Memorial to the Legislature relative to a division of the School Fund We, the undersigned, citizens of Michigan, respectfully represent to your Honorable Body, that we have labored, and are still laboring under grievances to which neither Justice nor Patriotism require longer submission on our part, without an effort for their removal.

We, your petitioners, wish to represent to your Honorable Body, that notwithstanding the Constitution guarantees liberty of conscience to every citizen of the State, yet our Public School laws compel us to violate our conscience, or deprive us unjustly of our share of the Public School Funds, and also impose on us taxes for the support of schools, which, as a matter of conscience, we cannot allow our children to attend.

To convince your Honorable Body of the magnitude of these grievances, we have but to refer you to the fact, that in the cities of Monroe and Detroit alone, there are educated at the expense of their parents, and charitable contributions, some 2500 of our children. Your petitioners might bear longer their present grievances, hoping that our fellow-citizens would soon discover the injustice done to us by the present School laws, and that the love of public justice for which they are distinguished, would prompt them to protest against laws which are self-evidently a violation of liberty of conscience, a liberty which is equally dear to every American citizen; but, as the new Constitution requires that free schools be established in every district of our State, and as the present Legislature will be called upon to act upon the subject, your petitioners consider that their duty to themselves, their duty to their children, and their duty to their country, the liberties of which they are morally and religiously bound to defend, as well as their duty to their God, require that they apprise your Honorable Body of the oppressive nature of our present School laws, the injustice of which is equalled only by the laws of England, which compel the people of all denominations to support a church, the doctrines of which they do not believe.

Your petitioners would not wish to be understood as being opposed to education; on the contrary they are prepared to bear every reasonable burden your Honorable Body are willing to impose on them, to promote the cause of education, providing that our schools be free indeed. But they do not consider schools free when the law imposes on parents the necessity of giving their children such an education as their conscience cannot approve of. But that your Honorable Body may not be ignorant of what they understand by free schools, your petitioners wish to say that in their opinions, schools can be free only, when the business of school teaching be placed on the same legal footing as the other learned professions, when all may teach who will, their success depending, as in other cases, on their fitness for their profession, and the satisfaction

that they may render to the public; that in all cases the parent be left free to choose the teacher to whom he will entrust the education of his child, as he is left to choose his physician, his lawyer, etc.; that each person teaching any public school in the State should be entitled to draw from the public school fund, such sums as the law might provide for every child so taught by the month, quarter, or otherwise, on producing such evidence as the law might require in such cases. Schools established on such principles are what your petitioners understand by free schools.

Your petitioners, therefore, respectfully urge that the public school system for our State, be based on these broad democratic principles of equal liberty to all, allowing freedom of conscience to the child, who also has a conscience, as well as to the instructor and parent. And your petitioners will ever pray.

324. Counter-Petition against Division

(Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Michigan, 1853, p. 205) To the preceding petition for a division of the school funds, Samuel A. McCoskry, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Michigan, entered the following counter-petition:

The undersigned is the Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Michigan: He has learned from the public newspapers, and from petitions about to be presented to your honorable bodies, that an application is to be made for a division of the school fund of this State, so that "in all cases the parent be left free to choose the teacher to whom he will entrust the education of his child." Such application (if granted) he considers as giving the right not only to parents, but to every religious body, to select teachers who will teach the peculiarities of the religious views of opinions they may hold. It will place the school fund of this State in the hands of religious bodies or sects, and entrust to them the education of the children of the State; for the right, if given to one, will be claimed by each and all. Whatever opinion the writer may entertain in reference to the system and effects of the common-school education, he begs leave to say, that he has no wish or desire to interfere with, or in any way alter, or abridge the system which has been the pride of the State, and which has furnished to so many thousands of her children the means of obtaining a high secular education; nor does he wish that the fund so generously granted to the people of the State, and so carefully guarded by her Legislature, and so highly prized by her citizens, should be used for the promotion of sectarian strife and bitterness.

It is one of the distinguishing features of our free institutions, and

which lies at the foundation of happiness and freedom of the people, that neither religious tests nor religious preferences form any part of our legislation. All religious bodies are placed on precisely the same footing, and whatever may be the exclusive claims of each and all, they can be settled only by an appeal to a higher and different authority than State legislatures. But if your honorable bodies see fit to overturn and destroy that system which has been heretofore so carefully guarded, and which has introduced into every occupation and profession, some of the most distinguished men of the State, and which has brought to the door of the poor man the means of educating his children; and if the Priests and Clergymen of every religious body are to take the place of the common-school teacher, and the State is to assume the duty, through them, of extending and building up religious differences, and of fomenting strife and contention, then, the undersigned (most reluctantly) would claim to have a share in this work. If then such a change is to be made in our common-school law, so as to allow parents to choose teachers for their children, the undersigned would respectfully ask for his proportion of the common-school fund, so that the people entrusted to his spiritual oversight may employ such teachers as will fully carry out their religious preferences. He would freely and frankly state to your honorable bodies that the amount thus granted, shall be carefully used in teaching the principles and doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and that the services of as many clergymen and laymen of the Church will be secured and used, so that no other principles and doctrines shall find any place in the different schools.

