After the purchase of 1784 it was discovered that the trouble was likely to arise with the original squatters and the Legislature passed an act entitling those who had made actual settlement prior to 1780, the benefit of pre-emption to their respective possessions. ---------- First Law to Educate Poor Children Signed March 1, 1802 The same earnest solicitude for public education which made itself manifest in the settlement of the New England Colonies in an unusual degree does not run through the early history of Pennsylvania, yet, outside of the Puritan settlements, there was no other colony which paid so much attention as Pennsylvania to the mental training of youth. During the seventeenth century the general character of the province, as regards the intelligence of its people, stood deservedly high. The school-house, with its inevitable concomitant, the printing-press, never at any time ceased to exert its wholesome influence in training up a population which as regards sobriety, thrift, and all the substantial qualities that flow from instructions, has never been surpassed by any other great community. William Penn, who was one of the most accomplished scholars of his time, never wearied in pointing out to the colony the advantages of public education. The Constitution which he proposed for the infant Commonwealth contains the direction that virtue and wisdom must be propagated by educating the youth, and that after ages would have the benefit of the care and prudence of the founders in this respect. It was one of the provisions of the great law of April 25, 1683, that “schools should be established for the education of the young” and those in authority did not long delay in carrying it into practical effect. On December 26, 1683, the subject of education was brought up in the Provincial Council, when it was agreed that there existed a great necessity for a schoolmaster. Accordingly an agreement was entered into with Enoch Flower, who promised that in conducting such an establishment as was needed he would charge only four shillings for teaching English each quarter, six shillings for reading, writing and costing accounts. A scholar who boarded with him would receive his tuition as well as his lodging, meals and washing for £10 a year. This was the first regular English school in Pennsylvania. There had been schools during the ascendancy of the Swedes and the Dutch. The former are known to have maintained schools at Chester and Tinicum as early as 1642, and the Dutch records show that in 1657 Evert Pieterson came over from Holland, and in the capacity of “schoolmaster, comforter of the sick and setter of Psalms,” sought twenty-five pupils.