevists in Russia and in America talk to-day as did Rousseau in the
Social Contract (249). Compare the justification of each with the
eighteenth-century France of Rousseau.
4. What do all the changes enumerated by Buckle (250) indicate as to the
spread of general education, irrespective of schools, among the English
people?
5. Compare the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights of 1776 (251) with that of your
own present-day state constitution,
6. Just what type of educational provisions, and what administrative
organization, did the recommendations of the Clergy of Blois (252)
contemplate? Indicate its shortcomings for eighteenth-century France.
7. Compare the main ideas of 251 and 253.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Dabney, R. H. _The Causes of the French Revolution_.
Taine, H. A. _The Ancient Regime_.
CHAPTER XX
THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION
I. NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE
THE STATE AS SERVANT OF THE CHURCH. With the rise of the Protestant sects
we noted, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and for the first time
since Christianity became supreme in the western world, the beginnings of
a state connection with the education of the young. The Protestant
reformers, obtaining the support of the Protestant princes and kings, had
successfully used this support to assist them in the organization of
church schools as an aid to the reformed faith. Luther, it will be
recalled (p. 312), had made a strong appeal to the mayors and magistrates
of all German lands to establish schools as a part of their civic duties
(R. 156), and had contended that a solemn obligation rested upon them to
do so. The Dutch Provinces had worked closely with the Dutch Protestant
synods (p. 334) in ordering schools established and in providing for their
financing; Calvin had organized a religious City-State at Geneva (p. 330),
of which religion and learning had been the corner-stones; the Scottish
Parliament, by the laws of 1633 and 1646 (p. 335), had ordered schools for
Scottish children in connection with the churches; and in the Scandinavian
countries and in Finland the beginnings of a connection with the State had
also been made (p. 315). Finally, in the new Massachusetts Colony the laws
of 1642 and 1647 (p. 366) had, for the first time in the English-speaking
world, ordered that children be taught "to read and understand the
principles of religion and the capital laws of the country" (p. 364), and
that schools be established by the towns, under penalty if they refused to
do so. In all Protestant lands we saw that the reformers appealed, from
time to time, to what were then the servants of the churches--the rising
civil governments and principalities and States--to use their civil
authority to force the people to meet their new religious obligations in
the matter of schooling.
The purpose of the schooling ordered established, however, was almost
wholly religious. Massachusetts, in ordering instruction in the "capital
laws of the country," as well as reading and religion, had formed a marked
exception. In nearly all lands the rising state governments merely helped
the Protestant churches to create the elementary vernacular religious
school, and to make of it an auxiliary for the protection of orthodoxy and
the advancement of the faith. Even in the new state school systems of the
German States--Saxony, Würtemberg (p. 317), Brunswick, Weimar, Gotha--the
elementary schools established were for religious rather than for state
ends. This condition continued until well toward the middle of the
eighteenth century.
THE NEW STATE THEORY OF EDUCATION. After about the middle of the
eighteenth century a new theory as to the purpose of education, and one
destined to make rapid headway, began to be advanced. This theory had
already made marked progress, as we shall see, in the New England
Colonies, and had also found expression, as we shall also see in a later
chapter, in the organizing work of Frederick the Great in Prussia. It was
from the French political philosophers of the eighteenth century, though,
that its clearest definition came. They now advanced the idea that schools
were essentially civil affairs, the purpose of which should be to promote
the everyday interests of society and the welfare of the State, rather
than the welfare of the Church, and to prepare for a life here rather than
a life hereafter.
After about 1750 a critical and reformatory pedagogy rapidly began to take
shape in France, and the second half of the eighteenth century became a
period of criticism and discontent and reconstruction in education, as
well as in politics and religion.
This criticism and discontent in France was greatly stimulated by the
decline in character and influence of the Jesuit schools. Unwilling to
change their instruction to meet the needs of a changing society, their
schools had become formal in character (R. 146), and were now engaged
chiefly in stilling thinking rather than in promoting it. In consequence
the schools had fallen into disrepute throughout all France. The Society,
too, in the eighteenth century, came to be a powerful political
organization which strove to dominate the State. So bad had the situation
become by 1762, that the different parliaments in the provinces and in
Paris had formulated complaints against the Jesuits and their schools, [1]
and, in 1764, the king was induced to suppress the Order. [2] This decline
in influence and final suppression of the Society gave rise to some rather
remarkable pedagogical literature, which looked to the creation of a
system of state secondary schools in France to replace those of the
Jesuits.
