G E O H G JS G A N N E T T ' S 
 
 E0. 
 
 ' ; '
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 OT 
 
 HOEACE MANN. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 MRS. MARY MANN. 
 
 IN FIVE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. HI. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 HORACE B. FULLER, 
 
 (SUCCESSOR TO WALKER, FULLEU, & CO.,) 
 245 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
 1868.
 
 ANNUAL REPORTS 
 
 ON 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 HORACE B. FULLER, 
 
 (Successor to Walker, Fuller. & Co.,) 
 
 No. 245, WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
 1868.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1807, by 
 
 Mas. .MARY 3IAXN, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 BOSTON : COKNHILL I'KESS. 
 
 STKREOTYI'EU A.VD PRINTED BY OEO. C. RAND it AVERT.
 
 Stack 
 
 CV.c 
 
 S/3/M 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE present volume consists of only such portions of 
 the ten remaining Reports of the Secretary as are now 
 of universal interest. If published entire, they would 
 fill two such volumes as the present. The statistics 
 omitted give the condition of Massachusetts, in an edu- 
 cational point of view, between the years 1837 and 1848, 
 and are not of general interest at the present time. 
 The people of the State can find them, when needed, 
 in the public archives. The portions selected contain 
 the views of Mr. Mann upon great points which concern 
 all societies alike. 
 
 The appropriations made by the towns for public 
 schools increased, under the administration of the Board 
 of Education, from $400,000 in 1837 to $749,943.45 
 in 1848. This sum was exclusive of the cost of school- 
 houses, school-books, libraries, apparatus, &c., and was 
 expended solely for the compensation of teachers, for 
 their board, and for fuel for. the schools. 
 
 In 18-37, there were three thousand five hundred and 
 ninety-one female teachers in the common schools. In 
 
 1850958
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 Those which stood near the bottom of the list one year 
 rose immediately (except in a few benighted corners of 
 the State) to a higher point. Somerville and Brighton 
 ranked above all the other towns. Boston never stood 
 first on the list, but at times was second, then third, 
 sixth, fifteenth. The abstracts of school-returns made 
 from the reports of the school-committees of each town 
 occupied Mr. Mann for four or five months of the year. 
 A mass of documents, sometimes amounting to six thou- 
 sand written pages, were thoroughly read, sifted, and 
 selected from. The character of these reports rose in 
 value under his earnest appeals to the committees, upon 
 whom, in the last resort, the welfare of the schools de- 
 pends ; and the abstracts have been considered the most 
 valuable body of information ever contributed to the 
 cause of education, and have been sought by all the 
 States and by all countries. The mode of teaching and 
 governing in each school is given, and thus all parts of 
 the State were enabled to compare notes, and profit by 
 each other's wisdom, or be warned by each other's fail- 
 ures. Some of these yearly abstracts make volumes of 
 five hundred pages, and were a very laborious work to 
 prepare, in order not to contain repetitions; but their 
 value compensated for the labor to one who was so ear- 
 nest in the prosecution of his work. It was all done by 
 his own hand, as tho small salary of the office made it 
 impossible to hire assistance. 
 
 The Graduated Tables were at one time prepared at 
 the State House, but so inaccurately, that Mr. Mann was
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 obliged to resume the preparation of them ; and for that 
 work he hired assistance at his own expense. 
 
 In each Annual Report, he discussed some special topic 
 to which he had given prominence in the labors of the 
 year. These discussions alone are selected for the pres- 
 ent volume. 
 
 The Tenth Report was republished by the State after 
 Mr. Mann left the office. It states all the provisions of 
 law in regard to the schools, and these are amply com- 
 mented upon by Mr. Mann. But they are omitted here, as 
 many alterations in the provisions have since been made. 
 Their interest now lies chiefly in their historical value. 
 The best history of a State or country is the history of 
 its ideas. To the moralist and the legislator, therefore, 
 this Report has an indestructible value, because it 
 yields up the secret of the strength of Massachusetts. 
 The only selection made from it is the general view 
 given of the common-school system of Massachusetts.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 QUALIFICATIONS OF TEACHERS. SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 
 WHAT SHALL BE THE READING MATTER ? IMPOR- 
 TANCE OF UNION SCHOOLS IN ORDER TO EQUALIZE THE 
 BENEFITS OF EDUCATION TO CHILDREN OF ALL AGES ; 
 OF THE THOROUGH PROFICIENCY OF THE TEACHERS IN 
 COMMON-SCHOOL STUDIES; OF PUNCTUAL ATTENDANCE 
 OF THE CHILDREN ; OF A MANIFESTATION OF PARENTAL 
 INTEREST IN THE SCHOOLS 1 
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION UPON THE WORLDLY FOR- 
 TUNES OF MEN 92 
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 
 
 THE STUDY OF PHYSIOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS. DISSER- 
 TATION UPON THE SUBJECT 129 
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 
 
 VISITATION AND DESCRIPTION OF EUROPEAN SCHOOLS. 
 DEAF-MUTES TAUGHT TO SPEAK SUCCESSFULLY . . 230 
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 
 
 DUTIES OF THE FUTURE. SCHOOL MOTIVES AND SCHOOL 
 VICES. EQUALITY OF SCHOOL PRIVILEGES . . . 419
 
 Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM OF MASSACHUSETTS . . 523 
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 
 
 THE POWEE OF COMMON SCHOOLS TO REDEEM THE STATE 
 FROM SOCIAL VICES AND CRIMES 559 
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 
 
 THE CAPACITY OF THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM TO IM- 
 PROVE THE PECUNIARY CONDITION, AND ELEVATE THE 
 INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER, OF 
 THE COMMONWEALTH . ... . 640
 
 ANNUAL REPORTS 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 ... I FEEL fully justified in affirming that the prospects 
 of the rising generation are daily gi'owing brighter by means 
 of the increasing light which is shed upon them from our 
 Common Schools. I refer here, more particularly, to such 
 proofs as are hardly susceptible of being condensed into 
 statistical tables, or even of being presented as isolated 
 facts : these speak for themselves. But I refer to such 
 indications of returning health as prove to the watchful 
 attendant that the crisis of the malady has passed. Stronger 
 feelings and firmer convictions of the importance of our 
 Common Schools are taking possession of the public mind; 
 and, Avhere they have not yet manifested themselves in any 
 outward and visible improvement, they are silently and 
 gradually working to that end. 
 
 In determining the rate of annual advancement, however, 
 which the friends of this cause are authorized reasonably to 
 expect, it should not be forgotten that all improvements in 
 the system depend ultimately upon the people themselves, 
 and upon the school officers, whom, in their several towns
 
 2 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATIOX. 
 
 and districts, they see fit to elect. All improvements in the 
 schools, therefore, suppose and require a simultaneous and 
 corresponding improvement in public sentiment, and in the 
 liberality of the citizens, who, by a major vote, from year to 
 year, measure out the pecuniary means for their support, and 
 elect the officers who are to superintend the application of 
 those means. Progress which must be so thorough must 
 necessarily be slow. But the thoroughness is a compensa- 
 tion for the slowness; for, when a revolution is once wrought, 
 it will be enduring. The Legislature, having conferred upon 
 the Board of Education no authority as to the amount of 
 money to be raised, the teachers to be employed, the books, 
 apparatus, or other instruments of instruction to be used, the 
 condition of the houses in which the schools are taught, nor, 
 indeed, as to any other subject, which can, in the slightest 
 degree, abridge the power or touch the property of towns or 
 districts, the responsibility, in all these respects, continues to 
 rest, where it always has rested, and where, it is to be hoped, 
 it always will rest, with the towns and districts themselves. 
 On these points, encouragement may be highly beneficial: 
 compulsion would counterwork its own purposes. 
 
 Hence, it is obvious, that if the Board or the Legislature 
 should devise and promulgate the wisest system imaginable, 
 and define the exact processes by which it could be executed, 
 and all its fruits realized, the administration of that system 
 must still be left with the local authorities. In the last stage 
 of the process, and at the very point where the means are 
 applied to the objects, they must pass through the hands of 
 the town and district officers, and of the teachers whom they 
 employ. In our system of public instruction, therefore, it is 
 emphatically true, that the influences flowing from the Legis- 
 lature, or from any advisory body, may have their quality 
 entirely changed by being assimilated to the character and 
 views of the men through whose hands they eventually 
 pass; just as the nutritious juices which ascend from the 
 roots of a tree may lose their original properties, and be made
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 3 
 
 to produce fruits of various flavor, according to the nature 
 of the ingrafted scions through whose transforming pores 
 they flow. Wherever, therefore, we find improvements in 
 the schools, it is a gratifying proof that higher views are 
 prevailing in the community in which those improvements 
 originate. 
 
 I advert to these facts respecting the authority, or rather 
 the want of authority, in the Board, and their entire depend- 
 ence npon the efficient co-operation of the public, because I 
 occasionally meet with misapprehensions respecting their 
 office and powers and consequent- duties; some persons 
 looking to the Board for action in matters of which they 
 have not the slightest official cognizance, and others deplor- 
 ing their possession of powers, of which there is no trace nor 
 indication to be found, cither in the law which created them, 
 or in any of their official or unofficial proceedings. 
 
 . . . To those whose views of public and private duty can 
 never be satisfied by any thing short of a universal education 
 for the people, it will be gratifying to be informed, that a 
 new interest has been excited, during the last year, in behalf 
 of the children of persons employed npon our public works. 
 This class of children, heretofore, has not shared in the pro- 
 visions for education made by our laws, and has rarely been 
 embraced in any of the numerous plans for moral improve- 
 ment, devised and sustained by private charity ; and hence 
 they have been growing up in the midst of our institutions, 
 uninstructed even in those rudiments of knowledge, without 
 which self-education is hardly practicable. During the last 
 year, a few inhabitants of the town of Middlefield (which is 
 situated in the western part of Hampshire County), commis- 
 erating the destitute condition of the children along the line 
 of the railroad in their vicinity, took active measures to 
 supply them with the means of instruction. A gentleman 
 of that town, Mr. Alexander Ingham, was the first to engage 
 in, and has been most active in carrying on, this Samaritan 
 enterprise. The good example extended; and a considerable
 
 4 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 number of children along the line of work were soon gath- 
 ered, either into the public schools, or, where that was im- 
 practicable, into schools established expressly for them, at 
 private expense. At the Common-school Convention in the 
 county of Hampden, held in the month of August last, the 
 condition of these children, and the necessity of some further 
 measures in their behalf, constituted one of the topics of in- 
 quiry and discussion. A committee was appointed, of which 
 Mr. Ingham was chairman, to collect the facts of the case. 
 From this committee, I have learned that there were, in the 
 month of September last, more than three hundred children, 
 between the ages of four and sixteen, belonging to the labor- 
 ers on the railroad west of Connecticut River, who were not 
 considered as entitled to the privileges of the public schools, 
 or were in such a local situation as not to be able to attend 
 them. A pregnant fact also, in relation to the subject, is, 
 that, in the enumeration of all the children of all ages, be- 
 longing to that class of people, " a large proportion of them 
 are under the age of four years." Owing to efforts since 
 made by private individuals, a very large majority of all 
 these children, who are of a suitable age, are now enjoying 
 the benefits of Common-school education. 
 
 Another subject, respecting which I have sought for infor- 
 mation from all authentic sources, and to which I have given 
 especial attention in my circuit through the State, is the 
 observance or non-observance of the law " for the better in- 
 struction of youth employed in manufacturing establish- 
 ments." This law was enacted in April, 1836, and was to 
 take effect on the first day of April, 1837. The substance of 
 its provisions is, that no owner, agent, or superintendent 
 of any manufacturing establishment, shall etnploy any child, 
 under the age of fifteen years, to labor in such establishment, 
 unless such child shall have attended some public or private 
 day school, where instruction is given by a legally qualified 
 teacher, nt least three months of the twelve months next 
 preceding any and every year in which such child shall be
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 5 
 
 so employed. The penalty for each violation is fifty dollars. 
 The law has now been in operation sufficiently long to make 
 manifest the intentions of those to whom its provisions ap- 
 ply, and whether those humane provisions are likely to be 
 observed or defeated. From the information obtained, I feel 
 fully authorized to say, that, in the great majority of cases, 
 the law is obeyed. But it is my painful duty also to say, 
 that, in some places, it has been uniformly and systematically 
 disregarded. The law is best observed in the largest manu- 
 facturing places. In several of the most extensive manufac- 
 turing villages and districts, all practicable measures are taken 
 to prevent a single instance of violation. Some establish- 
 ments have conducted most generously towards the schools; 
 and, in one case (at "Waltham), a corporation, besides pay- 
 ing its proportion of taxes for the support of the public 
 schools in the town, has gratuitously erected three school- 
 houses, the last in 1837, a neat, handsome, modern stoue 
 building, two stories in height, and maintained schools 
 therein, at a charge, in the whole, upon the corporate funds, 
 of a principal sum of more than seven thousand dollars. It 
 would be improper for me here to be more particular than 
 to say, that these generous acts have been done by the 
 "Boston Manufacturing Company;" though all will regret 
 that the identity of the individual members who have per- 
 formed these praiseworthy deeds should be lost in the gen- 
 erality of the corporate name. 
 
 Comparatively speaking, there seems to have been far 
 greater disregard of the law by private individuals and by 
 small corporations, especially where the premises are rented 
 from year to year, or from term to term, than by the owners 
 or agents of large establishments. Private individuals, rent- 
 ing an establishment for one or for a few years, intending 
 to realize from it what profits they can, and then to abandon 
 it, and remove from the neighborhood or town where it is 
 situated, may be supposed to feel less permanent interest 
 in the condition of the people who are growing up around
 
 6 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 them; and they are less under the control of public opinion 
 in the vicinity. But, without seeking an explanation of the 
 cause, there cannot be a doubt as to the fact. 
 
 It is obvious that the consent of two parties is necessary 
 to the infraction of this law, and to the infliction of this high- 
 est species of injustice upon the children whom it was de- 
 signed to protect. Not only must the employer pursue a 
 course of action by which the godlike powers and capacities 
 of the human soul are wrought into thorough-made products 
 of ignorance and misery and vice with as much certainty 
 and celerity as his raw materials of wool or cotton are 
 wrought into fabrics for the market by his own machinery, 
 but the parent also must be willing to convert the holy rela- 
 tion of parent and child into the unholy one of master and 
 slave, and to sell his child into ransomless bondage for the 
 pittance of money he can earn. Yet, strange to say, there 
 are many parents, not only of our immigrant, but of our na- 
 tive population, so lost to the sacred nature of the relation 
 they sustain towards the children whom they have brought 
 into all the solemn realities of existence, that they go from 
 town to town, seeking opportunities to consign them to un- 
 broken, bodily toil, although it involves the deprivation of 
 all the means of intellectual and moral growth; thus pan- 
 dering to their own vicious appetites by adopting the most 
 efficient measures to make their offspring as vicious as them- 
 selves. 
 
 If, in a portion of the manufacturing districts in the State, 
 a regular and systematic obedience is paid to the law, while, 
 in other places, it is regularly and systematically disregarded, 
 the inevitable consequences to the latter will be obvious 
 upon a moment's reflection. The neighborhood or town 
 where the lnw is broken will soon become the receptacle of 
 the poorest, most vicious, and abandoned parents, who are 
 bringing up their children to be also as poor, vicious, and 
 abandoned as themselves. The whole class of parents who 
 cannot obtain employment for their children at one place,
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 7 
 
 but are welcomed at another, will circulate through the body 
 politic, until at last they will settle down as permanent resi- 
 dents in the latter ; like the vicious humors of the natural 
 body, which, being thrown off by every healthy part, at last 
 accumulate, and settle upon a diseased spot. Every breach 
 of this law, therefore, inflicts direct and positive injustice, not 
 only upon the children employed, but upon all the industri- 
 ous and honest communities in which they are employed ; 
 Localise its effect will be to fill those communities with 
 paupers and criminals, or, at least, with a class of persons, 
 who, without being absolute, technical paupers, draw their 
 subsistence in a thousand indirect ways from the neighbor- 
 hood where they reside ; and, without being absolute crimi- 
 nals in the eye of the law, still commit a thousand injurious, 
 predatory acts, more harassing and annoying to the peace 
 and security of a village than many classes of positive 
 crimes. 
 
 While water-power only is used for manufacturing pur- 
 poses, a natural limit is affixed, in every place, to the exten- 
 sion of manufactories. The power being all taken up in any 
 place, the further investment of capital, and the employment 
 of an increased number of operatives, must cease. While 
 we restrict ourselves to the propulsion of machinery by 
 water, therefore, it is impossible that we should have such 
 an extensive manufacturing district as, for instance, that of 
 Manchester in England, because we have no streams of suffi- 
 cient magnitude for the purpose. But Massachusetts is al- 
 ready the gi-eatest manufacturing State in the Union. Her 
 best sites are all taken up ; and yet her disposition to manu- 
 facture appears not to be checked. Under such circum- 
 stances, it seems not improbable that steam-power will be 
 resorted to. Indeed, this is already done to some extent. 
 Should such improvements be made in the use of steam, or 
 such new markets be opened for the sale of manufactured 
 products, that capitalists, by selecting sites where the ex- 
 pense of transportation, both of the raw material and of the
 
 8 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 finished article, may be so reduced as, on the whole, to make 
 it profitable to manufacture by steam, then that agency will 
 be forthwith employed ; and, if steam is employed, there is 
 no assignable limit to the amount of a manufacturing popu- 
 lation that may be gathered into a single manufacturing 
 district. If, therefore, we would not have, in any subsequent 
 time, a population like that of the immense city of Manches- 
 ter, where great numbers of the laboring population live in 
 the filthiest streets, and mostly in houses which are framed 
 back to back, so that, in no case, is there any yard behind 
 them, but all ingress and egress, for all purposes, is between 
 the front side of the house and the public street, if we 
 would not have such a population, we must not only have 
 preventive laws, but we must see that no cupidity, no con- 
 tempt of the public welfare for the sake of private gain, is 
 allowed openly to violate or clandestinely to evade them. 
 It would, indeed, be most lamentable and self-contradictory, 
 if, with all our institutions devised and prepared on the hy- 
 pothesis of common intelligence and virtue, we should rear a 
 class of children to be set apart, and, as it were, dedicated 
 to ignorance and vice. 
 
 After presenting to the Board one further consideration, I 
 will leave this subject. It is obvious that children of ten, 
 twelve, or fourteen years of age may be steadily worked in 
 our manufactories, without any schooling, and that this cruel 
 deprivation may be persevered in for six, eight, or ten years, 
 and yet, during all this period, no very alarming outbreak 
 shall occur to rouse the public mind from its guilty slumber. 
 The children are in their years of minority, and they have no 
 control over their own time or their own actions. The bell 
 is to them what the water- wheel and the main shaft are to 
 the machinery which they superintend. The wheel revolves, 
 and the machinery must go ; the bell rings, and the children 
 must assemble. In their hours of work, they are under the 
 police of the establishment : at other times, they are under 
 the police of the neighborhood. Hence this state of things
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 9 
 
 may continue for years, and the peace of the neighborhood 
 remain undisturbed, except, perhaps, by a few nocturnal or 
 sabbath-day depredations. The ordinary movements of so- 
 ciety may go on without any shocks or collisions ; as, in the 
 human system, a disease may work at the vitals, and gain a 
 fatal ascendency there, before it manifests itself on the sur- 
 face. But the punishment for such an offence will not be 
 remitted because its infliction is postponed. The retribution, 
 indeed, is not postponed, it only awaits the full completion 
 of the offence ; for this is a crime of such magnitude, that it 
 requires years for the criminal to perpetrate it in, and to fin- 
 ish it off thoroughly in all its parts. But when the children 
 pass from the condition of restraint to that of freedom, 
 from years of enforced but impatient servitude to that inde- 
 pendence for which they have secretly pined, and to which 
 they have looked forward, not mei'ely as the period of eman- 
 cipation, but of long-delayed indulgence; when they become 
 strong in the passions and propensities that grow up spon- 
 taneously, but are weak in the moral powers that control 
 them, and blind in the intellect which foresees their ten- 
 dencies ; when, according to the course of our political insti- 
 tutions, they go, by one bound, from the political nothingness 
 of a child to the political sovereignty of a man, then, for 
 that people who so cruelly neglected and injured them, there 
 will assuredly come a day of retribution. It scarcely needs 
 to be added, on the other hand, that if the wants of the spir- 
 itual nature of a child, in the successive stages of its growth, 
 are duly supplied, then a regularity in manual employment 
 is converted from a servitude into a useful habit of diligence, 
 
 O 
 
 and the child grows up in a daily perception of the wonder- 
 working power of industry, and in the daily realization of the 
 trophies of victorious labor. A majority of the most useful 
 men who have ever lived were formed under the happy 
 necessity of mingling bodily with mental exertion. 
 
 But by far the most important subject respecting which I 
 have sought for information during the year remains to be
 
 10 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 noticed. "While we are in little danger of over-estimating 
 the value of Common Schools, yet we shall err egregiously 
 if we regard them as ends, and not as means. A forgetful- 
 ness of this distinction would send the mass of our children 
 of both sexes into the world scantily provided either with 
 the ability or the disposition to perform even the most ordi- 
 nary duties of life. Common Schools derive their value from 
 the fact that they are an instrument more extensively appli- 
 cable to the whole mass of the children than any other in- 
 strument ever yet devised. They are an instrument by 
 which the good men in society can send redeeming intlu- 
 
 O * 
 
 ences to those children who suffer under the calamity of 
 vicious parentage and evil domestic associations. The world 
 is full of lamentable proofs that the institution of the family 
 may exist for an indefinite number of generations without 
 mitio'atinsc the horrors of barbarism. But the institution of 
 
 ~ O 
 
 Common Schools is the offspring of an advanced state of 
 civilization, and is incapable of co-existing with barbarian life, 
 because, should barbarism prevail, it would destroy the 
 schools; should the schools prevail, they would destroy bar- 
 barism. They are the only civil institution capable of ex- 
 tendin<>- its beneficent arms to embrace and to cultivate in all 
 
 O 
 
 parts of its nature every child that comes into the world. 
 Nor can it be forgotten that there is no other instrumentality 
 which has done or can do so much to inspire that universal 
 reverence for knowledge which incites to its acquisition. 
 Still, these schools are means, and not ends. They confer 
 instruments for the acquisition of an object, but they are not 
 the object itself. As they now are, or, indeed, are ever likely 
 to become, our young men and young women will be most 
 insufficiently prepared to meet the various demands which 
 life will make upon them, if they possess nothing but what 
 these schools bestow. 
 
 Libraries. After the rising generation have acquired hab- 
 its of intelligent reading in our schools, what shall they read?
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 11 
 
 for, with no books to rend, the power of reading will be use- 
 less ; and, with bad books to read, the consequences will be as 
 much worse than ignorance as wisdom is better. What 
 books, then, are there accessible to the great mass of the 
 children in the State, adapted to their moral and intellectual 
 wants, and fitted to nourish their minds with the elements 
 of uprightness and wisdom ? 
 
 Let any person go into one of our country towns or dis- 
 tricts of average size, consisting, as most of them do, of an 
 agricultural population, interspersed with mechanics, and 
 here and there a few manufacturers, and inquire from house 
 to house what books are possessed, and he will probably find 
 the Scriptures and a few school-books in almost every family. 
 These are protected by law, even in the hands of an insol- 
 vent; so that the poor are as secure in their possession as the 
 rich. In the houses of professional men, the minister, the 
 lawyer, the physician, he would find small professional 
 libraries, intermixed with some miscellaneous works not of 
 a professional character ; in the houses of religious persons, a 
 few religious books of this or that class, according to the faith 
 of the owner; in the houses of the more wealthy, where 
 wealth is fortunately combined with intelligence and good 
 taste, some really useful and instructive books ; but where the 
 wealth is unfortunately united with a love of display, or with 
 feeble powers of thought, he would find a few elegantly- 
 bound annuals, and novels of a recent emission. What he 
 would find in other houses and these the majority would 
 be few, and of a most miscellaneous character ; books which 
 had found their way thither rather by chance than by de- 
 sign, and ranging in their character between very good and 
 very bad. Rarely, in such a town as I have supposed, will a 
 book be found which treats of the nature, object, and abuses 
 of different kinds of governments, and of the basis and con- 
 stitution and fabric of our own ; or one on economical or sta- 
 tistical science ; or a treatise on general ethics and the phi- 
 losophy of the human mind ; or popular or intelligible expla-
 
 12 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 nations of the applications of science to agriculture and the 
 useful arts, or the processes by which the latter are made so 
 eminently serviceable to man. Rarely will any book be 
 found partaking of the character of an encyclopaedia, by a 
 reference to which, thousands of interesting questions, as they 
 daily arise, might be solved, and great accessions to the stock 
 of valuable knowledge be imperceptibly made ; quite as rarely 
 will any books containing the lives of eminent British or 
 American statesmen be found, or books treating of our ante- 
 Revolutionary history ; and, most rarely of all, will any book 
 be found on education, education at home, physical, intel- 
 lectual, and those rudiments of a moral and religious educa- 
 tion in which all agree, the most important subject that 
 can possibly be named to parent, patriot, philanthropist, or 
 Christian. And in the almost total absence of books adapted 
 to instruct parents how to educate their children, so there are 
 quite as few which are adapted to the capacities of the chil- 
 dren themselves, and might serve, in some secondary degree, 
 to supply the place of the former. Some exceptions would, 
 of course, be expected where so many particulars are grouped 
 under so few heads ; but from all I have been able to learn, 
 after improving every opportunity for inquiry and corre- 
 spondence, I am led to believe, that, as it regards the private 
 ownership of books, the above may be taken as a fair medium 
 for the State. In small towns, almost wholly rural in their 
 occupation, the books, though fewer, may generally be bet- 
 ter; while in cities and large towns, though more numerous, 
 yet a larger proportion of them is worse. Whatever means 
 exist, then, either for inspiring or for gratifying a love of 
 reading in the great mass of the rising generation, are mainly 
 to be found, if found at all, in public libraries. 
 
 As the tastes and habits of the future men and women, in 
 regard to reading, will be only an enlargement and expan- 
 sion of the tastes and habits of the present children, it seemed 
 to me one of the most desirable of all facts, to learn, as far as 
 practicable, under what general influences those tastes and
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 13 
 
 habits are now daily forming. For who can think, without 
 emotion, and who can remain inactive under the conviction, 
 that every day which now passes is, by the immutable law 
 of cause and effect, predestinating the condition of the com- 
 munity twenty, thirty, or forty years hence ; that the web 
 of their character and fortunes is now going through the 
 loom, to come out of it, at that time, of worthy or of worth- 
 less quality, beautified with colors and shapes of excellence, 
 or deformed by hideousness, just according to the kind of 
 the woof which we are daily weaving into its texture? Every 
 book which a child reads with intelligence is like a cast of 
 the weaver's shuttle, adding another thread to the indestruc- 
 tible web of existence. 
 
 In the general want of private libraries, therefore, I have 
 endeavored to learn what number of public libraries exist ; 
 how many volumes they contain, and what are their general 
 character, scope, and tendency ; how many persons have ac- 
 cess to them, or, which is the most material point, how many 
 persons do not have access to them ; and, finally, how many 
 of the books are adapted to prepare children to be free citi- 
 zens and men, fathers and mothers, even in the most limited 
 signification of those vastly comprehensive words. It seemed 
 to me, therefore, that nothing could have greater interest or 
 significance than an inventory of the means of knowledge, 
 and the encouragements to self-education, possessed by the 
 present and the rising generation. 
 
 Simultaneously with this inquiry I have pursued a collat- 
 eral one, not so closely, although closely, connected with the 
 main object. A class of institutions has lately sprung up in 
 this State, universally known by the name of Lyceums, or 
 Mechanics' Institutes, before some of which courses of Popu- 
 lar Lectures, on literary or scientific subjects, are annually 
 delivered, while others possess libraries and reading-rooms, 
 and in a very few cases both these objects are combined. 
 These institutions have the same general purpose in view as 
 public libraries, viz. that of diffusing instructive and enter-
 
 14 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 taining knowledge, and of exciting a curiosity to acquire it ; 
 though they are greatly inferior to libraries in point of effi- 
 ciency. As the proportion of young persons who attend 
 these lectures and frequent these reading-rooms, compared 
 with the whole number of attendants, is much greater than 
 the proportion they bear to the whole people, the institutions 
 may justly be regarded as one of the means now in opera- 
 tion for enlightning the youth of the State. At any rate, an 
 inventory of the means of general intelligence which did not 
 include these institutions would justly be regarded as incom- 
 plete. 
 
 For the purpose of obtaining authentic information on the 
 above-mentioned subjects, I addressed to school committees 
 and other intelligent men residing, respectively, in every 
 town in the Commonwealth, a few inquiries, by which I as- 
 certained that, omitting the ten Circulating Libraries, con- 
 taining about twenty-eight thousand volumes, it appears that 
 the aggregate of volumes in the public libraries of all kinds 
 in the State is about three hundred thousand. This is also 
 exclusive of the Sabbath-school Libraries, which will be ad- 
 verted to hereafter. To these three hundred thousand vol- 
 umes but little more than one hundred thousand persons, or 
 one-seventh part of the population of the State, have any 
 risen t of access, while more than six hundred thousand have 
 
 O * 
 
 no right therein. 
 
