James Hamilton, who was born in 1769, and was at first occupied in mercantile pursuits, has himself left a record of the origin and reception from his “History of the Hamiltonian System,” published in 1829, that he got the idea of dispensing with the use of grammar or dictionary from a French émigré at Hamburg in 1798. He did not, however, put the plan into execution until 1815, and then more by accident than by deliberate intent; for having one to the United States with the purpose of becoming a manufacturer of potash, and having actually set out on horseback from New York to proceed to the farm which he had taken, he suddenly changed his mind, rode back to New York, and finding himself in need of employment to gain a living, took to education as a pis aller, adopting as his method the system which he had been turning over in his mind during the seventeen preceding years.
Henry S. Salt
The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1888, pp. 568-577
Download: The “Hamiltonian System” of Education (pdf)
More by Henry Salt
- Socialism and Literature, The New Review, January 1891
- What Teachers Can Do, The Animals’ Friend, 1986-87
- Classics and Modern Subjects, Time, July 1882