The outcome was the rise of a new national and individual conception of
the educational purpose. This was destined in time to spread to other
lands and to lead to the rise of complete state school systems, financed
and managed by the State and conducted for state ends, and to the ultimate
divorce of Church and State, in all progressive lands, in the matter of
the education of the young. Teachers trained and certificated by the State
were in time to supplant the nuns and brothers of the religious
congregations in Catholic lands, as well as teachers who served as
assistants to the pastors in Protestant lands and whose chief purpose was
to uphold the teachings and advance the interests of the sect; citizens
were to supplant the ecclesiastic in the supervision of instruction; and
the courses of instruction were to be changed in direction and vastly
broadened in scope to make them minister to the needs of the State rather
than the Church, and to prepare pupils for useful life here rather than
for life in another world.
II. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN FRANCE
[Illustration: FIG. 154. ROUSSEAU (1712-78)]
THE FRENCH POLITICAL THEORISTS. The leading French political theorists of
the two decades between 1760 and 1780 now began to discuss education as in
theory a civil affair, intimately connected with the promotion of the
welfare of the State. The more important of these, and their chief ideas
were:
1. _Rousseau._ The first of the critical and reformatory pedagogical
writers to awaken any large interest and obtain a general hearing was
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The same year (1762) that his _Social Contract_
appeared and attacked the foundations of the old political system (p.
483), his _Émile_ also appeared and attacked with equal vigor the
religious and social theory as to education then prevailing throughout
western Europe. For the stiff and unnatural methods in education, under
which children were dressed and made to behave as adults, [3] the harsh
discipline of the time, and the excessive emphasis on religious
instruction and book education, he preached the substitution of life amid
nature, childish ways and sports, parental love, and an education that
considered the instincts and natural development of children.
Gathering up the political and social ideas of his age as to
ecclesiastical and political despotism; the nature of the social contract;
that the "state of nature" was the ideal one, and the one in which men had
been intended to live; that human duty called for a return to the "state
of nature," whatever that might be; and that the artificiality and
hypocrisy of his age in manners, dress, religion, and education were all
wrong--Rousseau restated his political philosophy in terms of the
education of the boy, Émile. Despite its many exaggerations, much faulty
reasoning, and many imperfections, the book had a tremendous influence
upon Europe in laying bare the limitations and defects and abuses of the
formal and ecclesiastical education of the time. [4] He may be regarded as
the first important writer to sap the foundations of the old system of
religious education, and to lay a basis for a new type of child training
(R. 254). Though Rousseau's enthusiasm took the form of theory run mad,
and the educational plan he proposed was largely impossible, he
nevertheless popularized education, not only in France, but among the
reading public of the progressive European States as well. After he had
written, the old limited and narrow religious education was on the
defensive, and, though time was required, the transition to a more secular
type of education was inevitable as fast as nations and peoples could
shake off the dominance of the Church in state affairs.
[Illustration: FIG. 155 LA CHALOTAIS (1701-83)]
2. _La Chalotais._ The year following the publication of Rousseau's
_Émile_ appeared La Chalotais's _Essai d'éducation nationale_ (1763). René
de la Chalotais, a Solicitor-General for the Parliament of Bretagne, was
one of the notable French parliamentarians of the middle of the eighteenth
century. Unlike Rousseau's highly imaginary, exaggerated, sentimental, and
paradoxical volume, La Chalotais produced a practical and philosophical
discussion of the problem of the education of a people. Declaring firmly
that education was essentially a civil affair; that it was the function of
government to make citizens contented by educating them for their sphere
in society; that citizen and secular teachers should not be excluded for
celibates; [5] that the real purpose of education should be to prepare
citizens for France; that the poor were deserving of education; and that
"the most enlightened people will always have the advantage" in the
struggles of a modern world, La Chalotais produced a work which was warmly
approved by such political philosophers as Voltaire, Diderot, and Turgot,
and which was translated into several European languages (R. 255). Though
far less widely read than Rousseau's _Émile_, it was far more influential
in shaping subsequent political theory and action regarding the relations
of education to the State. Nearly every proposal for educational
legislation during the days of the Revolution went back in idea to this
philosophic discussion of the question by La Chalotais and to the
practical proposals of Rolland and Turgot.
