$3,000,000, was left to the university for the establishment of the
graduate school.
A notable feature of the scheme of instruction is the preceptorial (or tutorial) system, introduced in 1905; it somewhat resembles Jowett's method at Balliol College, Oxford; the preceptors, usually young men (many of them domiciled in the dormitories), have “conferences” each with a certain number of students on prescribed reading, especially in the departments of philosophy, history and politics, art and archaeology, and the languages. The preceptorial system has been a great success, and seems to have given the university a greater intellectual vitality. In 1909–1910 the university faculty numbered 169, of whom 51 were preceptors. In the same year there were 1400 students of whom 134 were in the graduate school, 13 in the school of electrical engineering, 521 in the A.B. course, 440 in the Litt.B. and B.S. courses, 203 in the C.E. course, and 89 not in regular courses.
The corporate title of the university is “The Trustees of Princeton University,” and the university is governed by the trustees, of whom the governor of the state of New Jersey is ex officio president. The president of the university is president of the board in the absence of the governor. The Board consists of twenty-five “life trustees,” a self-perpetuating body, two ex officio trustees, and (since 1900) five alumni trustees, elected by the graduates of the university for a five-year term, one each year.
The tuition fee is $160 a year in all undergraduate courses. There are many scholarships and prizes, a fund for the remission of tuition to students of insufficient means, and funds for the assistance of students for the ministry. In July 1909 the assets of the university were $4,749,482, of which $4,168,900 was invested for endowment; of the endowment $3,410,907 was special, $330,445 general, $60,000 historical, $122,643 was for scholarships and $244,905 was for professorships; and in this fiscal year the gifts for current expenses and special purposes amounted to $199,294 and the gifts for endowment to $1,508,283.
The university owes its origin to a movement set on foot by the Synod of Philadelphia in 1739 to establish in the Middle Colonies a college to rank with Harvard and Yale in New England and William and Mary in Virginia. Owing to dissension in the Church, no progress was made until 1746, when the plan was again broached by the synod of New York, recently formed by the secession of the presbytery of New York and the presbytery of New Brunswick, radical (New School) presbyteries of the Synod of Philadelphia. The synod of New York was led by Ebenezer Pemberton (1704–1779), a graduate of Harvard (1721), and Jonathan Dickinson (1688–1747), a graduate of Yale (1706). Together they had attempted to make peace between the conservatism of the presbytery of Philadelphia and the radicalism of the presbytery of New Brunswick. Most of the leaders of the presbytery of New Brunswick had been educated at the Log College, a school with restricted curriculum, situated about 20 m. N.N.E. of Philadelphia, but recently closed. The students of the Log College were almost without exception preparing for the Presbyterian ministry, and on the closing of the Log College, the opportunity was taken by the synod of New York to found a larger and better institution of higher learning, broader in scope and training, and to transfer to the new project the Log College interests. On October 22nd 1746, John Hamilton, acting governor of New Jersey, granted a charter for erecting a college in New Jersey. The college of New Jersey was opened in May 1747 at Elizabeth, New Jersey, with the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson as president. Little was accomplished until 1748, when, on the 14th of September, a second charter was granted to the “trustees of the College of New Jersey,” thirteen in number. The college under the administration of Jonathan Dickinson, held its exercises from the last of May 1747 to the 7th of October 1747, when Dickinson died. Upon the succession of Aaron Burr to the presidency, the school removed to Newark, where the first commencement was held in 1748 and where Burr began the work of organizing the college and its curriculum; but the situation was unsuitable, and in 1752 the trustees voted to remove the college to Princeton, where land was given for the Campus by Nathaniel Fitz Randolph. While funds were being collected in Great Britain, work was begun in Princeton in 1754 on the first college building, which, at Governor Belcher's request, was named Nassau Hall, in honour of King William. A year after the completion of this single college building and the removal of the students to Princeton, Burr died and was succeeded by his father-in-law, Jonathan Edwards, who died after five weeks in office (1758). He was succeeded (1759–1761) by Samuel Davies, and Davies (in 1761–1766) by Samuel Finley (1715–1766). John Witherspoon (q.v.) was president from 1768 until his death in 1794, and more than any of his predecessors influenced the college. The presidents immediately succeeding Witherspoon were: his son-in-law, Samuel Stanhope Smith (1750–1819), who resigned in 1812; Ashbel Green (1762–1848), who resigned in 1822; James Carnahan (1775–1859), who held office for thirty-one years (1823–1854), and in whose presidency there was, in 1846–1852, a department of law in the college; and John Maclean (1800–1886), who was president from 1854 to 1868. Up to the outbreak of the Civil War, the college was largely attended by Southerners, and the Civil War thus dealt it a doubly heavy blow, from which it began to recover under the long presidency (1868–1888) of James McCosh, who, like his successor, Francis Landey Patton (q.v.), president from 1888 to 1902, greatly advanced the material welfare of the college. Fourteen new buildings were erected during Dr McCosh’s administration, and the John C. Green School of Science was established in 1873 by the gift of John Cleve Green; and during Dr Patton’s administration the enrolment of students more than doubled, as did the number of members of the faculty. In October 1896, on the 150th anniversary of its founding, the official name of the College of New Jersey, long popularly displaced by Princeton, was dropped, and the corporation became “The Trustees of Princeton University,” although the institution did not become, in the usual American use of the term, a university, having no professional schools whatever, and only a small post graduate department. On Dr Patton’s resignation in 1902 he was succeeded by Woodrow Wilson (q.v.), the first layman to become president, who introduced the preceptorial system already described.
PRINCIPAL, a person or thing first, or chief in rank or importance, or, more widely, prominent, leading. The Lat. adj.
principalis, first, chief, original, also princely, is formed from
princeps, the first, chief, prince, from primus, first, and capere
to hold. In Late Lat. principal is was used as a substitute for
an Overseer or superintendent, and also for the chief magistrate
of a municipality (Symmachus, Ep. 9, 1). It is a common title
for the head of educational institutions, universities, colleges
and schools. It is thus used of the director, of some of the
heads of newer universities in England, e.g. London and Birmingham,
always so in Scotland, and frequently combined
with the vice-chancellorship. At the university of Oxford
the name occurs twice as the title of the head of a college, viz.
of Brasenose and Jesus. It was always used of the heads of
halls, of which St Edmund Hall alone remains. It is also the
designation used of the head of the newer theological or
denominational colleges, and also of the women’s colleges.
At Cambridge it does not occur. In law, it is used in distinction
from “accessory,” for the person who actually commits the
crime, “principal in the first degree,” or who is present, aiding
and abetting at the commission of the crime,” principal in the
second degree;” and also for the person for whom another
acts by his authority (see Principal and Agent below). Finally
as a shortened form of “principal sum,” “principal money,”
&c., the term is used of the original sum lent or invested upon
which interest is paid, and so, widely of any capital sum, as
opposed to interest or income derived from it.
PRINCIPAL AND AGENT. In law an agent is a person
authorized to do some act or acts in the name of another, who is called his principal. The law regulating the relations of principal and agent has its origin in the law of mandate among the Romans, and in England the spirit of that system of jurisprudence pervades this branch of the law. The law of agency is thus almost alike throughout the whole British Empire, and a branch of the British commercial code, in which it is of great importance that different nations should understand each other’s system, differs only slightly from the law of the rest of Europe.
In a general view of the law of agency it is necessary to have regard to the rights and duties of the principal, the agent, and the public. The agent should not do what he has no authority