 Of the towns heard from, there are one hundred (almost 
 one third of the whole number in the State) which have 
 neither a town, social, nor district school library therein. 
 What strikes us with amazement, in looking at these facts, is 
 the inequality with which the means of knowledge are spread 
 over the surface of the State; a few deep, capacious reser- 
 voirs, surrounded by broad wastes. It has long been a com- 
 mon remark that many persons read too much ; but here we 
 have proof how many thousands read too little. For the 
 poor man and the laboring man the art of printing seems 
 hardly yet to have been discovered.
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 15 
 
 The next question respects the character of the books com- 
 posing the libraries, and their adaptation to the capacities 
 and mental condition of children and youth. In regard to 
 this point there is, as might be expected, but little diversity 
 of statement. Almost all the answers concur in the opinion 
 that the contents of the libraries are not adapted to the intel- 
 lectual and moral wants of the young ; an opinion which a 
 reference to the titles in the catalogues will fully sustain. 
 With very few exceptions the books were written for adults, 
 for persons of some maturity of mind, and possessed already 
 of a considerable fund of infoi'mation ; and, therefore, they 
 could not be adapted to children, except through mistake. 
 Of course, in the whole collectively considered there is every 
 kind of books ; but probably no other kind, which can be 
 deemed of a useful character, occupies so much space upon 
 the shelves of the libraries as the historical class. Some of 
 the various histories of Greece and Rome; the History of 
 Modern Europe, by Russell ; of England, by Hume and his 
 successors ; Robertson's Charles V. ; Mayor's Universal His- 
 tory ; the numerous histories of Napoleon, and similar Avorks, 
 constitute the staple of many libraries. And how little do 
 these books contain which is suitable for children! How 
 little do they record but the destruction of human life, and 
 the activity of those misguided energies of men Avhich have 
 hitherto almost baffled the beneficent intentions of Nature 
 for human happiness ! Descriptions of battles, sackings of 
 cities, and the captivity of nations, follow each other Avith 
 the quickest moA 7 ement, and in an endless succession. Almost 
 the only glimpses which Ave catch of the education of youth 
 present them as engaged in martial sports, and in mimic feats 
 of arms, preparatory to the grand tragedies of battle ; exer- 
 cises and exhibitions, which, both in the performer and the 
 spectator, cultivate all the dissocial emotions, and turn the 
 whole current of the mental forces into the channel of de- 
 structiveness. The reader sees inventive genius, not em- 
 ployed in perfecting the useful arts, but exhausting itself in
 
 16 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the manufacture of implements of war ; he sees rulers and 
 legislators, not engaged in devising comprehensive plans for 
 universal welfare, but in levying and equipping armies and 
 navies, and extorting taxes to maintain them ; thus dividing 
 the whole mass of the people into the two classes of slaves 
 and soldiers, enforcing the degradation and servility of tame 
 animals upon the former, and cultivating the ferocity and 
 bloodthirstiness of wild animals in the latter. The highest 
 honors are conferred upon men in whose rolls of slaughter 
 the most thousands of victims are numbered ; and seldom 
 does woman emerge from her obscurity, indeed, hardly 
 should we know that she existed, but for her appearance to 
 grace the triumphs of the conqueror. What a series of facts 
 would be indicated by an examination of all the treaties of 
 peace which history records ! they would appear like a grand 
 index to universal plunder. The inference which children 
 would legitimately draw from reading like this would be, that 
 the tribes and nations of men had been created only for mu- 
 tual slaughter, and that they deserved the homage of posteri- 
 ty for the terrible fidelity with which their mission had been 
 fulfilled. Rarely do these records administer any antidote 
 against the inhumanity of the spirit they instil. In the im- 
 mature minds of children, unaccustomed to consider events 
 under the relation of cause and effect, they excite the con- 
 ception of magnificent palaces or temples for bloody conquer- 
 ors to dwell in, or in which to offer profane worship for 
 inhuman triumphs, without a suggestion of the bondage and 
 debasement of the myriads of slaves, who, through lives of 
 privation and torture, were compelled to erect them ; they 
 present an exciting picture of long trains of plundered wealth, 
 going to enrich some city or hero, without an intimation, that, 
 by industry and the arts of peace, the same wealth could 
 have been earned more cheaply than it was robbed ; they 
 exhibit the triumphal return of warriors, to be crowned with 
 honors worthy of a god, while they take the mind wholly 
 away from the carnage of the battle-field, from desolated
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 17 
 
 provinces and a mourning people. In all this, it is true, 
 there are many examples of the partial and limited virtue 
 of patriotism, but few only of the complete virtue of philan- 
 thropy. The courage held up for admiration is generally of 
 that animal nature which rushes into danger to inflict injury 
 upon another; but not of that divine quality which braves 
 peril for the sake of bestowing good, attributes, than which 
 there are scarcely any two in the souls of men more differ- 
 ent, though the baseness of the former is so often mistaken 
 for the nobleness of the latter. Indeed, if the past history 
 of our race is to be much read by children, it should be re- 
 written ; and while it records those events which have con- 
 travened all the principles of social policy, and violated all 
 the laws of morality and religion, there should, at least, be 
 some recognition of the great truth, that among nations, as 
 among individuals, the highest welfare of all can only be 
 effected by securing the individual welfare of each : there 
 should be some parallel drawn between the historical and 
 the natural relations of the race ; so that the tender and 
 immature mind of the youthful reader may have some op- 
 portunity of comparing the right with the wrong, and some 
 option of admiring and emulating the former instead of the 
 latter. As much of history now stands, the examples of right 
 and wrong, whose nativity and residence are on opposite 
 sides of the moral universe, are not merely brought and 
 shuffled together, so as to make it difficult to disti aguish 
 between them, but the latter are made to occupy almost the 
 whole field of vision ; while the existence of the former is 
 scarcely noticed. It is as though children should be taken 
 to behold, from afar, the light of a city on fire, and directed 
 to admire the splendor of the conflagration, without a thought 
 of the tumult and terror and death reigning beneath it. 
 
 Another very considerable portion of these libraries, espe- 
 cially where they have been recently formed or replenished, 
 consists of novels, and all that class of books which is com- 
 prehended under the familiar designations of "fictions,"
 
 18 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 " light reading," " trashy works," " ephemeral," or " babble 
 literature," &c. This kind of books has increased immeasu- 
 rably within the last twenty years. It has insinuated itself 
 into public libraries, and found the readiest welcome with 
 people who are not dependent upon libraries for the books 
 they peruse. Aside from newspapers, I am satisfied that the 
 major part of the unprofessional reading of the community is 
 of the class of books above designated. Amusement is the ob- 
 ject, mere amusement, as contradistinguished from instruc- 
 tion in the practical concerns of life; as contradistinguished 
 from those intellectual and moral impulses, which turn the 
 mind, both while reading and after the book is closed, to 
 observation and comparison and reflection upon the great 
 realities of existence. 
 
 That reading merely for amusement has its fit occasions 
 and legitimate office, none will deny. The difficulty of the 
 practical problem consists in adhering to that line of reason- 
 able indulgence, which lies between mental dissipation on 
 the one hand, and a denial of all relaxation on the other. 
 Life is too full of solemn duties to be regarded as a long play- 
 day ; while incessant toil lessens, the ability for useful labor. 
 In feeble health, or after sickness, or severe bodily or mental 
 labor, an amusing, captivating, enlivening book, which levies 
 no tax upon the powers of thought for the pleasure it gives, 
 is a delightful resource. It is medicinal to the sick, and re- 
 cuperative to the wearied mind. Especially is this the case 
 where a part only of the faculties have been intensely ex- 
 erted. Then, to stimulate those which have lain inactive 
 brings the quickest relief to those which have been laboring. 
 It is not repose to them, merely ; but repose, as it were, tran- 
 quillized by music. But the difference is altogether incalcu- 
 lable and immense between reading such books as an amuse- 
 ment only, and reading them as restorers from fatigue or as 
 soothers in distress ; between indulging in them as a relaxa- 
 tion or change from deep mental engrossment, and making 
 their perusal a common employment or business. One
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 19 
 
 yates, the other strengthens and restores ; one disables from 
 the performance of duty, the other is one of the readiest 
 preparations for a return to it. In reading merely for amuse- 
 ment, the mind is passive, acquiescent, recipient merely. 
 The subjects treated are not such as task its powers of 
 thought. It has no occasion to bring forth and re-examine 
 its own possessions; but it is wafted unresistingly. along, 
 through whatever regions the author chooses to bear it. It 
 is tliis passiveness, this surrendering of the mind, that consti- 
 tutes the pernicious influence of reading for amusement, when 
 carried to excess ; because a series, a reiteration, of eiforts is 
 just as indispensable, in order to strengthen any faculty of the 
 intellect, as a series of muscular exercises is to strengthen any 
 limb of the body: and, in reading for amusement, these ef- 
 forts are not made. Even when we read the most instructive 
 books, and transfer to our own minds the knowledge they con- 
 tain, the work is but half done. Most of their value consists in 
 the occasions they furnish to the reader to exert all his oAvn 
 vigor upon the subject, and, through the law of mental asso- 
 ciation, to bring all his own faculties to act upon it. A 
 stream of thought from his own mind should mingle with the 
 stream that comes from the book. Such reading creates 
 abilitv, while it communicates knowledge. The greatest 
 
 t t O O 
 
 accumulation of facts, until the comparing and the foreseeing 
 faculties have acted upon them, is as useless as a telescope or 
 a watch would be in the hands of a savasre. Single ideas 
 
 O O 
 
 may be transferred from an author to a reader; but habits of 
 thinking are intransferable : they must be formed within the 
 reader's own mind, if they are ever to exist there. Actual 
 observation, within its field, is better than reading; but the 
 advantage of reading consists in its presenting a field almost 
 infinitely larger and richer than any actual observation can 
 ever do: yet if the reader does not take up the materials 
 presented, and examine them one by one, and learn their 
 qualities and relations, he will not be able to work them into 
 any productions of his own ; he will be like a savage who
 
 20 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 has passed through the length of a civilized country, and just 
 looked at its machinery, its ships and houses, who, when he 
 returns home, will not be able to make a better tool, or build 
 a better canoe, or construct a better cabin, than before. It is 
 his own hand-work, on the materials of his art, which, after 
 thousands of trials and experiments, at last turns the rude 
 apprentice into such an accomplished artisan, that his hand 
 instantaneously obeys his will, and, in executing the most 
 ingenious works, he loses the consciousness of volition ; and 
 so it is by energetic, long-continued mental application to the 
 elements of thought, that the crude and meagre conceptions 
 of a child are refined and expanded and multiplied into the 
 sound judgment and good sense of a man of practical wis- 
 dom. Something, without doubt, is referable to the endow- 
 ments of Nature ; but with the mass of men much more is 
 attributable to that richest of all Nature's endowments, the 
 disposition to self-culture through patient, long-sustained 
 effort. No man, therefore, who has not made these efforts 
 times innumerable, and profited in each succeeding case by 
 the error or imperfection of the preceding, has any more right 
 to expect the possession of wisdom, discretion, foresight, than 
 the novice in architecture or in sculpture has to expect that, 
 in his first attempt, he shall be able to equal the Church of 
 St. Peter's, or chisel a perfect statue of Apollo. Now the 
 bane of making amusement the sole object of one's reading, 
 and the secret of its influence in weakening the mind, consist 
 in its superseding or discarding all attendant exertion on the 
 part of the reader. Without this exertion, the power of clear, 
 orderly, coherent thought, the power of seeing whether means 
 have been adapted to ends, becomes inactive, and at length 
 withers away like a palsied limb; while, at the same time, 
 the attention being hurried over a variety of objects, between 
 which Nature has established no relations, a sort of vola- 
 tility or giddiness is inflicted upon the mind, so that the 
 general result upon the whole faculties is that of weakness 
 and faintness combined.
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 21 
 
 What gives additional importance to this subject is the fact, 
 that by far the most extensive portion of this reading for 
 amusement consists of the perusal of fictitious works. The 
 number of books and articles, which, under the names of ro- 
 mances, novels, tales in verse or prose, from the elaborate 
 work of three volumes to the hasty production of three chap- 
 ters or three pages, is so wide-spread and ever-renewing, that 
 any computation of them transcends the power of the human 
 faculties. They gush from the printing-press. Their authors 
 are a nation. When speaking of the reading public, we must 
 be understood with reference to the subject-matter of the read- 
 ing. In regard to scientific works on government, political 
 economy, morals, philosophy, the reading public is very small. 
 Hardly one in fifty, amongst adults, belongs to it. For works 
 of biography, travels, history, it is considerably larger. But in 
 reference to fictitious works, it is large and astonishingly active. 
 It requires so little acquaintance with our language, and so 
 little knowledge of sublunary things and their relations, to 
 understand them ; and the inconvenience of failing to under- 
 stand a word, a sentence, or a page, is so trivial ; so exactly do 
 they meet the case of minds that are ignorant, indolent, and a 
 little flighty, that they are welcomed by vast numbers. Other 
 books are read slowly, commenced, laid aside, resumed, and 
 perused in intervals of leisure. These are run through with 
 almost incredible velocity. Take a work on morals, of the 
 same size with a novel ; the reading of the former will occupy 
 a month, the latter will be despatched without intervening 
 sleep. Of works unfolding to us the structure of our own 
 bodies, and the means of preserving health, and of the consti- 
 tution of our own minds, and the infinite diversity of the spirit- 
 ual paths, which the mind can traverse, each bringing after it, 
 its own peculiar consequences ; of works laying open the com- 
 plicated relations of society, illustrative of the general duties 
 belonging to all, and of the special duties arising from special 
 positions ; of works making us acquainted with the beneficent 
 laws and properties of Nature, and their adaptations to supply
 
 22 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 our needs aud enhance our welfare, of works of these 
 descriptions, editions of a few hundred copies only are printed, 
 and then the types are distributed, in despair of any further 
 demand ; while of fictitious works, thousands of copies are 
 thrown off at first, and they are stereotyped in confidence that 
 the insatiable public will call for new supplies. It was but a 
 few years after the publication of Sir Walter Scott's poems 
 and novels, that fifty thousand copies of many of them had 
 been sold in Great Britain alone. Under the stimulus which 
 he applied to the public imagination, the practice of novel-read- 
 ing has grown to such extent, that his imitators and copyists 
 have overspread a still wider field, and covered it to a greater 
 depth. In this country, the reading of novels has been still 
 more epidemic, because, in most parts of it, so great a portion 
 of the people can read, and because, owing to the exteusiveness 
 of the demand, they have been afforded so cheaply, that the 
 price of a perusal has often been less than the value of the 
 light by which they were read. 
 
 To give some idea of the difference in the sales of different 
 kinds of works, it may be stated, that of some of Bulwer's and 
 Marryatt's novels, from ten to fifteen thousand copies have been 
 sold in this country ; Avhile of that highly valuable and instruc- 
 tive work, Sparks's "American Biography," less than two thou- 
 sand copies, on an average, have been sold ; and of Prescott's 
 " Ferdinand and Isabella," only about thirty-six hundred. The 
 latter is considered a remarkably large sale, and is owing, in 
 no inconsiderable degree, to the superior manner in which that 
 interesting history was written. 
 
 No discerning person who has arrived at middle age, and 
 has been at all conversant with society, can have failed to 
 remark the effect upon mind and character of reading frivo- 
 lous books, when pursued as a regular mental employment, and 
 not as an occasional recreation ; the lowered tone of the facul- 
 ties, the irregular sallies of feeling, the want of a power of con- 
 tinuous thought on the same subject, and the imperfect views 
 taken of all practical questions, an imperfection compounded
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 23 
 
 by including things not belonging to the subject, and by omit- 
 ting things which do. Any such person will be able to give his 
 attestation to the fact, and be willing to advance it into an axiom, 
 that light reading makes light minds. 
 
 So far as it respects fictitious writings, the explanation of 
 their weakening and dispersive influence is palpable to the 
 feeblest comprehension. All men must recognize the wide dis- 
 tinction between intellect and feeling, between ideas and emo- 
 tions. These two classes of mental operations are inherently 
 distinct from each other in their nature ; they are called into 
 activity by different classes of objects ; they are cultivated by 
 different processes ; and as one or the other predominates in the 
 mental constitution, widely different results follow both in conduct 
 and character. All sciences are the offspring of the intellect. 
 On the other hand, there cannot be poetry or eloquence without 
 emotion. From the intellect come order, demonstration, inven- 
 tion, discovery ; from the feelings, enthusiasm, pathos, and 
 sublime sentiments in morals and religion. The attainments 
 of the greatest intellect are gathered with comparative slow- 
 ness, but each addition is a permanent one. The process re- 
 sembles that by which material structures are reared, which 
 are laboriously built up, brick by brick, or stone by stone, but, 
 when once erected, are steadfast and enduring. But the feel- 
 ings, on the other hand, are like the unstable elements of the 
 air or ocean, which are suddenly roused from a state of tran- 
 quillity into vehement commotion, and as suddenly subside into 
 repose. "When rhetoricians endeavor to excite more vivid con- 
 ceptions of truth by means of sensible images, they liken the pro- 
 ductions of the intellect to the solidity and stern repose of time- 
 defying pyramid or temple ; but they find symbols for the feel- 
 ings and passions of men in the atmosphere, which obeys the 
 slightest impulse, and is ready to start into whirlwinds or tem- 
 pest at once. To add to the stock of practical knowledge, 
 and to increase intellectual ability, requires voluntary and 
 long-sustained effort ; but feelings and impulses are often spon- 
 taneous, and always susceptible of being roused into action by
 
 24 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 a mere glance of the eye, or the sound of a voice To become 
 master of an exact, coherent, full set, or complement of ideas, 
 on any important subject, demands fixed attention, patience, 
 study ; but emotions or passions flash up suddenly, and while 
 they blaze they are consumed. In the mechanical and useful 
 arts, for instance, a knowledge of the structure and quality of 
 materials, of the weight and motive power of fluids, of the laws 
 of gravitation, and their action upon bodies in a state of motion 
 or rest, is acquired by the engineer, the artisan, the machinist, 
 not by sudden intuition, but by months and years of steady 
 application. Arithmetic, or the science of numbers ; geometry, 
 or the science of quantities ; astronomy, and the uses of astro- 
 nomical knowledge in navigation, must all have been profoundly 
 studied, the almost innumerable ideas which form these vast 
 sciences must have been discovered and brought together, one 
 by one, before any mariner could leave a port on this side 
 of the globe, and strike, without failure, the 'smallest town or 
 river on the opposite side of it. And the same principle is no 
 less true in regard to jurisprudence, to legislation, and to all 
 parts of social economy, so far as they are worthy to be called 
 sciences. But that part of the train of our mental operations 
 which we call the emotions or affections, those powers of our 
 spiritual constitution denominated the propensities and senti- 
 ments, Avhich give birth to appetite, hope, fear, grief, love, 
 shame, pride, at the very first, produce a feeling, which is 
 perfect or complete of its kind. An infant cannot reason, but 
 may experience as perfect an emotion of fear as an adult. 
 Mankind, for thousands of years, have been advancing in the 
 attainments of intellect ; but the fathers of the race had feel- 
 ings as electric and impetuous as any of their latest descend- 
 ants. In every intellectual department, therefore, there must 
 be accurate observation in collecting the elementary ideas, 
 these ideas must be compared, arranged, methodized, in the 
 mind, each faculty, which has cognizance of the subject, 
 taking them up individually, and, as it were, handling, assort- 
 ing, measuring, weighing them, until each one is marked at its
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 25 
 
 true value, and arranged in its right place, so that they may 
 stand ready to be reproduced, and to be embodied in any out- 
 ward fabric or institution, in any work of legislation or philoso- 
 phy, which their possessor may afterwards wish to construct. 
 Such intellectual processes must have been performed by every 
 man who has ever acquired eminence in the practical business 
 of life, or who has ever made any great discovery in the arts 
 or sciences, except, perhaps, in a very few cases, where dis- 
 covery has been the result of happy accident. It is this per- 
 severance in studying into the nature of things, in unfolding 
 their complicated tissues, discerning their minutest relations, 
 penetrating to their centres, that has made such men as Lord 
 Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Franklin, Watt, Fulton, Sir 
 Humphry Davy, and Dr. Bowditch, men, the light of whose 
 minds is now shed over all parts of the civilized world as dif- 
 fusively and universally as the light of the sun, and as endur- 
 ing as that light. And so it is in all the other departments of 
 life, whether higher or humbler ; not more in the case of the 
 diplomatist, who is appointed an ambassador to manage a diffi- 
 cult negotiation at a foreign court, than in that of the agent 
 who is chosen by a town, because of his good sense and 
 thorough knowledge of affairs, to conduct a municipal contro- 
 versy. It is to such habits of thought and reflection upon the 
 actual relations of things as they exist, and as God has consti- 
 tuted them, that we are indebted for the men who know how to 
 perform each day the duties of each day, and, in any station, 
 the duties of that station ; men, who, because of their clear- 
 sightedness and wisdom, are nominated as arbitrators or um- 
 pires by contending parties, or whose appearance in the jury- 
 box is hailed by the counsellors and suitors of the court ; men 
 whose work has not to be done over again, and whose books or re- 
 ports do not need errata as large as themselves. But the feelings 
 or emotions, so far from being dependent on these intellectual 
 habits for their vividness and energy, are even more vivid and 
 energetic when freed from control and direction. The intellect 
 hems in the feelings by boundaries of probability and natural-
 
 26 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ness. It opposes barriers of actual and scientific truth to their 
 devious wanderings and flights. It shows what things can be, 
 and what things cannot be, and thus ai-rests the imagination 
 when it would otherwise soar or plunge into the impossible and 
 the preternatural. The savage, with his uncultivated intellect, 
 has fields for the roamings of fancy, which can have no exist- 
 ence to the philosopher ; just as an idolater has an immensity 
 for the creations of his superstition, which to the enlightened 
 Christian is a nonentity. 
 
 Now, it is the feelings, and not the intellect, the excitable 
 or spontaneously-active powers of the mind, and not its steady, 
 day-laboring faculties, which the great body of fictitious 
 works appeals to and exercises. Were the whole mass of 
 these works analyzed, and reduced to its component elements, 
 nineteen parts in every twenty would be found addressed to the 
 emotions and feelings, and not to the reason and judgment. 
 Their main staple and texture are a description of the passions 
 of love, jealousy, hope, fear, remorse, revenge, rapture, de- 
 spair, the whole constituting a dark ground of guilt and 
 misery, occasionally illumined by a crossing beam of ecstatic 
 joy or almost superhuman virtue. But the trials and tempta- 
 tions described are rarely such as any human being will full 
 into ; and the virtues celebrated are such as few will ever 
 have an opportunity to achieve. Hence sympathy and aver- 
 sion, desire and apprehension, are kept at the highest tension ; 
 but it is upon incidents and scenes outside of actual life, not 
 in this world, and often not capable of being transferred to it. 
 In the mean time, the understanding sleeps ; the intellect is laid 
 aside. Those faculties by which we comprehend our position 
 in life and our relations to society, by which we discover 
 what our duty is, and the wisest way to perform it, have 
 nothing to do. The mind surrenders itself to the interest and 
 excitement of the story, while the powers by which we discern 
 tendencies and balance probabilities are discarded ; nay, those 
 sober thoughts are unwelcome intruders which come to break 
 the delusion, and to repress an insane exhilaration of the feel-
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 27 
 
 ings, until, at last, the diseased and infatuated mind echoes 
 that pagan saying, so treasonable to truth, that it would prefer 
 to go wrong with one guide rather than right with another, 
 as though, in a universe which an all-wise Being has formed, 
 any thing could be as well as to go right. In the reports of 
 some of the French hospitals for lunatics, the reading of 
 romances is set down as one of the standing causes of in- 
 sanity. 
 
 It is the perusal of this class of works as a regular or prin- 
 cipal mental employment, of which I am speaking ; and it is 
 easy for any one acquainted with the laws of the human 
 mind, and with the causes which foster or stint its growth, to 
 predict the effect of such reading both upon the will and the 
 capacity to perform the every-day duties and charities of life. 
 Could all temporal duties be written down in a catalogue, we 
 should find that private, domestic, in-door duties would consti- 
 tute vastly the greatest number. The social duties, growing out 
 of relationship, friendship, and neighborhood, would make up the 
 next largest and most important class ; for, while all others only 
 call upon us occasionally, the demands of these are perpetual. 
 Now. for the appropriate and punctual discharge of these nume- 
 rous and ever-recurring duties, a knowledge of all the scenes 
 and incidents, the loves and hates, the despairs and raptures, 
 contained in all the fictions ever written, is about as fit a prepa- 
 ration, as a knowledge of all the " castles in the air," ever built 
 by visionaries and dreamers, would be to the father of a house- 
 less family, who wished to erect a dwelling for their shelter, but 
 was wholly ignorant both of the materials and the processes 
 necessary for the work. And the reason is, that, in the region 
 of fiction, the imagination can have every thing in its own way ; 
 it can arrange the course of events as it pleases, and still 
 bring out the desired results. But in actual life, where the law 
 of cause and effect pervades all, links all, determines all, the 
 appropriate consequences of good or evil follow from their an- 
 tecedents with inevitable certaiuty. The premises of sound 
 or false judgments, of right or wrong actions, being given, the
 
 28 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 course of Nature and Providence predestines the conclusions of 
 happiness or misery, from which we cannot escape. Hence 
 the mind which, in the world of imagination, has been re- 
 lieved from all responsibility for consequences, being rigorously 
 held to abide by consequences whenever it descends to sublu- 
 nary aifairs, and being ignorant of the connection between causes 
 and effects finds all its judgments turned into folly, and all 
 its acts terminating in disaster or ruin. 
 
 Nor are the moral effects of this kind of reading, when 
 systematically pursued, less pernicious than the intellectual ; 
 for it will be found that those who squander their sympathies 
 most prodigally over distresses that were never felt are the 
 firmest stoics over calamities actually suffered. The invete- 
 rate novel-reader will accompany heroes and heroines to the 
 ends of the earth, and in tears bewail their fancied misfortunes ; 
 while he can command the serenest equanimity over sufferings 
 in the next street or at the next door. The continued contem- 
 plation of pain, without any accompanying effort to relieve it, 
 forms the habit of dissociating feeling from action, and pre- 
 sents the moral anomaly of one who professes to feel pity, 
 but withholds succor. In all healthy minds, judicious action 
 follows virtuous impulse. Nor do the splendid heroes of 
 romance ever earn their greatness and their honors by a 
 youth of study and toil, by contemning the seductions of in- 
 glorious ease ; and thus they never hold out to the young 
 mind the example of industry and perseverance and self- 
 denial as the indispensable prerequisites to greatness. Far 
 more baneful are the effects, when characters whose lives are 
 immersed in secret profligacy are varnished to the eye of the 
 world by Avealth and elegance ; or when audacious criminals 
 are endowed with such shining attractions of wit, talent, and 
 address, as cause the sympathy of the reader to outweigh his 
 abhorrence. 
 
 But if it is unfortunate that so many people should addict 
 themselves to the reading of fiction, because their minds are 
 immature and unbalanced, and have no touchstone whereby
 
 REPORT FOR 1389. 29 
 
 they can distinguish between what is extravagant, marvellous, 
 and supernatural, and -what, from its accordance to the 
 standard of nature, is simple, instructive, and elevating; it 
 is doubly unfortunate that so many excellent young persons 
 should be misled into the same practice, either from a laudable 
 desire to maintain some acquaintance with what is called 
 the literary world, and to furnish themselves with materials 
 for conversation, or from a vague notion that such reading 
 alone will give a polish to the mind, and adorn it with the 
 graces of elegance and refinement. In endeavoring to elucidate 
 the manner in which this indulgence entails weakness upon the 
 understanding, and unfits it for a wise, steady, beneficent 
 course of life, in a world so abounding as this is in solemn reali- 
 ties and obligations, I would most sedulously refrain from 
 uttering a word in disparagement of a proportionate and 
 measured cultivation of what are called polite literature and 
 the polite arts in all their branches. While we have senti- 
 ments and affections, as well as thoughts and ideas ; Avhile, in 
 the very account of the creation of the world, it is said that 
 some things were made to be pleasant to the sight, and others 
 good for sustenance ; and while our spiritual natures are en- 
 dowed with susceptibilities to enjoy the former, as well as 
 with capacities to profit by the later, any measures for the 
 elevation of the common mind, which do not recognize the 
 existence and provide for the cultivation of the first class of 
 powers, as well as for the second, would form a community 
 of men, wholly uncouth and rugged in their strength, and 
 almost uuamiable, however perfect might be their recti- 
 tude. The mind of every man is instinct with capacities 
 above the demands of the workshop or the field, capacities 
 which are susceptible of pure enjoyments from music and art, 
 and all the embellishments of civilized life, and whose indul- 
 gence would lighten the burden of daily toil. All have sus- 
 ceptibilities of feeling too subtile and evanescent to find any 
 medium of utterance, except in the language of poetry and 
 art, and too refined to be called into being, but by the creations
 
 30 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of genius. The culture of these sensibilities makes almost as 
 important a distinction between savage and civilized man, as 
 the training of the intellect; and without such cultivation, 
 though the form of humanity may remain, it will be disrobed 
 of many of its choicest beauties. Still, in a world, where, by 
 the ordinations of Providence, utility outranks elegance ; 
 where harvests to sustain life must be cultivated before gar- 
 dens are planted to gratify taste ; where all the fascinations of 
 regal courts are no atonement for the neglect of a single duty. 
 in such a world, no gentility or gracefulness of mind or man- 
 ners, however exquisite and fascinating, is any substitute im- 
 practical wisdom and benevolence. Without copious resources 
 of useful knowledge in our young men and young women ; 
 without available, applicable judgment and discretion, ade- 
 quate to the common occasions and ready for the emergencies 
 of life, the ability to quote poetic sentiments, aud expatiate 
 on passages of fine writing, or a connoisseurship in art, is but 
 mockery. Hence it is to be regretted that so many excellent 
 young persons, emulous of self-improvement, should commit 
 the error of supposing that an acquaintance with the institu- 
 tions of society, with the real wants and conditions of their 
 fellow-men, and with the means of relieving them, can be 
 profitably exchanged for a knowledge of the entire universe of 
 fiction ; or that it is wise, in their hours of study, to neglect 
 the wonderful works of the Creator, in order to become famil- 
 iar with the fables of men. Intellect must lay a foundation, 
 and rear a superstructure, before taste can adorn it. Without 
 solid knowledge and good sense, there is uo substance into 
 which ornament or accomplishment can be inwrought. It is 
 impossible to polish vacuity, or give a lustre to the surface of 
 emptiness. 
 
 One other general remark is applicable to a large portion of 
 this class of works. Most of them were written in Great 
 Britain for British readers. Hence they suppose and repre- 
 sent a state of society where wealth outranks virtue, and 
 birth takes precedence of talent, except in extraordinary cases
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 31 
 
 of mental endowment or attainment. They describe two 
 classes of men, which we never ought to have, one class, 
 whose distinction and elevation are founded on the adventitious 
 circumstances of birth or fortune, and another class who are 
 the ignorant, degraded dependants upon the former, but 
 they do not describe any class of industrious, intelligent, exem- 
 plary, just, and benevolent men, so alive to the rights of others, 
 that under no temptation would they become lords, and so con- 
 scious of their own, that under no force would they remain 
 slaves, a class of men which we ought to have, and, with a 
 proper use of the blessings Heaven has given us, we may 
 have. Surely, such books do not contain the models according 
 to which the youth of a Republic should be formed. 
 
 I should have felt myself wholly unwarranted in thus com- 
 menting upon the prevalence of amusing and fictitious, com- 
 pared with useful reading, and upon the pernicious conse- 
 qiiences of indulgence in it, were it not that the children of 
 the State are now growing up in this very condition of things, 
 and under circumstances, too, which will lead them to commit 
 the same error, and, of course, to suffer the same evil, except 
 some new inducements can be found to win them from it. The 
 number of these works, with the number of their readers, is 
 now rapidly increasing, not absolutely only, but relatively, 
 and in proportion to other and useful works. The materials of 
 which they are composed have now been so often wrought 
 over, that moderately imitative powers are amply sufficient for 
 recasting them in slightly modified forms : originality aud 
 invention have ceased to be necessary. The cheapness, too, 
 of this class of works, gives them a preference, not only for 
 circulating, but for town and social libraries. I have been 
 surprised at finding such numbers of them in the catalogues 
 of the latter. I have heard of but one town or social 
 library from which they ha.ve been peremptorily excluded 
 by an article in the constitution. The by-laws of one other 
 library set up a certain standard for books, and empower a 
 committee to burn all the nonconformists ; that is, the noncon-
 
 32 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 forming books. In other places, authority to dispose by sale 
 of trivial or pernicious books is given ; and this leads me to 
 another subject in regard to the reading of the community, 
 not less important than the preceding. 
 