[Illustration: FIG. 156. ROLLAND (1734-93)]
3. _Rolland._ In 1768 Rolland, president of the Parliament of Paris,
presented to his colleagues a report in which he outlined a national
system of education to replace both the schools of the Jesuits and those
of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. La Chalotais had proposed a more
modern system of state schools chiefly to replace those of the Jesuits,
but Rolland went further and proposed the extension of education to all,
and the supervision of all schools by a central council of the Government.
By means of a centralized control, a central university to which the other
universities of France were to be subordinate, a higher normal school to
train teachers for the colleges (secondary schools), and universal
education, [6] Rolland hoped to develop for France a national spirit, a
national character, and a national government and code of laws, and to
bring the youth of the provinces into harmony with the best of all French
ideas.
4. _Turgot._ In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance (p. 481),
and in 1775 he made a series of recommendations to the King in which he
set forth ideas analogous to those of Rolland, and presented an eloquent
plea for the formation of a national council of public instruction and the
establishment of a system of civil and national education for the whole of
France. In closing he wrote:
Your kingdom, Sir, is of this world. Without opposing any obstacle
to the instructions whose object is higher, and which already have
their rules and their expounders, I think I can propose to you nothing
of more advantage to your people than to cause to be given to all your
subjects an instruction which shows them the obligations they owe to
society and to your power to protect them, and the interest they have
in fulfilling those duties for the public good and their own. This
moral and social instruction requires books expressly prepared, by
competition, and with great care, and a schoolmaster in each parish to
teach them to children, along with the art of writing, reading,
counting, measuring, and the principles of mechanics. The study of the
duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of all the other
studies.... There are methods and establishments for training
geometricians, physicists, and painters, but there are none for
training citizens.
5. _Diderot._ In 1776 Diderot, editor with D'Alembert of the
_Encyclopaedia_ (1751-72), prepared, at the request of Catherine II (p.
477), under the title of _Plan of a University_, a complete scheme for the
organization of a state system of public instruction for Russia. Though
the plan was never carried out, it was printed and much discussed in
France, and is important as coming from one of the most influential
Frenchmen of his time. He commends as an example to be followed the work
of the German States in the organization of popular instruction. For
Russia he outlines first a system of people's schools, which shall be free
and obligatory for all, and in which instruction in reading, writing,
arithmetic, morals, civics, and religion shall be taught. "From the Prime
Minister to the lowest peasant," he says, "it is good for every one to
know how to read, write, and count." For the series of secondary schools
to be established, he condemns the usual practice of devoting so much of
the instruction to the humanities and a mediaeval type of logic and
ethics, and urges instead the introduction of instruction in mathematics,
in the modern sciences, literature, and the work of governments. Classical
studies he would confine to the last years of the course. Science,
history, drawing, and music find a place in his scheme.
All this instruction Diderot would place under the supervisory control of
an administrative bureau to be known as the _University of Russia_, at the
head of which should be a statesman, who should exercise control of all
the work of public instruction beneath. Though never carried out in
Russia, the University of France of 1808 is largely an embodiment of the
ideas he proposed in 1776.
LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS TO EMBODY THESE IDEAS. During the quarter of a
century between the publication of Rousseau's _Émile_ and the summoning of
the States-General to reform France (1762-88), the educational as well as
the political ideas of the French reformers had taken deep root with the
thinking classes of the nation. The _cahiers_ of 1789, of all Orders (p.
500), gave evidence of this in their somewhat general demand for the
creation of some form of an educational system for France (R. 252). From
the first days of the Revolution pedagogical literature became plentiful,
and the successive National Assemblies found time, amid the internal
reorganization of France, constitution-making, the troubles with and trial
of the King, and the darkening cloud of foreign intervention, to listen to
reports and addresses on education and to enact a bill for the
organization of a national school system. The more important of these
educational efforts were:
1. _The Constituent Assembly_ (June 17, 1789, to September 30, 1791). In
the Constituent Assembly, into which the States-General resolved itself,
June 17, 1789, and which continued until after it had framed the
constitution of 1791, two notable addresses and one notable report on the
organization of education were made. The Count de Mirabeau, a nobleman
turned against his class and elected to the States-General as a
representative of the Third Estate, made addresses on the "Organization of
a Teaching Body" and on the "Organization of a National _Lycée_." In the
first he advocated the establishment of primary schools throughout France.
