Such ideas of educational democracy had not appeared in England at the time when education first began to be considered in this country. Mr. Draper[26] notes that there was no school but the Latin school in Boston for thirty-five years after the passage of the so-called compulsory education law of 1647. Nor did the early Massachusetts schools receive all the children of the people. "No boys were received under seven years of age till 1818. No girls of any age were admitted prior to 1789. It was one hundred and forty-two years after the passage of the so-called compulsory school law of 1647 before Boston admitted one girl to her so-called 'free schools,' and it was one hundred and eighty-one years thereafter before girls had facilities equal to those enjoyed by their brothers." On the other hand, New Amsterdam had a professional schoolmaster as early as 1633, and with him popular common school education began in this country. Prior to 1662, there were as many as ten persons licensed to keep private schools or to teach on their own account, and Furman states that young men from both the New England and the Virginia colonies came to New Amsterdam to be educated. Speaking of the movement of 1658, looking to the establishment of a Latin school at New Amsterdam, and of the comment thereon by Mr. George H. Martin, representing the State Board of Education of Massachusetts, Mr. Draper says:-- "Mr. Martin seems to make much of the fact that the petition for the sending over of a Latin master stated that there was no Latin school nearer than Boston, but overlooks the fact that there had previously been a Latin school at New Amsterdam, and also the other fact that there was no school at Plymouth, and none but a Latin school at Boston, and that it received only a few of the brighter boys of the wealthier families, to prepare them for college and the ministry." The earliest laws of the colony show that for the support of schools "each householder and inhabitant should bear such tax and public charge as should be considered proper for their maintenance."[27] The first schoolmaster in Breuckelen made his appearance in 1661, on the 4th day of July, in which year the following petition was presented:-- _To the Right Hon. Director-General and Council of New Netherland:--_