Of these nine ante-revolution Colleges, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton maintain an equally high reputation, while Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, William and Mary and Dartmouth Colleges are more or less about the average standard of American Colleges.
Governor Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, was a graduate of Oxford. He, with other English University colonists, conceived the idea of a College for this, the then youngest of the English colonies. The project of his friend, the Irish Bishop Berkeley, of Cloyne, of founding a College in the Bermudas having failed, he secured £10,000 of the Bishop's funds to aid him in his settlement of the colony. The seed sown by Oglethorpe bore fruit; and while Georgia was still a colony, provision was made for a generous system of education.
D. C. Gilman, Esq. (President of the John Hopkins' University, Baltimore), in his admirable sketch of the growth of education in the United States during the last century, pays a high tribute to the nine Colonial Colleges to which we have referred. He says:—
"These nine Colleges were nurseries of virtue, intelligence, liberality and patriotism, as well as learning; so that when the revolution began, scores of the most enlightened leaders, both in council and upon the field (on both sides) were found among their graduates. The influence of academic culture may be distinctly traced in the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and in the political writings of Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Munroe and many other leading statesmen of the period. A careful student of American politics has remarked that nothing more strikingly indicates the education given at Cambridge than the masterly manner in which different problems of law and government were handled by those who had received their instruction only from that source."[18]
Prof. Charles Sprague Smith, A.M., (of Columbia College) in his essay on The American University, read June, 1887, thus refers to the character of these colonial colleges:—
"In New England the higher system at general education, brought over from Old England, was divided here, as there, into the two studies of the College and the Grammar School; the latter being superceded in quite recent times by the so-called Academy. The curriculum of the American (or Colonial) College was, in the main, modelled upon that of the parent country, special consideration being given to theological science, etc."—Page 13.
A recent American publication on revolutionary topics, thus deals with the question of the superior education of the British colonists who formed the first American Congress:—
"An examination of the Continental Congress, composed as it was of leading men of all the colonies, affords some light upon the topic of popular education at that period. The Congress, whose sessions extended through some ten years, comprised in all some three hundred and fifty members, of whom one-third were graduates of colleges. A recent writer in one of the most intelligent and accurate of American journals has[19] taken pains to collect and array a paragraph of important statistics upon this subject, which we have taken leave to insert here, though without verification, that, however, being hardly necessary for our present purpose.
"There were in the Continental Congress during its existence, 350 members, of these 118, or about one-third of the whole, were graduates from Colleges. Of these, 28 were graduates from the College of New Jersey in Princeton, 23 from Harvard, 23 from Yale, 11 from William and Mary, 8 from the University of Pennsylvania, 4 from Columbia College, 1 from Brown University and 1 from Rutger's College, and 21 were educated in foreign Universities. These 118 graduates were distributed in the Colonies as follows:—New Hampshire had 4 College graduates among her delegates; Massachusetts had 17; Rhode Island had 4 graduates; Connecticut had 18 graduates; New York out of her large delegation had but 8 graduates; New Jersey had 11 graduates; Pennsylvania had 13 graduates; Delaware had 2 graduates; Maryland had 7 graduates; Virginia had 19 graduates; North Carolina had 4 graduates; South Carolina had 7 graduates; Georgia had 5 graduates. We find that Princeton had representatives from 10 of the colonies; Yale from 6; Harvard from 5; the University of Pennsylvania from 3; William and Mary from 2; and Columbia, Brown and Rutger's from 1 each. Fifty-six delegates signed the Declaration of Independence. Of these, 28, or just one-half, were College graduates."
Incidentally, and as illustrative of the influence of college-bred men in the Legislature, Mr. Adams, speaking of the great liberality of South Carolina in founding a college in that State, says:—
"But no State ever made a better investment. During the first part of this century the general accomplishments and political ability of the statesmen of South Carolina were the just pride of the State, and would have been the pride of any State. In forming this high standard of intellectual and political power the influence of the College was immeasurable."—North American Review, January, 1876, pages 215, 216.