In the second he proposed the establishment of colleges of literature in
each department, with a National _Lycée_ at Paris for higher (university)
education, and to contain the essentials of a national normal school or
teachers' college as well.
[Illustration: FIG. 157 COUNT DE MIRABEAU (1749-91)]
[Illustration: FIG. 158. TALLEYRAND (1758-1838)]
Mirabeau's proposals represent rather a transition in thinking from the
old to the new, but the Report of Talleyrand (1791), former Bishop of
Autun, now turned revolutionist, embodies the full culmination of
revolutionary educational thought. Public instruction he termed "a power
which embraces everything, from the games of infancy to the most imposing
fêtes of the Nation." He definitely proposed the organization of a
complete state system of public instruction for France, to consist of a
primary school in every canton (community, district), open to the children
of peasants and workmen--classes heretofore unprovided with education; a
secondary school in every department (county); a series of special schools
in the chief French cities, to prepare for the professions; and a National
Institute, or University, to be located at Paris. Inspired by
Montesquieu's principle that "the laws of education ought to be relative
to the principles of government," Talleyrand proposed a bill designed to
give effect to the provisions of the Constitution of 1791 relating to
education (p. 501), and to provide an education for the people of France
who were now to exercise, through elected representatives, the legislative
power for France. Instruction he held to be the necessary counterpoise of
liberty, and every citizen was to be taught to know, obey, love, and
protect the new constitution. Political, social, and personal morality
were to take the place of religion in the cantonal schools, which were to
be free and equally open to all. As the Constituent Assembly was succeeded
by the newly elected Legislative Assembly within three weeks after
Talleyrand submitted his Report, no action was taken on his bill.
[Illustration: FIG. 159. CONDORCET (1743-94)]
2. _The Legislative Assembly_ (October 1, 1791, to September 21, 1792).
This new legislative body was far more radical in character than its
predecessor, and far more radical than was the sentiment of France at the
time. Among other acts it abolished (1792) the old universities and
confiscated (1793) their property to the State. To it was submitted (April
20-21, 1792) by the mathematician, philosopher, and revolutionist, Marquis
de Condorcet, [7] on behalf of the Committee on Public Instruction and as
a measure of reconstruction, a Report and draft of a Law for the
organization of a complete democratic system of public instruction for
France (R. 256). It provided for the organizing of a primary school for
every four hundred inhabitants, in which each individual was "to be taught
to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the plenitude of his own rights,"
and where principles would be taught, calculated to "insure the
perpetuation of liberty and equality." The bill also provided, for the
first time, for the organization of higher primary schools in the
principal towns; colleges (secondary schools) in the chief cities (one for
every four thousand inhabitants); a higher school for each "department";
_Lycées_, or institutions of still higher learning, at nine places in
France; and a National Society of Sciences and Arts to crown the
educational system at Paris. The national system of education he proposed
was to be equally open to women, as well as men, and to be gratuitous
throughout. Teachers for each grade of school were to be prepared in the
school next above. Sunday lectures for workingmen and peasants were to be
given by teachers everywhere. Public morality, political intelligence,
human progress, and the preservation of liberty and equality were the aims
of the instruction. The necessity for education in a constitutional
government he saw clearly. "A free constitution," he writes, "which should
not be correspondent to the universal instruction of citizens, would come
to destruction after a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of
those forms of government which cannot preserve the peace among an
ignorant and corrupt people." Anarchy or despotism he held to be the
future for peoples who become free without being enlightened. He held it
to be a fundamental principle that:
The order of nature includes no distinctions in society beyond those
of education and wealth. To establish among citizens an equality in
fact, and to realize the equality confirmed by law, ought to be the
primary object of national instruction.
The bill proposed by Condorcet, while too ambitious for the France of his
day, was thoroughly sound as a democratic theory of education, and an
accurate prediction of what the nineteenth century brought generally into
existence. Condorcet's Report was discussed, but not acted upon.
