How much culture shall be given in our free schools? All that is practically possible. In some states poverty and in other states public sentiment will limit culture. Our free schools already do their part. Now build high schools in every city and town and village and thickly-populated neighborhood. And I do not deny that the state has the right to establish a university, as in New York. I see no principle violated, any more than in establishing common schools. It was said, yesterday afternoon, that the system on which our common schools are based is a police arrangement to prevent crime, and so the common school is justified. That is but part of the purpose. But is not higher education also a police arrangement? Any reasoning that justifies common schools justifies high schools. Common schools increase a nation's wealth; so do high schools as well. Common schools are needed to make good citizens. Is not that the object of the high schools and colleges?

There is no danger that the state in doing good will collide with others in doing good. There is no real antagonism between those who are doing right. Colleges, academies, high schools and common schools can all work together in harmony.

Prof. W. P. Atkinson, Boston. I rise to correct a misapprehension. The distinction I wished to draw was in regard to centralized compulsory governmental education. The law in many states does indeed compel parents to give their children the elements of education. If they are found wandering in the streets, the truant officer takes them to a truant school. That is purely a police measure, based on the principle that a child brought up wholly in ignorance is a danger to the state. In many states where such a law exists, it is found superfluous. My objection was not to the promotion of higher or lower education by the state, for their promotion seems to me to be one of the very highest and most legitimate functions of a republican government. My objection was to the general government taking the management of the schools into its hands -going into the business of teaching-and making higher and lower education at the government schools compulsory, as in Germany, where public office is open only to those who have passed through a curriculum of governmental education.

I do not believe in government setting up its own educational machinery, as is proposed in this scheme of a national university. The machinery it would set up would never equal that which grows up locally and spontaneously, at the times and in the places where it is wanted. Education can not depend upon gifts from the central government at Washington; it must be the work of local communities and the outgrowth of their wants. We want high culture, but we can not force it artificially. The true function of the federal government is to foster and promote all valuable local educational undertakings, whether higher or lower; to supplement and assist, not to attempt to control and regulate education. In this way the general government may use the public domain in such a manner as to be of the highest possible service to the people.

Oren Root, jr., Mo. Missouri has a gap between the common school and the university. The boy shrinks from leaving home for college; is offered a clerk

ship, accepts, and goes through life longing for more liberal culture. Only now and then one pushes through. The primary school is bettered by having the high school to look ahead to. Our normal schools are embarrassed by illprepared pupils. Michigan-University scholars are prepared in high schools. I think high schools would do the same work for Missouri. Meet objections and fight them down. If we are outvoted, ask help of government. Prof. G. W. Atherton, of New Jersey, read the following paper.

THE RELATION OF THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT TO

EDUCATION.

It may be considered a fortunate circumstance that, in any discussion of educational subjects, we can take for granted the existence of a well-nigh universal conviction, among all classes of our citizens, that education is, in a republic, an absolute necessity. We may not all be able to give, off hand, the best reasons for the faith that is in us; we may not even have attempted very carefully to define them to ourselves; we may differ with each other, too, as to the means and methods of education, and the degree of advancement to which it should be carried on at the public expense; but these things are incidental and, for the most part, on the surface. Beneath them all lies a profound and immovable conviction, which, as it was not established by any process of reasoning, so requires none to confirm it, that, by some means or other, we must have education.

Assuming, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, that there can be no difference of opinion among us respecting this one fundamental principle, I shall not need to waste time in attempting to prove what all believe. I propose to discuss the single question of the relation of the United States Government to this branch of our social polity, and to consider how far the work of public education can wisely be undertaken or promoted by that agency. The subject is very much complicated in this country by the peculiar form of our political organization. In other countries, when "the government" is spoken of, we immediately understand by that term the national government, the supreme central authority. But under our system we have distributed the powers between two nearly independent organizations. Our entire national domain is broken into certain accidental and arbitrary portions, each forming a unit of political organization which we call a "state." The entire domain, again, embracing these several units and the outlying territories, organized and unorganized, forms the larger unit which we call the "nation." Between these the functions of the sovereignty, that is, the collective, organized will and authority of the whole people, are divided. Some of the powers and duties of sovereignty we assign to the state governments; others to the national government. The former are wholly such as affect the relations of citizens to each other within the limits of their own state; the latter extend for some purposes within these same boundaries, but, for the most part, deal with interests which concern all the states alike (including foreign relations), or some one of them in relation to others, or, the citizens of some one in relation to the citizens of another. The line of demarcation between these two political powers, which has been fixed