 This subject is presented by the question, What do those per- 
 sons read, who have not yet risen to the point of appreciating 
 and admiring the better class of fictions and of recent literary 
 woi'ks? A taste for the better kinds of light reading presup- 
 poses a preference, in the reader's mind, of what belongs to the 
 spiritual over what belongs to the merely animal part of our 
 nature, of mental over sensual gratifications. A knowledge, 
 too, of some of the more obvious phenomena of the material 
 world, and of the operations of the human mind, has made 
 many books ridiculous and contemptible, which once were con- 
 sulted as oracles, and filled their readers with terror and rever- 
 ential awe. The fictions of the last century, whose texture 
 consists of events monstrous and supernatural, whose ma- 
 chinery is ghosts, hobgoblins, demons, and demi-gods, written 
 from one end to the other in defiance not merely of experience, 
 but of possibility, and adapted to the lowest ignorance, these, 
 in rare instances only, have been republished. They have 
 been driven from shelves and tables upon which the feeblest 
 ray of the light of science has been cast. Yet, even within 
 the last year, large editions of dream-books and fortune- 
 tellers have been published. But there is a kind of reading 
 in the community, wholly unknown to the publishers of fash- 
 ionable novels and of the better sort of ephemeral literature. 
 To those who have not been in the way of knowing, nor in the 
 habit of reflecting, what kind of reading is most congenial and 
 welcome to the least educated portion of the people. Jiud 
 through what channels they are supplied, the facts which have 
 existed and still exist must be a source of alarm. Numerous 
 itinerant booksellers are constantly on the circuit of the coun- 
 try, offering from door to door such books as, in the advan- 
 cing knowledge and changing tastes of the times, are no longer 
 salable at the bookstore, nor inquired for at the circulating
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 33 
 
 library. The precise extent of this traffic it is impossible to 
 determine ; yet, from all I can learn, I am satisfied it is car- 
 ried on to a very considerable degree, especially in inland 
 towns and in the purlieus of populous places. One gentleman 
 informed me, that, in the vicinity of a manufacturing village 
 where he lived, he had seen half a dozen of these book-peddlers 
 in a fortnight. In communications received on the subject of 
 established libraries, mention of similar facts has occasionally 
 been made, although that was not one of the subjects on which 
 information was sought. During the last autumn, I saw in a 
 beautiful, inland town the consents of a peddler's vehicle, un- 
 laden, and arranged in a stall by the side of the street. I took 
 occasion carefully to examine the books thus exposed for sale. 
 Amongst several hundred volumes, there were not more than 
 two or three books which any judicious person would ever put 
 into the hands of a child after he could read. The rest con- 
 sisted of the absurdest novels of the last century, of stories of 
 buccaneers, of pirates and murderers, of shipwrecks, of New- 
 gate calendars, and accounts of other exciting and extraordi- 
 nary trials, of different sizes and prices to meet the ability of 
 purchasers. On a temporary counter were spread out bundles 
 of songs, in single sheets, some patriotic, some profane, and 
 some obscene, to be sold for a cent apiece. Amongst the 
 books were Volney's " Ruins" and Paine's "Age of Reason." 
 At the time of this exposition for sale, a literary festival, occupy- 
 ing two days, was held in the same village ; on which occasion, 
 profound, philosophical, literary, and religious discourses were 
 delivered to intelligent and gratified audiences. The stall 
 where the books were sold was within a stone's-throw of the 
 church where the anniversary was celebrated. Both exercises 
 went on together. The thought, irrepressible on the occasion, 
 was, how much of that immense difference between those who 
 listened with delight to the eloquence of the discourses and ap- 
 preciated the instruction they gave, and those who purchased 
 the moral venom to satisfy the cravings of a natural appetite, 
 to which no entertainment of better things had ever been 
 
 3
 
 34 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 offered, how much of this immense difference was perfectly 
 within the power, and therefore within the responsibility, of 
 society. Surely sucli taste, and such books at once to gratify 
 and aggravate it, are not the means Avherewith the children in 
 a free government, and of a Christian people, are to lay the 
 ever-during foundations of conduct and character. 
 
 How few parents there are, who, in looking back to the days 
 of their own childhood and minority, find no occasion to la- 
 ment, now when the injury is irreparable, the want of 
 eai'ly opportunities for laying up a store of valuable knowl- 
 edge, and the loss of time, now irrecoverable, conse- 
 quent upon that want ! How many feel, daily, that their 
 power of thinking, and especially of expressing their thoughts 
 in speech or in writing, has, all their life long, been obstructed 
 and deadened, from an absence of facilities for information 
 and of incitements to study in early life. For the parents 
 themselves, these regrets come too late. The losses belong to 
 a class for which even repentance brings no remedy. And 
 the question is, whether these same parents shall suffer their 
 own children to grow up under a similar privation, to be 
 doomed in their turn, when they become men and women, to 
 the same melancholy retrospect and to the same unavailing 
 regrets. 
 
 The people of this State are, and must of necessity con- 
 tinue to be, an industrious people, or they cannot subsist. 
 Wealthy as the State is justly supposed to be, yet if all the 
 property in it, both real and personal, were equally divided 
 amongst all its inhabitants, it would not amount to more than 
 four hundred dollars apiece. How soon would all this be gone, 
 even to the very soil we tread on, without the annual replenish- 
 iugs of industry ! Our soil furnishes nothing of spontaneous 
 growth, and its unrelenting ruggedness can be propitiated only 
 by the offerings of industry. Our people, therefore, as a peo- 
 ple, cannot go abroad for information, for that enlargement 
 of mind and that acquaintance with affairs which comes from 
 foreign travel, whim pursued with an inquiring spirit and an
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 35 
 
 open eye. If the necessity of their condition debars them from 
 visiting other states or countries in quest of knowledge, then 
 knowledge must be brought to them, to their own doors and 
 fire-sides, or ignorance is the only alternative, the igno- 
 rance of childhood darkening into the deeper ignorance of 
 manhood, with all its jealousies and its narrow-mindedness, 
 and its superstitions, and its penury of enjoyments, poor 
 amid the intellectual and moral riches of the universe, blind 
 in the splendid temple which God has builded, and famishing 
 amid the profusions of Omnipotence. The minds, then, of 
 our people, should travel, though their bodies remain at home ; 
 and, for these journeyings and voyages, books are an ever-ready 
 and costless vehicle. 
 
 With a rugged and unproductive soil, Massachusetts is also 
 by far the most densely populated State in the Union. Hence, 
 for the temporal and material prosperity of her people, for 
 their subsistence even, they are obliged to form an alliance 
 with the great agencies of Nature, as auxiliaries in their labor. 
 But Nature bestows her mighty forces of wind and water and 
 steam, only upon those who seek them through intelligence and 
 skill. The same circumstances, therefore, which seem to have 
 marked out this State as a place of great mechanical, manu- 
 facturing, and commercial industry, draw after them the neces- 
 sity of such a wide range of knowledge, as, though always valu- 
 able, would not otherwise be so indispensable. To fit the peo- 
 ple for prosecuting these various branches of business with 
 success or even to rescue them from making shipwreck of 
 their fortunes they must become acquainted with those 
 mechanical laws that pervade the material world. They must 
 become intelligent machinists, millwrights, shipwrights, engi- 
 neers not craftsmen merely, but men who understand the 
 principles upon which their work proceeds ; so that, by the 
 skilful preparation and adjustment of machinery, the sleepless 
 and gigantic forces of Nature may perform their tasks. They 
 must know the nature and action of the elements. They must 
 kuow the properties of the bodies used in their respective
 
 36 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 branches of business, and the processes by which rude mate- 
 rials can most cheaply be converted into polished fabrics. 
 They must know the countries whence foreign products are 
 imported, whither domestic products are exported, the course 
 of trade, the laws of demand and supply, what articles depend 
 on the permanent wants of mankind, and therefore will always 
 be in demand, and what depend upon caprice or fashion, and 
 therefore are certain to be discarded soon, for the very reason 
 that they are now in vogue. Now, all these lead out, by im- 
 perceptible steps, into mechanical philosophy, the applications 
 of science to the useful arts, civil geography, navigation, com- 
 merce, political economy, and the relations which nations bear 
 to each other. Although an individual might learn to perform 
 a task or execute an agency in one of these departments, 
 empirically, that is, by a knowledge of the modes of proceed- 
 ing, but in ignorance of the principles on which the" process 
 depends, yet such individuals never originate improvements or 
 inventions. Like the Chinese, the end of a hundred years, or 
 of a hundred generations, finds them in the spot they occupied 
 at the beginning. 
 
 Of those engaged in agriculture, an interest intrinsically 
 important and elevated, it may be said, that just in propor- 
 tion as the soils they cultivate are more sterile should the 
 minds of the cultivators be more fertile ; for, in a series of 
 years, the quantity of the harvests depends quite as much upon 
 the knowledge and skill of the cultivator as upon the richness 
 of the soil he tills. Take the year round, and the farmer has 
 as many leisure hours as any class of men ; and he has this 
 advantage over many others, that his common round of occu- 
 pations does not engross all his powers of thought, so that, 
 wei'e his mind previously supplied with a fund of facts, he 
 might be meditating as he works, and growing Aviser and richer 
 together. 
 
 In fine, there is not, and the constitution of things has made 
 it impossible that there should be, any occupation or employ- 
 ment whatever, where an extended knowledge of its principles,
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 87 
 
 or of its kindred departments, would not improve products, 
 abridge processes, diminish cost, and impart dignity to the 
 pursuit. 
 
 And how without books, as the grand means of intellectual 
 cultivation, are the daughters of the State to obtain that knowl- 
 edge on a thousand subjects, which is so desirable in the 
 character of a female, as well as so essential to the discharge 
 of the duties to which she is destined ? Young men, it may 
 be said, have a larger circle of action ; they can mingle more 
 in promiscuous society, at least, they have a far wider range 
 of business occupations, all of which stimulate thought, 
 suggest inquiry, and furnish means for improvement. But the 
 sphere of females is domestic. Their life is comparatively 
 secluded. The proper delicacy of the sex forbids them from 
 appearing in the promiscuous marts of business, and even from 
 mingling, as actors, in those less boisterous arenas, where 
 mind is the acting agent, as well as the object to be acted upon. 
 If, then, she is precluded from these sources of information, 
 and these incitements to inquiry ; if, by the unanimous and 
 universal opinion of civilized nations, when she breaks away 
 from comparative seclusion and retirement, she leaves her 
 charms behind her ; and if, at the same time, she is debarred 
 from access to books, by what means, through what channels, 
 is she to obtain the knowledge so indispensable for the fit dis- 
 charge of maternal and domestic duties, and for rendering her- 
 self ail enlightened companion for intelligent men ? Without 
 books, except in cases of extraordinary natural endowment, 
 she will be doomed to relative ignorance and incapacity. Nor 
 can her daughters, in their turn, escape the same fate ; for 
 their minds will be weakened by the threefold cause of trans- 
 mission, inculcation, and example. Steady results follow from 
 steady causes ; under such influences, therefore, if not avert- 
 ed, the generations must deteriorate from the positive to the 
 superlative in mental feebleness and imbecility. 
 
 But far above and beyond all special qualifications for 
 special pursuits is the importance of forming to usefulness and
 
 38 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 honor the capacities which are common to all mankind. The 
 endowments that belong to all are of far greater consequence 
 than the peculiarities of any. The practical farmer, the inge- 
 nious mechanic, the talented artist, the upright legislator or 
 judge, the accomplished teacher, should be only modifications 
 or varieties of the original man. The man is the trunk ; occu- 
 pations and professions are only diiferent qualities of the fruit 
 it should yield. There are more of the same things to be 
 taught to all, and learned by all, than there are of different 
 things to be imparted, distributively, to classes consisting of a 
 few. The development of the common nature ; the cultivation 
 of the germs of intelligence, uprightness, benevolence, truth, 
 that belong to all, these are the principal, the aim, the end ; 
 while special preparations for the field or the shop, for the 
 forum or the desk, for the land or the sea, are but incidents. 
 
 In the first place, it is requisite that every man, considered 
 merely as a man, and without reference to station or occupa- 
 tion, should know something of his own bodily structure and 
 organization, of whose marvellous workmanship it is said, that 
 it is fearfully aud wonderfully made, ii-onderfully, because 
 the infinite wisdom and skill, manifested in the adjustment 
 and expansion of his frame, tend to inspire the mind with 
 devotion and a religious awe ; and fearfully, because its 
 exquisite mechanism is so constantly exposed to peril and 
 destruction from all the objects and elements around him, 
 that precaution or fear is the hourly condition of his exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Did each individual know, what, with a few suitable 
 books, he might easily learn, on what observances and con- 
 ditions the Creator of the body has made its health and strength 
 to depend ; did he know that his corporeal frame is a general 
 system, made up by the union of many particular systems, 
 the nervous, the muscular, the bony, the arterial, the venous, 
 the pulmonary, the digestive ; that all these bear certain 
 fixed relations to each other, aud to the objects and elements 
 of the external world, it is inconceivable how much of
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 39 
 
 disease and pain and premature death would be averted, 
 from how much imposition he Avould be saved, and how much 
 the powers of useful labor, and the common length of life, 
 would be increased. Even from the extension of knowledge 
 on these subjects within the last century, the average length of 
 life has increased one quarter ; and yet it now reaches to but 
 little more than half of threescore years and ten. How many 
 persons, annually, are killed by the carbonic gas of burning 
 charcoal, when, did they know of its existence, or how it is 
 formed, they would as soon swallow arsenic as inhale it ! 
 How much property is annually destroyed by spontaneous com- 
 bustion, through an ignorance of the circumstances that cause 
 it ! What a population of spectres and ghosts and appari- 
 tions has been driven from the abodes of all intelligent men, 
 and might be annihilated with regard to all mankind, by a 
 knowledge of the reflection and refraction of light, and of a 
 few other simple laws of Nature ! Those terrific races, that 
 once swarmed the earth, have ceased their visits where a few 
 of those principles of science are understood, which every 
 child, if supplied with the means, might easily learn. How 
 pertinaciously have the most diffusive blessings been resisted, 
 
 such as the use of lightning conductors, and vaccination, 
 
 because devout but ignorant people supposed, that to ward 
 off death, when it came under violent forms, was an impious 
 defiance of the will of Heaven ! as though it were not the 
 primary will of Heaven that we should use the means of self- 
 preservation which it has graciously given us. It is not long 
 since, that, in one of our most intelligent cities, a splendid granite 
 church took fire ; and when it was found impossible to extin- 
 guish the flames in its interior, the chief-engineer forbade the 
 engine-men to play upon the walls, because he well knew that 
 water thrown upon heated granite would decompose it, and he 
 wished to save the materials ; but hundreds of others, igno- 
 rant of this fact, but only knowing that the engineer belonged 
 to a different religious denomination from the worshippers at 
 the church, attributed the prohibition to his spite against an
 
 40 AXXUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 opposing sect of Christians ; and, while he took the measure 
 which alone could save the property, they supposed he was 
 maliciously delighting himself with the sight of its destruction. 
 In Scotland, during the last century, the introduction of mills 
 for winnowing grain was violently opposed. The whole 
 argument took a theological cast. It was urged, on one side, 
 that the use of a winnowing mill Avas a resistance of the 
 Divine "Will, because it prevented the wind from " blowing 
 Avhere it listeth." But, on the other side, it was gravely 
 answered, that to prevent the wind from " blowing where it 
 listeth," only contravened the will of the "Prince of the power 
 of the air," and was therefore not only lawful, but laudable. 
 Profit and convenience coming to the support of the latter 
 argument, it prevailed. These are specimens only of the 
 most gross and sottish ignorance. Its less palpable forms are 
 indefinitely more numerous, and their consequences, in the 
 aggregate, indefinitely more disastrous. Let any one read 
 such a work as that of Dick " On the Diffusion of Usi-ful 
 Knowledge," and he will be able to form some idea how inti- 
 mately the private, personal happiness of a people is connected 
 with its intelligence. 
 
 But these illustrations are endless. The real fact to be 
 pondered is, that, without diffusing information amongst the 
 people, we shall go on in the same way, smiling at the follies 
 of the last generation, and furnishing anecdotes for the next. 
 There are innumerable ways in which a knowledge of the 
 material world would gladden the obscurest dwelling in the 
 land, and disburden the heart of the humblest individual of 
 fears, anxieties, and sorrows. There are innumerable ways in 
 winch an instructed and enlightened man turns the course 
 of Nature to his profit and delight and daily comfort, which 
 an ignorant man would no more think of than a savage would 
 think of burning anthracite coal in the winter to warm him, 
 and of preserving ice over summer to cool him. 
 
 All children might learn something of Natural History. 
 This department presents an immense variety of objects, cal-
 
 REPORT FOB 1839. 41 
 
 dilated to develop their observing and comparing faculties, at 
 a period of life when these faculties are more active than ever 
 afterwards, and to store the mind with an abundance of mate- 
 rials for the judging and reasoning powers to act upon. To 
 portions of this class of objects, divines and moralists are per- 
 petually referring, in order to illustrate the power and wisdom 
 and perfections of God ; and yet, how nearly lost are all such 
 illustrations upon minds that know nothing of those laws of 
 vegetable life which clothe " the lilies of the field " in a beauty 
 beyond the regal glory of Solomon, nor of that animal 
 mechanism that saves the " sparrow " from falling ! 
 
 The biography of great and good men is one of the most 
 efficient of all influences in forming the character of children ; 
 for, as they are prone to imitate what they admire, it uncon- 
 sciously directs, while it delights them. Let the mind be sup- 
 plied with definite, exact ideas on any subject, and we all 
 know by experience, that, when an analogous case arises, the 
 related ideas with which we were familiar before will instan- 
 taneously spring up in the mind by the law of association. 
 And when correct ideas present themselves spontaneously in 
 this way, they are, to say the least, far more likely to be em- 
 bodied in action, than if they had first to be laboriously sought 
 out. Especially is this true in emergencies ; and how many 
 of the follies and imprudences of men are first committed on 
 emergencies, so sudden as to exclude reflection ! On such 
 occasions, to have prototypes of moral excellence in the mind 
 is something like having precedents or examples in the practi- 
 cal concerns or business of life. Although it is a great ti'uth, 
 that all miuds have the capacity of distinguishing between 
 right and wrong, yet life presents innumerable instances where 
 the application of these principles is attended with serious 
 difficulty : in such cases, mere ignorance is always the 
 source of error, and often of ruin. And how many excellent 
 men have lived, how many illustrious examples have been set, 
 of which only a very few of the more favored children of this 
 State have ever heard ! all others, therefore, being not so
 
 42 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 much as invited to follow in the same radiant paths. Why 
 should the examples of benevolence, of probity, of devotion to 
 truth, be lost to so many of our children, whom they might 
 fire with a corresponding love of excellence? Here are real 
 examples of real men, and are, therefore, possible and imita- 
 ble ; and, to the unsophisticated mind of a child, there is as 
 great a difference between real and fictitious personages as 
 there is to a merchant between real and fictitious paper. There 
 never was such an argument in favor of furnishing biographi- 
 cal aud scientific truth for children, and against that mass of 
 fictions which are given them for true stories, and not as media 
 or illustrations merely, as the simple question, which ingenu- 
 ous children so often a<k. when reading or hearing a narrative, 
 Is it true f It ought to be remembered, that in all the objects 
 and operations of Nature, and in the lives of genuine men. we 
 converse with God and with the course of his providence at 
 first hand, and not with mock-shows and counterfeits and 
 hearsays. 
 
 There is another kind of reading, which all must admit to 
 be of the very highest importance to our citizens, and of which 
 they are almost universally ignorant ; I mean our ante-Revolu- 
 tionary history. Few, even of our educated men, can claim 
 any familiarity with it ; yet there our free institutions germi- 
 nated. Never, in any other place, nor at any other time, have 
 the great principles of civil and religious liberty been so ably 
 discussed, or been sustained by such heroic trials aud sacrifices, 
 as between the first colonization of this country and the peace 
 of 1783. Our country's independence, the birth of a free 
 people, one of the greatest epochs in the history of the human 
 race, was the result. Every boy who is not ruined by a false 
 course of instruction passes through a state of mind, between 
 the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, when a study of the princi- 
 ples and deeds recorded in that history would give him some 
 adequate idea what liberty and law are, what they have cost, 
 and what they are worth. 
 
 But, when we turn from the outward and material world to
 
 REPOET FOR 1839. 43 
 
 the inward and spiritual life, a wider field for improvement 
 opens before us ; for out of the invisible recesses of the mind 
 come all the mighty changes wrought by human power. When 
 an uninstructed person looks upon the outward form of a man, 
 he thinks nothing of the skilfully-adjusted organs, nor of the 
 mysterious functions of vitality, within it. The vibrating 
 nerves, which convey sensation and volition, the contracting 
 muscle, the flowing blood, the health and strength giving pro- 
 cesses of nutrition, the dilating lungs, with their adaptations to 
 each other, are all hidden from his untaught gaze. So, when 
 an ignorant man regards the operations of the mind, he discerns 
 only a tumultuary, conflicting tide of wishes and terrors, of 
 pleasures and pains, of doubts and purposes, rising, contending, 
 and subsiding, without order or law. He takes no cognizance 
 of the different powers and faculties with which he has been en- 
 dowed, of their relative supremacy, of their different spheres of 
 action, nor of their adaptations to his temporal condition ; and 
 hence, when he obeys their impulses, it is without the approval 
 of conscience ; and when he commands them, it is without the 
 discriminations of reason. Every child, towards the close of 
 his minority, has time and capacity enough, could he be fur- 
 nished with the means, to acquire much of the knowledge en- 
 joined in that ancient precept, so universally celebrated and 
 sanctioned, " Know thyself." 
 
 But, after all, those blessings of knowledge, combined with 
 well-directed feelings, which cannot be enumerated, are infi- 
 nitely more than any language can express. The greater pro- 
 portion of the stream of every man's life is hidden in the silent 
 breast, and never emerges into utterance or action. Much as 
 any one may be in the company of the world, he is much more 
 in the company of his own consciousness only. It is the per- 
 petual inflowing of his secret reflections and emotions that 
 mingles sweet or bitter waters in the stream of every man's 
 existence. Whatever reaches the fountains of this stream, is, 
 as far as possible, to be remembered in plans for human ame- 
 lioration. Few men have battles to fight, or senates to per-
 
 44 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 suade, or kingdoms to rule ; but all have a spirit to be con- 
 trolled, and to be brought into subjection to the social and 
 divine law. The intellect forces the great problems of exist- 
 ence and futurity and destiny upon all ; and none will question 
 that much depends upon human means, whether a man shall go 
 through the world and out of it, elated by delusive hopes, or 
 tormented by causeless fears. 
 
 Among the agencies that operate to these momentous ends, 
 books, certainly, occupy a conspicuous place. Whoever has 
 read modern biography, with a philosophic eye to the causes of 
 the extraordinary characters it records, must have observed the 
 frequent references that are made to some book, as turning the 
 stream of life at some critical point in its course. In one of 
 Dr. Franklin's letters, he says, that, when a boy, he met with 
 a book entitled " Essays to do Good," which led to such a train 
 of thinking, as had an influence on his conduct through life. 
 Sir Walter Scott, in his writings and letters, makes repeated 
 and repeated mention of the fact, that he owed his power of 
 painting past times to the books which he read when young. 
 The notorious Stephen Burroughs, a native of a neighboring 
 State, relates in his autobiography, that he was inflamed with 
 military ardor by the perusal of " Guy, Earl of Warwick ; " 
 that he ran away from his father three times, once before 
 he was fourteen years of age, and enlisted in a regiment of 
 artillery. Twice he was reclaimed, but, at last, he succeeded 
 in escaping, and in the camp, it has been sometimes said, 
 commenced his life of ignominy. Whoever looks deeper, sees 
 that that ignominious life commenced when he was reading a 
 pernicious book. It would be easy to fill pages with similar facts. 
 " When I see a house," says Dr. Franklin, " well furnished 
 with books and newspapers " (of course he meant instructive, 
 and not mere partisan ones), " there I see intelligent and well- 
 informed children ; but, if there are no books nor papers, the 
 children are ignorant, if not profligate." It has been fre- 
 quently remarked by observing men, that towns in which good 
 libraries have been established show a population of intelli-
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 45 
 
 gence superior to that of towns where none has existed. In a 
 number of towns, recent attempts to establish libraries for 
 grown people have utterly failed. The men and women, not 
 having acquired a taste for useful reading when children, have 
 lost it for life. Let the same course be followed in regard to 
 the present children, and time is not more certain to bring the 
 day when they shall be men and women, than it is to bring the 
 same feelings of indifference towards mental improvement. 
 On the other hand, I have never heard of a well-selected 
 library for children which has failed from their want of inte- 
 rest in it. 
 
 And iu what way, except by furnishing good libraries to the 
 people at large, can the reading of frivolous and useless books, 
 of novels of the baser sort, and of that contaminating and 
 pestilential class of works which is now hawked around the 
 country, creating moral diseases, or inflaming and aggravating 
 where it finds them, be prevented ? These books no law can 
 destroy or reach. No power of persuasion can ever induce 
 those who have acquired a love of reading them to aban- 
 don what gives them pleasure, without some equivalent of 
 pleasure is proffered in its stead. But a supply of good books 
 would confer far more than an equivalent. It would prove a 
 remedy where the disease exists, and an antidote where it 
 threatens. Let good books be read, and the taste for reading 
 bad ones will slough oif from the minds of the young, like 
 gangrened flesh from a healing wound. Nor will any severity 
 of legislative enactment, nor any vigilance in the administra- 
 tion of the law, ever succeed iu the extirpation of gaming, 
 shows, circuses, theatres, and many low and gross forms of 
 indulgence, without the introduction of some moral and intel- 
 lectual substitutes. 
 
 For the purpose of carrying out a plan of improvement, co- 
 extensive with the wants of the community, and with the limits 
 of the State, no system can be devised at all comparable with 
 the existing arrangement of school districts. Here are corpo- 
 rate bodies, known to the law, already organized and in ope-
 
 46 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ration. The schoolhouses are central points of minute sub- 
 divisions of territory, which, in the aggregate, embrace every 
 inch of ground in the State. There are but few districts in 
 the State which comprise more than a space of two miles 
 square. On an average, they include less than that extent of 
 territory. Here, then, are central points, at convenient dis- 
 tances, distributed with great uniformity all over the Common- 
 wealth ; each one with a little group of children the hope 
 and treasure of the State dependent upon it for all the 
 means of public instruction they are ever to enjoy. And 
 these points, though now emitting so dim and feeble a light, 
 may be made luminous and radiant, dispelling the darkness, 
 and filling the land with a glory infinitely above regal splen- 
 dor. Could the children, who are so widely scattered over the 
 surface of the State, laboring, even in their tender years, upon 
 its hills and by its water-falls, could they assemble, and 
 present themselves before their rulers, and be, for a moment, 
 endued with a vision of their coming fortunes, and speak of 
 the life of toil to which most of them have been born, of their 
 poverty in the means of self-cultivation, or, what is worse than 
 poverty, of their indifference to it ; could they proclaim that 
 every passing day is uttering the irreversible oracles of their 
 fate, who could resist the appeal? And can the thought of 
 such an appeal penetrate the heart with less electric swiftness 
 because they cannot make it? 
 
 Were any mode to be now devised or discovered by which 
 tbe soil of the State could be made to yield fourfold its pres- 
 ent harvests, with no additional labor or expense ; or by which, 
 in some new mode of applying water or steam power, a given 
 expenditure of time and money would return quadruple products 
 in value or in quantity, could there be found a dissenting 
 voice against its immediate adoption? Yet who will venture 
 to say that one-fourth, or even one-fortieth, part of the mental 
 and moral energies of our children is now put forth and 
 expended in the wisest direction, or for the highest objects? 
 Were the earth beneath us found to be a rich magazine of
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 47 
 
 mineral treasures, how speedily would the spirit of enter- 
 prise invest its capital and ply its enginery in bringing 
 those treasures to light, and in appropriating them to their 
 uses ! Why a more contented wastefulness of moral resources 
 than of mineral wealth ? Were there wide tracts of the richest 
 soils in the State unreclaimed, how soon would the hand of 
 skilful husbandry enter and till them, and make them teem 
 with luxuriant harvests ! Yet, in the obscurest corners of the 
 land, along the by-ways, and under the humblest roofs, there 
 is buried talent, and the suppressed power of extended and god- 
 like benevolence. Could a library containing popular, intelli- 
 gible elucidations of the great subjects of art, of science, of 
 duty, be carried home to all the children in the Commonwealth, 
 it would be a magnet to reveal the varied elements of excel- 
 lence now hidden in their souls. 
 
 The State, in its sovereign capacity, has the deepest interest 
 in this matter. If it would spread the means of intelligence 
 and self-culture over its entire surface, making them diffusive 
 as sunshine, causing them to penetrate into every hamlet and 
 dwelling, and, like the vernal sun, quickening into life the 
 seeds of usefulness and worth, wherever the prodigal hand of 
 Nature may have scattered them, it would call into existence 
 an order of men who would establish a broader basis for its 
 prosperity, and give a brighter lustre to its name, who 
 would improve its arts, impart wisdom to its counsels, and 
 extend the beneficent sphere of its charities. Yet not for its 
 own sake only should it assume this work. It is a corollary 
 from the axioms of its constitution, that every child born with- 
 in its borders shall be enlightened. In its paternal character, 
 the government is bound, even to those who can make no re- 
 quital. Sacredly is it bound to develop all the existing capa- 
 cities, and to insure the utmost attainable welfare, of that vast 
 crowd and throng of men, who, without being known, during 
 life, beyond their neighboring hills, without leaving any 
 enduring name behind them after death, still, by their life-long 
 industry, fill up, as it were, drop by drop, the mighty stream
 
 48 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of the country's prosperity. In the heart of this multitude 
 dwell capacities of good, and possibilities of evil, wholly tran- 
 scending the power of finite imagination to conceive. Here 
 are an inconceivable extent and magnitude of interests, sympa- 
 thies, obligations ; here are all the great instincts of humani- 
 ty, working out their way to a greater or less measure of good, 
 according to the light they enjoy ; and, compared with this 
 wide and deep mass of unrecorded life, all that emerges into 
 history and is seen of man is as nothing. To a superior being, 
 to whom the world appears as it really is, whose eve can 
 see through it and round it, the substance of its weal and woe 
 lies here ; and ought not the means of knowledge, and die in- 
 citements and the aids to virtue, to be co-exteusive with this 
 vast expanse and depth of wants and responsibilities ? 
 
 Again : it is believed that no barbarous nation has ever been 
 known to history, amongst whom any form of government 
 had been established, which had not adopted specific meas- 
 ures to educate the heir of sovereignty for the discharge of his 
 regal duties. And can the obligation to prepare for the respon- 
 sibilities attendant upon power be less, where all the citizens, 
 instead of one, are born to the inheritance of sovereignty ? By 
 our institutions, the political rights of the father descend to his 
 sons in course of law. But the intellectual and moral qualifi- 
 cations necessary for the discreet use of those rights are in- 
 transmissible by virtue of any statute. These are personal, 
 not hereditary ; and are, therefore, to be taught anew and 
 learned anew by each successive generation. Hence, as the 
 work of education is never done, the means of education should 
 never be withheld ; as the former must be continually re- 
 newed, the latter must as continually be supplied. 
 
 The instruction and pleasure which the parents themselves 
 would experience from the, establishment of a good library in 
 their respective districts are too important to be forgotten, and 
 yet are so obvious as to need only a passing reference. 
 
 It seems to be the unanimous opinion of the teachers of all 
 schools, whether public or private, that a School Library would
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 49 
 
 be a most valuable auxiliary in interesting children in their stud- 
 ies. It would inspire the young with the desire to learn, that 
 they might prepare themselves to enjoy what they saw was 
 prized by others. Several of the rudimental studies could be 
 invested, to the eye of the pupil, with new interest and use- 
 fulness by its means. If the facts or sentiments contained in 
 the reading-lessons could be illustrated or enlivened by some 
 explanation or anecdote from the library, it would often convert 
 a mechanical routine into a living exercise. If, when the schol- 
 ars come to the name of Socrates or Luther or Howard, they 
 could turn to a Biographical Dictionary, and find a summary of 
 the lives and deeds of these men, and ascertain their place in 
 chronology and in geography, it would give a sense of reality 
 to the business of the school, while, at the same time, it would 
 acquaint them with important facts. And so of ancient or for- 
 eign customs and manners, of memorable events, of remarkable 
 phenomena in Nature, &c. Pupils, who, in their reading, pass 
 by names, references, allusions, without searching, at the time, 
 for the facts they imply, not only forego valuable information, 
 which they may never afterwards acquire, but they contract a 
 habit of being contented with ignorance. Under the influence 
 of such a habit, the ardent desire for knowledge, which Nature 
 kindles in the breast of children, will soon be extinguished, and 
 they will come to resemble the irrational creation, which, with- 
 out thought or emotion, passes by objects of the greatest curi- 
 osity and wonder. 
 
