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Educational institutions.

There has been much controversy as to whether the public school, i. e., the school supported by the public and free to the poor, was first established in New England (Massachusetts) or in New Netherland, with the weight of evidence inclining to the latter. The Boston Latin School seems to be the direct successor of one founded in 1635, the Roxbury Latin School was founded in 1657, the Penn Charter School at Philadelphia in 1698. Governor Berkeley's famous remark made in 1670, that he thanked God there were no free schools in Virginia, is often quoted. The South being thinly settled, efforts to maintain schools were seldom successful. Boys were sent abroad, or were educated by tutors or by the parish clergyman or by lettered sen-ants. In New England a certain amount of education was general and compulsory. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts did something for education in American colonies. The disorders of the Revolutionary period probably caused some falling off in elementary education. The Constitution left the matter to the States. The "Blair Bill," which passed the Senate in 1884 and 1886, proposing to give Federal money to States, in proportion to the number of their illiterates, for education, was defeated in the House.