the land.

Private schools may be founded also by one or more persons, and by them
endowed with funds, for their partial or entire support. In such cases,
the founder, through the money given, has the right to prescribe the
rules by which the school shall be controlled, and also to provide for
the appointment of its managers or trustees through all time. In such
cases, corporate powers are usually granted by the government for the
management of the business. But the chief rights of such an institution
are derived from the founder, and the facilities for their easy exercise
and quiet enjoyment are derived from the state.

Such schools are sometimes, upon a superficial view, supposed to be
public, because they receive pupils upon terms of equality, and no rule
of exclusion exists which does not apply to all. And especially has it
been assumed that a free school thus founded, as the Norwich Free
Academy, which makes no charges for tuition, and is open to all the
inhabitants of the city, is therefore a public school. These
institutions are public in their use, but not in their foundation or
control, and are therefore not public schools. The character of a
school, as of any eleemosynary institution, is derived from the will of
the founder; and when the beneficial founder is an individual, or a
number of individuals less than the whole political organization of
which the individuals are a part, the institution is private, whatever
the rules for its enjoyment may be. To say that a school is a public
school because it receives pupils free of charge for tuition, or because
it receives them upon conditions that are applied alike to all, is to
deny that there are any private schools, for all come within the
definition thus laid down.

Nor is there any good reasoning in the statement that a school is public
because it receives pupils from a large extent of country. Dartmouth
College is a private school, though its pupils come from all the land or
all the world; while the Boston Latin School is a public school; though
it receives those pupils only whose homes are within the limits of the
city. The first is a private school, because it was founded by President
Wheelock, and has been controlled by him and his successors, holding and
governing and enjoying through him, from the first until now; while the
Boston Latin School is a public school, because it was established by
the city of Boston, through the votes of its inhabitants, un