[Illustration: FIG. 160. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE
Founded by Article 298 of the Constitution of Year III (1793)]
3. _The National Convention_ (September 21, 1792, to October 26, 1795).
The Convention was also a radical body, deeply interested in the creation
of a system of state schools for the people of France. To higher education
there was for a time marked opposition, though later in its history the
Convention erected a number of important higher technical institutions and
schools, among the most important of which was the Institute of France.
There was also in the Convention marked opposition to all forms of
clerical control of schools. The schools of the Brothers of the Christian
Schools were suppressed by it, in 1792, and all secular and endowed
schools and colleges were abolished and their property confiscated, in
1793. The complete supremacy of the State in all educational matters was
now asserted. Great enthusiasm was manifested for the organization of
state primary schools, which were ordered established in 1793 (R. 258 a),
and in these:
Children of all classes were to receive that first education,
physical, moral, and intellectual, the best adapted to develop in them
republican manners, patriotism, and the love of labor, and to render
them worthy of liberty and equality.
The course of instruction was to include: "to speak, read, and write
correctly the French language; the geography of France; the rights and
duties of men and citizens; [8] the first notions of natural and
familiar objects; the use of numbers, the compass, the level, the
system of weights and measures, the mechanical powers, and the
measurement of time. They are to be taken into the fields and the
workshops where they may see agricultural and mechanical operations
going on, and take part in the same so far as their age will allow."
What a change from the course of instruction in the religious schools just
preceding this period!
[Illustration: FIG. 161. LAKANAL (1762-1845)]
A multiplicity of reports, bills, and decrees, often more or less
contradictory but still embodying ideas advanced by Condorcet and
Talleyrand, now appeared. Whereas the preceding legislative bodies had
considered the subject carefully, but without taking action, the
Convention now acted. The nation, though, was so engrossed by the internal
chaos and foreign aggression that there was neither time nor funds to
carry the decrees into effect.
The most extreme proposal of the period was the bill of Lepelletier le
Saint-Fargeau to create a national system of education modeled closely
after that of ancient Sparta. The best of the proposals probably was the
Lakanal Law, of November 17, 1794, which ordered a school for every one
thousand inhabitants, with special divisions for boys and girls, and which
provided for instruction in:
1. Reading and writing the French language.
2. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Constitution.
3. Lessons on republican morals.
4. The rules of simple calculation and surveying.
5. Lessons in geography and the phenomena of nature.
6. Lessons on heroic actions, and songs of triumph.
Lakanal also carefully prescribed the method of instruction, and advocated
the founding of a national normal school (Latin _norma_; a rule), which
idea the Convention adopted in 1794, the school opening [9] in January,
1795. Supplementing this was the law of February 25, 1795, ordering
central or higher schools established to replace the former colleges, [10]
one for every three hundred thousand of the population, which were to
offer instruction from twelve to eighteen. The course was to include:
12 to 14--Drawing, natural history, ancient and living languages.
14 to 16--Mathematics, natural philosophy, experimental chemistry.
16 to 18--Grammar, literature, history, legislation.
Organized on a soviet principle, each professor declared the equal of
every other, and lacking any effective administration or discipline, these
institutions soon fell into disrepute and were displaced when Napoleon
reorganized secondary education in France.
The law of October 25, 1795, closed the work of the Convention. This made
less important provisions for primary education (R. 258 b) than had
preceding bills, but was the only permanent contribution of this period to
the organization of primary schools. It placed greater emphasis than had
the legislative Assembly on the creation of secondary and higher
institutions (R. 258 a), of more value to the bourgeois class. This bill
of 1795 represents a reaction from the extreme republican ideas of a few
years earlier, and the triumph of the conservative middle-class elements
in the nation over the radical republican elements previously in control.
The Convention also, in the latter part of its history, created a number
of higher technical institutions of importance, which were expressive
alike of the French interest in scientific subjects which arose during the
latter part of the eighteenth century, and of the new French military
needs. Many of these institutions have persisted to the present, so well
have they answered the scientific interests and needs of the nation. A
mere list of the institutions created is all that need be given. These
were:
Museum or Conservatory of Arts (Jan. 16, 1794).
