[14] Thus, in regard to the chivalrous destruction of tea in Boston harbour, in 1773, an American historian says: "The object of the mother country in imposing a duty of three pence per pound on tea imported by the East India Company into America, while it was _twelve_ pence per pound in England, was mainly to break up the contraband trade of the colonial merchants with Holland and her possessions."... "Sons of the merchants [of Boston] had become rich in the traffic, and a considerable part of the large fortune which Hancock [President of the Insurgent Congress] inherited from his uncle was thus acquired."... "It was fit, then, that Hancock, was ... was respondent in the Admiralty Courts, in suits of the Crown, to recover nearly half a million of dollars, ... should be the first to affix his name to the [declaration of independence] which, if made good, would save him from ruin."...--_Sabine's American Loyalists_, Vol. I. (Boston, 1865), pages 8, 9, 13. So much for the much-valued patriotic act, which was a vast pecuniary gain to Hancock and other contraband tea merchants of Boston. Nor were the British colonists into those early times peculiar in their zeal for the promotion of Education. The Dutch, Swedish, and Irish colonists who settled in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland did their part in his great work, and on the whole did it well, according to the spirit of the times. In 1633, the first schoolmaster opened his school in the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam; and in 1638, the "articles for the colonization and trade of New Netherlands," provided that, "each householder and inhabitant shall bear such tax and public charge as shall hereafter be considered proper for the maintenance of schoolmasters." General Eaton, the United States Commissioner of Education, in his valuable report for 1875, says: "We find, in numerous instances, the civil authorities of these Dutch colonies acknowledging, (1) The duty of educating the young, (2) The care of the qualification of the teacher, (3) Provision for the payment of his services, and (4) The provision of the school-house. When, in 1653, municipal privileges were granted to the New Amsterdam [New York], the support of schools was included." In 1642, the instruction sent to the Governor of New Sweden [Pennsylvania], was "to urge instruction and virtuous education of youth and children." In 1693-6, large numbers of primers, tracts and cathechisms were received from Sweden, for these schools on the Delaware. This was the educational state of the Swedish settlement in what was afterwards known as Pennsylvania, on the arrival of its noble English founder, William Penn. His views on education were well expressed in the following declaration: