towns with very great advantage. The parents in such cases have been ordered by the magistrates to pay what was for them a considerable sum per week toward the maintenance of their children, the orders being seldom for less than 35. per week, and very generally for 5s. per week. Parents who have been guilty of habitual neglect being called upon to pay in this manner during a few weeks, have been very careful when their children were allowed to go home again on license, not to get the licenses revoked. but on the contrary to take such care of them as would insure the licenses being renewed. It is reported that 83 per cent. of the children thus dealt with have become regular attendants at school."

The increase in average attendance in Manchester, from 1871 to 1882, was 66 per cent., while the increase in population was only 2.2 per cent. The following is a comparative table:

The annual cost of compulsion for the first five years, for each child in average attendance, was Is. 7d. in London, and Is. 2d. in Glasgow. No doubt quite a large number of pupils went voluntarily into the schools when, under the Act, accommodation was offered in the new Board schools; but, making all proper allowance for this, the reports show that the great portion of the large per cents. of increase was due solely to the healthful stimulus of the compulsory law and its efficient servants. The foregoing facts prove conclusively that the compulsory system can be worked with very little friction or expense when wise methods are applied by wise and philanthropic officers.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN CONNECTICUT.

BY HENRY E, SAWYER.

In the territory now embraced within the limits of Connecticut, the public-school system is coeval with civilization.

It was late in the autumn of 1635 when the choice spirits who settled Hartford, after their long tramp through the woods from Boston, built their first log-house on the site of the present beautiful city. No records of the public acts of the little colony during the first few years of its existence are to be found, but the records for 1642, seven years after the settlement, show that an appropriation of £30 was made to "the school,"-not as a new thing then first established, but as a well-recognized matter of public concern, to be provided for as necessarily as roads, military defenses, and institutions of worship. In 1643 the town meeting ordered,

"That Mr. Andrews should teach the children in the school one year next ensuing from the 25th of March, 1643, and that he should have for his pains £16; and therefore the Townsmen (selectmen) shall go and enquire who will engage themselves to send their children; and all that do so shall pay for one quarter at the least, and for more if they do send them, after the proportion of 20s. the year, and if they do go any weeks more than an even quarter they shall pay 6d. a week; and if any who send their children are not able to pay for their teaching, they shall give notice of it to the Townsmen and they shall pay for it at the Town's charge; and Mr. Andrews shall keep the account between the children's schooling and himself and send notice of the time of payment and demand it; and if his wages do not come in the Townsmen must collect and pay it, or if the engagements come not to £16, then they shall pay what is wanting at the Town's charge."

This vote is copied in full because it contains the essential elements of the public-school system of Connecticut for one hundred and fifty years. It will be referred to further on.

In 1648 an appropriation was made by the town, and a committee chosen, for buying or "building a house for a school-house."

Other towns in the Connecticut colony generally followed the example of Hartford in supporting schools; for instance, in Wethersfield, in 1658,—

"It was ordered by the town that Mr. Thomas Lord should be schoolmaster for the year ensuing, and to have £25 for the year, and also the use of the house lot and the use of the meadow as formerly; and the £25 is to be raised,—of the children 8s. per head of such as come to school, and the remainder by rate of all the inhabitants made by the lists of estates."

In 1650 the General Court enacted a body of laws for the government of the Commonwealth. This "code of 1650," as it is generally called, comprised a compilation of the laws passed by the General Court up to that date, and also many enactments suggested by the practices and votes of different towns, or borrowed from the statutes of Massachusetts. Under the titles "Schools" and "Children," it contains the following, among other important and stringent provisions :

"SCHOOLS."

"It being one chief project of that old deluder Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading them from the use of tongues, so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded with false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers; and that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors; It is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof, that every township within this jurisdiction after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general by the way of supply, as the major part of those who order the prudentials of the town shall appoint; provided, that those sending their children be not oppressed by paying more than they can have them taught for in other towns."

"And it is further ordered, That where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a Grammar school, the masters thereof being able to instruct youths so far as they may be fitted for the university, and if any town shall neglect the performance hereof above one year, then every such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the next such school till they shall perform this order."

"CHILDREN."