partly by written documents and partly by the conditions of a historical growth, is, indeed, not always easily defined. It has been the great battleground of opposing political parties, and has furnished the subject-matter of many of our most important judicial decisions.

But whatever doubt may exist upon particular points, there is one broad rule which the people of the country have uniformly maintained, viz :— - that institutions of any kind which affected exclusively the citizens of a single state should be exclusively controlled by the people of that state. This rule may not in every case work the best possible results; but it nevertheless exists as an established fact, and must be accepted as such in every consideration of this or any similar subject.

If we assume, then, as it has already been suggested we may, that the people of a free country must be educated, and at the public expense, the practical question at once arises: "What part of the work, with us, shall be done by the state governments, and what part by the national?" As a help towards obtaining a right answer to this question, let us notice what the two have done heretofore.

We find in the first place that the practice has been for the most part, though by no means exclusively, to consider public education as an interest belonging to the care of the state governments; and accordingly the several states have established systems, more or less complete, designed to furnish free schooling to all the children of the community. Within the last ten or fifteen years there has been a very rapid and marked advance in this respect.

Previous to the late war, though the constitution of every state except Illinois and South Carolina contained provisions for the support of education, yet none of the slave-holding states maintained any thing like an efficient general system of common schools; and some of the systems in the free states bore about the same relation to the educational wants of the day that a frigate of the last century, or a flint-lock musket, would to the requirements of modern warfare. It has always been easier to procure the insertion of some "glittering generality" into the constitution in behalf of education in the abstract, than to induce legislatures to establish practical and efficient means of providing it, based on a solid levy of taxes; easier to secure the passage of a good law, than to arouse a vigorous public sentiment in support of it.

Since the war, as has been already observed, things have greatly improved. Every state of the thirty-seven now recognizes in its constitution the duty of maintaining the work of education; and all except Delaware have systems, mostly excellent ones, of free common schools, with an administrative officer at the head of the department.

Delaware seems to have a fond reverence for the past. She still distributes her school fund, as she elects her repesentatives, on the basis of the census of 1830. The lack of school-houses she makes up with an over-supply of whipping-posts; and she refuses to make any provision whatever for the education of colored children. In this last respect, however, she is not alone. Kentucky, too, believes that for the colored race even "a little learning is a dangerous thing."

A few figures of totals will give some slight idea of the magnitude of the educational interests cared for by the states.

The total school population of the states, according to the returns for last year, was 12,828,848; the total enrollment in 34 states reporting was 7,327,415; and in 7 territorities, 52,241, making a total of 7,379,656. The number of teachers reported in 33 states was 216,062, and in 7 territories, 1,177; giving a total of 217,239. It would probably be safe to add to these, for the states not reporting, enough to bring the number of teachers up to 225,000.

Look now for a moment at the pecuniary interests involved.

Thirty-one states report a permanent school fund, which amounts to $65,850,572.93; while the total annual income for educational purposes is $72,630,269.83, of which $55,889,790.31, almost 77 per cent., is raised by taxation.

It is not in the line of my present purpose to examine in detail the great excellences or the admitted defects of these state systems, nor of their important adjuncts the normal schools and the city systems, some of which afford, undoubtedly, the best types yet reached in the world of thoroughly-popular and voluntary educational agencies. But it would be a grave oversight, even in this brief mention, not to express a high appreciation of the practical sagacity, the intellectual vigor and the administrative resources which many of the officers in charge of these systems are bringing to their work.

