UNIV OF

MEMORIAL ADDRESS.

CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS, LL. D.,

President of Cornell University.

THE MORRILL LAND GRANT.

It was a remarkable evidence of the confidence and the composure of our federal legislature that in 1862, just twenty-five years ago, they were able to give their thoughts to the framing of that farreaching act, in commemoration of which we are to-day assembled. It was at one of the most anxious, if not one of the darkest periods of our terrible war. The first great organized advance of the federal forces was just coming to a disastrous end. The Peninsula Campaign in which were centered all the nation's hopes had taken time for the most complete preparation in order that no repulse might be possible. Fair Oaks, Gaines Mill, Mechanicsville, Cold Harbor, Malvern Hill,-names that even now send a shudder into thousands of American homes,-had followed in rapid succession, and our baffled army took up its retreat on the second of July, the very day on which, by the signature of the President, the act in which we have now so much interest, became a law. Little did the people think that at the very moment they were watching, with bated breath and tearful eyes for every new sign of success or repulse, there was going forward to completion in the halls of legislation at the National Capitol, a great act of statesmanship which in after years would bring the people together, as we are assembled here to-day.

And yet a great act of statesmanship it was. In the few moments I shall detain you it will be my effort to show that its spirit was conceived in accordance with the best traditions of our country, that its

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provisions were in harmonious accord with the general spirit of the time, and that it was fraught with the means of incalculable advantage to the nation. To these three considerations, then, I briefly invite your attention.

Within the last twenty-five years the policy of rendering national and state aid to educational institutions has sometimes been gravely questioned. It has been asserted that the work of education, in any other than a purely elementary sense, should be left to the care of private benevolence. This, however, was not the doctrine of the fathers. As was so eloquently shown fifty years ago, when the orator selected to represent Harvard, and Amherst, and Williams pleaded the cause of the colleges before the Legislature of Massachusetts, it was the states acting in their organized capacity, that provided for the means of higher education as well as for the common schools.

Look at the facts of that early history. Years before the famous common school law was passed, provision had been made for the founding of a college, by means of a tax levied upon the whole people of the Colony. As Mr. Everett said, scarcely had the feet of the Pilgrims taken hold of Plymouth Rock, when a year's rate of the Colony was levied in order that the higher learning might have a home in the New World. Nor was the child of this parentage left to any such precarious support as might be afforded by private benevolence. The Court Records of Massachusetts in the colonial period are sprinkled over with evidences of the most solicitous care. It was in the days of poverty. The subsistence of the president and the professors or tutors, as they were then called, was immediately dependent on the bounty of the commonwealth. Appropriations for buildings and for lands were from time to time made. The income of the ferry between Boston and Cambridge was appropriated by the General Court to the use of the college. The legislature selected the controlling board. In short, Harvard College was an institution of the government, founded by it, supported by it and controlled by it. Before the days of independence arrived, more than a hundred different statutes had been spread upon the legislative record for the purpose of guiding and assisting this child of the infant state. Even in the constitution of 1780 it was declared forever to be the duty of the legislature to encourage higher learning and especially the University at Cambridge. And it was not until the sons of the college had multiplied and grown rich, that the legisla

ture said to them as late as 1865: you can now care for your benignant mother better than I can, therefore I pension her off and entrust her fortunes to your generous keeping.

The policy of Massachusetts was the policy of Connecticut. Long before Elihu Yale gave the final impulse for the founding of the college which was to bear his name, the General Court had carefully considered the establishment of such an institution. The subject was postponed from time to time, not because there was any question as to the propriety of founding such an institution; but because the population was as yet too sparse and too poor to furnish the pupils for two colleges in New England. And so it was not till more than sixty years had passed after the founding of Harvard that the second New England College was established. But after its establishment its history was much like that of its elder sister. During the whole of the last century, as the first President Dwight has said in his History, it was to the bounty of the Legislature of Connecticut that the support of Yale College was chiefly due. Again and again all other resources failed. It was the legislature that erected old Connecticut Hall and gave to it the name of its benefactor.

Then look at the history of Dartmouth. The college began as a work of charity. Gradually it grew into something more than a secondary school. But during the years of its early growth, it never hesitated to call for aid upon the Legislature of New Hampshire; and its call was seldom heard in vain. It educated many of the sons of Vermont, and in due time it called upon the Green Mountain State for its share of assistance. A cheerful recognition of the obligation was the result. The land of a township was given to the college, and a record of the fact was stamped into the history and upon the map of the state by giving to the town the name of the college president.

What was true of the method that prevailed in New England was also true of the South. William and Mary, the second college established in the Colonies, took its name from the.royal benefactors who made the first large contribution for its support out of the public treasury. The Colony was also taxed in behalf of the institution. A part of the value of every pound of tobacco raised in Virginia had to go into the treasury for the benefit of the college. This continued throughout colonial days. And when Jefferson conceived the plan of the University of Virginia, in some respects the grandest ed

ucational project ever devised in America, though he was inclined to intrust less authority to the government than any other of our forefathers, he endeavored to make the institution as much a part of the educational system of the state as were the common schools themselves.

This method of supporting the colleges, moreover, was not only universal, it was also effectual in that it planted and nourished into maturity colleges of a high order of merit even in the infant days of our national life. Not only were admirable scholars made, but they were made in large numbers. The standards of those days, it is true, were somewhat different from the standards of our days; but one who looks at what was done, while recognizing great differences, will hesitate long before he pronounces them inferior. A recent and eminent superintendent of education in your own state not long since pronounced the opinion that the standards of higher education in colonial days were not simply relatively, but actually higher than the standards of the second half of the nineteenth century. I am not here to corroborate this statement or even to express an opinion on that point. But we may regard it as certain that the schools that could train the men of revolutionary days were efficient and were among the most valuable institutions of colonial time.

And when we pass on from colonial days to the days of the republic, we find that the propriety and the justice of these methods were universally recognized. That first great ordinance which still sheds its benign influence over the Northwest, provided that "Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." And from the day of that benignant provision to the present time, no territory has been organized and no state has been admitted to the Union without provision that a part of its domain shall be set apart for higher learning as well as a part for the common schools.

Thus it is that I hold the Land Grant of 1862 to have been in strict accordance with the best traditions of our educational history. The second part of my thesis is that the Morrill Land Grant was in strict accordance with the spirit of the present time.

We, doubtless, sometimes talk flippantly and unwisely of what we call the spirit of the age. And yet the age in which we live has certain peculiarities which we can hardly go astray in trying to characterize. They are so distinctly marked, indeed they are so generally acknowledged and understood that even to speak of them, subjects one to the charge of dealing with the common-place. But the relation