Conservatory of Arts and Trades (Oct. 10, 1794).
New medical schools (_Schools of Health_) ordered (Dec. 4, 1794).
Museum of Natural History (Dec. 11, 1794).
Central Schools to succeed the former Colleges (secondary schools)
(Feb. 25, 1795).
School of Living Oriental Languages (March 30, 1795).
Veterinary Schools (April 21, 1795).
Course in Archaeology, National Library (June 8, 1795).
Bureau of Longitude (June 29, 1795).
Conservatory of Music (Aug. 3, 1795).
The National Library (Oct. 17, 1795).
Museum of Archaeological Monuments (Oct. 20, 1795).
Polytechnic Schools (R. 257);
School of Civil Engineering;
School of Hydrographic Engineers;
and School of Mining (Oct. 22, 1795).
The Convention also adopted the metric system of weights and measures;
enacted laws under which the peasants could acquire title to the lands
they had tilled for so long; and began the unification of the laws of the
different parts of the country into a single set, which later culminated
in the _Code Napoléon_.
4. _The Directory_ (1795-99) _and the Consulate_ (1799-1804). The
Revolution had by this time largely spent itself, the Directory followed,
and in 1799 Napoleon became First Consul and for the next sixteen years
was master of France. The Law of 1795 for primary schools (R. 258 b) was
but feebly administered under the Directory, as foreign wars absorbed the
energies and resources of the Government. Napoleon's chief educational
interest, too, was in opening up opportunities for talent to rise, in
encouraging scientific work and higher specialized institutions, and in
developing schools of a type that would support the kind of government he
had imposed upon France. The secondary and higher schools he established
and promoted cost him money at a time when money was badly needed for
national defense, and primary education was accordingly neglected during
the time he directed the destinies of the nation. His educational
organizations and work we shall refer to again in a later chapter.
The Revolutionary enthusiasts had stated clearly their theory of
republican education, but had failed to establish a permanent state school
system according to their plans. This now became the work of the
nineteenth century. In the meantime, in the new United States of America
the same ideas were taking shape and finding expression, and to the
developments there we next turn.
III. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN AMERICA
WANING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS INTEREST. As early as 1647 Rhode Island Colony
had enacted the first law providing for freedom of religious worship ever
enacted by an English-speaking people, and two years later Maryland
enacted a similar law. Though the Maryland law was later repealed, and a
rigid Church-of-England rule established there, these laws were indicative
of the new spirit arising in the New World. By the beginning of the
eighteenth century a change in attitude toward the old problem of personal
salvation had become evident. Frontier conditions; the gradual rise of a
civil as opposed to a religious form of town government; the rising
interests in trade and shipping; the beginnings of the breakdown of the
old aristocratic traditions and customs transplanted from Europe; the
rising individualism in both Europe and America--these all helped to
weaken the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines.
By 1750 the change in religious thinking in the American Colonies had
become quite marked. [11] Especially was this change evidenced in the
dying-out of the old religious fervor and intolerance, and the breaking-up
of the old religious solidarity. While most of the Colonies continued to
maintain an "established Church," other sects had to be admitted to the
Colony and given freedom of worship. The Puritan monopoly in New England
was broken, as was also that of the Anglican faith in the central
Colonies. The day of the monopoly of any sect in a Colony was over. New
secular interests began to take the place of religion as the chief topic
of thought and conversation, and secular books began to dispute the
earlier predominance of the Bible. A few colonial newspapers had begun
(seven by 1750), and these became expressive of the new colony interests.
CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOLS. These changes in attitude toward the
old religious problems materially affected both the support and the
character of the education provided in the Colonies. The Law of 1647,
requiring the maintenance of the Latin grammar schools, had been found to
be increasingly difficult of enforcement, not only in Massachusetts, but
in all the other New England Colonies which had followed the Massachusetts
example. With the changing attitude of the people, which had become
clearly manifest by 1750, the demand for relief from the maintenance of
this school in favor of a more practical and less aristocratic type of
higher school, if higher school were needed at all, became marked. By the
close of the colonial period the new American Academy (p. 463), with its
more practical studies, had begun to supersede the old Latin grammar
school.