Any one who has had occasion to look over their reports, year after year, will, I think, concur in the statement that they furnish a body of the ablest discussions to be found any where of the principles, the working, and the results, of popular educational systems. I shall be told, I am aware, that many countries in Europe are actually securing what we only talk about-the nearly universal education of children; but it is one thing to drive children to school and another thing to attract them there; one thing to compel the people to pay such taxes as the government may choose to levy, quite another thing to induce them to vote the money out of their own pockets. It is better, indeed, that the children should be driven to school than allowed to remain in ignorance; but the driving should be a last resort, and for those who can not be reached by any other agency.

It is this problem that the officers at the head of our common-school systems, are working out, and the grand total of $55,000,000 raised every year by voluntary taxation, and largely assessed by the people upon themselves in their own townships or school-districts,* is a striking evidence of the hold which the system has upon the hearts of our people, and the practical wisdom with which it is administered.

We turn now, in the second place, to inquire what part the general government has taken in the work of education, and we shall see that it has followed uniformly a single line of policy—that of donating to the states certain portions of the public lands for educational purposes; and these lands have been given, partly for the support of common schools and partly for the support of institutions of higher education.

In the State of Illinois, for example, the total receipts for school purposes in 1872 were $7,500,000, of which $5.292,942.65, or 70 per cent., was raised by ad valorem tax in the schooldistricts for general school purposes, and only $900,000 by state taxation.

This policy was entered upon almost at the beginning of our national existence; or, at all events, as soon as the national government had lands to dispose of. As early as 1780, the State of New York, in order to remove one of the gravest of the objections of the smaller states to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, took steps to define her western boundary, and ceded to the United States the portion of her territory lying beyond. Other states followed her example, and thus the whole territory north of the Ohio river became the property of the United States.

The first ordinance for the government of the north west territory, passed in 1785, and the more famous one of 1787, set apart "section 16 of every township" for the maintenance of public schools; the latter act declaring: "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be for ever encouraged." This ordinance was renewed in 1789, after the adoption of the Constitution, and all the states admitted into the Union from the beginning of the present century down to 1848 have received under it the specified 16th section. In 1848, on the formation of a territorial government for Oregon, the 36th section was set apart for schools, in addition to the 16th; and the territories organized and states admitted since that time have in like manner received these two sections in stead of one.* Besides these grants to the states at the time of their admission to the Union, 16 states have received 500,000 acres each (Act of 1841) which some of them have added to their school fund; and 14 have received under the designation of "swamp lands" (Acts of 1849, 1850 and 1860) an aggregate of 62,428,413 acres, which has also, to some extent, been devoted to the same purpose.† The aggregate of lands thus granted amounts, if I do not miscalculate, to the grand total of 137,718,871.55 acres— which may, with substantial accuracy, be taken as a grant from the general government to the several states for the support of common schools; and the permanent school-fund of the 18 states that have received lands under one or all of these grants reaches the considerable sum of $43,866,787.55, the most of which is probably derived from that source.

It may be as convenient to say here as elsewhere, however, that this magnificent endowment, amounting as has been said to almost 140,000,000 acres of land, which ought to have been cherished as a priceless heritage for all coming generations, and which might have been made ample for the yearly education of several millions of children, has been squandered like forest leaves; some times through a remarkable faculty for blundering, some times criminally. In several of the states the lands were disposed of to the counties or townships, and in some, as I have had occasion to know, it is now impossible to trace the paths by which they have wholly or partly melted away. The state has no record from which the inquiry can be made. In some of the

The states receiving the 16th section were: Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine. Missouri, Arkansas. Michigan, Florida, Iowa, Texas, Wisconsin. The states receiving the 16th and the 36th are California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, Nevada.

The sixteen states receiving the 500 000 acres each are: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida. Illinois. Iowa, Kansas. Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi. Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Wisconsin. The fourteen states receiving the 62,000,000 acres are the same, with the exception of Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada and Oregon, and with the addition of Indiana and Ohio.