"The introduction of an educational system into the New England Colonies may be deemed substantially contemporaneous with their settlement. It was of such a character, too, and so energetically prosecuted, that education suffered little if any deterioration in passing from Old to New England. It was even more on this side than the other side of the ocean.... Thus Common School instruction at least was provided for all. Higher schools, too, had an early beginning. What afterwards was Harvard College was established but six years after the settlement of Boston.... Every town [township] of fifty families was obliged to support a school, and the same general state of facts existed throughout New England. Classical schools followed in regular succession. These were modelled after the Grammar Schools of England, in which the founders of the Colleges had themselves received their first classical training.... As early as 1701, the law of Connecticut required every parent to see that he had no child or apprentice in his household who could not read the Word of God, and 'the good laws of the colony.' The system embraced a High School in every town [township] of seventy families, a Grammar School in the four chief county towns to fit pupils for college, and a College to which the general court [Legislature] made an annual appropriation of £120."--Pages 1-3. Mr. Ten-Brook, speaking of these New England schools, which were afterwards transplanted to each of Western States, says:-- "They were the elements of that noble system out of which has grown the present one, by the natural laws of development," etc.--Page 18. Mr. C. K. Adams, in his interesting paper on State Universities in the _North American Review_ for October, 1875, in speaking of the educational policy of the colonies, "pursued up to the time of the Revolution, says:-- "In general terms it may be stated that, through all the dark periods of our Colonial history, the encouragement of higher education was regarded as one of the great interests of the State. It was no doctrine of the Fathers that higher education was less entitled to the fostering care of the commonwealth than was the education offered by the Common Schools."--Page 374. The "Free School" idea, of which we hear so much as the outgrowth of "modern American civilization and enlightenment," was due to Colonial thought and foresight. It was first broached by Jefferson, three or four years before the treaty with Great Britain was signed by which the United States became a nation. His plan was so comprehensive that we reproduce it here. In a letter to the veteran philosopher, Dr. Priestley, he thus unfolds it:--