The elementary school experienced something of the same difficulties. Many
of the parochial schools died out, while others declined in character and
importance. In Church-of-England Colonies all elementary education was
left to private initiative and philanthropic and religious effort (p.
373). In the southern Colonies the classes in society and the character of
the plantation life made common schools impossible, and the feeling of any
need for elementary schools almost entirely died out. In New England the
eighteenth century was a continual struggle on the one hand to prevent the
original religious town school from disappearing, and on the other to
establish in its place a series of scattered and inferior district
schools, while either church or town support and tuition fees became ever
harder to obtain. Among other changes of importance the reading school and
the writing school now became definitely united, in all the smaller places
and in the rural districts, as a measure of economy, to form the American
school of the "3 Rs." New textbooks, too, containing less of the gloomily
religious than the _New England Primer_, and secular rather than religious
in character (p. 443), appeared after 1750 and began to be used in the
schools. After 1750, too, it was increasingly evident that the old
religious enthusiasm for schools had largely died out; that European
traditions and ways and types of schools no longer completely satisfied;
and that the period of the transplanting of European educational ideas and
schools and types of instruction was coming to an end. Instead, the
evolution of a public or state school out of the original religious
school, and the beginnings of the evolution of distinctly American types
of schools, better adapted to American needs, became increasingly evident
in the Colonies as the eighteenth century progressed.
RISE OF THE CIVIL OF STATE SCHOOL. As has been stated earlier, the school
everywhere in America arose as a child of the Church. In the Middle
Colonies, where the parochial-school conception of education was the
prevailing type, the school remained under church control until after the
foundation of our national government. In New England, though--and the New
England evolution in time became the prevailing American practice--the
school passed through a very interesting development during colonial
times.
As we have seen (p. 360), each little New England town was originally
established as a little religious republic, with the Church in complete
control. The governing authorities for church and civil affairs were much
the same. When acting as church officers they were known as Elders and
Deacons; when acting as civil or town officers they were known as
Selectmen. The State, as represented in the colony legislature or the town
meeting, was clearly the servant of the Church, and existed in large part
for religious ends. It was the State acting as the servant of the Church
which enacted the Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 (Rs. 190, 19l),
requiring the towns to maintain schools for religious ends. Now, so close
was the connection between the religious town, which controlled church
affairs, and the civil town, which looked after roads, fences, taxes, and
defense--the constituency of both being one and the same, and the meetings
of both being held at first in the meeting-house--that when the schools
were established the colony legislature placed them under the civil--as
involving taxes, and being a public service--rather than under the
religious town. The interests of one were the interests of both, and,
being the same in constituency and territorial boundaries, there seemed no
occasion for friction or fear. From this religious beginning the civil
school and the civil school-town and school-township, with all their
elaborate school administrative machinery, were later evolved.
The erection of a town hall, separate from the meeting-house, was a first
step in the process. School affairs now were discussed at the town hall,
instead of in the church. The town authorities now appointed committees to
locate and build schoolhouses, select and certificate the teachers, and
visit and examine the school. Next a regular town school committee was
provided for. To this was given the management of the town school, and
town taxes, instead of church taxes, were voted for buildings and
maintenance. The minister continued to certificate the grammar-school
master until the close of the colonial period, but the power to
certificate the elementary-school teachers passed to the town authorities
early in the eighteenth century. By the close of the century all that the
minister--as the only surviving representative of church control--had left
to him was the right to accompany the town authorities in the visitation
of schools. Thus gradually but certainly did the earlier religious school
in America pass out from under the control of the Church and come under
the control of the State. When our national government and the different
state governments were established, the States were ready to accept, in
principle at least, the theory gradually worked out in New England that
schools are state institutions, and should be under the control of the
State.
THE EARLY STATE CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS. In framing the Federal
Constitution, in 1787, education, then being regarded largely as a local
matter, was left to the States to handle as they saw fit; so we turn to
the early state constitutions and laws to see how far the new American
States had, by the close of the eighteenth century, advanced toward the
conception of education as an affair of the State.
