Subsequently from March 1849 to July 1850 he was a member of President Taylor’s cabinet as the first secretary of the newly established department of the interior. He thoroughly organized the department, and in his able annual report advocated the construction by government aid of a railroad to the Pacific Coast. In 1850–1851 he filled the unexpired term of Thomas Corwin in the U.S. Senate, strenuously opposing Clay’s compromise measures and advocating the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He was subsequently a delegate to the Peace Congress in 1861, and was a loyal supporter of President Lincoln’s war policy. He died at Lancaster, Ohio, on the 26th of October 1871.
His daughter was the wife of General William T. Sherman. His son, Hugh Boyle Ewing (1826–1905), served throughout the Civil War in the Federal armies, rising from the rank of colonel (1861) to that of brigadier-general (1862) and brevet major-general (1865), and commanding brigades at Antietam and Vicksburg and a division at Chickamauga; and was minister of the United States to the Netherlands in 1866–1870. Another son, Thomas Ewing (1829–1896), studied at Brown University in 1852–1854 (in 1894, by a special vote, he was placed on the list of graduates in the class of 1856); he was a lawyer and a free-state politician in Kansas in 1857–1861, and was the first chief-justice of the Kansas supreme court (1861–1862). In the Civil War he attained the rank of brigadier-general (March 1863) and received the brevet of major-general (1865). He was subsequently a representative in Congress from Ohio in 1877–1881; and from 1882 to 1896 practised law in New York City, where he was long one of the recognized leaders of the bar.
EXAMINATIONS. The term “examination” (i.e. inspecting,
weighing and testing; from Lat. examen, the tongue of a balance)
is used in the following article to denote a systematic test of
knowledge, and of either special or general capacity or fitness,
carried out under the authority of some public body.
1. History.—The oldest known system of examinations in history is that used in China for the selection of officers for the public service (c. 1115 B.C.), and the periodic tests which they undergo after entry (c. 2200 B.C.). See China; also W. A. P. Martin, The Lore of Cathay (1901), p. 311 et seq.; T. L. Bullock, “Competitive Examinations in China” (Nineteenth Century, July 1894); and Étienne Zi, Pratique des examens littéraires en Chine (Shanghai, 1894). The abolition of this system was announced in 1906, and, as a partial substitute, it was decided to hold an annual examination in Peking of Chinese graduates educated abroad (Times, 22nd of October 1906).
The majority of examinations in western countries are derived from the university examinations of the middle ages. The first universities of Europe consisted of corporations of teachers and of students analogous to the trade gilds and merchant gilds of the time. In the trade gilds there were apprentices, companions, and masters. No one was admitted to mastership until he had served his apprenticeship (q.v.), nor, as a rule, until he had shown that he could accomplish a piece of work to the satisfaction of the gild.
The object of the universities was to teach; and to the three classes established by the gild correspond roughly the scholar, the bachelor or pupil-teacher (see Rashdall i. 209, note 2, and 221, note 5), and the master or doctor (two terms at first equivalent) who, having served his apprenticeship and passed a definite technical test, had received permission to teach. The early universities of Europe, being under the same religious authority and animated by the same philosophy, resembled each other very closely in curriculum and general organization and examinations, and by the authority of the emperor, or of the pope in most cases, the permission to teach granted by one university was valid in all (jus ubicunque docendi).
The earliest university examinations of which a description is available are those in civil and in canon law held at Bologna at a period subsequent to 1219. The student was admitted without examination as bachelor after from four to six years’ study, and after from six to eight years’ study became qualified as a candidate for the doctorate. He might obtain the doctorate in both branches of law in ten years (Rashdall i. 221-222).
The doctoral examination at Bologna in the 13th-14th centuries consisted of two parts—a private examination which was the real test, and a public one of a ceremonial character (conventus). The candidate first took an “oath that he had complied with all the statutable conditions, that he would give no more than the statutable fees or entertainments to the rector himself, the doctor or his fellow-students, and that he would obey the rector.” He was then presented to the archdeacon of Bologna by one or more doctors, who were required to have satisfied themselves of his fitness by private examination. On the morning of the examination, after attending mass, he was assigned by one of the doctors of the assembled college two passages (puncta) in the civil or canon law, which he retired to his house to study, possibly with the assistance of the presenting doctor. Later in the day he gave a lecture on, or exposition of, the prepared passages, and was examined on them by two of the doctors appointed by the college. Other doctors might then put supplementary questions on law arising out of the passages, or might suggest objections to his answers. The vote of the doctors present was taken by ballot, and the fate of the candidate was determined by the majority. The successful candidate, who received the title of licentiate, was, on payment of a heavy fee and other expenses, permitted to proceed to the conventus or final public examination. This consisted in the delivery of a speech and the defence of a thesis on some point of law, selected by the candidate, against opponents selected from among the students. The successful candidate received from the archdeacon the formal “licence to teach” by the authority of the pope in the name of the Trinity, and was invested with the insignia of office. At Bologna, though not at Paris, the “permission to teach” soon became fictitious, only a small number of doctors being allowed to exercise the right of teaching in that university (Rashdall).
In the faculty of arts of Paris, towards the end of the 13th century, the system was already more complicated than at Bologna. The baccalaureate, licentiateship, and mastership formed three distinct degrees. For admission to the baccalaureate a preliminary test or “Responsions” was first required, at which the candidate had to dispute in grammar or logic with a master. The examiners then inspected the certificates (schedulae) of residence and of having attended lectures in the prescribed subjects, and examined him in the contents of his books. The successful candidate was admitted to maintain a thesis against an opponent, a process called “determination” (see Rashdall i. 443 et seq.), and as bachelor was then permitted to give “cursory” lectures. After five or six years from the date of beginning his studies (matriculation) and being twenty years of age (these conditions varied at different periods), a bachelor was permitted to present himself for the examination for the licentiateship, which was divided into two parts. The first part was conducted in private by the chancellor and four examiners (temptatores in cameris), and included an inquiry into the candidate’s residence, attendance at lectures, and performance of exercises, as well as examination in prescribed books; those candidates adjudged worthy were admitted to the more important examination before the faculty, and the names of successful candidates were sent to the chancellor in batches of eight or more at a time, arranged in order of merit. (The order of merit at the examination for the licentiateship existed in Paris till quite recently.) Each successful candidate was then required to maintain a thesis chosen by himself (quodlibetica) in St Julian’s church, and was finally submitted to a purely formal public examination (collatio) at either the episcopal palace or the abbey of Ste Geneviève, before receiving from the chancellor, in the name of the Trinity, the licence to incept or begin to teach in the faculty of arts. After some six months more the licentiate took part “in a peculiarly solemn disputation known as his ‘Vespers,’” then gave his formal inaugural lecture or disputation before the faculty, and was received into the faculty as master. This last process was called “inception.”
