it, who does not understand its provisions, who could not on a just occasion assert its principles, no more sustains the character of an American citizen than the man who would not seal it with his blood.

It is in vain to say that education is a private matter, and that it is the duty of every parent to provide for the instruction of his own children. In theory it is so. But there are some who can not and there are more who will not make provision. And the question, then, is, Shall the State suffer from individual inability or from individual neglect? When the child who has not been trained up in the way in which he ought to go commits a crime against the State, the law, with iron hand, comes in between the parent and his offspring and takes charge of the offender. And shall there be provision to punish only and none to prevent? Shall the only offices in which this State is known be those of jailer or executioner? Shall she content herself with the stern attributes of justice and discard the gentler ministries of mercy? It was said of Draco's laws that they were writ with blood. Is it less true of any State which makes provision for the whipping post, the penitentiary, the scaffold, and leaves the education of her children to individual effort or precarious charity?...

If the positions be maintained that the education of the people is indispensable to the preservation of free institutions, and that it is therefore the duty of every free State to provide for the education of her children, we are prepared, fellow-citizens, for the inquiry, How far has provision been made for the discharge of this duty in the State with which we are most intimately connected, the State of New

Jersey? That the duty of making some provision for this end has long been recognized, the twenty-one years which have elapsed since the passage of the first act "to create a fund for the support of free schools" sufficiently attest. That what has been done is insufficient, you have yourselves borne witness. . .

Omitting all considerations. . . of what has been or of what may be legislative enactments on the subject, we address you as the sovereign people, and we say that it is your duty and your highest interest to provide and to maintain, within the reach of every child, the means of such an education as will qualify him to discharge the duties of a citizen of the Republic, and will enable him, by subsequent exertion, in the free exercise of the unconquerable will, to attain the highest eminence in knowledge and in power which God may place within his reach. We utterly repudiate as unworthy, not of freemen only, but of men, the narrow notion that there is to be an education for the poor as such. Has God provided for the poor a coarser earth, a thinner air, a paler sky? Does not the glorious sun pour down his golden flood as cheerily upon the poor man's hovel as upon the rich man's palace? Have not the cotter's children as keen a sense of all the freshness, verdure, fragrance, melody, and beauty of luxuriant nature as the pale sons of

kings? Or is it on the mind that God has stamped the imprint of a baser birth, so that the poor man's child knows with an inborn certainty that his lot is to crawl, not climb? It is not so. God has not done it. Men can not do it. Mind is immortal. Mind is imperial. It bears no mark of high or low, of rich or poor. It needs no bound of time or place, or rank or circumstance. It asks but freedom. It requires but light. It is heaven born, and it aspires to heaven. Weakness does not enfeeble it. Poverty can not repress it. Difficulties do but stimulate its vigor. And the poor tallow chandler's son that sits up all the night to read the book which an apprentice lends him, lest the master's eye should miss it in the morning, shall stand and treat with kings, shall add new provinces to the domain of science, shall bind the lightning with a hempen cord and bring it harmless from the skies. The common school is common, not as inferior, not as the school for poor men's children, but as the light and air are common. It ought to be the best school because it is the first school. . . .

Fellow-citizens, it is for you to say what shall be the present character, what shall be the future destiny of New Jersey. We have indeed a goodly heritage, but it has been long and shamefully neglected. We have undervalued our privileges. We have overlooked our duties. We have been content to be a pendent merely, when we ought to be an independent State. There is now, thank God, the sound as of a trumpet in the land that stirs the old heroic blood. We feel the remnant sparks of the forgotten fire which warmed our fathers' hearts. The spirit of the elder day is breathing on us with its quickening and invigorating power. Let us accept the omen. Let us obey the noble impulse. Let us arise to duty and to glory. Men of New Jersey, it is you that are to rise. You are the State. You create and you control the legislature. You enact and you sustain the laws. Yours is the influence. Yours is the work. State. Go on as you have now begun. The system of common schools which shall be adopted by the present legislature, take it into your own hands. If it is not what it should be, see that the next legislature make it such. Act together. Act with system. Act like men. The organization for the purpose is complete. The general committee, the committees of correspondence for the counties, the committees of the townships there is not an inch of ground that is not reached; there is not a citizen of New Jersey whose heart may not be roused by this electric chain.

Yours are the means. You make, you are the

321. A Rate-Bill and a Warrant for Collection (Gregory, J. M., School Funds and School Laws of Michigan, 1859, pp. 290-93) The following forms were used in Michigan, and these may be considered as typical of all the New England States and of the

States to the westward to which New England people emigrated. That the collection of these small amounts was exceedingly vexatious must be evident.

Form of Rate-Bill and Warrant

Rate-Bill containing the name of each person liable for teachers' wages in District No......., in the township of........., for the term ending on. . . . . .day of.... ........, A.D. 18.., and the amount for which each person not exempted from the payment thereof is so liable, with the fees of the assessor thereon.

