The compilers of the First Book of Discipline paid particular attention to the state of education. They required that a school should be erected in every parish, for the instruction of youth in the principles of religion, grammar, and the Latin tongue. They proposed that a college should be erected in every “notable town,” in which logic and rhetoric should be taught, along with the learned languages. They seem to have had it in their eye to revive the system adopted by some of the ancient republics, in which the youth were considered as the property of the public rather than of their parents, by obliging the nobility and gentry to educate their children, and by providing, at the public expense, for the education of the children of the poor who discovered talents for learning. Their regulations for the three national universities discover an enlightened regard to the interests of literature, and may suggest hints which deserve attention in the present age.[17] If these were not reduced to practice, the blame cannot be imputed to the reformed ministers, but to the nobility and gentry whose avarice defeated the execution of their plans. To carry these important measures into effect, permanent funds were requisite; and for these it was natural to look to the patrimony of the church. The hierarchy had been abolished, and the popish clergy excluded from all religious services, by the alterations {11} which the parliament had introduced; and, whatever provision it was proper to allot for the dismissed incumbents during life, it was unreasonable that they should continue to enjoy those emoluments which were attached to offices for which they had been found totally unfit. No successors could be appointed to them; and there was not any individual, or class of men in the nation, who could justly claim a title to the rents of their benefices. The compilers of the Book of Discipline, therefore, proposed that the patrimony of the church should be appropriated, in the first instance, to the support of the new ecclesiastical establishment. Under this head they included the ministry, the schools, and the poor. For the ministers they required that such “honest provision” should be made, as would give “neither occasion of solicitude, neither yet of insolencie and wantonnesse.” In ordinary cases, they thought that forty bolls of meal, and twenty‑six bolls of malt, with a reasonable sum of money, to purchase other necessary articles of provision for his family, was an adequate stipend for a minister. To enable superintendents to defray the extraordinary expenses of travelling in the discharge of their duty, six chalders of bear, nine chalders of meal, three chalders of oats, and six hundred merks in money, were thought necessary as an annual stipend. The salaries of professors were fixed from one to two hundred pounds; and the mode of supporting the poor was left undetermined, until means should be used to suppress “stubborne and idle beggars,”