In a report to the English King, Sir William Berkeley wrote as governor of Virginia in 1671: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both."
Governor Berkeley's sentiments, expressed by him in turgid rhetoric, were held in his day by most men in authority, but that did not prevent the planting of little schoolhouses here and there, and men of much vision and little property bequeathed their possessions for maintaining them. Many a school had its origin in a bequest comprising a few milch kine, a horse or two, or a crop of tobacco; in some instances, slaves. From such beginnings, with such endowments, was evolved three hundred years ago the public system of education which today prodigally promises, though it but niggardly realizes, sixteen years of schooling for every boy and girl in the land.
If the span of years needed for the development of the free library system has been much shorter, the hostile attitude of influential men and the privations that attended pioneer efforts were no less marked. As recently as 1889 the writer of an article in the _North American Review_ labeled his attack: "Are public libraries public blessings?" and answered his own question in no uncertain negative. "Not only have the public libraries, as a whole, failed to reach their proper aim of giving the means of education to the people," he protested, "but they have gone aside from their true path to furnish amusement, and that in part of a pernicious character, chiefly to the young." And he added: "I might have mentioned other possible dangers, such as the power of the directors of any library to make it a propaganda of any delusive _ism_ or doctrine subversive of morality, society or government; but I prefer to rest my case here."
And it was somewhat later than this that the pages of the _Century_ gave space to correspondence in opposition to the establishment of a public library system for the city of New York.
These were but echoes of earlier antagonisms.
For the documentary material dealing with the beginnings of the public library movement, the searcher must delve within the thousand pages of a portly folio volume issued by the British government sixty years ago. If one possesses patience sufficient to read the immense mass of dry evidence compiled by a parliamentary commission and "presented to both houses of parliament by command of Her Majesty," some interesting facts in library history will be found. A young man of twenty-three, then an underling in the service of the British Museum, afterwards an eminent librarian, was one of the principal witnesses. Edward Edwards had the gift of vision. Half a century before public libraries became the people's universities, as they are today, his prophetic tongue gave utterance to what has since become the keynote of library aims and policies. Badgered by hostile inquisitors, ridiculed by press and politicians, he undeviatingly clung to his views, and he lived to see his prophecy realized.