"Forasmuch as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any commonwealth, and whereas many parents and masters are too indulgent and negligent of their duty in that kind;—It is therefore ordered by this court and authority thereof, That the selectmen of every town in the several precincts and quarters where they dwell, shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors, to see, first, that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families as not to endeavor to teach, by themselves or others, their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue and knowledge of the capital laws, upon penalty of 20s. for each neglect therein."

These provisions for schools and education underwent only trifling alterations until the revision of the school laws in 1801, a centuryand-a-half after this enactment.

New Haven was settled in 1638, and until its union with Connecticut in 1665 it had a distinct and almost absolutely independent gov

ernment. The records of this remarkable colony show that in 1639 one Thomas Fugill was ordered by the court "to keep Charles Higginson, an indentured apprentice, at school for one year; or else to advantage him as much in his education as a year's learning comes to." Thus it appears that in the very infancy of the colony a school was in existence and education was compulsory.

In 1644 it was ordered that a free school be set up, and about the same time a public grammar, or as it would now be called, high school, was established. Says the Hon. Henry Barnard, from whose writings a large part of the material of this sketch is derived:

"It is due to historical truth to ascribe to the early, enlightened, and persevering labors of Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport the credit of establishing in New Haven, before it ceased to be an independent colony, a system of public education at that time without a parallel in any part of the world, and not surpassed in its universal application to all classes, rich and poor, at any period in the subsequent history of the State."

The distinguishing characteristics of this system seem to have been, first, that the schools for elementary instruction were absolutely free; second, that parents and masters were required by law to see that children under their charge received a certain amount of instruction,-in other words, education was compulsory; and, third, that provision was made by law for higher education in part, if not entirely, at the public expense.

At the union of the colonies in 1665, the laws of Connecticut superseded those of New Haven. The schools of New Haven colony lost their chief glory,—that of absolute freedom. For two hundred years, until the passage of the free-school law in 1868, the towns in Connecticut were not required to maintain schools which should be free to any except those who either were, or claimed to be, too poor to pay tuition-fees collected under the name of a "rate-bill."

In 1672 it was "ordered that in every county," there were then four in the State,-"there shall be set up and kept a graded school for the use of the county, the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for college," and in 1690, stimulated perhaps by the bequests of Gov. Edward Hopkins, the Court endeavored to make the county high schools in Hartford and New Haven free. In 1690, also, the law requiring the education of children was made more stringent. The grand-jurymen in each town were required to visit each family suspected of neglecting this order, "and if they find any children or servants not taught as their years are capable of, they shall return the names of the parents or masters of said children to the next common court, where the said parents or

masters shall be fined twenty shillings for each child or servant whose teaching is thus neglected."

At the close of the seventeenth century the principal characteristics of the public-school system of Connecticut were the following:

1. Every town containing more than seventy families was required to maintain a school for eleven months each year, and every town of fewer families to maintain one for at least six months in each year.

2. A grammar school to prepare boys for college was required to be kept in the chief town of each of the four counties, and those in Hartford and New Haven were to be free.

3. The common schools were not free, but were supported in part by the tuition-fees of such as were able to pay, and in part by a tax of forty shillings on every thousand pounds of the lists of estates, which was collected in every town with the annual State tax, and was payable proportionally to those towns only which should keep their schools according to law.

4. The schools were taught by masters, the school-mistress appearing rarely, if at all, at this period.

5. The unit in school-management was the town. There was as yet no division of towns into school-districts, no recognition of school societies or of ecclesiastical parishes, in connection with school affairs. The school-district is not a part of the original Connecticut or New England plan of organization for public schools.

6. Education was compulsory. Parents and masters were required by law to send children to school, and were punishable by heavy fines for neglect.

Most of the laws passed by Connecticut in reference to education during the eighteenth century had for their object the more complete and efficient advancement of the public-school system as it existed in the year 1701, and not the introduction of radical changes into the system itself. Three important changes, however, were introduced.

In 1714 the General Assembly ordered the civil authority and selectmen in every town to inspect the schools each quarter, to inquire into the qualifications and diligence of the masters and the proficiency of the children, to give such directions as they should find needful to render the schools most serviceable to the increase of that knowledge, civility, and religion which was "designed in erecting them," and to report to the Assembly concerning any disorders or misapplication. of the public money. The schools having been established mainly for the increase of religion, the inspection and supervision of them had, from the first, been universally recognized as a regular part of the parochial duty of the clergy, and it continued for many years. longer to be so regarded.