 Again : access to some library seems indispensable, in all 
 schools where any attention is paid to composition. The ability 
 to express ideas in writing, with vigor and perspicuity, is now 
 deemed so valuable, that, in many places, Composition has been 
 added to the list of Common-school studies. But the earlier 
 exercises of children, in composing (however it may be with 
 the later), can consist of little more than rendering other men's 
 thoughts in their own language. If the most distinguished 
 authors desire to consult books before they attempt the discus- 
 sion of great subjects, then to require children to write compo-
 
 50 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 sition, without supplying them with some resources whence to 
 draw their materials, is absurdly to suppose, not only that they 
 are masters of a select and appropriate diction in which to 
 clothe their thoughts and feelings, but also that they possess a 
 degree of originality which even the ablest writers do not 
 claim. 
 
 For these and other reasons, some of the most judicious and 
 successful teachers have carried into school any little collection 
 of books belonging to themselves, and have realized great bene- 
 fit from it. Such collections, however, must generally be 
 scanty, and can rarely, if ever, be the most appropriate and 
 useful ; besides, such a practice is, at least, liable to misuse. 
 But a well-selected library, such as that which is now in a 
 course of preparation under the auspices of the Board, 
 in which all possible respect is paid to the right of private 
 judgment on questions concerning which an unhappy differ- 
 ence of opinion prevails amongst the best men in the commu- 
 nity, such a library would avoid all danger, and increase 
 every benefit. Every legitimate excitement or encouragement 
 brought to bear upon our children in the schools, not only quick- 
 ens progress, but diminishes the occasion for discipline. 
 
 Finally, from all I have heard and learned, it is my belief 
 that the Legislature can do no one thing which shall be so ac- 
 ceptable to the friends of Common-school education in Massa- 
 chusetts, as to devise some plan by which a school library shall 
 be placed in every district school in the State. By the accom- 
 plishment of an object so permanently useful, they will win not 
 only a sincere, but a lasting gratitude. Many of the districts 
 are small ; and without some assistance, they may not, for a 
 long time, perhaps never, obtain a library by their own means. 
 When we consider that the average number of all the scholars, 
 in all the public schools, is less than fifty for each, and also 
 how many large schools there are in Boston and other cities, 
 and in the central districts of large towns, we shall at once per- 
 ceive how many small schools there must be. In the majority 
 of instances, the small schools are in the exterior districts of the
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 51 
 
 towns. They draw but little money, because of the small num- 
 ber of scholars which they contain. Hence, they have short 
 schools, and seldom give large compensation to teachers. The 
 fact that the schools are small proves that the lands of the dis- 
 trict are not very fertile, and also that it is not a place of much 
 trade or business ; otherwise the population would be denser 
 and the schools larger. Their means, therefore, cannot be very 
 abundant ; and hence the necessity for assistance. There is 
 another consideration which must have great weight with all, 
 who desire, as far as practicable, to furnish equivalents for 
 natural disadvantages. The project of libraries for schools has 
 lately been so much discussed, and has found such general favor 
 with the public, that rich and populous school districts will not 
 long remain without them. This class of large and wealthy 
 districts have much the largest schools ; they are able to offer 
 more liberal compensation to teachers ; and if, in addition to 
 these advantages, they possess libraries also, while the districts 
 less favorably circumstanced in point of wealth and population 
 are destitute of them, the inequality of condition and privi- 
 leges already existing will be still further increased. Every 
 well-wisher of his kind will more cordially co-operate in meas- 
 ures which bring forward those who are in the rear, than with 
 measures which still carry farther onward those already in ad- 
 vance. Poverty ought never to be a bar against the attainment 
 of that degree of knowledge which is necessary for the intelli- 
 gent performance of every duty in life. 
 
 After the munificent endowment by the State of two of its 
 colleges, and many of its academies, it is thought that the time 
 has arrived when something should be done for the broader insti- 
 tution of the schools. Whatever claims may be made by the 
 friends of colleges and academies in their behalf, they cannot 
 deny that the Common School is still more important, because 
 on this basis the welfare of the whole people more immediately 
 rests. When the State endowed its first university, and visited 
 it from time to time, for almost two centuries, with substantial 
 proofs of its liberality, it surely did not mean to establish a law
 
 52 AXSUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of primogeniture in its favor, and to disinherit the younger 
 members of the family, that is, the Common Schools. It is 
 expected, too, by the friends of the schools throughout the 
 State, that those who have received benefits and enjoyed the 
 honors of a university education, which is claimed to exert 
 a harmonizing and liberalizing effect upon the mind and char- 
 acter, will not themselves refute the claim by a want of 
 liberality towards the only institutions where the masses can 
 be benefited. 
 
 Amongst all the letters which I have received on the subject 
 of libraries, not one man in his individual capacity, and but 
 one board of school-committee men, has questioned their desira- 
 bleness and utility. And the reason assigned in the latter 
 case was, that the town to which the committee belonged 
 already possessed a sufficient number of books accessible to all 
 its inhabitants. The conventions held in the different coun- 
 ties have approved and recommended the plan by votes, which, 
 with two exceptions, had not a dissenting voice ; and in neither 
 of the excepted cases was there more than half a dozen nega- 
 tive votes. Probably so entire a unanimity would not be found 
 to exist on any other subject whatever. 
 
 In view of these facts and considerations, I cannot close this 
 Report without suggesting to the Board the expediency of in- 
 viting the special attention of the Legislature to this subject, 
 as one which has an important bearing upon the welfare of the 
 present age, and a bearing still more important upon the wel- 
 fare of coming generations. 
 
 . . . On inspecting the laws of the Commonwealth which 
 provide for public instruction, two grand features stand con- 
 spicuously forth ; viz., that the benefits of a Common-school 
 education shall be brought within the reach of every child iu 
 the State, however poor ; and that the property of the State 
 shall support a system of schools adequate to confer this uni- 
 versal education. These provisions are fundamental and or- 
 ganic. They have been in existence from the very infancy of 
 the colony, a period of about two centuries, during all
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 53 
 
 which time the statute-book furnishes no instance of their 
 repeal or modification. The mode of administration has been 
 changed, but not the original basis of the system. The prin- 
 ciples have reigned supreme throughout, that the property of 
 the citizens, whether it represented children or not, should sup- 
 port the schools ; and that all children, whether they repre- 
 sented property or not, should possess the means of education. 
 
 . . . The advantages of Union Schools may be briefly 
 stated under the following heads : 1. Economy of the plan. 
 2. Management and Discipline. 
 
 . . . The plan of Union Districts commends itself, on the 
 score of economy, to every man who desires to make a given 
 amount of money accomplish more good, or to derive an 
 equal amount of good from less money. In my Report on 
 Schoolhouses, pp. 30, 31, it is arithmetically proved, that, 
 where four districts can be united for this purpose, a given 
 sum of money, which now sustains four summer schools 
 taught by females, and four winter schools taught by males, 
 only four months each, would, under the proposed arrange- 
 ment, maintain the four summer schools six months each, and 
 a winter school eight months instead of four ; would give the 
 master $35 a month instead of $25, and would still leave in 
 the treasury an unexpended balance of $20. The demonstra- 
 tion as to the economy of the plan being there wrought out, 
 and open to the inspection of any one who will examine it, 
 I leave this topic with a single statement illustrative of the 
 necessity of adopting some immediate and efficient remedy. 
 In my circuit last autumn through a part of the State which I 
 had not visited before, I saw six schoolhouses all situated on 
 the same road, the extreme ones of which were but a mile 
 and a half .apart, and of course only three-fourths of a mile 
 from a central point. In these the uniform practice had been 
 to employ six females in summer and six males in winter. 
 And thus, as it regards the winter schools, the wages and 
 board of six men had been paid, and fuel for six fires provided, 
 when one male principal, who might liave received and been
 
 54 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 worthy of the most liberal salary, with suitable female assist- 
 ants if necessary, might have accomplished ten times the good 
 at a greatly reduced expense. All this was acknowledged as 
 soon as pointed out, and assurances of a change gratefully 
 given. How great would be the gain, if the spirit of economy, 
 which is so often active at the town-meeting when the money for 
 schools is granted, could be transferred to its expenditure by a 
 wiser mode of appropriation ! 
 
 In regard to management and discipline, a more trying situa- 
 tion, to a person of judgment and good feelings, cannot well be 
 conceived, than that of having the sole charge of a school of 
 sixty, seventy, or eighty scholars, of all ages, where he is 
 equally exposed to censure for the indulgences that endanger 
 good order, and for the discipline that enforces it. One of the 
 inquiries contained in the circular letter to the school commit- 
 tees, in 1838, was respecting the ages of the children attending 
 our public schools. By the answers, it appeared, that, in very 
 many places, the schools were attended by scholars of all ages, 
 between four years and twenty, and, in some places, by those 
 between two years and a half and twenty-five ; and thus the 
 general regulations of the school, as to order, stillness, and the 
 observance of a code of fixed laws, were the same for infants 
 but just out of their cradles, and for men who had been en- 
 rolled seven years in the militia. Now, nothing can be more 
 obvious than that the kind of government appropriate and 
 even indispensable for one portion of these scholars was fla- 
 grantly unsuitable for the other. The larger scholars, with a 
 liberal recess, can keep their seats and apply their minds for 
 three consecutive hours. But to make small children sit both 
 dumb and motionless, for three successive hours, with the 
 exception of a brief recess and two short lessons, is an infrac- 
 tion of every law which the Creator has impressed upon both 
 body and mind. There is but one motive by which this violence 
 to every prompting of nature can be committed, and that is an 
 overwhelming, stupefying sense of fear. If the world were 
 offered to these children as a reward for this prolonged silence
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 55 
 
 and inaction, they would spurn it : the deep instinct of self- 
 preservation alone is sufficient for the purpose. The irrepa- 
 rable injury of making a child sit straight and silent and mo- 
 tionless for three continuous hours, with only two or three 
 brief respites, cannot be conceived. Its effect upon the body 
 is to inflict severe pain, to impair health, to check the free cir- 
 culations in the system (all which lead to dwarfislmess), 
 and to misdirect the action of the vital organs, which leads to 
 deformity. In regard to the intellect, it suppresses the activity 
 of every faculty ; and as it is a universal law in regard to them 
 all, that they acquire strength by exercise, and lose tone and vigor 
 by inaction, the inevitable consequence is, both to diminish the 
 number of thing? they will be competent to do, and to disable 
 them from doing this limited number so well as they otherwise 
 might. lu regard to the temper and morals, the results are still 
 more deplorable. To command a child whose mind is furnished 
 with no occupation to sit for a long time silent in regard to speech, 
 and dead in regard to motion, when every limb and organ aches 
 for activity ; to set a child down in the midst of others, whose 
 very presence acts upon his social nature as irresistibly as gravi- 
 tation acts upon his body, and then to prohibit all recognition of 
 or communication with his fellows, is subjecting him to a 
 temptation to disobedience, which it is alike physically and 
 morally impossible he should wholly resist. What observing 
 person who has ever visited a school where the laws of bodily 
 and mental activity were thus violated has failed to see how 
 keenly the children watch the motions of the teacher ; how 
 eagerly, the first moment when his face is turned from them, 
 or any person or object intervenes to screen them from his 
 view, they seize upon the occasion to whisper, laugh, chaffer, 
 make grimaces, or do some other thing against the kuo\vu laws 
 of the school? Every clandestine act of this kind cultivates 
 the spirit of deception, trickery, and fraud ; it leads to the for- 
 mation, not of an open and ingenuous, but of a dissembling, 
 wily, secretive character. The evil is only aggravated when 
 the teacher adopts the practice of looking out under his eye-
 
 56 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 brows, as it is called, or of glancing at them obliquely, or of 
 wheeling suddenly round, in order to detect offenders in the 
 act of transgression. Such a course is a practical lesson in 
 artifice and stratagem, set by the teacher ; and the conse- 
 quence is, that to entrap on the one side and elude on the other 
 soon becomes a matter of rivalry and competition between 
 teacher and pupils. Probably it is within the recollection of 
 most persons, that, after the close of some school-terms, both 
 teacher and pupils have been heard to boast, the one how 
 many he had insuared, the others how often they had escaped ; 
 thus presenting the spectacle of the moral guide of our youth, 
 and the moral subjects of his charge, boasting of mutual cir- 
 cumvention and disiugenuousness. 
 
 Teachers who manage schools with a due observance of those 
 laws with which the Creator has pervaded the human system. 
 are accustomed, when scholars have become restless and uneasy, 
 to send them out to run, or in some way to take exercise, un- 
 til the accumulation of muscular and nervous energy, which 
 prompted their uneasiness, is expended. They will then return 
 to the schoolroom to sit with composure, or to study with 
 diligence and vigor. 
 
 I have deemed this matter of so much consequence, and 
 have found, in some places, such inveterate false habits and 
 modes of thinking respecting it, that I have desired to fortify 
 my own views by those of gentlemen whose authority none 
 will venture to question. Accordingly, I have obtained the 
 opinions of some of the most eminent physicians and physiolo- 
 gists in the State, and have selected three from the number to 
 be placed in the Appendix.* 
 
 The remedies for these various evils are the establishment 
 of Union Schools, wherever the combined circumstances of 
 territory and population will allow ; the consolidation of two 
 or more districts into one, where the union system is impracti- 
 
 * The letters referred to are from Dr. S. B. Woodard, Principal of the State 
 Lunatic Hospital at Worcester; Dr. James Jackson, of Boston ; and Dr. S. G. 
 Howe, Principal of the Perkins Blind Institution, South Boston. They entirely 
 coulirm Mr. Mann's views.
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 57 
 
 cable ; and, Avhere the population is so sparse as to prevent 
 either of these courses, there to break in upon the routine of 
 the school, either by confining the young children for a less 
 number of hours, or by giving to them two recesses each half- 
 day. The health of the body must be preserved, because it is 
 the only medium through which the brightest intellect and the 
 purest morals can bless the world. 
 
 If it were possible to measure or gauge the quantity and 
 quality of instruction which the teacher could give under the 
 union system, compared with that which he can give in a 
 school composed of scholars of all ages, and in all stages of 
 advancement, no further proof in favor of a classification of 
 the children into divisions of older and younger would be 
 needed. , A teacher well versed in the better modes of instruc- 
 tion, which are beginning to be adopted, will, in most branches, 
 teach each one, of a class of twenty, more in the same time 
 than he could teach any one individual of the same class. 
 What an accession to his usefulness, that is, to the improve- 
 ment of the children, would thus be gained ! And is it not an 
 unpardonable waste of means, where it can possibly be avoided, 
 to employ a man, at $25 or $30 a month, to teach the alpha- 
 bet, when it can be done much better, at half-price, by a 
 female teacher? 
 
 The Union School is found to improve all the schools in the 
 constituent districts. The children in the lower schools look 
 upward to the higher with ambition, and labor more earnestly, 
 that they may be prepared to enter it. So far as my knowl- 
 edge extends, no districts which have adopted could be induced 
 to abandon it. 
 
 ... A brief consideration of a few of the qualifications 
 essential to those who undertake the momentous task of 
 training the children of the State will help us to decide the 
 question, whether the complaints of the committees, in regard 
 to the incompetency of teachers, are captious and unfounded ; 
 or whether they proceed from enlightened conceptions of the 
 nature of their duties and office, and therefore require meas- 
 ures to supply the deficiency.
 
 58 ANNUAL KEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 1st. One requisite is a knowledge of Common-school 
 studies. Teachers should have a perfect knowledge of the 
 rudimental branches which are required by law to be taught 
 in our schools. They should understand, not only the rules, 
 which have been prepared as guides for the unlearned, but also 
 the principles on which the rules are founded, those princi- 
 ples which lie beneath the rules, and supersede them in 
 practice, and from which, should the rules be lost, they could 
 be framed anew. Teachers should be able to teach subjects, 
 not manuals merely. 
 
 This knowledge should not only be thorough and critical, but 
 it should be always ready at command for every exigency, 
 familiar like the alphabet, so that, as occasion requires, it will 
 rise up in the mind instantaneously, and not need to be studied 
 out with labor and delay. For instance : it is not enough that 
 the teacher be able to solve and elucidate an arithmetical ques- 
 tion, by expending half an hour of school-time in trying various 
 ways to bring out the answer ; for that half-hour is an impor- 
 tant part of the school-session, and the regular exercises of the 
 school must be shortened or slurred over to repair the loss. 
 Again : in no school can a teacher devote his whole and undi- 
 vided attention to the exercises, as they successively recur. 
 Numerous things will demand simultaneous attention. While 
 a class is spelling or reading, he may have occasion to recall 
 the roving attention of one scholar ; to admonish another by 
 word or look ; to answer some question put by a third ; or to 
 require a fourth to execute some needed service. Now, if he 
 is not so familiar with the true orthography of every word, 
 that his ear will instantaneously detect an error in the spelling, 
 he will, on all such occasions, pass by mistakes without notice, 
 and therefore without correction, and thus interweave wrong 
 instruction with right through all the lessons of the school. 
 If he is not so familiar, too, both with the rules of reading, 
 and with the standard of pronunciation for each word, that a 
 wrong emphasis or cadence, or a mispronounced word, will jar 
 his nerves, and recall even a wandering attention, then iunu-
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 59 
 
 merable errors will glide by his ovvu ear unnoticed, while they 
 are stamped upon the minds of his pupils. These remarks 
 apply with equal force to recitations in grammar and geography. 
 A critical knowledge respecting all these subjects should be 
 so consciously present with him, that his mind will gratefully 
 respond to every right answer or sign made by the scholar, 
 and shrink from every wrong one, with the quickness and 
 certainty of electrical attraction and repulsion. In regard to 
 the last-named branch, geography, a study which, in its 
 civil or political department, is constantly mutable and progres- 
 sive, the teacher should understand, and be able to explain, 
 any material changes which may have occurred since the last 
 edition of his text-book ; as, for instance, the erection of Iowa 
 into a territorial government by the last Congress ; or, during 
 the last year, the restitution of Syria to the Turkish govern- 
 ment through the intervention of the Four European Powers. 
 This establishment of a link between past events and present 
 times, this realization of things as lately done or now doing, 
 sheds such a strong light upon a distant scene, as makes it 
 appear to be near us, and thus gives to all the scholars a new 
 and inexpressible interest in their lessons. 
 
 However much other knowledge a teacher may possess, it 
 is uo equivalent for a mastership in the rudiments. It is not 
 more true in architecture than in education, that the value of 
 the work in every upper layer depends upon the solidity of all 
 beneath it. The leading, prevailing defect in the intellectual 
 department of our schools is a want of thoroughness, a 
 proneness to be satisfied with a verbal memory of rules, instead 
 of a comprehension of principles, with a knowledge of the 
 names of things, instead of a knowledge of the things them- 
 selves ; or, if some knowledge of the things is gained, it is 
 too apt to be a knowledge of them as isolated facts, and unac- 
 companied by a knowledge of the relations which subsist 
 between them, and bind them into a scientific whole. That 
 knowledge is hardly worthy of the name, which stops with 
 things, as individuals, without understanding the relations
 
 60 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATIONS 7 . 
 
 existing between them. The latter constitutes indefinitely the 
 greater part of all human knowledge. For instance, all the 
 problems of plane geometry, by which heights and distances 
 are measured, and the contents of areas and cubes ascertained, 
 are based upon a few simple definitions which can be committed 
 to memory by any child in half a day. With the exception of 
 the comets, whose number is not known, there are but thirty 
 bodies in the whole solar system. Yet, on the relations which 
 subsist between these thirty bodies is built the stupendous 
 science of astronomy. How worthless is the astronomical 
 knowledge which stops with committing to memory thirty 
 names ! 
 
 At the Normal School at Barre during the last term the 
 number of pupils was about fifty. This number might have 
 been doubled if the visitors would have consented to carry the 
 applicants forward at once into algebra and chemistry and 
 geometry and astronomy, instead of subjecting them to a thor- 
 ough review of Common-school studies. One of the most cheer- 
 ing auguries in regard to our schools is the unanimity with which 
 the committees have awarded sentence of condemnation against 
 the practice of introducing into them the studies of the univer- 
 sity to the exclusion or neglect of the rudimeutal branches. By 
 such a practice a pupil foregoes all the stock of real knowledge 
 he might otherwise acquire ; and he receives, in its stead, only 
 a show or counterfeit of knowledge, which, with all intelligent 
 persons, only renders his ignorance more conspicuous. A 
 child's limbs are as well fitted in point of strength to play with 
 the planets before he can toss a ball, as his rniud is to get any 
 conception of the laws which govern their stupendous motions 
 before he is master of common arithmetic. For these and simi- 
 lar considerations, it seems that the first intellectual qualification 
 of a teacher is a critical thoroughness, both in rules and prin- 
 ciples, in regard to all the branches required by law to be taught 
 in the Common Schools ; and a power of recalling them in any 
 of their parts with a promptitude and certainty hardly inferior 
 to that with which he could tell his own name.
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 61 
 
 
 
 2d. The next principal qualification in a teacher is the art of 
 teaching. This is happily expressed in the common phrase, 
 aptness to teach, which in a few words comprehends many par- 
 ticulars. The ability to acquire, and the ability to impart, are 
 wholly different talents. The former may exist in the most lib- 
 eral measure without the latter. It was a remark of Lord 
 Bacon, that " the art of well-delivering the knowledge we pos- 
 sess is among the secrets left to be discovered by future genera- 
 tions." Dr. Watts says, " There are some very learned men 
 who know much themselves, but who have not the talent of 
 communicating their knowledge." * Indeed, this fact is not 
 now questioned by any intelligent educationist. Hence we ac- 
 count for the frequent complaints of the committees, that those 
 teachers who had sustained an examination in an acceptable 
 manner failed in the schoolroom through a want of facility in 
 communicating what they knew. The ability to acquire is the 
 power of understanding the subject-matter of investigation. 
 Aptness to teach involves the power of perceiving how far a 
 scholar understands the subject-matter to be learned, and what, 
 in the natural order, is the next step he is to take. It involves 
 the power of discovering and of solving at the time the exact 
 difficulty by which the learner is embarrassed. The removal 
 of a slight impediment, the drawing aside of the thinnest veil 
 which happens to divert his steps or obscure his vision, is worth 
 more to him than volumes of lore on collateral subjects. How- 
 much does the pupil comprehend of the subject? What should 
 his next step be ? Is his mind looking towards a truth or an er- 
 ror ? The answer to these questions must be intuitive in the per- 
 son who is apt to teach. As a dramatic writer throws himself 
 successively into the characters of the drama he is composing, that 
 he may express the ideas and emotions peculiar to each ; so the 
 
 * While writing this paragraph, I received the fifth report of the Glasgow 
 Educational Society's Normal Seminary for 1839. It contains the following: 
 " There is perhaps no mistake so fatal to the proper education anJ training of 
 youth as the practical error of imagining, that, because a man possesses knowl- 
 edge, therefore he will be able to communicate it. The knowledge of a Xew- 
 ton or a Bacou would avail little without a proper mode of communication."
 
 G2 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 
 
 mind of a teacher should migrate, as it were, into those of his 
 pupils, to discover what they know and feel and need ; and then, 
 supplying from his own stock what they require, he should re- 
 duce it to such a form, and bring it within such a distance, that 
 they can reach out and seize aud appropriate it. He should 
 never forget that intellectual truths are naturally adapted to give 
 intellectual pleasure ; and that, by leading the minds of his pu- 
 pils onward to such a position in relation to these truths that 
 they themselves can discover them, he secures to them the natu- 
 ral reward of a new pleasure with every new discovery, which 
 is one of the strongest as well as most appropriate incitements 
 to future exertion. 
 
 Aptness to teach includes the presentation of the different 
 parts of a subject in a natural order. If a child is told that 
 the globe is about twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, 
 before he has any conception of the length of a mile or of the 
 number of units in a thousand, the statement is not only utterly 
 useless as an act of instruction, but it will probably prevent 
 him ever afterwards from gaining an adequate idea of the sub- 
 ject. The novelty will be gone, and yet the fact unknown. 
 Besides, a systematic acquisition of a subject knits all parts of 
 it together, so that they will be longer retained and more easily 
 recalled. To acquire a few of the facts gives us fragments 
 only ; and even to master all the facts, but to obtain them pro- 
 miscuously, leaves what is acquired so unconnected and loose 
 that any part of it may be jostled out of its place and lost, or 
 remain only to mislead. 
 
 Aptness to teach, in fine, embraces a knowledge of methods aud 
 processes. These are indefinitely various. Some are adapted 
 to accomplish their object in an easy and natural manner ; oth- 
 ers in a toilsome aud circuitous one ; others, again, may accom- 
 plish the object at which they aim with certainty and despatch, 
 but secure it by inflicting deep and lasting injuries upon the 
 social aud moral sentiments. We are struck with surprise on 
 learning, that, but a few centuries since, the feudal barons of 
 Scotland, in running out the lines around their extensive do-
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 63 
 
 mains, used to take a party of boys, and whip them at the differ- 
 ent posts and landmarks in order to give them a retentive mem- 
 ory as witnesses in case of future litigation or dispute. Though 
 this might give them a vivid recollection of localities, yet it 
 would hardly improve their ideas of justice, or propitiate them 
 to bear true testimony in favor of the chastiser. But do not 
 those who have no aptness to teach sometimes accomplish their 
 objects by a kindred method ? 
 
 He who is apt to teach is acquainted, not only wfti common 
 methods for common minds, but with peculiar methods for 
 pupils of peculiar dispositions and temperaments ; and he is 
 acquainted with the principles of all methods whereby he can 
 vary his plan according to any difference of circumstances. 
 The statement has been sometimes made, that it is the object of 
 Normal Schools to subject all teachers to one inflexible, immuta- 
 ble course of instruction. Nothing could be more erroneous ; 
 for one of the great objects is to give them a knowledge of modes 
 as various as the diversity of cases that may arise, that, like a 
 skilful pilot, they may not only see the haven for which they 
 are to steer, but know every bend in the channel that leads to it. 
 No one is so poor in resources for difficult emergencies as they 
 may arise as he whose knowledge of methods is limited to the 
 one in which he happened to be instructed. It is in this w r ay 
 that rude nations go on for indefinite periods, imitating what 
 they have seen, and teaching only as they were taught. 
 
 3d. Experience has also proved that there is no necessary con- 
 nection between literary competency, aptness to teach, and the 
 power to manage and govern a school successfully. They are 
 independent qualifications ; yet a marked deficiency in any one 
 of the three renders the others nearly valueless. In regard to 
 the ordinary management or administration of a school, how 
 much judgment is demanded in the organization of classes, so 
 that no scholar shall either be clogged and retarded, or hurried 
 forward with injudicious speed, by being matched with an un- 
 equal yoke-fellow ! Great discretion is necessary in the assign- 
 ment of lessons, in order to avoid, on the one hand, such short-
 
 (34 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ness in the tasks as allows time to be idle ; and, on the other, 
 such over-assignments as render thoroughness and accuracy im- 
 practicable, and thereby so habituate the pupil to mistakes and 
 imperfections, that he cares little or nothing about committing 
 them. Lessons, as far as it is possible, should be so adjusted 
 to the capacity of the scholar, that there should be no failure in 
 a recitation not occasioned by culpable neglect. The sense of 
 shame, or of regret for ignorance, can never be made exquisitely 
 keen, if the lessons given are so long, or so difficult, as to make 
 failures frequent. When " bad marks," as they are called, 
 against a scholar, become common, they not only lose their 
 salutary force, but every addition to them debases his charac- 
 ter, and carries him through a regular course of training which 
 prepares him to follow in the footsteps of those convicts who 
 are so often condemned, that, at length, they care nothing for the 
 ignominy of the sentence. Yet all this may be the legitimate 
 consequence of being unequally mated or injudiciously tasked. 
 It is a sad sight, in any school, to see a pupil marked for a de- 
 ficiency, without any blush of shame, or sign of guilt ; and it is 
 never done with impunity to his moral character. 
 
 The preservation of order, together with the proper despatch 
 of business, requires a mean between the too much and the too 
 little, in all the evolutions of the school, which it is difficult to 
 hit. When classes leave their seats for the recitation-stand, 
 and return to them again, or when the different sexes have a 
 recess, or the hour of intermission arrives, if there be not 
 some order and succession of movement, the school will be tem- 
 porarily converted into a promiscuous rabble, giving both the 
 temptation and the opportunity for committing every species of 
 indecorum and aggression. In order to prevent confusion, on 
 the other hand, the operations of the school may be conducted 
 with such militfiry formality and procrastination, the second 
 scholar not being allowed to leave his seat until the first has 
 reached the door, or the place of recitation, and ouch being 
 made to walk on tiptoe to secure silence, -that a substantial 
 part of every school session will be wasted in the wearisome 
 pursuit of an object worth nothing when obtained.
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 65 
 
 When we reflect how many things are to be done each half- 
 day, and how short a time is allotted for their performance, the 
 necessity of system in regard to all the operations of the school 
 will be apparent. System compacts labor ; and when the hand 
 is to be turned to an almost endless variety of particulars, if 
 system does not preside over the whole series of movements, the 
 time allotted to each will be spent in getting ready to perform 
 it. With lessons to set ; with so many classes to hear ; with 
 difficulties to explain ; with the studious to be assisted ; the 
 idle to be spurred ; the transgressors to be admonished or 
 corrected ; with the goers and comers to observe ; with all 
 these things to be done, no considerable progress can be made, 
 if oue part of the wheel is not coming up to the work while 
 another is going down. And if order do not pervade the school 
 as a whole, and In all its parts, all is lost : and this is a very 
 difficult thing ; for it seems as though the school were only a 
 point, rescued out of a chaos that still encompasses it, and is 
 ready on the first opportunity to break in and re-occupy its an- 
 cient possession. As it is utterly impracticable for any commit- 
 tee to prepare a code of regulations co-extensive with all the 
 details which belong to the management of a school, it must be 
 left with the teacher ; and hence the necessity of skill in this 
 item of the long list of his qualifications. 
 
