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CHAPTER and privileges of that institution were transferred by act of Assembly to the University of Pennsylvania, a new cor1779. poration erected and endowed by the Legislature. After the triumph of the anti-constitutional, or, as they called themselves, the Republican party, this act of transfer was repealed, and for some years both institutions went on together; but they were reunited again in 1791. Dickinson College, at Carlisle, was incorporated in 1783, and Franklin College, at Lancaster, in 1787. The latter has ceased to exist.

Jefferson procured the abolition of the two professorships of divinity, and a third for the Greek and Latin languages, in the College of William and Mary, and the substitution for them of professorships of anatomy, medicine, and chemistry; law and police; and modern languages. But his attempt to introduce a system of common schools did not succeed. An establishment for education in the district of Kentucky, endowed with confiscated lands, was incorporated in 1783 by the name of the Transylvania Seminary; the same year the Hampden Sidney Academy, established by the Presbyterians in 1774, received a charter as a college.

The Constitution of Massachusetts dignified the college at Cambridge with the title of University, and guaranteed its property and privileges. A medical school was added to it in 1782. The same Constitution charged upon the Legislature to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences," especially the public schools and grammar schools in the towns." These town schools, and the same was the case in New Hampshire and Connecticut, and also with the county schools of Maryland, were continued on their old colonial footing. It was only these four states that could boast any thing like a system of public education, and many years elapsed before their example was imitated.

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The project of a college for Maryland, delayed by the CHAPTER state of public affairs and by disputes between the inhabitants of the eastern and western shores as to its site, was 1782. presently taken in hand by the Assembly, an act being passed for erecting the county school at Chester, in Kent county, into Washington College," in honorable and perpetual memory of his Excellency General Washington, the illustrious and virtuous commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States." By a subsequent act, a per- 1784. petual grant was made to this college of £1250, current money ($4166 25), annually, to be paid out of marriage, tavern, and peddlers' licenses, and fines and forfeitures accruing on the eastern shore. By another act of the same session, provision was made for establishing another college for the western shore at Annapolis, to be called St. John's, to which was granted a similar endowment of £1750 ($5832 75), annually, the two colleges to constitute together the University of Maryland. The college of St. John's is still in existence; that of Washington has disappeared, as has also the "perpetual grant" voted by the Assembly.

Through the procurement of Hamilton, the New York Assembly presently passed an act erecting a board of twen- 1787. ty-one members, called "Regents of the University of the State of New York," to which were intrusted the visitation and oversight of all the schools and colleges that were or might be established in the state-a board afterward imitated in France, and which still continues to exist.

Few matters of municipal law have a more direct bearing upon politics than the descent of landed property. Upon this point all the state constitutions were silent except that of Georgia, which prohibited entails, and provided for the equal distribution among all the children,

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CHAPTER or other heirs in equal degree, of the landed as well as personal property of intestates. By the law, as it stood at the period of the Revolution, in New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, the Mosaic rule prevailed, providing, indeed, for a distribution among the children, but giving to the eldest son a double share. In New York and the southern colonies, the English system of primogeniture was in force. But the example of Georgia was soon imitated. North Carolina adopted the rule of equal distribution in 1784; Virginia followed in 1785; New York and Maryland in 1786; and South Carolina in 1791. In 1789 the Legislatures of New Hampshire and Massachusetts deprived the eldest son of his double share; Connecticut did the same in 1792; Pennsylvania and Delaware in 1794; and Rhode Island in 1796. Entails also were every where done away with, or the means of cutting them off made easy.

In the late crown colonies the royal quit-rents were abolished. The states assumed the ownership of all ungranted lands within their limits, or, in case those lands were occupied by Indians, the exclusive right of pre-emption. In Pennsylvania, by an act of Assembly of 1779, all the proprietary claim of the Penn family to ungranted lands, or to quit-rents, was vested in the state, reserving, however, to the late proprietaries, all their private prop erty, including the lands heretofore set out and appropriated as proprietary tenths or manors, with the quit-rents accruing therefrom. The Assembly also, as a manifestation of "their liberality and remembrance of the enterprising spirit which distinguished the founder of Pennsylvania," granted to his heirs and representatives, late proprietaries of the province, the handsome sum of £130,000 sterling, $524,000, payable in installments, to commence one year after the peace. Besides the amount thus vot

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ed and faithfully paid, the Penns received a large in- CHAPTER demnity, also, from the British government.

So far as American indemnity was concerned, Henry Harford, the infant proprietary of Maryland, was less lucky. In 1780, the Legislature of that state abolished. the quit-rents, and declared the proprietary estates forfeited; nor was any attention ever paid to the claim for indemnity subsequently set up. Harford's illegitimate birth, and the circumstance that he held by will and not by descent, disinclined the Marylanders to regard him as the representative of the Calverts. On the expiration of Lee's term of office, William Paca was elected governor of 1782. Maryland.

Most of the peculiarities in the several state governments as first established can be traced back to colonial times. There were some, however, purely theoretical in their origin, which, though since abandoned, deserve to be noticed. In Pennsylvania, two persons from each county were to be chosen every seven years to act as a "Council of Censors," with power to investigate all breaches of the Constitution, to send for persons and papers, to pass censures, and ordain impeachments. It was also provided that no person should be a member of Assembly more than four years in seven. The Constitution of New York established a "Council of Revision," consisting of the governor, chancellor, and judges of the Supreme Court, to which were to be submitted all bills. about to pass into laws. If objected to by this council, a majority of two thirds in both branches of the Legislature was required to pass them. The same Constitution provided for a "Council of Appointment," to consist of sixteen senators, to be annually selected by the Assembly, four from each of the four senate districts into which the state was divided. All nominations to office made

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CHAPTER by the governor required the sanction of this council. By the Constitution of Georgia, all mechanics, even though destitute of pecuniary qualification, were entitled to vote by virtue of their trades. All persons privileged to vote, and failing to do so, were subject to a penalty of £5- -a provision borrowed, indeed, from the colonial Legislatures of Maryland and Virginia, but specially intended to oper ate, it is probable, on the disaffected, so numerous in that state.

It is apparent from this review that the Revolution made no sudden nor violent change in the laws or political institutions of America beyond casting off the su perintending power of the mother country; and even that power, always limited, was replaced to a great extent by the authority of Congress.

The most marked peculiarity of the Revolution was the public recognition of the theory of the equal rights of man-a theory set forth in the Declaration of colonial rights made by the first Congress at Philadelphia; solemnly reiterated in the Declaration of Independence; and expressly or tacitly recognized as the foundation principle of all the new governments. But this principle, brought forward for a special purpose, encountered in existing prejudices and institutions many serious and even formidable obstacles to its general application, giving rise to several striking political anomalies. Some of these anomalies have been already pointed out; the most startling of all was domestic slavery, an institution inconsistent not only with the equal rights of man, but even with the law of England, as solemnly decided in the case of Somersett four years before the Declaration of Independence; an institution, therefore, which the colonial Legislatures and courts had no capacity to legalize, but which, at the commencement of the struggle with the