290 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
Connecticut, in 1723, and became one of the outstanding thinkers 
of the time. The University of Oxford conferred upon him, in 
1743, the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and he was soon recog- 
nized as a most learned and distinguished, as well as a liberal, 
thinker. When the college at Philadelphia was projected in 1749, 
Franklin endeavored, but without success, to induce him to take 
charge of the nascent institution. When, a few years later, 
Kings College was planned, in New York, the promoters turned 
to him as the most erudite scholar in the colonies, and he was 
finally persuaded to accept the presidency. In 1754, the first 
year of the college, he constituted the entire faculty, and as his 
salary of £250 was clearly inadequate, he was made assistant 
minister of Trinity Church; at an additional stipend of £150. 
Dr. Johnson had written for his sons compendia of Logic and 
of Ethics, subsequently published in one volume in 1752 for the 
use of the students at the new college in Philadelphia. He was 
from the outset much interested in economic questions and in 
1754 he prepared an advertisement, which was published in the 
papers, addressed “to such parents as have now (or expect to 
have) children prepared to be educated in the College of New 
York.” After descanting on the advantages of a sound moral 
and religious education and adjuring the parents to refrain 
from exhibiting themselves as “examples of impiety or profane- 
ness or of any sort of vice whatsoever,” he proceeded to explain 
his provision for “a serious, virtuous and industrious course of 
life.” It is the design of the college, he tells us, “to instruct and 
perfect the youth in the learned languages, and the arts of reason- 
ing exactly, of writing correctly, and of speaking eloquently.” 
Then follow the arts “of geography, of history, of husbandry, 
commerce and government.” Finally, after adverting to the 
knowledge of nature, he adds the knowledge “of everything use- 
ful for the comfort, the convenience, and the elegance of life, 
in the chief manufactures relating to any of these things.” * 
What was done in order to carry out this comprehensive plan 
we do not know in detail. It is a fact, however, that Mr. Tread- 
well—who had been appointed a few years earlier to teach the 
senior class in “mathematiks and natural phylosophy”’—began his 
instruction in those subjects in 1757. It is possible that, in 
! The advertisement is printed in full in A History of Columbia Univer- 
sity, 1764-1904. New York, 1904, p. 444. 
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