 The government and discipline of a school demands qualities 
 still more rare, because the consequences of error in these are 
 still more disastrous. What caution, wisdom, uprightness, and 
 sometimes even intrepidity, are necessary in the administration 
 of punishment ! After all other means have been tried, and 
 tried in vain, the chastisement of pupils found to be otherwise 
 incorrigible is still upheld by law and sanctioned by public 
 opinion. But it is the last resort, the ultimate resource, ac- 
 knowledged on all hands to be a relic of barbarism, and yet 
 authorized because the community, although they feel it to be a 
 great evil, have not yet devised and applied an antidote. 
 Through an ignorance of the laws of health, a parent may 
 so corrupt the constitution of his child as to render poison a 
 
 5
 
 66 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 necessary medicine ; and, through an ignorance of the laws of 
 mind, he may do the same thing in regard to punishment. 
 "When the arts of health and of education are understood, 
 neither poison nor punishment will need to be used, unless in 
 most extraordinary cases. The discipline of former times was 
 inexorably stern and severe ; and, even if it were wished, it is 
 impossible now to return to it. The question is, what can be 
 substituted, which, without its severity, shall have its efficiency? 
 But how important is the relation in which a teacher stands 
 towards a supposed offender ! If the grounds of suspicion are 
 presumptive only, how nice the balance of judgment in which 
 they should be weighed, lest, on the one hand, injustice be done 
 by bringing a false accusation against the innocent ; or lest, on 
 the other, a real offender should escape through mistaken con- 
 fidence and charity ! If there be sufficient ground to put a pupil 
 upon trial, the teacher in his own pei-son combines the charac- 
 ters of the law-maker, by whom the rule, supposed to be trans- 
 gressed, was enacted ; of the counsel who examines the wit- 
 nesses ; of the jury who decides upon the facts ; and of the judge 
 interpreting his own law, and awarding sentence according to 
 his own discretion. And, after all this, he is the executive offi- 
 cer, inflicting the penalty himself has awarded, unless that pen- 
 alty is remitted by the pardoning power, which also resides in 
 him. Often, too, this representative or depositary of so many 
 functions is himself the person supposed to be offended ; and 
 thus he presents the spectacle of a party in interest trying his 
 own cause, and avenging his own insults against his own dig- 
 nity. If he suffers the out-door consequences of inflicting pun- 
 ishment to enter his mind, his fears will become his counsellors, 
 and they will be as false as his pride. This specification is not 
 given for the purpose of excepting to that usage which makes 
 the teacher the sovereign of the schoolroom, but only to show 
 what danger of error there must be when teachers are employed 
 who have had neither experience nor instruction, and whose 
 judgment years have not yet begun to ripen. Are there not 
 teachers to whom all the children in the district are intrusted
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 67 
 
 for their education, and for all the momentous and enduring in- 
 terests connected with that word, to whom scarcely a parent in 
 the district would surrender the care and management of his 
 own children for the same length of time? Yet how much less 
 incapable would the teacher be of governing and controlling a 
 family of five or six children than a school of fifty or sixty ! 
 Every child ought to find at school the affection and the wis- 
 dom which he has left at home ; or, if he has left neither wis- 
 dom nor affection at home, there is so much more need that he 
 should find them at school. 
 
 A school should be govei'ned with a steady hand, not only 
 during the same season, but from year to year ; substantially 
 the same extent of indulgence being allowed, and the same re- 
 strictions imposed. It is injurious to the children to alternate 
 between the extremes of an easy and a sharp discipline. It is 
 unjust also for one teacher to profit by letting down the disci- 
 pline of a school, and thus throw upon his successor the labor 
 of raising it up to its former level. 
 
 4th. In two words the statute opens to all teachers an exten- 
 sive field of duty, by ordaining that all the youth in the schools 
 shall be taught " good behavior." The framers of the law were 
 aware how rapidly good or bad manners mature into good or 
 bad morals ; they saw that good manners have not only the 
 negative virtue of restraining from vice, but the positive one of 
 leading, by imperceptible gradations, towards the practice of 
 almost all the social virtues. The effects of civility or discour- 
 tesy, of gentlemanly or ungentlemanly deportment, are not 
 periodical or occasional, merely, but of constant recurrence ; 
 and all the members of society have a direct interest in the 
 manners of each of its individuals ; because each one is a radi- 
 ating point, the centre of a circle which he fills with pleasure or 
 annoyance, not only for those who voluntarily enter it, but for 
 those, who, in the promiscuous movements of society, are caught 
 within its circumference. Good behavior includes the elements 
 of that equity, benevolence, conscience, which, in their great 
 combinations, the moralist treats of in his books of ethics, and
 
 68 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the legislator enjoins in his codes of law. The schoolroom 
 and its playground, next to the family table, are the places 
 where the selfish propensities come into most direct collision 
 with social duties. Here, then, a right direction should be 
 given to the growing mind. The surrounding influences which 
 are incorporated into its new thoughts and feelings, and make 
 part of their substance, are too minute and subtle to be received 
 in masses like nourishment ; they are rather imbibed into the 
 system unconsciously by every act of respiration, and are con- 
 stantly insinuating themselves into it through all the avenues of 
 the senses. If, then, the manners of the teacher are to be imi- 
 tated by his pupils, if he is the glass at which they " do dress 
 themselves," how strong is the necessity that lie should under- 
 stand those nameless and innumerable practices in regard to 
 deportment, dress, conversation, and all personal habits, that 
 constitute the difference between a gentleman and a clown ! 
 We can bear some oddity or eccentricity in a friend whom we 
 admire for his talents or revere for his virtues ; but it becomes 
 quite a different thing when the oddity or the eccentricity is to 
 be a pattern or model from which fifty or a hundred children 
 are to form their manners. It was well remarked by the ablest 
 British traveller who has ever visited this country, that, amongst 
 us, '' every male above twenty-one years of age claims to be a 
 sovereign. He is, therefore, bound to be a gentleman." 
 
 5th. On the indispensable, all-controlling requisite of moral 
 character, I have but a single suggestion to make in addition 
 to those admirable views on this subject which are scattered up 
 and down through the committees' reports. This suggestion 
 relates to the responsibility resting on those individuals who 
 give letters of recommendation or certificates of character to 
 candidates for schools. Probably one-half, perhaps more, 
 of all the teachers in the State are comparatively strangers in 
 the respective place where they are employed. Hence the ex- 
 amining committee, in the absence of personal knowledge, must 
 rely upon testimonials exhibited before them. These consist of 
 credentials brought from abroad, which are sometimes obtained
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 69 
 
 through the partialities of relationship, interest, or sect ; or 
 even given lest a refusal should be deemed an unneighborly act, 
 and the applicant should be offended or alienated by a repulse. 
 But are interests of such vast moment as the moral influence of 
 teachers upon the rising generation to be sacrificed to private 
 considerations of relationship or predilection, or any other self- 
 ish or personal motive whatever? It may be very agreeable to 
 a person to receive the salary of a teacher, but this fact has no 
 tendency to prove his fitness for the station : if so, the poor- 
 house would be the place to inquire for teachers ; and what 
 claim to conscience or benevolence can that man have who 
 jeopards the permanent welfare of fifty or a hundred children 
 for the private accommodation of a friend? In regard to pecu- 
 niary transactions, it is provided by the laws of the land, that 
 whoever recommends another as responsible and solvent be- 
 comes himself liable for the debts which may be contracted, 
 under a faith in the recommendation, should it prove to have 
 been falsely given. The recommendation is held to be a war- 
 ranty ; and it charges its author with all its losses incurred, 
 within the scope of a fair construction. It is supposed that, 
 without tliis responsibility, the expanded business of trade and 
 commerce would be restricted to persons possessing a mutual 
 knowledge of each other's trustworthiness or solvency. But 
 why should the precious and enduring interests of morality be 
 accounted of minor importance, and protected by feebler secu- 
 rities than common traffic? Why should the man Avho has 
 been defrauded by an accredited peddler have his remedy against 
 the guarantor, while he who is instrumental in inflicting upon 
 a district, and upon all the children in a district, the curse of a 
 dissolute, vicious teacher, escapes the condign punishment of 
 general execration? In the contemplation of the law, the 
 school committee are sentinels stationed at the door of every 
 schoolhouse in the State to see that no teacher ever crosses its 
 threshold who is not clothed, from the crown of his head to the 
 sole of his foot, in garments of virtue ; and they are the ene- 
 mies of the human race, not of contemporaries only, but of
 
 70 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 posterity, who, from any private or sinister motive, strive to 
 put these sentinels to sleep in order that one who is profane or 
 intemperate, or addicted to low associations, or branded with the 
 ptigma of any vice, may elude the vigilance of the watchmen, and 
 be installed over the pure minds of the young as their guide 
 and exemplar. If none but teachers of pure tastes, of good 
 manners, of exemplary morals, had ever gained admission into 
 our schools, neither the schoolrooms nor their appurtenances 
 would have been polluted as some of them now are with such 
 ribald inscriptions, and with the carvings of such obscene em- 
 blems, as would make a heathen blush. Every person, there- 
 fore, who indorses another's character, as one befitting a school 
 teacher, stands before the public as his moral bondsman and 
 sponsor, and should be held to a rigid accountability. 
 
 It will ever remain an honor to the Commonwealth of Mas- 
 sachusetts, that among all the reports of its school committees 
 for the last year, so many of which were voluminous and de- 
 tailed, and a majority of which probably were prepared by 
 clergymen belonging to all the various denominations in the 
 State, there was not one which advocated the introduction of 
 sectarian instruction or sectarian books into our public schools ; 
 while, with accordant views, as a single voice coming from a 
 single heart, they urge, they insist, they demand, that the 
 great axioms of a Christian morality shall be sedulously taught, 
 and that the teachers shall themselves be patterns of the virtues 
 they are required to inculcate. 
 
 The limits proper for a report debar me from pursuing the 
 topics under this head into further detail. It may, however, be 
 briefly observed, on the one hand, that there are some delin- 
 quencies on the part of a teacher, such as the commencement of a 
 school without having submitted to an examination by the com- 
 mittee as required by law ; the unauthorized introduction of 
 books into the school which are not contained in the list fur- 
 nished by the committee ; and the open disregard of directions 
 given by the committee in respect to the classification or man- 
 agement of the school : all or either of which prove that the
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 71 
 
 teacher is destitute of good principles, that he is capable of a 
 wilful violation or evasion of the laws of the State, and which, 
 therefore, demonstrate his unfitness to fill a place where a spirit 
 of subordination and of obedience to legitimate authority is 
 among the lessons to be taught by practice as well as by pre- 
 cept. On the other hand, I can only refer to those eminent 
 advantages which would accrue from employing a teacher, who, 
 in addition to the qualifications enumei'ated in the statute-book, 
 should possess a mind filled with stores of knowledge collateral 
 to the branches pursued in the school ; so that the pupils from 
 day to day might not only be enlivened and instructed by appo- 
 site anecdote and impressive illustration, but be led to emulate 
 the attainments which it is their delight to witness in him. So 
 too, if from the extent of the teacher's acquirements, and the 
 worth and dignity of his character, his society should be sought 
 by all the families in the neighborhood ; and, as he visited from 
 house to house, he should exhibit a living example of those pow- 
 ers of instructing and of pleasing which are derived from intel- 
 lectual resources and benevolence of disposition, he would im- 
 bue the youth of the district with the love of knowledge and the 
 desire of excellence, and thus lay the foundation of tastes, hab- 
 its, and institutions which would shed their pure and ennobling 
 influences over a long tract of future time. It is an authentic 
 anecdote of the late Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch, that when, at the 
 age of twenty-one years, he sailed on an East-Indian voyage, 
 he took pains to instruct the crew of the ship in the art of navi- 
 gation. Every sailor on board, during that voyage, became 
 afterwards a captain of a ship. Such are the natural conse- 
 quences of associating with a man whose mind is intent upon 
 useful knowledge, and whose actions are born of benevolence. 
 
 CONSTANCY AND PUNCTUALITY OF ATTENDANCE. 
 
 . . . After the territory of the State has been judiciously dis- 
 tricted, good schoolhouses prepared, the scholars all provided 
 both with the requisite number and proper kinds of books, and 
 the town has made appropriations sufficiently liberal to com-
 
 72 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 mand the services of well-qualified teachers, after all these 
 preliminaries have been attended to, the poioer of money ceases. 
 Up to this point the possession of property, and a spirit of liber- 
 ality in bestowing it, are indispensable ; but here their agency ter- 
 minates. The schools here pass, as it were, under a new juris- 
 diction, from material to moral influences ; and if not cher- 
 ished by the latter, they might as well have never been founded. 
 So far, it is external organization, the preparation of an out- 
 ward form merely ; but it is yet a cold, inert, dead mass, a 
 body of clay. A vitality, a genial warmth, a living principle 
 of energy, are now to be infused and spread through every fibre 
 of this organized frame, or all the skill and cost which have been 
 expended in its formation will be lost ; or what is far worse, 
 and perhaps far more probable, that body Avill corrupt, and in 
 its corruption engender a thousand pernicious forms of life. 
 Moral power is now to be added to pecuniary, or the pecuniary 
 had better never have been exerted. 
 
 Under this head, the first thing in the order of time, if not 
 the first in point of importance, is the constant and punctual 
 attendance of the scholars. Without authentic information on 
 the subject of irregularity in attendance, the extent to which it 
 has prevailed would have been wholly incredible. According 
 to the school census of last year, the whole number of children 
 in the State between the ages of four and sixteen was one hun- 
 dred and seventy-nine thousand two hundred and 
 
 sixty-eight 179,268 
 
 The average attendance during the summer of the 
 
 same year (1839-40) was .... 92,698 
 
 Do. during the winter ...... 111,844 
 
 Of the number attending who were under four years 
 
 of age, there were .... 7,844 
 Do. over sixteen years of age . . . 11,834 
 
 19,678 
 
 If the children under four years of age, who at- 
 tended school, are deducted from the aggregate 
 of attendance in summer, and those over sixteen
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 73 
 
 years from the aggregate of attendance in win- 
 ter, the average attendance of those between four 
 and sixteen will stand thus : 
 For summer . . . . . . 84,854 
 
 For winter 100,010 
 
 And allowing twelve thousand as the number of the children 
 who derive their whole education from academies and private 
 schools, and therefore are not dependent upon the Common 
 Schools at all, and deducting this number from the number of 
 children in the State who are between the ages of four and six- 
 teen years (thus 179,268 12,000 = 167.268), and the pro- 
 portion of those who attend the Common Schools in summer, 
 compared with the whole number dependent upon those schools, 
 is as 84,854 to 167,268, or a very small fraction more than 
 one-half; and the proportion of those who attend 'the same 
 schools in winter, compared with the whole number dependent 
 upon them, is as 100,010 to 167,268, or about ten-seventeenths 
 only. 
 
 One striking aspect of this lamentable fact is the waste of 
 money which it proves. The amount raised by taxes last year 
 for teachers' wages and board, and fuel for the schools, was 
 8477.221.24. Of the portion of this sum which was expended 
 for the summer schools, about one-half was lost, and of the 
 portion expended for the winter schools, about seven-seven- 
 teenths, through irregularity in the attendance of the scholars ; 
 that is, of the $477,221.24 raised for the support of our public 
 schools, more than two hundred thousand dollars was directly 
 thrown away by this voluntary abandonment of privileges. 
 Nor, in this computation, is any thing included for interest on 
 the cost of schoolhouses ; for the loss of an equal proportion of 
 the amount contributed for public schools (37,269.74) ; for au 
 equal proportion also of the income (about 820,000) of the 
 State school fund ; of the income also (15,270.89) of local 
 funds for public schools ; and of such portions of the income of 
 the surplus revenue as individual towns have appropriated for 
 the support of the schools. Vast, enormous as the main item
 
 74 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of the pecuniary loss is, a proportional loss from these sources 
 (which in the whole amount to more than $75,000) would 
 materially enlarge it. If made out with the exactness of a 
 business account, it would stai-tle every business man in the 
 community. Is it a subject for less surprise and regret be- 
 cause it is an educational account? What manufacturing or 
 other business establishment could prosper if its laborers should 
 absent themselves for a corresponding proportion of the time? 
 What a direful calamity it Avould be justly deemed if some 
 wide-spreading epidemic should visit the State from year to 
 year, and deprive its children of an equal amount of their school 
 privileges ! It is well remarked, in one of the reports, that the 
 promulgation of a law which should deprive the children of so 
 noble a boon would produce a stamp-act ferment. 
 
 Who, beforehand, could have deemed it possible that a peo- 
 ple so renowned for the virtues of frugality and economy, for 
 their skill in turning limited means to a great account, would 
 have tolerated this extent of wastefulness? The fact can be 
 explained only on the ground that we were unaware of its exist- 
 ence. A parent who surmounts no obstacles to get his children 
 daily to school, or who keeps them at home to subserve the pet- 
 tiest convenience, has no conception how rapidly the column of 
 absences lengthens, nor of the amount of its footing at the end 
 of the term. He does not see, that, for every day's absence of 
 his child, so much mental nourishment is withheld, his growth 
 so much retarded, and that he is preparing to send out that child 
 into the world an intellectual dwarf. 
 
 But, with the industrial habits of our community, this amount 
 of money can be re-earned ; indeed, it bears no proportion to 
 the annual products of our labor and skill. But an item of loss 
 is involved which neither labor nor skill can ever repair. The 
 time is irrevocable. The spring-season of human life once past 
 cannot be restored. The seed-time lost, the harvest also is 
 lost. This forfeiture is without redemption. 
 
 The period during which, as a general rule, our children at- 
 tend school, viz. between the ages of four and sixteen years,
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 75 
 
 is twelve years. The proportion of twelve years correspond- 
 ing with this amount of absences is more than five years ; and 
 therefore the children, on an average, for so much of the period 
 of life that should be sacredly devoted to education, are deprived 
 of its benefits. It must also be remembered that this deduction 
 is not made from an entire year, but from the period of seven 
 months and ten days, which was last year the average length 
 of the schools ; so that schools, originally far too short, are cut 
 down to a little more than half their apparent length, and so 
 much even of a scanty mental subsistence is taken away. 
 When Dr. Franklin said, " Time is money," he referred to 
 adult's : with children, time is more valuable than money ; it is 
 education. 
 
 Our law, in establishing the legal age of majority, or period 
 of emancipation from parental control, at twenty-one years, has 
 followed the clear indications of nature. The period of minor- 
 ity and tutelage which precedes this age is necessary for the 
 growth and preparation required for the labors and duties of 
 manhood. And the indications of nature are equally clear in 
 regard to the mind. The young mind needs the instruction and 
 guidance of more mature minds ; it needs instruments and aids 
 which it is incapable of preparing for itself; nay, of the very 
 existence of which it is itself ignorant until the full period, or 
 nearly the full period, of legal minority has passed. Were it 
 not so, the young of the human race would have come to their 
 bodily and mental maturity, like the young of the inferior ani- 
 mals, at an earlier period, at the end of a month or a year, or 
 at farthest at the end of a few years. It is this extensive and 
 irrevocable portion of early life, proved by all observation arid 
 analogy to be so essential to a preparation for the duties of man- 
 hood, that is withdrawn ; and yet, when these neglected children 
 shall arrive at the state of manhood, the duties belonging to that 
 state will be required of them, or society, in some or in all of 
 its relations, must suffer the penalty. 
 
 The main trunk of this evil of non-attendance sends off nu- 
 merous branches, each of which is laden with its own peculiar
 
 76 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 kind of bitter fruit. One effect is the injustice done to the 
 teacher. If the register of the school bears the names of sev- 
 enty different scholars, while the school is reduced by absences 
 to an average of fifty, the common inference is, that although 
 seventy is a greater number than one teacher can properly in- 
 struct, yet that he must be in fault if he does not teach the fifty 
 in a competent manner, and advance them at a rapid rate. And 
 yet a school averaging fifty scholars, reduced to that number 
 from seventy by absences, is far more difficult, both to instruct 
 and to govern, than a school of a hundred, all of whom attend 
 regularly. A teacher, therefore, ought to be excused, not 
 blamed, if he does not carry a small number of scholars rap- 
 idly forward if the number is made small by irregularity in 
 attendance ; yet those who send their children most irregularly 
 are among the first to complain that they make little progress. 
 The law (under a certain condition) requires the employment 
 of an assistant teacher in all the public schools when the aver- 
 age number of scholars is fifty. But the principal teacher 
 needs an assistant quite as much when a school of fifty is re- 
 duced to an average of thirty by absences as when it rises to 
 seventy by a regular attendance of all the scholars belonging 
 to it. 
 
 Again : if parents keep a child at home for two or three days, 
 or for three or four half-days, in a week, he must, at least, be 
 stationary, while the class to which he belongs is advancing. 
 Hence, on his return to the school, he is not in a suitable con- 
 dition to rejoin his class. But, generally, there is no other 
 class in which he can be placed : and the formation of new 
 classes to meet these cases would soon destroy classification al- 
 together 1 ; because the classes would soon become as numerous 
 as the scholars ; and the school, which should march onward in 
 regular divisions, would be reduced to a promiscuous throng 
 of stragglers. Unless in extraordinary cases, therefore, the 
 absent scholar must resume his place in the class ; but, as the 
 correct understanding of each successive step in his studies de- 
 pends upon his having mastered the preceding steps, he is almost
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 77 
 
 necessarily incapacitated for intelligent study and good recita- 
 tions. Out of this come, not merely loss of knowledge, but habits 
 of incorrectness. The pupil, accustomed to failures and mis- 
 takes, is hardened into indifference ; he loses the greatest incite- 
 ment to study, the pleasure of understanding his lessons ; be- 
 comes careless, mischievous, disobedient ; draws down upon him- 
 self the displeasure of the teacher, perhaps punishment ; has all 
 his associations established, adverse to learning ; looks for 
 pleasure elsewhere ; is disgusted with the school ; and, as soon 
 as possible, forfeits its privileges by abandonment, the victim 
 of irregular attendance. 
 
 The previous half-day, Avhen a child expects to be absent, 
 and the half-day after he has been so, are worth but little, even 
 with good scholars. A child must have an almost inconceiv- 
 able love of the school to desire to be there, when he knows 
 that his ignorance of the lessons is to be put in direct and pub- 
 lic contrast with the knowledge of his classmates ; and he must 
 have an almost incredible love of knowledge to derive any grati- 
 fication from the broken fragments of it which he can obtain at 
 these irregular intervals. The spirit of pride, which would 
 prompt him to stay away from the final examination of the 
 school, lest he should be questioned upon parts of a study 
 which he had never seen, or upon parts dependent upon what 
 he had never seen, would promise as much for the character of 
 the future man, as the spirit of indifference that could tamely 
 bear the exposure. 
 
 Irregularity of attendance in any one member of a class is 
 an act of injustice to every other member of it. After an 
 absence, whether longer or shorter, the pupil, on his return, 
 must inevitably learn his lessons in a very imperfect man- 
 ner. He occupies double his share of the time at a recita- 
 tion ; he requires double the amount of explanations from the 
 teacher ; and these explanations, having been previously given, 
 are not necessary for the others. Hence, the absent scholars 
 are a perpetual clog upon the class. The advanced body must 
 wait, while the laggards are coming up ; and thus not only the
 
 78 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 absentees themselves, but the reputation of the teacher, the 
 condition of the school, the character of the district, are all 
 made to suffer the consequences of the guilt of unnecessary 
 absence. 
 
 The effects of a want of punctuality, though less in extent, 
 are similar in kind ; co-existing, they are a mutual aggravation. 
 
 But, without entering into further detail respecting the losses, 
 embarrassments, and injustice, resulting from this common 
 delinquency, it becomes a matter of primary importance to 
 inquire what measures can be adopted to dry up a fountain of 
 mischief, which sends forth such copious streams. 
 
 The first thing to be done is to render the schoolhouse, both 
 by its external appearance and its internal conveniences, a 
 place of attraction ; or, at any rate, to prevent it from being 
 a place odious to the sight, and painful to the bodies and 
 limbs, of the pupils. The excuses and contrivances of the 
 children to stay away from a repulsive, uiihealthful school- 
 house seem to be preventives, which Nature, in her wise 
 economy, has provided, to escape the infliction of permanent 
 evils. 
 
 The teacher can do much, in various ways, to diminish the 
 cases of absence and tardiness. When the question is debated, 
 at the evening fire-side or at the breakfast-table, whether a 
 child shall stay at home or go to school, the child has a voice 
 and a vote, and often the casting vote, in its decision. If he 
 loves the school, he will be an able advocate for the expediency 
 of attending it. If errands or any little household services 
 are to be done, the child will rise an hour earlier, or sit up an 
 hour later, or bestir himself with greater activity, to accom- 
 plish them, that he may attend the school. For this object, he 
 will forego a family holiday, postpone the reception or the 
 making of a visit, endure summer's heat, or brave winter's 
 cold. On the contrary, if the pupil looks towards the school 
 with aversion ; if his heart sinks within him when the name of 
 the teacher is mentioned, or his image is excited, then every 
 pretence for absence will be magnified, and invention will be
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 79 
 
 active in fabricating excuses. In the former case, he would 
 almost feign to be well when he was sick ; here, he will feign 
 to be sick when he is well. Hence it will very often happen, 
 that the pleas or excuses of the pupil himself will determine 
 the question of going or staying ; and it depends primarily 
 upon the teacher which way this steady and powerful bias shall 
 incline. 
 
 During the first part of the school-term, and while the 
 habits of the pupils are forming, a skilful teacher may do 
 much towards inspiring a laudable pride in the scholars, in 
 regard to constancy and promptness. He can cause a public 
 opinion to be spread through the school, that absence or tardi- 
 ness, without the strongest reasons, is a stigma on the delin- 
 quent, a dishonorable abandonment of the post of duty. When 
 errors are committed, or difficulties felt, in consequence of 
 either of these causes, he can point out the relation between 
 the cause and its effect, and warn against a repetition. To 
 save the feelings of a child who comes late, or after a half- 
 day's absence, and renders a valid excuse, he can acquit him 
 before the school of the apparent neglect. He can refer to the 
 state of the Register in a brief remark at the close of the day ; 
 taking occasion, if the attendance is full, to commend the 
 scholars for it, to express his regret and mortification if it 
 is not ; but always so measuring and attempering his blame 
 and his praise, that none shall be disheartened by the severity 
 of the former, and that the latter shall not become valueless 
 by its superabundance. If regularity and punctuality could be 
 secured, during a four months' school, by expending an entire 
 week in this way at its beginning, the loss would be repaid 
 sevenfold before its close. If the teachers have not consider- 
 ation enough to speak on these subjects to their pupils, how 
 can they expect that the pupils, unprompted, will originate 
 proper views concerning their importance? 
 
 There is one act of justice which a teacher, who demands 
 punctuality, should never fail of rendering. Let him observe 
 the golden rule, and, when he demands punctuality of his pupils,
 
 80 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 be punctual himself, punctual, not only in the hour of com- 
 mencing his school, but in the hour of closing it. Pupils have 
 a sense of justice on this subject: if the regular intermission 
 is an hour, and the afternoon session commences at one o'clock, 
 they want to be dismissed at twelve. In this respect, let the 
 teacher bestow what he demands, and enforce his precept by 
 his example ; or, at least, when the morning or the evening 
 hour arrives for dismissing the school, let him bring its 
 exercises to a pause, and give his pupils an option to retire or 
 to remain. Years of mere talk are often lost upon children, 
 while a practical lesson is never without its effect. 
 
 Some teachers have adopted the plan of sending, to the 
 parents and guardians of all the scholars, weekly reports, or 
 cards, containing an account of all cases of absence or tardi- 
 ness. In some instances, these cards contain also a descrip- 
 tion of the quality of recitations, of the general deportment of 
 the children, or whatever else the teacher desires the parent 
 or guardian to be acquainted with. 
 
 To secure a prompt attendance at the opening of the school, 
 each half-day, some teachers make it their practice, during 
 the first five or ten minutes of the school, to have an exer- 
 cise in vocal music, or to relate some useful and instruc- 
 tive anecdote, or to read an interesting incident from a bio- 
 graphy, or to give a description of a curious fact in natural 
 history ; or, where there is apparatus, to perform, occasionally, 
 a striking experiment, and explain to what department of busi- 
 ness or the arts it is related ; to show the pupils, for instance, 
 that, in an exhausted receiver, a feather falls as rapidly as a 
 stone ; that, without air, gunpowder will not burn ; how a 
 steam-engine is made, or a rainbow formed. Why should all 
 the curiosity of children be pent up for months, to vent itself, at 
 last, on the occasion of raree-shows, circus-riding, or militia 
 musters? 
 
 The teacher ought also to visit the parents of children who 
 attend irregularly, and kindly and affectionately to expostulate 
 with them on the irremediable injury they are inflicting on
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. * 81 
 
 their offspring, both by the time they lose, and the bad habits 
 they form. 
 
 In several of the larger towns in the State, the school-com- 
 mittees have enacted positive regulations, excluding for the 
 forenoon or afternoon session all who come late ; and for the 
 residue of the term, all who are absent, unless from sickness 
 or some other disabling cause, for a fixed number of days or 
 half-days. There may be some objections to this course, 
 such as the fact, that truant-dispositioned boys may contrive 
 to be absent the requisite number of days, or half-days, for 
 the very purpose of being excluded afterwards ; but almost 
 any other evil is less than the combined influence of the 
 innumerable throng that follow in the train of a general 
 irregularity and tardiness. For most of the scholars, 
 this last-mentioned method is very effectual. It is the practice 
 of many of the lyceums in the State to close the doors of the 
 lecture-room at a given hour ; and railroad-cars and steam- 
 boats have a fixed time for starting, the consequence of 
 which is that everybody is punctual ; and, were all the gains 
 of this punctuality added together, it would be found that 
 years of time are saved daily by the regulation. 
 
 Some towns, in order to bring the force of a pecuniary mo- 
 tive to bear upon the subject, distribute the school-money 
 among the districts, not in the ratio of the children between 
 four and sixteen years of age, but in the ratio of their attend- 
 ance upon the schools. 
 
 Although teachers, as a body, can do more than any other 
 class in the community to abate the evils of inconstant and 
 tardy attendance ; although school-committees can do some- 
 thing through the instrumentality of school-regulations, and 
 even towns can make their appropriations of money subserve 
 the same end ; yet neither of these, nor all of them united, 
 can complete the work. The final, authoritative decision, in 
 each case, rests with parents. They, therefore, should be 
 appealed to with the most earnest and importunate solicitations, 
 not to be guilty of so great cruelty to their own children, of so
 
 82 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 great injustice towards the teacher and towards their neigh- 
 bors, as to cause or suffer those children, except in cases of 
 imperious necessity, to be absent from the school a single day 
 of the term or a single hour of the day. From time imme- 
 morial, in all schools, truantship has been regarded as a high 
 offence in a pupil, and forbidden under the sanction of severe 
 corporal punishment ; but it is difficult to see why an unneces- 
 sary absence from school at the pleasure of the child is worse 
 than an unnecessary absence at the pleasure of the parent. 
 The real cause of the difficulty must be, that parents are not 
 aware of its existence, and of the manifold mischiefs it in- 
 volves. Until recently, even the well-informed friends of educa- 
 tion were not apprised of its magnitude ; as, before the use of 
 the Register, no authentic means of making it known existed. 
 The diffusion of a knowledge, both of the fact and of its con- 
 sequences, cannot fail to produce a remedy ; and for this 
 purpose, as I have elsewhere suggested, the reading of the 
 Abstracts, at meetings of the inhabitants of the districts con- 
 vened at the schoolhouse, or other convenient place ; the circu- 
 lation of their contents by means of lectures and newspapers ; 
 the visitation of negligent parents by the teachers and by the 
 committees ; together with conversations held, on all proper 
 occasions, by those who know more of the subject with those 
 who know less, will be rapid and effectual means of convey- 
 ing the information to the very individuals who need it, and 
 must lead, in the end, to a much-needed reform. It is surpris- 
 ing and cheering to know what can be done by the combined 
 and harmonious exertions of all to accomplish this object. 
 There were many families of children, last winter, who did 
 not miss a single day in their attendance ; and in one school, 
 although the roads were almost impassable from snow, there 
 was scarcely the absence of a scholar during the whole school- 
 term. 
 
 If the school is to continue four months, and parents or 
 guardians cannot send their children more than two or three, 
 let them be sent continuously while they are sent at all, and
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 83 
 
 taken wholly from school the residue of the time. Six weeks 
 of constant attendance is better than three months scattered 
 promiscuously over a four-months' school. So, if nine o'clock 
 comes too eai'ly in the morning for punctual attendance, let the 
 school begin at ten, or even at half-past ten. Almost any 
 thing is better for children than to form the pernicious habit 
 of tardiness, which, in regard to the rights of others, has all 
 the practical effect of dishonesty, and varies but a shade from 
 it in the motive. 
 
 Notwithstanding the melancholy view of the subject pre- 
 sented by existing facts, yet when we consider the excessive 
 severity of the last winter ; the depth of snow, which for a long 
 period overspread all the inland counties, rendering the roads 
 nearly impassable for weeks together ; and also the fact, that, 
 in many places, children suffered to an extraordinary degree 
 from epidemic sickness, the average attendance was better than 
 in former years. It was not until last year that any return 
 was ever made of the children under four and over sixteen 
 years of age attending the schools. The number was found 
 to be about twenty thousand. Heretofore, in comparing the 
 average number of children in school with the whole number 
 of children in the State between four and sjxteen years of 
 age, for the purpose of ascertaining what proportion of the 
 whole number were in school, those who were below the age 
 of four, and above that of sixteen, have been reckoned as 
 between four and sixteen, and thus have materially swelled 
 the apparent proportion of attendants. 
 
 MANIFESTATION OF PARENTAL INTEREST. 
 
 Sovereign, reigning over and above all other influences upon 
 the school, is, or rather might be, that of the parents. The 
 father, when presiding at his table, or returning home at even- 
 ing from the labors of the day ; the mother, in that inter- 
 course with her children which begins with the waking hour of 
 the morning and lasts until the hour of sleep, enjoy a continu- 
 ing opportunity, by arranging the affairs of the household in
 
 84 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 such a way as to accommodate the hours of the school ; by 
 subordinating the little interests or conveniences of the family 
 to the paramount subject of regular and punctual attendance ; 
 by manifesting such an interest in the studies of each child, 
 that he will feel a daily responsibility, as well as a daily en- 
 couragement in regard to his lessons ; by foregoing an hour of 
 useless amusement or a call of ceremony, in order to make a 
 visit to the school ; by inviting the teacher to the house, and 
 treating him, not as a hireling, but as a wiser friend ; by a con- 
 scientious care in regard to their conversation about the school, 
 and their award of praise or blame ; in fine, by all those count- 
 less modes which parental affection, when guided by reason, 
 will make delightful to themselves, the parents can inspire 
 their offspring with a love of knowledge, a habit of industry, a 
 sense of decorum, a respect for manliness of conduct and dig- 
 nity of character, prophetic of their future usefulness and hap- 
 piness and honor. 
 
 For one who has not traversed the State, and made himself 
 actually acquainted with the condition of the schools by person- 
 al inspection and inquiry, it is impossible fully to conceive the 
 contrasts they now present. I have no hope, therefore, of mak- 
 ing myself adequately understood, when I say, that in contigu- 
 ous towns, and even in contiguous districts, activity and paraly- 
 sis it is hardly too much to say life and death are to be 
 found side by side. Wherever a town or district has been 
 blessed with a few men, or even with a single mau, who had 
 intellect to comprehend the bearings of this great subject, and 
 a spirit to labor in the work, there a revolution in public senti- 
 ment has been effected, or is now going on. In some districts, 
 last winter, the prosperity of the school became a leading topic 
 of conversation among the neighbors ; the presence of visitors, 
 from day to day, cheered the scholars ; a public spirit grew up 
 among them, animating to exertion, and demanding courteous, 
 honorable, just behavior ; the consequence of which was, that, 
 ( by a law as certain as that light comes with the rising of the sun, 
 ! a proficiency surpassing all former example was made ; and, when
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 85 
 
 the schools drew to a close, a crowd of delighted spectators 
 attended the final examination, which, from the interest and 
 the pleasure of the scene, was prolonged into the night. In some 
 places, the visitors who did not come early to this examination 
 could not obtain admittance on account of the crowded state of 
 the house ; and in one, although a cold and driving snow-storm 
 lasted through the day, yet a hundred parents attended, whom 
 the inclemency of the weather could not deter from being pres- 
 ent to celebrate this harvest-home of knowledge and virtue ; 
 while on the same occasion, in an adjoining town, perhaps in 
 a bordering district, a solitary committee-man dropped grudg- 
 ingly in to witness a half-hour of mechanical movements, got 
 up as a mock representation of knowledge, and to look at the 
 half-emptied benches of the schoolroom made vacant by de- 
 serters. These differences are not imaginary, they are real ; 
 and their proximate cause is the interest, or the want of inter- 
 est, manifested by the parents toward the schools. 
 
 It is a celebrated saying of the French philosopher and edu- 
 cationist, Cousin, that " as is the teacher, so is the school." 
 In regard to France and Prussia, where the schools depend so 
 much upon the authority of the government, and so little upon 
 the social influences of the neighborhood where they exist, this 
 brief saying is the embodiment of an important truth ; but, 
 with our institutions, there is far less reason for giving it the 
 currency and force of a proverb. Here, every thing emanates 
 from the people : they are the original ; all else is copy. If, [ 
 therefore, the transatlantic maxim, which identifies the char- 
 acter of the school with that of the teacher, be introduced ' 
 amongst us, it must be with the addition, that " as are the 
 parents, so are both teacher and school." 
 
 A visit to the school by the parents produces a salutary 
 effect upon themselves. Although it is feeling which origi- 1 
 nates and sends forth conduct, yet conduct re-acts powerfully I 
 upon feeling ; and, therefore, if parents could be induced to 
 commence the performance of this duty, they would soon find 
 it not only delightful in itself, but demanded by the force of
 
 86 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 habit. Nor is it any excuse for their neglect, that they are in- 
 capable, in point of literary attainments, of examining the 
 school, or of deciding upon the accuracy of recitation. If 
 
 I they have no knowledge to bestow in instruction, they all have 
 sympathy to give in encouragement. Indeed, the children 
 must be animated to exertion before they will make any 
 valuable or lasting attainment. This animation the parents 
 can impart, and thus become the means of creating a good 
 they do not themselves possess. 
 
 It is surprising that the sagacity of parental love does not 
 discover that a child, whose parents interest the teacher in his 
 welfare, will be treated much better in school than he other- 
 wise would be ; and this, too, without the teacher's incurring 
 the guilt of partiality. If the teacher is made acquainted with 
 l' the peculiarities of the child's disposition, he will be able to 
 I manage him more judiciously, and therefore more successfully, 
 ' than he otherwise could ; he will be able to approach the child's 
 mind through existing avenues, instead of roughly forcing a new 
 passage to it ; and thus, in many instances, to supersede pun- 
 ishment by mild measures. A wise physician always desires 
 to know the constitution and habit of his patient before he pre- 
 scribes for his malady ; and a parent who should call a medical 
 practitioner to administer to a sick child, but should refuse to 
 give him this information, would be accounted insane. But are 
 the maladies of the mind less latent and subtile and elusive than 
 those of the body? and is a less degree of peril to be appre- 
 hended in the former case than in the latter from the prescrip- 
 tions of ignorance? I have been credibly informed of a case 
 where a child received a severe chastisement in school for not 
 reading distinctly, when the inarticulateness was occasioned by 
 ,' a natural impediment in his organs of speech. The parent sent 
 the child to school without communicating this fact to the 
 teacher ; and, under the circumstances of the case, the teacher 
 mistook the involuntary defect for natural obstinacy. This 
 may seem an extreme case, and one not likely to happen ; but, 
 doubtless, hundreds of similar though less discoverable ones,
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 87 
 
 in regard to some mental or moral deficiency, are daily occur- 
 ring. Again : if parents do not visit the school until at or near 
 its close, they may then discover errors or evils whose conse- 
 quences might have been foreseen on an earlier visit, and thus 
 prevented. It is another fact, eminently worthy of parental 
 consideration, that many young and timid children, unaccus- 
 tomed to see persons not belonging to the family, are almost 
 paralyzed when first brought into the presence of strangers. 
 An excessive diffidence cripples their limbs, and benumbs all 
 their senses ; and it is only by their being gradually familiar- 
 ized to company, that the fetters of embarrassment can be 
 stripped off, and the shy, downcast countenance be uplifted. 
 After a few years of neglect, this awkwardness and shame- 
 facedness become irremediable : they harden the whole frame, 
 as it were, into a petrifaction ; and their victim always finds 
 himself bereft of his faculties at the very moment when he has 
 most need of freedom and vigor in their exercise. On the f 
 other hand, pert, forward, self-esteeming children, who are un- 
 accustomed to the equitable reciprocities of social intercourse, 
 commit the opposite error of becoming rude, aggressive, and 
 disdainful, whenever brought into contact with society. Now, 
 one of the best remedies or preventives which children can en- 
 joy, both for this disabling bashfuluess, and for this spirit of 
 effrontery, is the meeting of visitors in school, where a pre- 
 vious knowledge of what the occasion demands helps them to 
 behave in a natural manner, notwithstanding the consciousness 
 that others are present ; und where they are relieved from the 
 double embarrassment of thinking both what they are to do, 
 and how it should be done. Especially is it necessary that 
 mothers should accompany sensitive and timid children when 
 they first go to school, to obviate a distrust of the teacher, or a 
 fear of other children, which might otherwise infix in the mind 
 a permanent repugnance to the place. Whatever confers upon 
 the school a single attraction, or removes from it one feature of 
 harshness, clears the avenue for a more ready transmission of 
 knowledge into the pupils' minds.
 
 88 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 RETROSPECT. NUMBER AND COMBINATION OP INFLUENCES 
 
 NECESSARY TO A GOOD SCHOOL. 
 
 In discussing the various topics embodied in this Report, 
 and in pointing out, under each successive head, the imperfec- 
 tions belonging to it, imperfections which prevent our school 
 system from conferring those abundant and precious benefits it 
 is capable of bestowing, I have not been without fear that my 
 remarks might seem to wear an aspect of accusation, and to 
 savor of harshness ; and although it might be admitted that no 
 just exception could be taken to the views presented on any 
 particular topic, still, that the tenor of the whole might seem 
 too condemnatory and reprehensive. To be the bearer of un- 
 welcome tidings is proverbially a thankless office ; and the fidel- 
 ity that tells a friend of his faults is too apt to forfeit the friend- 
 ship which it should have strengthened. Yet to these general 
 rules there are noble exceptions. A wise man wishes to know 
 what is wrong in his affairs, that he may rectify it ; and every 
 sincere lover of excellence rejoices to be made acquainted with 
 his faults, that he may correct them. In commenting, there- 
 fore, upon what I consider the imperfections of our system, in 
 good faith, and with a single eye to their removal, I have pro- 
 ceeded upon the conviction that our people do possess that wis- 
 dom and that love of excellence which desires to " forget the 
 things which are behind," and, in the career of well-doing, to 
 " press forward to those which are before ; " and rather to de- 
 vote their energies to still higher achievements than ignobly to 
 waste them in vain-glorying and self-eulogy. It would have 
 been easy for me and, could duty have allowed, it would 
 have been delightful to have occupied much more time, and 
 to have filled a much larger space, in recounting those merits 
 and excellences of our system of free schools, which, abroad as 
 well as at home, it is acknowledged to possess ; in pointing to 
 the bright train of blessings which, from age to age, it has been 
 the means of conferring upon the people of this State, which 
 it is now conferring, and, as it remains steadfast while the
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 89 
 
 generations rise and pass away, it promises still to confer upon 
 unborn millions. But, at best, the pleasure of self-adulation is | 
 fleeting, and it leaves no abiding improvement behind. 
 
 It should be remembered, too, that, in the administration of 
 our system, a larger share of power is possessed by the people 
 than in any other state or country in the world. If it were 
 true here, that as soon as any error or deficiency became 
 known to the Legislature, or to any central and supervisory 
 body, they could forthwith issue an edict for its correction, 
 such a summary mode of proceeding would supersede the 
 necessity of all explanation. But, where all measures of im- 
 provement and reform are to be carried out by the people at 
 large, it becomes necessary that they should first be made 
 acquainted with the evils which it is their interest and duty to 
 remedy ; and, for this purpose, I have endeavored faithfully 
 to perform the unwelcome task of describing them. 
 
 The explanation, and, to some extent, the excuses, for the 
 deficiencies here enumerated, are to be found in the number 
 and complexity of the parts whose combined and harmonious 
 action is essential to a good school. We have no other insti- 
 tution where such a confluence of favorable influences is neces- 
 sary to the production of the desired result ; nor have we any 
 whose usefulness is so liable to be impaired, or even destroyed, 
 by a single adverse tendency. A long train of measures is 
 requisite to accomplish the end, and a failure in any one of the 
 series is ruin. If the schoolhouse be bad, in regard to its *"*" 
 location or internal construction, then not only will the im- 
 provement in the children's minds be materially lessened, but 
 the healthiness of their bodies will be exposed to continual 
 danger. If the house be otherwise well built, but deficient in 
 the single requisite of ventilation, two-thirds of all the intel- v 
 lectual power of the children will be destroyed at the very 
 moment when they are called upon to exercise it. In the whole 
 range of science, no fact is better established than that the 
 breathing of impure air benumbs and stupefies every faculty ; 
 and, therefore, to call upon children to study or understand 
 or remember, while we give them impure air for breathing, is
 
 90 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 . as absurd as to put fetters upon their limbs when we wish them 
 to run swiftly, or to interpose an opaque body between their 
 eyes and any object which we wish them to see clearly. But 
 if the schoolhouse be the best that art can build, yet, if the 
 ^/ town grants only penurious sums of money, the school will but 
 just begin when the means of supporting it will end. This is 
 the false economy of saving in the seed, though thirty or sixty 
 or a hundred fold be lost in the harvest. Even when the town 
 makes liberal grants of money, in proportion to its valuation 
 and census, still, if it has unwisely divided its territory into 
 V minute districts, it defeats its own liberality ; for, by attempting 
 to support so many schools with disproportionate means, it 
 gives an efficient support to none. But with a good school- 
 house, and with such large and populous districts, or union 
 districts, as give the multiplying power of union and concert 
 to individual action, still, the employment of a bad teacher 
 will vitiate the whole ; and the place will have been prepared, 
 and the money appropriated, only to gather the children into a 
 
 , receptacle, where bad feelings and passions, bad language and 
 manners, will ferment into corruption ; and, without a good 
 prudential and superintending committee, the chance of secur- 
 ing the services of a good teacher becomes so small as to elude 
 even a fractional expression. And, again, if the most perfect 
 teacher is obtained, still the scholars must be brought within 
 the circle of his influence in order to be benefited ; and, there- 
 ^/ fore, absence, irregularity, and tardiness must be prevented, 
 or the good teacher will have been employed in vain. Let all 
 other influences be propitious, and the single circumstance, of 
 which so little has heretofore been thought, viz., a diversity of 
 
 / class-books for scholars of similar ages and attainments, will 
 derange any operation of the school ; because no perseverance, 
 no fertility of resources, on the part of the teacher, can carry it 
 forward if each pupil brings a different book. The obstacle 
 defies human genius. All that reciprocal aid and stimulus is 
 lost which the different minds of a class afford each other 
 when they have once been awakened, and their attention turned 
 upon the same point. To expect progress under this embar-
 
 REPORT FOR 1839. 91 
 
 rassment is as unreasonable as it would be for a singing-master ! 
 to expect concord of sounds when all his pupils were singing 
 simultaneously from different notes. Even if all the preceding 
 arrangements and appointments are perfect, it will yet be true 
 that not one-half of the capabilities of the school will be 
 developed, unless the parents breathe life into the children before , 
 they leave their own door, and send them to school hungering 
 and thirsting after knowledge. 
 
 Xow, all these various agencies must work in concert, or 
 they work in vain. When a system is so numerous in its 
 parts, and so complex in its structure ; when the nice adjustment 
 of each and the harmonious working of all are necessary to the 
 perfection of the product, all who are engaged in its opera- 
 tion must not only have a great extent of knowledge, but they 
 must be bound together by a unity of purpose. Experience 
 has often proved how fatally powerful one ill-disposed person 
 can be in destroying the value of a school ; but experience is 
 yet to prove what an amount of corporeal and material well- 
 being, of social enjoyment, of intellectual dominion and ma- 
 jesty, of moral purity and fervor, what an amount, in fine, 
 of both temporal and spiritual blessedness, this institution, in 
 the providence of God, may be the means of conferring upon 
 the race. 
 
 Experience is yet to develop the grandeur and the glory, 
 which, through the exhaustless capabilities of this institution, 
 may be wrought out for mankind, when, by the united labors 
 of the wise and the good, its elastic nature shall be so ex- 
 panded as to become capacious of the millions of immortal 
 beings, who, from the recesses of Infinite Power, are evoked 
 into this life as a place of preparation for a higher state of 
 existence, and whom, like a nursing mother, it shall receive 
 and cherish, and shall instruct and train in the knowledge and 
 the observance and the love of those divine laws and command- 
 ments upon which the Creator, both of the body and the soul, 
 has made their highest happiness to depend.
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 . . . THE declination of the sun towards the southern tropic 
 is not more certainly followed by winter, with all its blankness 
 and sterility, nor does the ascension of that luminary towards 
 our own part of the heavens more certainly bring on summer, 
 with all its beauty and abundance, than does the want or the 
 enjoyment of education degrade or elevate the condition of a 
 people. I will occupy the short space which propriety allows 
 to me, iu concluding this Report, by showing the effect of 
 education upon the worldly fortunes and estates of men, its 
 influence upon property, upon human comfort and competence, 
 upon the outward, visible, material interests or well-being of 
 individuals and communities. 
 
 This view, so far from being the highest which can be taken 
 of the beneficent influences of education, may, perhaps, be 
 justly regarded as the lowest. But it is a palpable view. It 
 presents an aspect of the subject susceptible of being made 
 intelligible to all ; and, therefore, it will meet the case of 
 thousands who are now indifferent about the education of their 
 offspring, because they foresee no re-imbursement in kind, 
 no return in money, or in money's worth, for money ex- 
 pended. The co-operation of this numerous class is iudi^peu- 
 sable, in order to carry out the system ; and if they can be 
 induced to educate their children, even from inferior motives, 
 the children, when educated, will feel its higher and nobler 
 aftiuities. 
 
 92
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 93 
 
 So, too, in regard to towns. If it can be proved that the 
 aggregate wealth of a town will be increased just in propor- 
 tion to the increase of its appropriations for schools, the op- 
 ponents of such a measure will be silenced. The tax for this 
 purpose, which they now look upon as a burden, they will then 
 regard as a profitable investment. Let it be shown that the 
 money which is now clung to by the parent, in the hope of 
 iacreasing his children's legacies some six or ten per cent, can 
 be so invested as to double their patrimony, and the blind 
 instinct of parental love, which now, by voice and vote, op- 
 poses such outlay, will become an advocate for the most 
 generous endowments. When the money expended for educa- 
 tion shall be viewed in its true character, as seed-grain sown 
 in a soil which is itself enriched by yielding, then the most 
 parsimonious will not stint the sowing, lest the harvest also 
 should be stinted, and thereby thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold 
 should be lost to the garners. 
 
 I am the more induced to take this view of the subject, 
 because the advocates and eulogists of education have rarely, 
 if ever, descended to so humble a duty as to demonstrate its 
 pecuniary value both to individuals and to society. They 
 have expended their strength in portraying its loftier attributes, 
 its gladdening, refining, humanizing tendencies. They have 
 not deigned to show how it can raise more abundant harvests, 
 and multiply the conveniences of domestic life ; how it can 
 build, transport, manufacture, mine, navigate, fortify ; how, 
 in fine, a single new idea is often worth more to an individual 
 than a hundred workmen, and to a nation than the addition 
 of provinces to its territory. I have novel and striking evi- 
 dence to prove that education is convertible into houses and 
 lands, as well as into power and virtue. 
 
 Although, therefore, this utilitarian view of education, as it 
 may be called, which regards it as the dispenser of private 
 competence, and the promoter of national wealth, is by no 
 means the first which would address itself to an enlightened 
 and benevolent mind, yet it will be found to possess intrinsic
 
 94 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 merits, and to be worthy of the special regard, not only of the 
 political economist, but of the lawgiver and moralist. Nature 
 fastens upon us original and inexorable necessities in regard to 
 food, raiment, and shelter. Though these physical wants are 
 among the lowest that belong to our being, yet there is a view 
 of them which is not sordid or ignoble. They must be first 
 served, because, if denied, forthwith the race is extinct. They 
 domineer over us ; and, until supplied, their importunate clamor 
 will drown every appeal to higher capacities. No hungry or 
 houseless people ever were, or ever will be, an intelligent or a 
 moral one. It is found that the church, the lecture-room, and 
 the hall of science, flourish best where regard is paid to the 
 institution for savings. The divine charities of Christian love 
 are often straitened, because our means of benevolence fall 
 short of our desires. 
 
 I proceed, then, to show that education has a power of min- 
 istering to our personal and material wants beyond all other 
 agencies, whether excellence of climate, spontaneity of pro- 
 duction, mineral resources, or mines of silver and gold. Every 
 wise parent and community, desiring the prosperity of their 
 children, even in the most worldly sense, will spare no pains 
 in giving them a generous education. 
 
 During the past year, I have opened a correspondence, and 
 availed myself of all opportunities to hold personal interviews, 
 with many of the most practical, sagacious, and intelligent 
 business-men amongst us, who for many years have had large 
 numbers of persons in their employment. My object has been 
 to ascertain the difference in the productive ability where 
 natural capacities have been equal between the educated 
 and the uneducated ; between a man or woman whose mind 
 has been awakened to thought and supplied with the rudiments 
 of knowledge by a good common-school education and one 
 whose faculties have never been developed, or aided in emer- 
 ging from their original darkness and torpor, by such a privilege. 
 For this purpose I have conferred and corresponded with man- 
 ufacturers of all kinds, with machinists, engineers, railroad
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 95 
 
 contractors, officers in the army, &c. These various classes 
 of persons have means of determining the effects of education 
 on individuals, equal in their natural abilities, which other 
 classes do not possess. A farmer hiring a laborer for one 
 season, who has received a good common-school education, 
 and, the ensuing season, hiring another who has not enjoyed 
 this advantage, although he may be personally convinced of 
 the relative value or profitableness of their services, will rarely 
 have any exact data or tests to refer to by which he can measure 
 the superiority of the former over the latter. They do not work 
 side by side, so that he can institute a comparison between the 
 amounts of labor they perform. They may cultivate different 
 fields, where the ease of tillage or the fertility of the soils 
 may be different. They may rear crops under the influence 
 of different seasons, so that he cannot discriminate be- 
 tween what is referable to the bounty of Nature, and what to 
 superiority in judgment or skill. Similar difficulties exist in 
 estimating the amount and value of female labor in the house- 
 hold. And as to the mechanic also, the carpenter, the 
 mason, the blacksmith, the tool-maker of any kind, there 
 are a thousand circumstances which we call accidental, that 
 mingle their influences in giving quality and durability to their 
 work, and prevent us from making a precise estimate of the 
 relative value of any two men's handicraft. Individual differ- 
 ences too, in regard to a single article, or a single day's work, 
 may be too minute to be noticed or appreciated, while the 
 aggregate of these differences at the end of a few years may 
 make all the difference between a poor and a rich man. No 
 observing man can have failed to notice the difference between 
 two workmen, one of whom to use a proverbial expression 
 always hits the nail on the head, while the other loses half 
 his strength, and destroys half his nails, by the awkwardness 
 of his blows ; but perhaps few men have thought of the dif- 
 ference in the results of two such men's labor at the end of 
 twenty years. 
 
 But when hundreds of men or women work side by side, in
 
 96 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the same factory, at the same machinery, in making the same 
 fabrics, and, by a fixed rule of the establishment, labor the 
 same number of hours each day ; and when, also, the products 
 of each operative can be counted in number, weighed by the 
 pound, or measured by the yard or cubic foot, then it is per- 
 fectly practicable to determine with arithmetical exactness the 
 productions of one individual and one class as compared with 
 those of another individual and another class. 
 
 So where there are different kinds of labor, some simple, 
 others complicated, and, of course, requiring different degrees 
 of intelligence and skill, it is easy to observe what class of 
 persons rise from a lower to a higher grade of employment. 
 
 This, too, is not to be foi'gotten, that in a manufacturing or 
 mechanical establishment, or among a set of hands engaged in 
 filling up a valley or cutting down a hill, where scores of peo- 
 ple are working together, the absurd and adventitious distinc- 
 tions of society do not inti-ude. The capitalist and his agents 
 are looking for the greatest amount of labor, or the largest 
 income in money from their investments ; and they do not 
 promote a dunce to a station where he will destroy raw ma- 
 terial, or slacken industry, because of his name or birth or 
 family connections. The obscurest and humblest person has an 
 open and fair field for competition. That he proves himself 
 capable of earning more money for his employer is a testi- 
 monial better than a diploma from all the colleges. 
 
 Now, many of the most intelligent and valuable men in our 
 community, in compliance with my request, for which I ten- 
 der them my public and grateful acknowledgments, have 
 examined their books for a series of years, and have ascer- 
 tained both the quality and the amount of work performed by 
 persons in their employment ; and the result of the investigation 
 is a most astonishing superiority, in productive power, on the 
 part of the educated over the uneducated laborer. The hand 
 is found to be another hand when guided by an intelligent 
 mind. Processes are performed, not only more rapidly, but 
 better, when faculties which have been exercised in early life
 
 EEPORT FOR 1841. 97 
 
 furnish their assistance. Individuals who, without the aid of 
 knowledge, would have been condemned to perpetual inferiority 
 of condition, and subjected to all the evils of want and poverty, 
 rise to competence and independence by the uplifting power 
 of education. In great establishments, and among large 
 bodies of laboring men, where all services are rated according 
 to their pecuniary value ; where there are no extrinsic circum- 
 stances to bind a man down to a fixed position, after he has 
 shown a capacity to rise above it ; where, indeed, men pass 
 by each other, ascending or descending in their grades of labor, 
 just as easily and certainly as particles of water of different 
 degrees of temperature glide by each other, there it is found 
 as an almost invariable fact, other things being equal, 
 that those who have been blessed with a good common-school 
 education rise to a higher and a higher point in the kinds of 
 labor performed, and also in the rate of wages paid, while the 
 ignorant sink like dregs, and are always found at the bottom. 
 
 I now proceed to lay before the Board some portions of the 
 evidence I have obtained, first inserting my Circular Letter, 
 in answer to which, communications have been made. 
 
 CIRCULAR LETTER. 
 To . 
 
 DEAR SIR, My best and only apology for taking the liberty to address 
 you will be found in the object I have in view, which, therefore, I proceed 
 to state without further preface. 
 
 In fulfilling the duties with which I have been intrusted by the Board of 
 Education, I am led into frequent conversation and correspondence, not 
 only with persons in every part of the State, but more or less with every 
 class and description of persons in the whole community. 
 
 I regret to say, that among these I occasionally meet with individuals, 
 who, although very differently circumstanced in life, cordially agree in their 
 indifference towards the cause of common education ; and some of whom 
 even profess to be alarmed at possible mischiefs that may come in its train, 
 and therefore stand in its path, and obstruct its advancement. 
 
 The individuals who thus maintain an attitude of neutrality, or assume 
 one of active opposition, are either persons who, in their worldly circum- 
 stances, are deemed the favorites of fortune, or they are persons who are 
 7
 
 98 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 alike strangers to mental cultivation, and to all the outward and ordinary 
 signs of temporal prosperity. In a word, they are found, in regard to their 
 worldly condition, at the two extremes of the social scale. I would by no 
 means be understood to say, that any considerable proportion of the men 
 of wealth amongst us look with an unfriendly eye on the general diffusion 
 of the means of knowledge. On the contrary, some of the best friends of 
 education are to be found amongst this class, who, uniting abundance of 
 means with benevolence of disposition, are truly efficient in advancing the 
 work. Nor, on this subject, are the lines of demarcation between parties 
 broadly drawn ; but they shade off, by imperceptible degrees, from friends 
 to opponents. 
 
 But this I do mean to say, that there are men of wealth and leisure, too 
 numerous to be overlooked in a calculation of friendly and of adverse 
 agencies, who profess to fear that a more thorough and comprehensive 
 education for the whole people will destroy contentment, loosen habits of 
 industry, engender a false ambition, and prompt to an incursion into their 
 own favored sphere, by which great loss will accrue to themselves, without, 
 any corresponding benefit to the invaders. 
 
 The othfer class are those who, suffering from a neglected or a perverted 
 education in themselves, seem incapable of appreciating either the temporal 
 and material well-being, or the mental elevation and enjoyment, which it is 
 the prerogative of a good education to confer. These two parties, though 
 alien from each other in all other respects, are allies here ; and although, 
 with the exception of a very few towns in the Commonwealth, they are not 
 numerically strong, yet, by adroitly implicating other questions with that 
 of the Public Schools, they are able in many cases to baffle all efforts at 
 reform and improvement. 
 
 The views of these parties I believe to be radically wrong, anti-social, 
 anti-Republican, anti-Christian; and I believe that all action in pursu- 
 ance of them will impair the best interests of society, and originate a train 
 of calamities, in which not only their advocates, but all portions of the 
 community, will be involved. Convinced that such is the inevitable and 
 accelerating tendency of such views, it seems to me to be the duty of the 
 friends of mankind to meet them with fairness and a conciliatory spirit 
 indeed, but with earnestness and energy, and to confute them by UK- pro- 
 duction of evidence and the exposition of principles. 
 
 It is for this reason that I address you, and solicit a reply, founded upon 
 your personal knowledge, to the following questions : 
 
 First, Have you had large numbers of persons in your employment or 
 under your superintendence ? If so, will you please to state how many ? 
 Within what period of time ? In what department of business 1 Whether 
 at different places "? Whether natives or foreigners ? 
 
 Second, Have you observed differences among the persons you have 
 employed, growing out of differences in their education, and independent of
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 99 
 
 t/ir/'r natural abilities; that is, whether, as a class, those who from early life 
 have been accustomed to exercise their minds by reading and studying 
 have greater docility and quickness in applying themselves to work ? and, 
 after the simplest details are mastered, have they greater aptitude, dexterity, 
 or ingenuity in comprehending ordinary processes, or in originating new 
 ones ? Do they more readily or frequently devise new modes by which the 
 same amount of work can be better done, or by which more work can be 
 done in the same time, or by which raw material or motive-power can be 
 economized ? In short, do you obtain more work and better work, with less 
 waste, from those who have received what, in Massachusetts, we call a good 
 common-school education, or from those who have grown up in neglect and 
 ignorance 1 Is there any difference in the earnings of these two classes, 
 and consequently in their wages ? 
 
 Third, What, within your knowledge, has been the effect of higher 
 degrees of mental application and culture upon the domestic and social 
 habits of persons in your employment ? Is this class more cleanly in their 
 persons, their dress, and their households ? and do they enjoy a greater im- 
 munity from those diseases which originate in a want of personal neatness 
 and purity ? Are they more exemplary in their deportment and conversa- 
 tion, devoting more time to intellectual pursuits or to the refining art of 
 music, and spending their evenings and leisure hours more with their 
 families, and less at places of resort for idle and dissipated men ? Is a 
 smaller portion of them addicted to intemperance ? Are their houses 
 kept in a superior condition ? Does a more economical and judicious 
 mode of living purchase greater comforts at the same expense, or equal 
 comforts with less means ? Are their families better brought up, more 
 respectably dressed, more regularly attendant upon the school and the 
 church ? and do their children, when arrived at years of maturity, enter 
 upon the active scenes of life with better prospects of success 1 
 
 Fourth, In regard to standing and respectability among co-laborers, 
 neighbors, and fellow-citizens generally, how do those who have enjoyed 
 and improved the privilege of good common schools compare with the 
 neglected and the illiterate ? Do the former exercise greater influence 
 among their associates ? Are they more often applied to for advice and 
 counsel in cases of difficulty, or selected as umpires or arbitrators for the 
 decision of minor controversies ? Are higher and more intelligent circles 
 for acquaintance open to them, from conversation and intercourse with 
 which their own minds can be constantly improved ? Are they more likely 
 to rise from grade to grade in the scale of labor, until they enter depart- 
 ments where greater skill, judgment, and responsibility arc required, and 
 which therefore command a larger remuneration ? Are they more likely 
 to rise from the condition of employe's, and to establish themselves in busi- 
 ness on their own account ? 
 