Detroit, January 19th, 1853.

325. Act of Incorporation of the Norwich Free Academy

(Laws of Connecticut, 1854)

The following is typical of many acts incorporating free academies in towns and cities. A body of citizens was constituted the "corporation," with power to establish and conduct the school. Some of these school corporations still exist, though most of them have been turned over to the towns or cities and merged with or become the public high schools.

Act of Incorporation

Upon the petition of Russell Hubbard and others of Norwich, county of New London, praying for an act of incorporation for a free Academy, in said town of Norwich, as per petition on file, dated May 5th, 1854:

Resolved by this Assembly, That Russell Hubbard, (35 others here

named) and their successors, be, and they hereby are constituted a body corporate and politic, by the name of "The Norwich Free Academy," and by that name shall have perpetual succession, and be capable in law to purchase, receive, hold and convey all kinds of property requisite and convenient for the purposes of a school; to sue and to be sued; defend and be defended, in all courts and places whatsoever; may have a common seal, and change and alter the same at their discretion; appoint proper officers and agents; elect residents of said town of Norwich, to fill the vacancies occurring in their number by death, resignation, or removal from said town, so that hereafter the number of said corporators shall be maintained at twenty-five, when from any of these causes it shall be reduced below that number; and make such regulations, rules and by-laws, as they shall deem expedient, to carry out the objects of the corporation, not inconsistent with the laws of this State or of the United States.

Provided always, that this resolve may be altered, amended, or repealed by the General Assembly.

326. The Establishment of the First American High School (Report of the School Committee to the Town Meeting of Boston, January, 1821) In 1818 Boston had extended its school system downward to include Primary Schools, and in 1820 steps were taken to extend it upward for those not destined for the Latin Grammar School

and College. In October, 1820, the School Committee voted "that it is expedient to establish an English Classical School in the Town of Boston." The matter was submitted to a town meeting in January, 1821, in the form of the Report which follows, and by an almost unanimous vote the School Committee was instructed to establish the school. The school opened in May, 1821, as the English Classical School, and in 1824 the name was changed to that of the English High School. The report, as

SCHOOL IN THE UNITED adopted, reads:

STATES

Established in Boston

in 1821.

Though the present system of public education, and the munificence with which it is supported, are highly beneficial and honorable to the town; yet, in the opinion of the Committee, it is susceptible of a greater degree of perfection and usefulness, without materially augmenting the weight of the public burdens. Till re

cently, our system occupied a middle station: it neither commenced with the rudiments of Education, nor extended to the higher branches of knowledge. This system was supported by the Town at a very great expense, and to be admitted to its advantages, certain preliminary qualifications were required at individual cost, which have the effect of excluding many children of the poor and unfortunate classes of the community from the benefits of a public education. The Town saw and felt this inconsistency in the plan, and have removed the defect by providing Schools (Primary) in which the children of the poor can be fitted for admission into the public seminaries.

The present system, in the opinion of the Committee, requires still further amendment. The studies that are pursued at the English grammar schools are merely elementary, and more time than is necessary is devoted to their acquisition. A scholar is admitted at seven, and is dismissed at fourteen years of age; thus, seven years are expended in the acquisition of a degree of knowledge, which with ordinary diligence and a common capacity, may be easily and perfectly acquired in five. If then, a boy remain the usual term, a large portion of the time will have been idly or uselessly expended, as he may have learned all that he may have been taught long before its expiration. This loss of time occurs at that interesting and critical period of life, when the habits and inclinations are forming by which the future character will be fixed and determined. This evil, therefore, should be removed, by enlarging the present system, not merely that the time now lost may be saved, but that those early habits of industry and application may be acquired, which are so essential in leading to a future life of virtue and usefulness.

Nor are these the only existing evils. The mode of education now adopted, and the branches of knowledge that are taught at our English grammar schools, are not sufficiently extensive nor otherwise calculated to bring the powers of the mind into operation nor to qualify a youth to fill usefully and respectably many of those stations, both public and private, in which he may be placed. A parent who wishes to give a child an education that shall fit him for active life, and shall serve as a foundation for eminence in his profession, whether Mercantile or Mechanical, is under the necessity of giving him a different education from any which our public schools can now furnish. Hence, many children are separated from their parents and sent to private academies in this vicinity, to acquire that instruction which cannot be obtained at the public seminaries. Thus, many parents, who contribute largely to the support of these institutions, are subjected to heavy expense for the same object, in other towns.

The Committee, for these and many other weighty considerations that might be offered, and in order to render the present system of public education more nearly perfect, are of the opinion that an addi