CHAPTER XVIII

SCHOOLS AND  SCHOOLMASTERS

The Dutch came to America from a country
in which printing was free and books were cheap.
Public schools, for all children to the age of
twelve, sustained by taxation and giving free ele¬
mentary instruction, had existed in most of the
towns from the Middle Ages. There was, besides
these, a large number of Church schools, in which
the young people of the upper classes received in¬
struction in Latin and the humanities. Long be¬
fore England enjoyed the " liberty of unlicensed
printing," for which Milton made seraphic plea,
printers in the Netherlands were busy in free
competition, and books were as common as bread
and cheese. One of the chief elements of success
in the Eighty Y'ears' War against Spain, as later
in the case of Japan and Russia, was the power
of general popular education.

Among the first and very definite provisions
made, when the West India Company was formed,
were those for ministers and schoolmasters, both
of whom were required to show certificates before
they received their appointment. The Domines
must be university graduates, as a rule, though
the instructors need not necessarily be such, but