 Fifth, Have you observed any difference in the classes above named
 
 100 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 (I speak of them as classes, for there will, of course, be individual excep- 
 tions) in regard to punctuality and fidelity in the performance of duties ? 
 Which class is most regardful of the rights of others, and most intelligent 
 and successful in securing their own ? You will, of course, perceive that 
 this question involves a more general one ; viz., from which of the above- 
 described classes have those who possess property, and who hope to trans- 
 mit it to their children, most to fear from secret aggression, or from such 
 public degeneracy as will loosen the bands of society, corrupt the testimony 
 of witnesses, violate the sanctity of the juror's oath, and substitute, as a 
 rule of right, the power of a numerical majority for the unvarying princi- 
 ples of justice ? 
 
 Sixth, Finally, in regard to those who possess the largest shares in the 
 stock of worldly goods, could there, in your opinion, be any police so vigi- 
 lant and effective, for the protection of all the rights of person, property, 
 and character, as such a sound and comprehensive education and training 
 as our system of common schools could be made to impart ? and would not 
 the payment of a sufficient tax to make such education and training uni- 
 versal be the cheapest means of self-protection and insurance ? And in 
 regard to that class which, from the accident of birth and parentage, are 
 subjected to the privations and the temptations of poverty, would not such 
 an education open to them new resources in habits of industry and economy, 
 in increased skill, and the awakening of inventive power, which would 
 yield returns a thousand-fold greater than can ever be hoped for from the 
 most successful clandestine depredations, or open invasion of the property 
 of others ? 
 
 I am aware, my dear sir, that, to every intelligent and reflecting man, 
 these inquiries will seem superfluous and nugatory ; and your first impulse 
 may be to put some such interrogatory to me in reply, as whether the sun 
 has any influence on vegetable growth, or whether it is expedient to have 
 windows in our houses for the admission of light. I acknowledge the close 
 analogy of the cases in point of self-evidence ; but my reply is, that while 
 we have influential persons, who dwell with us in the same common mansion 
 of society, and who, having secured for themselves a few well-lighted apart- 
 ments, now insist that total darkness is better for a portion of the occupants 
 born and dwelling under the same roof; and while, unfortunately, a por- 
 tion of these benighted occupants, from never having seen more than the 
 feeblest glimmerings of the light of day, insist that it is better for them 
 and their children to remain blind ; while these opinions continue to ex- 
 ist, I hold that it is necessary to adduce facts and arguments, and to present 
 motives, which shall prove, both to the blinded and those who would keep 
 them so, the value and beauty of light. 
 
 HORACE MANN, 
 
 Secretary of the Board of Education.
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 101 
 
 P. S. If the above shall give you a general outline of my object, I would 
 thank you to fill it up, even though parts of it may not be distinctly indi- 
 cated by the questions. 
 
 LETTER FROM J. K. MILLS, ESQ. 
 
 BOSTON, Dec. 29, 1841. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I have endeavored, since I received your letter, to 
 collect such information as would enable me to answer your questions. 
 The house with which I am connected in business has had, for the last ten 
 years, the principal direction of cotton-mills, machine-shops, and calico- 
 printing works, in which are constantly employed about three thousand 
 persons. The opinions I have formed of the effects of a common-school 
 education upon our manufacturing population are the result of personal 
 observation and inquiries, and are confirmed by the testimony of the over- 
 seers and agents, who are brought into immediate contact with the opera- 
 tives. They are as follows : 
 
 1. That the rudiments of a common-school education are essential to 
 the attainment of skill and expertness as laborers, or to consideration and 
 respect in the civil and social relations of life. 
 
 2. That very few, who have not enjoyed the advantages of a common- 
 school education, ever rise above the lowest class of operatives ; and that the 
 labor of this class, when it is employed in manufacturing operations, which 
 require even a very moderate degree of manual or mental dexterity, is un- 
 productive. 
 
 3. That a large majority of the overseers, and others employed in situa- 
 tions which require a high degree of skill, in particular branches, which often- 
 times require a good general knowledge of business, and always an unex- 
 ceptionable moral character, have made their way up from the condition of 
 common laborers with no other advantage over a large proportion of those 
 they have left behind than that derived from a better education. 
 
 A statement made from the books of one of the manufacturing com- 
 panies under our direction will show the relative number of the two classes, 
 and the earnings of each. This mill may be taken as a fair index of all the 
 others. 
 
 The average number of operatives annually employed for the last three 
 years is one thousand two hundred. Of this number, there are forty-five 
 unable to write their names, or about three-fourths per cent. 
 
 The average of women's wages, in the departments requiring the most 
 skill, is S2.50 per week, exclusive of board. 
 
 The average of wages in the lowest departments is $1.25 per week. 
 
 Of the forty-live who are unable to write, twenty-nine, or about two-
 
 102 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 thirds, are employed in the lowest department. The difference between the 
 wages earned by the forty-five, and the average wages of an equal number 
 of the better-educated class, is about twenty-seven per cent in favor of the 
 latter. 
 
 The difference between the wages earned by twenty-nine of the lowest 
 class, and the same number in the higher, is sixty-six per cent. 
 
 Of seventeen persons filling the most responsible situations in the mills, 
 ten have grown up in the establishment from common laborers or appren- 
 tices. 
 
 This statement does not include an importation of sixty-three persons 
 from Manchester, in England, in 1839. Among these persons, there was 
 scarcely one who could read or write ; and although a part of them had been 
 accustomed to work in cotton-mills, yet, either from incapacity or idleness, 
 they were unable to earn sufficient to pay for their subsistence, and at the 
 expiration of a few weeks not more than half a dozen remained in our em- 
 ployment. 
 
 In some of the print-works, a large proportion of the operatives are foreign- 
 ers. Those who are employed in the branches which require a considerable 
 degree of skill are as well educated as our people in similar situations. 
 But the common laborers, as a class, are without any education ; and their 
 average earnings are about two-thirds only of those of our lowest classes, 
 although the prices paid to each are the same for the same amount of work. 
 
 Among the men and boys employed in our machine-shops, the want of 
 education is quite rare ; indeed, I do not know an instance of a person who 
 is unable to read and write, and many have had a good common-school 
 education. To this may be attributed the fact, that a large proportion of 
 persons who fill the higher and more responsible situations came from this 
 class of workmen. 
 
 From these statements, you will be able to form some estimate, in dollars 
 and cents at least, of the advantages even of a little education to the opera- 
 tive; and there is not the least doubt that the employer is equally benefited. 
 He has the security for his property that intelligence, good morals, and a 
 just appreciation of the regulations of his establishment] always afford. 
 His machinery and mills, which constitute a large part of his capital, are in 
 the bauds of persons, \vho, by their skill, are enabled to use them to their 
 utmost capacity, and to prevent any unnecessary depreciation. 
 
 Each operative in a cotton-mill may be supposed to represent from one 
 thousand to twelve hundred dollars of the capital invested in the mill and 
 its machinery. It is only from the most diligent and economical use of 
 this capital that the proprietor can expect a profit. A fraction less than 
 one-half of the cost of manufacturing common cotton-goods, when a mill 
 is in full operation, is made up of charges which are permanent. If the 
 product is reduced in the ratio of the capacity of the two classes of opera- 
 tives mentioned in this statement, it will be seen that the cost will be 
 increased in a compound ratio.
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 103 
 
 My belief is, that the best cotton-mill in New England, with such opera- 
 tives only as the forty-five mentioned above, who are unable to write their 
 names, would never yield the proprietor a profit ; that the machinery 
 would soon be worn out, and he would be left, in a short time, with a popu- 
 lation no better than that which is represented, as I suppose, very fairly, by 
 the importation from England. 
 
 I cannot imagine any situation in life where the want of a common- 
 school education would be more severely felt, or be attended with worse 
 consequences, than in our manufacturing villages ; nor, on the other hand, 
 is there any place where such advantages can be improved with greater 
 benefit to all parties. 
 
 There is more excitement and activity in the minds of people living in 
 masses, and, if this expends itself in any of the thousand vicious indul- 
 gences with which they are sujre to be tempted, the road to destruction is trav- 
 elled over with a speed exactly corresponding to the power employed. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 JAMES K. MILLS. 
 HON. HORACE MANN. 
 
 LETTER FROM H. BARTLETT, ESQ. 
 
 LOWELL, Dec. 1, 1841. 
 HON. HORACE MANX. 
 
 Dear Sir, In replying to your interrogatories, respecting the effect 
 of education upon the laboring classes, I might be very brief; but the sub- 
 ject is one in which I feel so deep an interest, that I propose to go a little 
 into detail, and hope to do so without being tedious. 
 
 I have been engaged for nearly ten years in manufacturing, and have 
 had the constant charge of from four hundred to nine hundred persons 
 during that time. The greater part of them have been Americans.; but 
 there have always been more or less foreigners. During this time, I have 
 had charge of two different establishments in different parts of the State. 
 
 In answering your second interrogatory, I can say, that I have come in 
 contact with a very great variety of character and disposition, and have 
 seen mind applied to production in the Mechanic and Manufacturing Arts, 
 possessing different degrees of intelligence, from gross ignorance to a high 
 degree of cultivation ; and I have no hesitation in affirming that I have 
 found the best educated to be the most profitable help ; even those females 
 who merely tend machinery give a result somewhat in proportion to the 
 advantages enjoyed in early life for education, those who have a good 
 common-school education giving, as a class, invariably, a better production 
 than those brought up in ignorance.
 
 104 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The former make the best wages. If any one should doubt the fact, let 
 him examine the pay-roll of any establishment in New England, and ascer- 
 tain the character of the girls who get the most money, and he will be 
 satisfied that I am correct. I am equally clear, that, as a class, they do their 
 work better. There are many reasons why it should be so. They have 
 more order and system ; they .not only keep their persons neater, but their 
 machinery in better condition. 
 
 But there are other advantages, besides mere knowledge, growing out of 
 a good common-school education. Such an education is calculated to 
 strengthen the whole system, intellectual, moral, and physical. It educates 
 the whole man or woman, and gives him or her more energy and greater 
 capacity for production in all departments of labor. Minds formed by such 
 an education are superior in the combination and arrangement of what is 
 already known, and more frequently devise ntyv methods of operation. 
 
 Your third inquiry relates to the effect of education upon the domestic and 
 social habits of persons in my employ. I have never considered mere 
 knowledge, valuable as it is in itself to the laborer, as the only advantage 
 derived from a good common-school education. I have uniformly found 
 the better educated, as a class, possessing a higher and better state of morals, 
 more orderly and respectful in their deportment, and more ready to comply 
 with the wholesome and necessary regulations of an establishment. And 
 in times of agitation on account of some change in regulations or wages, I 
 have always looked to the most intelligent, best educated, and the most 
 moral, for support, and have seldom been disappointed. For, while they 
 are the last to submit to imposition, they reason ; and, if your requirements 
 are reasonable, they will generally acquiesce, and exert a salutary influence 
 upon their associates. But the ignorant and uneducated I have generally 
 found the most turbulent and troublesome, acting under the impulse of ex- 
 cited passion and jealousy. 
 
 The former appear to have an interest in sustaining good order, while 
 the latter seem more reckless of consequences. And, to my mind, all this 
 is perfectly natural. The better educated have more and stronger attach- 
 ments binding them to the place where they are. They are generally 
 neater, as I have before said, in their persons, dress, and houses ; surrounded 
 with more comforts, with fewer of " the ills which flesh is heir to." In 
 short, I have found the educated, as a class, more cheerful and contented, 
 devoting a portion of their leisure time to reading and intellectual pursuits, 
 more with their families, and less in scenes of dissipation. 
 
 The good effect of all this is seen in the more orderly and comfortable 
 appearance of the whole household, but nowhere more strikingly than in 
 the children. A mother who has had a good common-school education will 
 rarely suffer her children to grow up in ignorance. 
 
 As I have said, this class of persons is more quiet, more orderly, and, I 
 may add, more regular in their attendance upon public worship, and more 
 punctual in the performance of all their duties.
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 105 
 
 Your fourth inquiry refers to the relative stand taken in society by those 
 who have received an early education ; and my answers to your inquiries 
 under that head might be inferred from what I have already said. My 
 remarks before have referred quite as much to females as to males, but 
 what I shall say under this will refer particularly to the latter. 
 
 I have generally observed individuals exerting an influence among their 
 co-laborers and citizens somewhat in proportion to their education. And, 
 in cases of difficulty and arbitration, the most ignorant have paid an invol- 
 untary respect to the value of education by the selection of those who have 
 enjoyed its benefits for the settlement of their controversies. 
 
 It would be very difficult, if not impossible, for a young man, who had 
 not an education equal to a good common-school education, to rise from 
 grade to grade, until he should obtain the birth of an Overseer ; and in 
 making promotions, as a general thing, it would be unnecessary to make 
 inquiry as to the education of the young men from whom you would select ; 
 for their mental cultivation would be sufficiently indicated by their general 
 appearance and standing among their fellows ; and, if you had reference to 
 merit and qualifications, very seldom indeed would an uneducated young 
 man rise to " a better place and better pay." 
 
 Young men who expect to resort to manufacturing establishments for 
 employment cannot prize too highly a good education. It will give them 
 standing among their associates, and be the means of promotion from their 
 employers. 
 
 Your fifth interrogatory refers to difference of moral character in the two 
 classes, and the dangers which society or men of property have to appre- 
 hend from the one or the other. I do not know that I can better answer 
 your inquiries under this head than to give you my views of the value, in a 
 pecuniary point of view, of education and morality, to the stockholders of 
 our manufacturing establishments. If they have no danger to apprehend 
 from a general diffusion of knowledge among those in their employ ; if it is 
 a fact that that class of help which has enjoyed a good common-school edu- 
 cation are the most tractable, yielding most readily to reasonable require- 
 ments, exerting a salutary and conservative influence in times of excite- 
 ment, while the most ignorant are the most refractory ; then it appears to 
 me that the public at large ought to be satisfied that they have more dan- 
 ger to apprehend from the ignorant than from the well educated. I am 
 aware that there is a feeling to a certain, but I hope limited extent, that 
 knowledge among the great mass is dangerous ; that it creates discontent, 
 and tends to insubordination. But I believe the fear to be groundless, and 
 that our danger will come from an opposite source. In my view, there is a 
 connection between education and morals ; and I believe that our common 
 schools have been nurseries, not only of learning, but of sound morality ; 
 and I trust they will always be surrounded by such influences as will 
 strengthen and confirm the moral principles of our youth ; and I am confi- 
 dent, that, so long as that shall be the case, society is safe.
 
 106 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 From my observation and experience, I am perfectly satisfied that the 
 owners of manufacturing property have a deep pecuniary interest in the 
 education and morals of their help ; and I believe the time is not distant 
 when the truth of this will appear more and more clear. And as competi- 
 tion becomes more close, and small circumstances of more importance in 
 turning the scale in favor of one establishment over another, I believe it 
 will be seen that the establishment, other things being equal, which has the 
 best educated and the most moral help, will give the greatest production at 
 the least cost per pound. So confident am I that production is affected by 
 the intellectual and moral character of help, that whenever a mill or a room 
 should fail to give the proper amount of work, my first inquiry, after that 
 respecting the condition of the machinery, would be, as to the character of 
 the help ; and if the deficiency remained any great length of time, I am sure 
 I should find many who had made their marks upon the pay-roll, being 
 unable to write their names ; and I should be greatly disappointed if I did 
 not, upon inquiry, find a portion of them of irregular habits and suspicious 
 character. My mind has been drawn to this subject for a long time. I 
 have watched its operation, and seen its result, and am satisfied that the 
 pecuniary interest of the owners is promoted by the general diffusion of 
 knowledge and morality among those in their employ. 
 
 Lowell is a striking illustration of the truth of my remarks on this sub- 
 ject. Probably no other place has done as much for the education and 
 morality of those engaged in manufacturing. She has twenty-three public 
 schools, fifteen churches, and numerous associations for intellectual improve- 
 ment ; and the result is seen, not only in the orderly and temperate 
 character of the people, but in the great productiveness of the mills. And 
 where, I would ask, is manufacturing stock of more value 1 If any one 
 doubts the connection between these institutions and the price of stocks, 
 let the former be destroyed, let those lights be extinguished, let ignorance 
 and vice take the place of intelligence and virtue, let the prevailing influ- 
 ence here be against schools and churches ; and my opinion is. that the 
 moral character of the people would not decline faster than the price of 
 manufacturing stocks. The founders of this place were clear and far- 
 sighted men ; and they put in operation a train of moral influences which 
 has formed and preserved a community distinguished for intelligence, virtue, 
 and great energy of character. Should any owner or manager think other- 
 wise, and surround himself with the ignorant and unprincipled, because for 
 a time he might get them for less wages, I am confident that loss in produc- 
 tion would more than keep pace with reduction in pay, to say nothing of 
 the insecurity of property in the hands of such persons. 
 
 In short, in closing my answer to your fifth interrogatory, I consider that 
 " those who possess property, and hope to transmit it to their children," have 
 nothing to fear from the general diffusion of knowledge ; that if their rights 
 are ever invaded, or their property rendered insecure, it will be when igno-
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 107 
 
 ranee has corrupted the public mind, and prepared it for the controlling 
 influence of some master-spirit possessing intelligence without principle. 
 
 Finally, in answering your sixth and last interrogatory, I remark that 
 " those who possess the greatest share in the stock of worldly goods " are 
 deeply interested in this subject as one of mere insurance ; that the most 
 effectual way of making insurance on their property would be to contribute 
 from it enough to sustain an efficient system of common-school education, 
 thereby educating the whole mass of mind, and constituting it a police more 
 effective than peace-officers or prisons. By so doing they would bestow a 
 benefaction upon " that class, who, from the accident of birth or parentage, 
 are subjected to the privations and temptations of poverty," and would do 
 much to remove the prejudice and to strengthen the bands of union be- 
 tween the different and extreme portions of society. The great majority 
 always have been, and probably always will be, comparatively poor, while 
 a few will possess the greatest share of this world's goods. And it is a 
 wise provision of Providence which connects so intimately, and as I think 
 so indissolubly, the greatest good of the many with the highest interest of 
 the few. 
 
 Yours very respectfully and truly, 
 
 H. BABTLETT. 
 
 LETTER FROM J. CLARK, ESQ. 
 
 LOWELL, Dec. 3, 1841. 
 
 DEAR SIR, I owe you an apology for not having made an earlier 
 reply to your inquiries respecting the influences of education upon the 
 character and conduct of our operatives. I have to plead in excuse for my 
 neglect an unusual press of business, which has almost literally occupied 
 every moment of my time ; and, while I was seeking a leisure hour to 
 devote to this purpose, my friend, Mr. Bartlett, has kindly allowed me to 
 read the very full and particular answers prepared by him to your several 
 interrogatories. 
 
 . . . We have in our mills about one hundred and fifty females who have, 
 at some time, been engaged in teaching schools. Many of them teach during 
 the summer months, and work in the mills in winter. The average wages 
 of these ex-teachers I find to be seventeen and three-fourths per cent above 
 the general average of our mills, and about forty per cent above the wages of 
 the twenty-six who cannot write their names. It may be said that they are 
 generally employed in the higher departments, where the pay is better. 
 This is true ; but this again may be, in most cases, fairly attributed to their 
 better education, which brings us to the same result. If I had included in 
 iny calculations the remaining fourteen of the forty, who are mostly
 
 108 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 sweepers and scrubbers, and who are paid by the day, the contrasts would 
 have been still more striking ; but having no well-educated females engaged 
 in this department with whom to compare them, I have omitted them alto- 
 gether. In arriving at the above results, I have considered the net wages 
 merely, the price of board being in all cases the same. I do not consider 
 these results as either extraordinary or surprising, but as a part only of the 
 legitimate and proper fruits of a better cultivation and fuller development 
 of the intellectual and moral powers. 
 
 Yours very respectfully, 
 
 JOHN CLARK, 
 
 Superintendent of Merrimack Mills. 
 HON. HORACE MANN, BOSTON. 
 
 Extracts from a Letter of Jonathan Crane, Esq., for several years a large 
 Contractor on the Railroads in Massachusetts. 
 
 My principal business, for about ten years past, has been grading railroads. 
 During that time, the number of men employed has varied from fifty to three 
 hundred and fifty, nearly all Irishmen, with the exception of superintend- 
 ents. Some facts have been so apparent, that my superintendents and 
 myself could not but notice them : these I will freely give you. I should 
 say that not less than three thousand different men have been, more or less, 
 in my employment during the before-mentioned period, and that the num- 
 ber that could read and write intelligibly was about one to eight. Inde- 
 pendently of their natural endowments, those who could read and write, 
 and had some knowledge of the first principles of arithmetic, have almost 
 invariably manifested a readiness to apprehend what was required of them, 
 and skill in performing it, and have more readily and frequently devised 
 new modes by which the same amount of work could be better done. Some 
 of these men we have selected for superintendents, and they are now con- 
 tractors. With regard to the morals of the two classes, we have seen very 
 little difference ; but the better-educated class are more cleanly in their per- 
 sons and their households, and generally discover more refinement in their 
 manners, and practise a more economical mode in their living. Their fami- 
 lies are better brought up, and they are more anxious to send their children 
 to school. In regard to their standing and respectability among co-laborers, 
 neighbors, and fellow-citizens, the more educated are much more respected ; 
 and in settling minor controversies, they are more commonly applied to as 
 arbitrators. With regard to the morals of the two classes before men- 
 tioned, permit me to remark, that it furnishes an illustration of the truth 
 of a common saying, that merely cultivating the understanding, without 
 improving the heart, does not make a man better. The more extensively
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 109 
 
 knowledge and virtue prevail in our country, the greater security have we 
 that our institutions will not be overthrown. Our common-school system, 
 connected as it is, or ought to be, with the inculcation of sound and practi- 
 cal morality, is the most vigilant and efficient police for the protection of 
 persons, property, and character, that could be devised ; and is it not grati- 
 fying that men of wealth are beginning to see, that, if they would protect 
 their property and persons, a portion of that property should be expended 
 for the education of the poorer classes 1 Merely selfish considerations 
 would lead any man of wealth to do this, if he would only view the subject 
 in its true light. Nowhere is this subject better understood than in Massa- 
 chusetts ; and the free discussions which have of late been held, in county 
 and town meetings, have had the effect to call the attention of the public 
 to it; and I trust the time is not far distant, when, at least in Massachu- 
 setts, the common-school system will accomplish all the good which it is 
 capable of producing. Why do we not in these United States have a revo- 
 lution, almost annually, as in the republics of South America? Ignorance 
 and vice always have invited, and always will invite, such characters as 
 Shakspeare's Jack Cade to rule over them. And may we not feel an assur- 
 ance, that in proportion as the nation shall recover from the baneful 
 influence of intemperance, so will its attention be directed pre-eminently to 
 the promotion of virtue and knowledge, and nowhere in our country will 
 an incompetent or intemperate common-school teacher be intrusted with 
 the education of our children ? 
 
 These are a fair specimen, and no more than a fair speci- 
 men, of a mass of facts which I have obtained from the most 
 authentic sources. They seem to prove incontestably that edu- 
 cation is not only a moral renovator, and a multiplier of intel- 
 lectual power, but that it is also the most prolific parent of ma- 
 terial riches. It has a right, therefore, not only to be included 
 in the grand inventory of a nation's resources, but to be placed 
 at the very head of that inventory. It is not only the most 
 honest and honorable, but the surest means of amassing prop- 
 erty. A trespasser or a knave may forcibly or fraudulently ap- 
 propriate the earnings of others to himself; but education has 
 the prerogative of originating or generating property more 
 certainly and more rapidly than it was ever accumulated by 
 force or fraud. It has more than the quality of an ordinary 
 mercantile commodity, from which the possessor realizes but a 
 single profit as it passes through his hands : it rather resembles
 
 110 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 fixed capital, yielding constant and high revenues. As it enjoys 
 an immunity from common casualties, it incurs no cost for in- 
 surance or defence. It is above the reach of changes in admin- 
 istration or in administrational policy ; and it is free from those 
 fluctuations of trade which agitate the market, and make it so 
 frequent an occurrence that a merchant who goes to bed a man 
 of wealth at night rises a pauper in the morning. Possessing 
 these qualities, it has the highest economical value ; and al- 
 though statesmen who assail or defend, who raise up or put 
 down, systems of commercial, manufacturing, or agricultural 
 policy, have seldom or never deigned to look at education as 
 the grand agent for the development or augmentation of national 
 resources, yet it measures the efficacy of every other means of 
 aggrandizement, and is more powerful in the production and 
 gainful employment of the total wealth of a country than all 
 other things mentioned in the books of the political economist. 
 Education is an antecedent agency ; for it must enlighten man- 
 kind in the choice of pursuits, it must guide them in the selec- 
 tion and use of the most appropriate means, it must impart that 
 confidence and steadiness of purpose which results from com- 
 prehending the connections of a long train of events, and see- 
 ing the end from the beginning, or all enterprises will terminate 
 in ruin. 
 
 Considering education, then, as a producer of wealth, it fol- 
 lows that the more educated a people are, the more will they 
 abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions 
 which money will buy ; and, other things being equal, the in- 
 crease of competency and the decline of pauperism will be 
 measurable on this scale. There are special reasons giv- 
 ing peculiar force to these considerations in the State of Mas- 
 sachusetts. Our population is principally divided into agricul- 
 turists, manufacturers, and mechanics. We have no idle class, 
 no class born to such hereditary wealth as supersedes the neces- 
 sity of labor, and no class subsisting by the services of heredi- 
 tary bondmen. All, with exceptions too minute to be noticed, 
 must live by their own industry and frugality. The master and
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. Ill 
 
 the laborer are one ; and hence the necessity that all should 
 have the health and strength by which they can work, and the 
 judgment and knowledge by which they can plan and direct. 
 The muscle of a laborer and the intelligence of an employer 
 must be united in the same person. 
 
 The healthful and praiseworthy employment of Agriculture 
 requires knowledge for its successful prosecution. In this de- 
 partment of industry we are in perpetual contact with the 
 forces of Nature. We are constantly dependent upon them for 
 the pecuniary returns and profits of our investments, and hence 
 the necessity of knowing what those forces are, and under what 
 circumstances they will operate most efficiently, and will most 
 bountifully reward our original outlay of money and time. In 
 the presence of the savage, the exuberance of Nature may cover 
 the earth with magnificent forests, through whole degrees of 
 latitude and longitude, and clothe and beautify it with the 
 grasses and flowers of the prairie to whose ocean-like expanse 
 the eye can discover no shore ; magnificent and poetic specta- 
 cles, indeed ; yet, for the sustentation of human life, for the ex- 
 istence and extension of human happiness, almost valueless. 
 But under the art of agriculture, which is only another name 
 for the knowledge of natural powers, millions are feasted on a 
 territory, where, before, a hundred starved. Perhaps there is 
 no spot in the world, of such limited extent, where there is a 
 greater variety of agricultural productions than in Massachu- 
 setts. This brings into requisition all that chemical and experi- 
 mental knowledge which pertains to the rotation of crops, and 
 the enrichment of soils. If rotation be disregarded, the re- 
 peated demand upon the same soil to produce the same crop 
 will exhaust it of the elements on which that particular crop 
 will best thrive ; and, if its chemical ingredients and affinities 
 are not understood, an attempt may be made to re-enforce it by 
 substances with which it is already surcharged, instead of ren- 
 ovating it with those of which it has been exhausted by pre- 
 vious growths. But, for these arrangements and adaptations, 
 knowledge is the grand desideratum ; and the addition of a new
 
 112 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 fact to a farmer's mind will often increase the amount of his 
 harvests more than the addition of acres to his estate. Why is 
 it, that, if we except Egypt, all the remaining territory of Afri- 
 ca, containing nearly ten millions of square miles, with a soil 
 most of which is incomparably more fertile by Nature, produces 
 less for the sustenance of man and beast than England, whose 
 territory is only fifty thousand square miles ? In the latter coun- 
 try, knowledge has been a substitute for a genial climate and an 
 exuberant soil ; while, in the former, it is hardly a figurative ex- 
 pression to say that all the maternal kindness of Nature, power- 
 ful and benignant as she is, has been repulsed by the ignorance 
 of her children. Doubtless, industry as well as knowledge is 
 indispensable to productiveness ; but knowledge must precede 
 industry, or the latter will work to so little eifect as to become 
 discouraged and to relapse into the slothfulness of savage life. 
 But, without further exposition, it may be remarked generally, 
 that the spread of intelligence, through the instrumentality of 
 good books and the cultivation in our children of the faculties 
 of observing, comparing, and, reasoning through the medium of 
 good schools, would add millions to the agricultural products 
 of the Commonwealth, without imposing upon the husbandman 
 an additional hour of labor. It would be as foolish for us as 
 for the African to suppose that we have reached the ultimate 
 boundary of improvement. 
 
 In regard to another branch of industry, the State of Massa- 
 chusetts presents a phenomenon, which, all things being consid- 
 ered, is unequalled in any part of the world. I refer to the 
 distribution or apportionment of its citizens among the different 
 departments of labor. With a population of only eighty-seven 
 thousand engaged in agriculture, we have eighty-five thousand 
 engaged in manufactures and trades. The proportion, there- 
 fore, in this State, of the latter to the former, is almost as one 
 to one, while the proportion for the whole Union falls but a 
 fraction below one to five. If to the eighty-five thousand en- 
 gaged in manufactures and trades are added the twenty-seven 
 (almost twenty-eight) thousand employed in navigating the
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 113 
 
 ocean, and to whom, as a class, the succeeding views are, to a 
 great extent, applicable, we shall find that the capital and labor 
 of the State embarked in the latter employments far exceed 
 those devoted to agricultural pursuits. 
 