During the period from the Declaration of Independence to the close of the
eighteenth century (1776-1800), all the States, except Rhode Island and
Connecticut, which considered their colonial charters as satisfactory,
formulated and adopted new state constitutions. Three new States--Vermont,
Kentucky, and Tennessee--were admitted to the Union before 1800, and these
framed constitutions also. Of the sixteen States forming the Union by
1800, seven had incorporated into their constitutions a clause setting
forth the State's duty in the matter of education (R. 259). As in the
earlier period of American education, it was Calvinistic New England which
incorporated into the constitutions the best provisions regarding
learning. In the parochial-school central Colonies the mention was much
less emphatic, while the old Anglican-Church Colonies and the new States
of Kentucky and Tennessee remained silent on the subject. Massachusetts,
Vermont, and New Hampshire, in particular, incorporated strong sections
directing the encouragement of learning and virtue, the protection and
fostering of school societies, and the establishment of schools. The
Massachusetts provision, afterwards copied by New Hampshire, is so
explicit in the matter of state duty that it is worth quoting in full.
Chap. V, Sec. 2. Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused
generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the
preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on
spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various
parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it
shall be the duty of the legislatures and magistrates, in all future
periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature
and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the
university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the
towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, by
rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts,
sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the
country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and
general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and
frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good
humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments among the
people.
Though the Federal Constitution made no provision for education or aid to
schools, when the Congress of the Confederation, in 1787, adopted the
Ordinance for the organization and government of the Northwest Territory,
out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin were later carved, it prefixed to this Ordinance the following
significant provision:
Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good
government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of
education shall forever be encouraged [in the States to be formed from
this Territory].
By the time the first State formed from this western territory was ready
to be admitted to the Union (Ohio, 1802), the theory that education is a
function of the State had come to be so thoroughly accepted, in principle
at least, by the new American people that Congress now began a policy,
ever since continued, of aiding each new State to establish and maintain a
state system of schools. To this end Congress gave the new State for this
purpose a generous endowment of national land, and in addition three
townships of land to endow a state university. We also find that the
constitutions of the first States created from this new Northwest
Territory (Ohio, 1802; Indiana, 1816 [12]) contain for the time good
provisions relating to public education. The Ohio provisions (R. 260) are
noteworthy for the strong stand for religious freedom and against any
discrimination in the schools between rich and poor, while the Indiana
provisions (R. 261) are marked for their broad and generous conception of
the scope and purpose of a state system of public instruction.
Many of the older States enacted general state school laws early in their
history (R. 262). Connecticut continued the general school laws of 1700,
1712, and 1714 unchanged, and in 1795 added $1,200,000, derived from land
sales, to a permanent state school endowment fund, created as early as
1750. Vermont enacted a general school law in 1782. Massachusetts and New
Hampshire enacted new general school laws, in 1789, which restated and
legalized the school development of the preceding hundred and fifty years.
All these required the maintenance of schools by the towns for a definite
term each year, ordered taxation, and fixed the school studies required by
the State. New York, in 1784, created an administrative organization,
known as the University of the State of New York, to supervise secondary
and higher education throughout the State--an institution clearly modeled
after the centralizing ideas of Condorcet, Rolland, and Diderot (p. 477),
and very similar to the ideas proposed by Talleyrand and Condorcet and
later (1808) embodied in the University of France by Napoleon. In 1795 New
York also provided for a state system of elementary education. Georgia
created a state system of academies, as early as 1783. Delaware created a
state school fund, in 1796, and Virginia enacted an optional school law
the same year. North Carolina created a state university, as early as
1795.
THE NEW POLITICAL MOTIVE FOR SCHOOLS. We thus see, in the new United
States, the theories of the French revolutionary thinkers and statesmen
actually being realized in practice. The constitutional provisions, and
even the legislation, often were in advance of what the States,
impoverished as they were by the War of Independence, could at once carry
out, but they mark the evolution in America of a clearly defined state
theory as to education, and the recognition of a need for general
education in a government whose actions were so largely influenced by the
force of public opinion. The Federal Constitution had extended the right
to vote for national officers to all, and the older States soon began to
remove their earlier property qualifications for voting and to extend
general manhood suffrage to all citizens.
This new development in government by the people, which meant the passing
of the rule of a propertied and educated class and the establishment of a
real democracy, caused the leading American statesmen to turn early to
general education as a necessity for republican safety. In his Farewell
Address to the American people, written in 1796, Washington said: