=Decline of Education in Massachusetts.=--In Massachusetts, on the other hand, efforts for the provision of universal training degenerated during the eighteenth century. The generous support of public education that had been started in 1647 was followed by a period of decline for about a century and a half. The causes of this decadence of local interest in education were rather complicated. In the first place, the complete domination of Calvinism gradually disintegrated and was replaced by a toleration of several creeds. The non-Puritans, who were constantly increasing in numbers, were obliged by the law of 1638 to preserve an outward conformity to the Calvinistic régime under penalty of banishment, but by 1662 a compromise was granted, whereby persons not conforming in every respect might be admitted to all church privileges, except communion, and the persecution of Quakers, Baptists, and other sects was largely abandoned. In 1670 came the successful secession of the Old South Church from the original church of Boston, as the result of a quarrel concerning this very compromise, and within a decade the Baptists were permitted to build a meeting-house in Boston. By 1692 recognition had been largely granted to all Protestant beliefs, and to be a ‘freeman,’ or voter on all colonial questions, it was no longer necessary to be a member of a Puritan church. While every town was still required to support by tax an orthodox pastor, by 1728 the Episcopalians, Quakers, and Baptists were permitted to pay their assessments to their own ministers, and the alliance of the State with a despotic Church, which had made possible the system of public education, was largely broken. [Sidenote: Lowering of intellectual standards.] [Sidenote: Dispersion of population.] [Sidenote: Consequent attempts to evade the school law.]