You are hereby commanded to collect from each of the persons in the annexed rate-bill named, the several sums set opposite their respective names in the last column thereof, and within sixty days after receiving this warrant, to pay over the amount so collected by you (retaining five percent for your fees) to the order of the Director of said District, countersigned by the Moderator; and in case any person named therein, shall neglect or refuse, on demand, to pay the amount set opposite his name as aforesaid, you are to collect the same by distress and sale of goods and chattels of such persons wherever found, within the county or counties in which said District is situated, having first published such sale at least ten days, by posting up notices thereof in three public places in the townships where such property shall be sold.

At the expiration of this warrant, you will make a return thereof in writing, with the rate-bill attached, to the Director; stating the amount collected on said rate-bill, the amount uncollected, and the names of the persons from whom collections have not been made. Given under our hands this..... day of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and

in the year of

A. B., Director

C. D., Moderator.

322. Horace Mann on Religious Instruction in the Schools (Mann, Horace, Sequel to the so-called Correspondence between the Rev. M. H. Smith and Horace Mann. Boston, 1847)

In 1846 a Reverend Mr. Smith attacked the Massachusetts State Board of Education and its Secretary, Mr. Mann, in a sermon entitled "The Ark of God on a New Cart." In this sermon he claimed that the increase in crime and immorality was due to the "Godless schools," sponsored by Mr. Mann and the State Board. Mr. Mann and the Reverend Mr. Smith exchanged two letters each on the question, and then Smith published the sermon and the correspondence in a book entitled The Bible, the Rod, and Religion in Common Schools. To this Mann published a Sequel, etc., of fifty-six pages, in which he judiciously examined the question at issue. He said he stood firmly for the reading of the Bible in the schools, but without comment; examined the matter in its different aspects; and in the concluding portion of the pamphlet said:

It is easy to see that the experiment would not stop with having half a dozen conflicting creeds taught by authority of law in the different schools of the same town or vicinity. Majorities will change in the same place. One sect may have the ascendency to-day; another tomorrow. This year there will be three Persons in the Godhead; next year but one; and the third year the Trinity will be restored to hold its precarious sovereignty until it shall be again dethroned by the worms of the dust it has made. This year, the everlasting fires of hell will burn to terrify the impenitent; next year, and without any repentance, its eternal flames will be extinguished, to be rekindled forever, or to be quenched forever as it may be decided at annual town meetings. This year, under Congregational rule, the Rev. Mr. So and So and the Rev. Dr. So and So will be on the committee; but next year these reverends and reverend doctors will be plain misters, never having had apostolic consecration from the bishop. This year the ordinance of baptism is inefficacious without immersion; next year one drop of water will be as good as forty fathoms. Children attending the district school will be taught one way; going from the district school to the high school they will be taught another way. In controversies involving such momentous interests, the fiercest party spirit will rage, and all the contemplations of heaven be poisoned by the passions of earth. Will not town lines and school district lines be altered, to restore an unsuccessful or to defeat a successful party? Will not fiery zealots move from place to place, to turn the theological scale, as it is said is sometimes now done to turn a political one? And will not the godless make a merchandise of religion by being bribed to do the same thing? Can

aught be conceived more deplorable, more fatal to the interests of the young than this? Such strifes and persecutions on the question of total depravity as to make all men depraved at any rate; and such contests about the nature and the number of persons in the Godhead in heaven, as to make little children atheists on earth.

If the question, "What theology shall be taught in school?" is to be decided by districts or towns, then all the prudential and the superintending school committees must be chosen with express reference to their faith; the creed of every candidate for teaching must be investigated; and when litigations arise and such a system will breed them in swarms an ecclesiastical tribunal, some star chamber, or high commission court must be created to decide them. If the governor is to have power to appoint the judges of this spiritual tribunal, he also must be chosen with reference to the appointments he will make, and so, too, must the legislators who are to define their power, and to give them the purse and sword of the State, to execute their authority. Call such officers by the name of judge and governor, or cardinal and pope, the thing will be the same. The establishment of the true faith will not stop with the schoolroom. Its grasping jurisdiction will extend over all schools, over all private faith and public worship, until at last, after all our centuries of struggle and of suffering, it will come back to the inquisition, the faggot, and the rack.

Let me ask here, too, where is the consistency of those who advocate the right of a town or a district to determine, by a majority, what theology shall be taught in the schools, but deny the same right to the State? Does not this inconsistency blaze out into the faces of such advocates so as to make them feel, if they are too blind to see? This would be true, even if the State had written out the theology it would enforce. But ours has not. It has only said that no one sect shall obtain any advantage over other sects by means of the school system, which, for purposes of self-preservation, it has established.

323. Petition for a Division of the School Funds

(Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Michigan, 1853, pp. 190–91)

The following petition to the Legislature of Michigan, in 1853, by the Catholics of Detroit, is typical of petitions of the time to Legislatures in other States. This petition contains an interesting sectarian definition of free schools and liberty in instruction.; It was met with a counter-petition from the Protestant Episcopal Bishop for the Diocese of Michigan (R. 324), and the matter was threshed out before the Legislature. Committees of both the Senate and the House made reports opposing division, and the Legislature took no further action on the request.