 Now, for the successful prosecution, it may almost be said, 
 for the very existence amongst us of the manufacturing and 
 mechanic arts, there must be not only the exactness of science, 
 but also exactness or skill in the application of scientific prin- 
 ciples throughout the whole processes, either of constructing 
 machinery, or of transforming raw materials into finished fab- 
 rics. This ability to make exact and skilful applications of 
 science to an unlimited variety of materials, and especially to 
 the subtile but most energetic agencies of Nature, is one of the 
 latest attainments of the human mind. It is remarkable that 
 astronomy, sculpture, painting, poetry, oratory, and even ethi- 
 cal philosophy, had made great progress thousands of years 
 before the era of the manufacturing and mechanic arts. This 
 era, indeed, has but just commenced ; and already the abun- 
 dance, and, what is of far greater importance, the universal- 
 ity, of personal, domestic, and social comforts it has created, 
 constitutes one of the most important epochs in the history of 
 civilization. The cultivation of these arts is conferring a thou- 
 sand daily accommodations and pleasures upon the laborer in 
 his cottage, which, only two or three centuries ago, were lux- 
 uries in the palace of the monarch. Through circumstances 
 incident to the introduction of all economical improvements, 
 there has hitherto been great inequality in the distribution of 
 their advantages, but their general tendency is greatly to ameli- 
 orate the condition of the mass of mankind. It has been esti- 
 mated that the products of machinery in Great Britian, with a 
 population of eighteen millions, is equal to the labor of hun- 
 dreds of millions of human hands. This vast gain is effected 
 without the conquest or partitioning of the territory of any 
 neighboring nation, and without rapine or the confiscation of 
 property already accumulated by others. It is an absolute crea- 
 tion of wealth ; that is, of those articles, commodities, im- 
 8
 
 114 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 provements, which we appraise and set down as of a certain 
 moneyed value, alike in the inventory of a deceased man's estate, 
 and in the grand valuation of a nation's capital. These contri- 
 butions to human welfare have been derived from knowledge, 
 from knowing how to employ those natural agencies, which 
 from the beginning of the race had existed, but had laid dor- 
 mant or run uselessly away. For mechanical purposes, what is 
 wind or water, or the force of steam, worth, until the ingenuity 
 , of man comes in, and places the wind-wheel, the water-wheel, 
 or the piston, between these mighty agents and the work he 
 wishes them to perform? but, after the invention and interven- 
 tion of machinery, how powerful they become for all purposes 
 of utility ! In a word, these great improvements, which distin- 
 guish our age from all preceding ages, have been obtained 
 from Nature by addressing her in the language of Science and 
 Art, the only language she understands, yet one of such 
 all-prevailing efficacy that she never refuses to comply to the 
 letter with all petitions for wealth or physical power, if they 
 are preferred to her in that dialect. 
 
 Now, it is easy to show, from reasoning, from history, and 
 from experience, that an early awakening of the mind is a pre- 
 requisite to success in the useful arts. It must be an awaken- 
 ing not to feeling merely, but to thought. In the first place, 
 a clearness of perception must be acquired, or the power of tak- 
 ing a correct mental transcript, copy, or image of whatever is 
 seen. This, however, though indispensable, is by no means 
 sufficient. It may answer for mere automatic movements, 
 for the servile copying of the productions of others. The Chi- 
 nese excel in imitations of this kind; but, as they have little 
 inventive genius, the learner echoes the teacher, the apprentice 
 repeats the master; and thus the human mind, for generation 
 after generation, presents the monotonous aspects of a revolv- 
 ing cylinder, which turns up the same phases at each successive 
 revolution. But the talent of improving upon the labors of 
 others requires, not only the capability of receiving an exact 
 mental copy or imprint of all the objects of sense or reasoning ;
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 115 
 
 it also requires the power of reviving or reproducing at will 
 all the impressions or ideas before obtained, and also the 
 power of changing their collocations, of re-arranging them into 
 new forms, and of adding something to, or removing something 
 from, the original perceptions, in order to make a. more perfect 
 plan or model. If a shipwright, for instance, would improve 
 upon all existing specimens of naval architecture, he would 
 first examine as great a number of ships as possible ; this done, 
 he would revive the image which each one imprinted upon his 
 mind ; and, with all the fleets which he had inspected present 
 to his imagination, he would compare each individual vessel 
 with all the others, make a selection of one part from one, and 
 of another part from another, apply his own knowledge of the 
 laws of moving and of resisting forces to all, and thus create 
 in his own mind the complex idea or model of a ship, more 
 perfect than any of those he had seen. Now, every recitation 
 in a school, if rightly conducted, is a step towards the attain- 
 ment of this wonderful power. With a course of studies judi- 
 ciously arranged and diligently pursued through the years of 
 minority, all the great phenomena of external Nature, and the 
 most important productions in all the useful arts, together with 
 the principles on which they are evolved or fashioned, would 
 be successfully brought before the understanding of the pupil. 
 He would thus become familiar with the substances of the ma- 
 terial world, and with their manifold properties and uses ; and 
 he would learn the laws comparatively few by which re- 
 sults infinitely diversified are produced. When such a student 
 goes out into life, he carries, as it were, a plan or a model of 
 the world in his own mind. He cannot, therefore, pass, either 
 blindly or with the stupid gaze of the brute creation, by the 
 great objects and processes of Nature ; but he has an intelligent 
 discernment of their several existences and relations, and their 
 adaptation to the uses of mankind. Neither can he fasten his 
 eye upon any workmanship or contrivance of man without ask- 
 ing two questions, first, how is it? and, secondly, how can it 
 be improved? Hence, he has as great an advantage over an
 
 116 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ignorant man as one traveller in a foreign country, who is 
 familiar with the language of the people where he is journey- 
 ing, has over another incapable of understanding a word that 
 he hears. The one also carries a map of the whole country 
 in his hand, while the other is without path or guide. Hence 
 it is, too, that all the processes of Nature, and the contrivances 
 of Art, are so many lessons or communications to an instructed 
 man ; but an uninstructed one walks in the midst of them like 
 a blind man amongst colors or a deaf man amongst sounds. 
 The Romans carried their aqueducts from hill-top to hill-top 
 on lofty arches, erected at an immense expenditure of time and 
 money. One idea, that is, a knowledge of the law of the 
 equilibrium of fluids, a knowledge of the fact that water in 
 a tube will rise to the level of the fountain, would have enabled 
 a single individual to do with ease, what, without that knowl- 
 edge, it required the wealth of an empire to accomplish. 
 
 It is in ways similar to this, that is, by accomplishing 
 greater results with less means ; by creating products, at once 
 cheaper, better, and by more expeditious methods ; and by 
 doing a vast variety of things otherwise impossible, that the 
 cultivation of mind may be truly said to yield the highest pecu- 
 niary requital. Intelligence is the great money-maker, not 
 by extortion, but by production. There are ten thousand 
 things in every department of life, which, if done in season, 
 can be done in a minute, but which, if not seasonably done, 
 will require hours, perhaps days or weeks, for their perform- 
 ance. An awakened mind will see and seize the critical junc- 
 ture ; the perceptions of a sluggish one will come too late, if 
 they come at all. A general culture of the faculties gives ver- 
 satility of talent, so that, if the customary business of the la- 
 borer is superseded by improvements, he can readily betake him- 
 self to another kind of employment ; but an uncultivated mind 
 is like an automaton, which can do only the one thing for which 
 its wheels or springs were made. Brute force expends itself 
 unproductively. It is ignorant of the manner in which Nature 
 works, and hence it cannot avail itself of her mighty agencies.
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 117 
 
 Often, indeed, it attempts to oppose Nature. It throws itself 
 across the track where her resistless car is moving. But 
 knowledge enables its possessor to employ her agencies in his 
 own service ; and he thereby obtains an amount of power, with- 
 out fee or reward, which thousands of slaves could not give. 
 Every man who consumes a single article, in whose production 
 or transportation the power of steam is used, has it delivered to 
 him cheaper than he could otherwise have obtained it. Every 
 man who can avail himself of this power, in travelling, can 
 perform the business of three days in one, and so far add two 
 hundred per cent to the length of his life as a business-man. 
 What innumerable millions has the invention of the cotton-gin 
 by Whitney added, and will continue to add, to the wealth of 
 the world ! a part of which is already realized, but vastly the 
 greater part of which is yet to be received, as each successive 
 day draws for an instalment which would exhaust the treasury 
 of a nation. The instructed and talented man enters the rich 
 domains of Nature, not as an intruder, but, as it were, a pro- 
 prietor, and makes her riches his own. 
 
 And why is it, that, so far as this Union is concerned, four- 
 fifths of all the improvements, inventions, and discoveries, in 
 regard to machinery, to agricultural implements, to superior 
 models in ship-building, and to the manufacture of those re- 
 fined instruments on which accuracy in scientific observations 
 depends, have originated in New England? I believe no ade- 
 quate reason can be assigned, but the early awakening and 
 training of the power of thought in our children. The sugges- 
 tion is not made invidiously, but in this connection it has 
 too important a bearing to be omitted. Let any one, who has 
 resided or travelled in those States where there are no Common 
 Schools, compare the condition of the people at large, as to 
 thrift, order, neatness, and all the external signs of comfort and 
 competence, with the same characteristics of civilization in 
 the farm-houses and villages of New England. These contrasts 
 exist, notwithstanding the fertility of the soil and the abun- 
 dance of mineral resources, in the former States, as compared
 
 118 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 with the sterile surface and granite substratum of the latter. 
 Never was a problem more clearly demonstrated than that even 
 a moderate degree of intelligence, diffused through the mass of 
 the people, is more than an equivalent for all the prodigality 
 of Nature. It is said, indeed, in regard to those States where 
 there are no provisions for general education, that the want of 
 energy and forecast, the absence of labor-saving contrivances, 
 and an obtuseness in adapting means to ends, are the conse- 
 quences of a system of involuntary servitude : but what is this, 
 so far as productiveness is concerned, but a want of knowl- 
 edge? what is it but the existence of that mental imbecility 
 and torpor which arise from personal and hereditary neglect? 
 In conversing with a gentleman who had possessed most exten- 
 sive opportunities for acquaintance with men of different coun- 
 tries and of all degrees of intellectual development, he observed 
 that he could employ a common immigrant or a slave, and, if he 
 chose, could direct him to shovel a heap of sand from one spot 
 to another, and then back into its former place, and so to and 
 fro through the day ; and that, with the same food or the same 
 pay, the laborer would perform this tread-mill operation without 
 inquiry or complaint ; but, added he, neither love nor money 
 would prevail on a New-Englander to prosecute a piece of 
 work of which he did not see the utility. There is scarcely any 
 kind of labor, however simple or automatic, which can be so 
 well performed without knowledge in the workman as with it. 
 It is impossible for an overseer or employer at all times to sup- 
 ply mind to the laborer. In giving directions for the shortest 
 series or train of operations, something will be omitted or mis- 
 understood ; and, without intelligence in the workman, the omis- 
 sion or the mistake will be repeated in the execution. 
 
 It is a fact of universal notoriety, that the manufacturing 
 population of England, as a class, work for half, or less than 
 half, the wages of our own. The cost of machinery there also 
 is but about half as much as the cost of the same articles with 
 us ; while our capital, when loaned, produces nearly double the 
 rate of English interest. Yet, against these grand adverse cir-
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 119 
 
 cumstances, our manufacturers, with a small percentage of 
 tariff, successfully compete with English capitalists in many 
 branches of manufacturing business. No explanation can be 
 given of this extraordinary fact, which does not take into the 
 account the difference of education between the operatives in 
 the two countries. Yet where, in all our Congressional debates 
 upon this subject, or in the discussions and addresses of National 
 Conventions, has this fundamental principle been brought out, 
 and one, at least, of its most important and legitimate infer- 
 ences displayed ; viz., that it is our wisest policy as citizens if, 
 indeed, it be not a duty of self-preservation as men to im- 
 prove the education of our whole people, both in its quantity 
 and quality ? I have been told by one of our most careful and 
 successful manufacturers, that on substituting, in one of his 
 cotton-mills, a better for a poorer educated class of operatives, 
 he was enabled to add twelve or fifteen per cent to the speed 
 of his machinery, without any increase of damage or danger 
 from the acceleration. How direct and demonstrative the bear- 
 ing which facts like this have upon the wisdom of our law 
 respecting the education of children in manufacturing establish- 
 ments ! What prominency and cogency do they give to the 
 argument for obeying it, if not from motives of humanity, at 
 least from those of policy and self-interest ! I am sorry to say 
 that this benignant and parental law is still, in some cases, 
 openly disregarded ; and that there are employers amongst us 
 who say, that if their hands come punctually to their work, and 
 continue at it during the regular hours, it is immaterial to them 
 what private character they sustain, and whether they attend 
 the evening school or the lyceum lecture on the week-day, or go 
 to church on the sabbath. 
 
 The number of females in this State engaged in the various 
 manufactures of cotton, straw-platting, &c., has been estimated 
 at forty thousand ; and the annual value of their labor, at one 
 hundred dollars each, on an average, or four millions of dollars 
 for the whole. From the facts stated in the letters of Messrs. 
 Mills and Clark, above cited, it appears that there is a differ-
 
 120 ANNUAL EEPOBTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ence of not less than fifty per cent between the earnings of the 
 least educated and of the best educated operatives, between 
 those who make their marks, instead of writing their names, 
 and those who have been acceptably employed in school-keep- 
 ing. Now, suppose the whole forty thousand females engaged 
 in the various kinds of manufactures in this Commonwealth 
 to be degraded to the level of the lowest class, it would follow 
 that their aggregate earnings would fall at once to two millions 
 of dollars. But, on the other hand, suppose them all to be 
 elevated by mental cultivation to the rank of the highest, and 
 their earnings would rise to the sum of six millions of dollars 
 annually. 
 
 I institute no comparison in regard to the company imported 
 from England, who, though accustomed to work in the mills of 
 Manchester, could not earn their living here. 
 
 These remarks, in regard to other States or countries, ema- 
 nate from no boastful or vain-glorious spirit. They come from 
 a very different mood of mind ; for I have the profoundest con- 
 viction, and could fill much space with facts that would jus- 
 tify it, that other communities do not fall short of our own 
 so much as we fall short of what we might easily become. 
 
 A few instances, of a familiar kind, exemplifying the axiom 
 that u knowledge is power," will close this Report. 
 
 M. Redelet, in his work, Sur L 'Art de Butir, gives the follow- 
 ing account of an experiment made to test the different amounts 
 of force, which, under different circumstances, Avere necessary 
 to move a block of squared granite, weighing a thousand and 
 eighty pounds. 
 
 In order to move this block along the floor of a roughly-chis- 
 elled quarry, it required a force equal to seven hundred and 
 fifty-eight pounds. 
 
 To draw the same stone over a floor of planks, it required a 
 force equal to six hundred and fifty-two pounds. 
 
 Placed on a platform of wood, and drawn over the same 
 floar, it required six hundred and six pounds. 
 
 By soaping the two surfaces of wood, the requisite force was 
 reduced to a hundred and eighty-two pounds.
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 121 
 
 Placed on rollers of three inches diameter, and a force equal 
 to thirty-four pounds was sufficient. 
 
 Substituting a wooden for a stone floor, and the requisite 
 force was twenty-eight pounds. 
 
 With the same rollers on a wooden platform, it required a 
 force equal to twenty-two pounds only. 
 
 At this point, the experiments of M. Redelet stopped. But 
 by improvements since effected, in the invention and use of loco- 
 motives on railroads, a traction or draft of eight pounds is suffi- 
 cient to move a ton of twenty-two hundred and forty pounds : 
 so that a force of less than four pounds would now be sufficient 
 to move the granite block of a thousand and eighty pounds ; 
 that is, a hundred and eighty-eight times less than was required 
 in the first instance. When, therefore, mere animal or muscu- 
 lar force was used to move the body, it required about two- 
 thirds of its own weight to accomplish the object ; but, by add- 
 ing the contrivances of mind to the strength of muscle, the force 
 necessary to move it is reduced more than a hundred and eighty- 
 eight times. Here, then, is a partnership, in which mind con- 
 tributes a hundred and eighty-eight shares to the stock to one 
 share contributed by muscle ; or, while brute strength represents 
 one man, ingenuity or intelligence represents a hundred and 
 eighty-eight men. 
 
 Dr. Potter, in his late work, entitled " The Principles of 
 Science, applied to the Domestic and Mechanic Arts, and to 
 Manufactures and Agriculture," has the following, p. 29 n. : 
 
 " The increasing powers of the steam-loom are shown in 
 the following statement, furnished by a manufacturer : 
 
 " ' A very good hand-iceaver, twenty-five or thirty years of 
 age, will weave two pieces of 9-8ths shirting a week. 
 
 " ' In 1823, a steam-loom weaver, about fifteen years of age, 
 attending two looms, could weave seven similar pieces in a 
 week. 
 
 " ' In 1826, a steam-loom weaver, about fifteen years of age, 
 attending two looms, could weave twelve similar pieces in a 
 week ; some could weave fifteen pieces.
 
 122 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 " ' In 1833, a steam-loom weaver, from fifteen to twenty- 
 years of age, assisted by a girl about twelve years of age, at- 
 tending four looms, could weave eighteen similar pieces in a 
 week ; some could weave twenty pieces.' " 
 
 Here, then, during a period of only ten years, the application 
 of mind to a particular branch of business enabled a lad of 
 fifteen years of age, assisted by a girl of twelve, to do from 
 nine to ten times as much work as had before been done by an 
 accomplished and mature workman. 
 
 In the manufacture of needles, a number equal to twenty 
 thousand is thrown promiscuously into a box, mingled heads 
 and points, and crossing each other in every possible direction. 
 This happens several times during the various stages of manu- 
 facturing needles ; and, in each case, it is necessary to arrange 
 them lengthwise or in a parallel direction. One would sup- 
 pose, beforehand, that the picking out of twenty thousand 
 needles entangled together, and forming, as it were, one great 
 iron burr, and placing them all in a parallel direction, would be 
 a formidable task, even for a week ; and also that the opera- 
 tor would need some insurance on the ends of his fingers, or 
 be obliged to submit to a very uncomfortable species of blood- 
 letting. But, by a simple and ingenious contrivance, aided by 
 a little sleight of hand, the work is done in a few minutes. It 
 is unnecessary to inquire how much such ingenuity diminishes 
 the price of needles, because, without it, there would be no 
 needles at any price. 
 
 Not more than thirty years ago, it was uncommon for a 
 glazier's apprentice, even after having served an apprenticeship 
 of seven years, to be able to cut glass with a diamond, without 
 spending much time, and destroying much of the glass upon 
 which he worked. The invention of a simple tool has put it 
 in the power of the merest tyro in the trade to cut glass with 
 facility and without loss. A man, who had a mind as well as 
 fingers, observed that there was one direction in which the 
 diamond was almost incapable of abrasion or wearing by use. 
 The tool not only steadies the diamond, but fastens it in that 
 direction.
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 123 
 
 The lathe, the old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and the loom, 
 by having a treadle for the foot, became equal to the addition 
 of another hand to the workman.* 
 
 The operation of tanning leather consists in exposing a hide 
 to the action of a chemical ingredient called tannin for a length 
 of time sufficient to allow every particle of the hide to become 
 saturated with the solution. In making the best leather, the 
 hides used to lie in the pit for six, twelve, or eighteen months, 
 and sometimes for two years ; the tanner being obliged to wait, 
 all this time, for a return of his capital. By the modern pro- 
 cess, the hides are placed in a close pit with a solution of the 
 tannin-matter ; and, the air being exhausted, the liquid pene- 
 trates through every pore and fibre of the skin, and the whole 
 process is completed in a few days. 
 
 The bleaching of cloth, which used to be effected in the open 
 
 * " Without tools, that is, by the mere efforts of the human hand, there are, un- 
 doubtedly, multitudes of things which it would be impossible to make. Add to the 
 human hand the rudest cutting instrument, and its powers are enlarged; the fab- 
 rication of many things then becomes easy, and that of others possible, with great 
 labor. Add the saw to the knife or the hatchet, and other works become possi- 
 ble, and a new course of difficult operations is brought into view, whilst many of 
 the former are rendered easy. This observation is applicable even to the most per- 
 fect tools or machine's. It would be possible for a very skilful workman, with files 
 and polishing substances, to form a cylinder out of a piece of steel; but the time 
 which this would require would be so considerable, and the number of failures 
 would probably be so great, that, for all practical purposes, such a mode of pro- 
 ducing a steel cylinder might be said to be impossible. The same process, by the 
 aid of the lathe and the sliding-rest, is the every-day employment of hundreds of 
 workmen." Babbageon the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. 
 
 " The earliest mode of cutting the trunks of a tree into planks was by the use 
 of the hatchet or the adze. It might, perhaps, be first split into three or four por- 
 tions, and then each portion was reduced to a uniform surface by those instruments. 
 With such means, the quantity of plank produced would probably not equal the 
 quantity of the raw material wasted by the process, and, if the planks were thin, 
 would certainly fall short of it. An improved tool, the saw, completely reverses 
 the case. In converting a tree into thick planks, it causes the waste of a very 
 email fractional part; and, even in reducing it to planks of only an inch in thick- 
 ness, it does not waste more than an eighth part of the raw material. When the 
 thickness of the plank is still further reduced, as is the case in cutting wood for 
 veneering, the quantity of material destroyed again begins to bear a considerable 
 proportion to that which is used; and hence circular saws, having a very thin 
 blade, have been employed for such purposes. In order to economize still fur- 
 ther the more valuable woods, Mr. Brunei contrived a machine, which, by a system 
 of blades, cut off the veneer in a continuous shaving, thus rendering the whole of 
 the piece of timber available." Id.
 
 124 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 air and in exposed situations where a temptation to theft was 
 offered (and in England hundreds, and probably thousands, of 
 men have yielded, and forfeited their lives), is now performed 
 in an unexposed situation, and in a manner so expeditious, that 
 cloth is bleached as much more rapidly than it formerly was 
 as hides are tanned. 
 
 It is stated by Lord Brougham, in his beautiful " Discourse 
 on the Advantages of Science," that the inventor of the new 
 mode of refining sugar made more money in a shorter time, 
 and with less risk and trouble, than perhaps was ever realized 
 from any previous invention. 
 
 Intelligence also prevents loss, as well as makes profit, 
 How much time and money have been squandered in repeated 
 attempts to invent machinery, after a principle had been once 
 tested, and had failed through some defect, inherent and natu- 
 ral, and therefore insuperable ! Within thirty years, not less 
 than five patents have been taken out, in England and the 
 United States, for a certain construction of paddle-wheels for a 
 steamboat, which construction was tested and condemned as 
 early as 1810. A case once came within my own knowledge, 
 of a man who spent a fortune in mining for coal, when a work 
 on geology which would have cost but a dollar, and might 
 have been read in a week, would have informed him that the 
 stratum where he began to excavate belonged to a formation 
 lower down in the natural series than coal ever is, or, according 
 to the constitution of things, ever can be found. He therefore 
 worked into a stratum which must have been formed before a 
 particle of coal, or even a tree or a vegetable, existed oo the 
 planet. 
 
 These are a few specimens, on familiar subjects, taken almost 
 at random, for the purpose of showing the inherent superiority 
 of any association or community, whether small or great, where 
 mind is a member of the partnership. What is true of the above- 
 mentioned cases is true of the whole circle of those arts by 
 which human life is sustained, and human existence comforted, 
 elevated, and embellished. Mind has been the improver, for
 
 REPORT FOR 1841. 125 
 
 matter cannot improve itself; and improvement has advanced 
 in proportion to the number and culture of the minds excited 
 to activity and applied to the work. Similar advancements 
 have been effected throughout the whole compass of human 
 labor and research : in the arts of transportation and locomo- 
 tion, from the employment of the sheep and the goat, as beasts 
 of burden, to the steam-engine and the railroad-car ; in the art 
 of navigation, from the canoe clinging timidly to the shore, to 
 steamships which boldly traverse the ocean ; in hydraulics, 
 from carrying water by hand, in a vessel, or in horizontal aque- 
 ducts, to those vast conduits which supply the demands of a 
 city, and to steam fire-engines which throw a column of water 
 to the top of the loftiest buildings ; in the arts of spinning and 
 rope-making, from the hand-distaff to the spinning-frame, and 
 to the machine which makes cordage or cables of any length, in 
 a space ten feet square ; in horology, or time-keeping, from the 
 sun-dial and the water-clock to the watch, and to the chronome- 
 ter by which the mariner is assisted in measuring his longitude, 
 and in saving property and life ; in the extraction, forging, and 
 tempering of iron, and other ores having malleability to be 
 wrought into all forms, and used for all purposes, and supply- 
 ing, instead of the stone-hatchet or the fish-shell of the savage, 
 an almost infinite variety of instruments, which have sharpness 
 for cutting, or solidity for striking ; in the arts of vitrification, 
 or glass-making, giving not only a multitude of commodious 
 and ornamental utensils for the household, but substituting the 
 window for the unsightly orifice or open casement, and winnow- 
 ing light and warmth from the outward and the cold atmo- 
 sphere ; in the arts of induration by heat, from bricks dried 
 in the sun to those which withstand the corrosion of our cli- 
 mate for centuries, or resist the intensity of the furnace ; in 
 the arts of illumination, from the torch cut from the fir or pine 
 tree to the brilliant gas-light which gives almost a solar splen- 
 dor to the nocturnal darkness of our cities ; in the arts of heat- 
 ing and ventilation, which at once supply warmth for comfort 
 and pure air for health ; in the art of building, from the hoi-
 
 126 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 lowed trunk of a tree, or the roof-shaped cabin, to those commo- 
 dious and lightsome dwellings which betoken the taste and com- 
 petence of our villages and cities ; in the art of copying or 
 printing, from the toilsome process of hand-copying, where the 
 transcription of a single book was the labor of months or years, 
 and sometimes almost of a life, to the power-printing press, 
 which throws off sixty printed sheets in a minute ; in the art of 
 paper-making, from the preparation of the inner bark of a tree, 
 cleft off, and dried at immense labor, to the machinery of Four- 
 drinier, from which there jets out an unbroken stream of paper 
 with the velocity and continuousness of a current of water ; and, 
 in addition to all these, in the arts of modellin? and casting : 
 
 O o " 
 
 of designing, engraving, and painting ; of preserving materials 
 and of changing their color, of dividing and uniting them, 
 &c., &c., a ample catalogue, whose very names and pro- 
 cesses would fill columns. 
 
 Now, for the perfecting of all these operations, from the 
 tedious and bungling process to the rapid and elegant ; for the 
 change of an almost infinite variety of crude and worthless 
 materials into useful and beautiful fabrics, mind has been the 
 agent. Succeeding generations have outstripped their prede- 
 cessors, just in proportion to the superiority of their mental 
 cultivation. When we compare different people or different 
 generations with each other, the diversity is so great, that all 
 must behold it. But there is the same kind of difference be- 
 tween contemporaries, fellow-townsmen, and fellow-laborers. 
 Though the uniustructed man works side by side with the in- 
 telligent, yet the mental difference between them places them 
 in the same relation to each other that a past age bears to the 
 present. If the ignorant man knows no more respecting any 
 particular art or branch of business than was generally known 
 during the last century, he belongs to the last century ; and he 
 must consent to be outstripped by those who have the light and 
 knowledge of the present. Though they are engaged in the 
 same kind of work, though they are supplied with the same 
 tools or implements for carrying it on, yet so long as one has
 
 EEPORT FOE 1841. 127 
 
 only an arm, but the other has an arm and a mind, their prod- 
 ucts will come out stamped and labelled all over with marks 
 of contrast : superiority and inferiority, both as to quantity 
 and quality, will be legibly written on their respective labors. 
 It is related by travellers among savage tribes, that when, by 
 the help of any ingeniously-devised instrument or apparatus, 
 they have performed some skilful manual operation, the savages 
 have purloined from them the instrument they had used, sup- 
 posing there was some magic in the apparatus itself, by which 
 the seeming miracle had been performed ; but, as they could 
 not steal the art of the operator with the implement which he 
 employed, the theft was fruitless. Any person who expects to 
 effect, with less education, what another is enabled to do with 
 more, ought not to smile at the delusion of the savage, or the 
 simplicity of his reasoning. 
 
 On a cursory inspection of the great works of art, the 
 steam-engine, the printing-press, the power-loom, the mill, the 
 iron-foundery, the ship, the telescope, &c., &c.. we are apt 
 to look upon them as having sprung into sudden existence, and 
 reached their present state of perfection by one, or, at most, by 
 a few mighty efforts of creative genius. We do not reflect 
 that they have required the lapse of centuries, and the succes- 
 sive application of thousands of minds, for the attainment of 
 their present excellence ; that they have advanced from a less 
 to a more perfect form by steps and gradations almost as im- 
 perceptible as the growth by which an infant expands to the 
 stature of a man ; and that, as later discoverers and inventors 
 had first to go over the ground of their predecessors, so must 
 future discoverers and inventors first master the attainments of 
 the present age before they will be prepared to make those new 
 achievements which are to carry still further onward the stu- 
 pendous work of improvement. 
 
 Amongst a people, then, who must gain their subsistence by 
 their labor, what can be so economical, so provident and far- 
 sighted, and even so wise, in a lawful and laudable, though 
 not iu the highest sense of that word, as to establish, and,
 
 128 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 with open heart and hand, to endow and sustain, the most effi- 
 cient system of universal education for their children ; and, 
 where the material bounties of Nature are comparatively nar- 
 row and stinted, to explore, in their stead, those exhaustless 
 and illimitable resources of comfort and competency and inde- 
 pendence which lie hidden in the yet dormant powers of the 
 human intellect? 
 
 But, notwithstanding all I have said of the value of educa- 
 tion in a pecuniary sense, and of its power to improve and ele- 
 vate the outward domestic and social condition of all men, yet, 
 in closing this Report, I should do injustice to my feelings, did 
 I abstain from declaring, that, to my own mind, this tribute to 
 its worth, however well deserved, is still the faintest note of 
 praise which can be uttered in honor of so noble a theme ; 
 and that, however deserving of attention may be the economical 
 view of the subject which I have endeavored to present, yet it 
 is one that dwindles into insignificance when compared with 
 those loftier and more sacred attributes of the cause which 
 have the power of converting material wealth into spiritual 
 well-being, and of giving to its possessor lordship and sove- 
 reignty alike over the temptations of adversity, and the still 
 more dangerous seducements of prosperity, and which so 
 far as human agency is concerned must be looked to for the 
 establishment of peace and righteousness upon earth, and for 
 the enjoyment of glory and happiness in heaven.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 . . . DURING the last year, I have obtained returns from 
 almost.every public school in the State, respecting the number 
 of scholars who are engaged in studies above the elementary 
 or statutory course prescribed for the lowest grade of our 
 schools. The result is as follows : 
 
 Scholars studying History of the United States . . . 10,177 
 
 General History 2,571 
 
 Algebra 2,333* 
 
 Book-keeping ...... 1,472 
 
 Latin Language 858 
 
 Rhetoric ....... 601 
 
 Geometry 463 
 
 Human Physiology 416 
 
 Logic 330 
 
 Surveying 249 
 
 Greek Language 183 
 
 In some of the public schools, other branches, such as botany, 
 chemistry, natural history, astronomy, intellectual philosophy, 
 and the French language, are attended to ; but, as these are not 
 included in the statutory course prescribed for the highest grade 
 of schools, I have not obtained any particular information 
 respecting them. They are not extensively pursued. 
 
 Now, is not a bare inspection of the above list of studies 
 
 * It was found last year, in the State of New York, that out of 173,38-1 pupils in 
 attendance upon the public schools, in forty-three out of the fifty-nine counties 
 in the State, only 616 were studying algebra. 
 
 9 129
 
 130 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 sufficient to show that caprice rather than intelligence has pre- 
 sided over their adoption ? In this general statement, it is 
 impossible to exhibit the relative proportions in which these 
 different studies are distributed among the different towns in 
 the Commonwealth. It must suffice to state generally, that 
 there is the greatest inequality, not only between different 
 towns, but between different schools in the same town, whose 
 circumstances in other respects are substantially alike. 
 
 But, supposing a judicious distribution to exist, can any suf- 
 ficient reason be given for the proportion which prevails among 
 them? Does the numerical order in which they stand corre- 
 spond with the natural order, that is, with an order founded 
 upon their relative importance ? Can any satisfactory ground 
 be assigned why algebra a branch which not one man in a 
 thousand ever has occasion to use in the business of life 
 should be studied by more than twenty-three hundred pupils, 
 and book-keeping, which every man, even the day-laborer, 
 should understand, should be attended to by only a little more 
 than half that number ? Among farmers and road-makers, 
 why should geometry take precedence of surveying ? and, 
 among seekers after intellectual and moral truth, why should 
 rhetoric have double the followers of logic ? 
 
 In the entire list above given, is there one which can claim 
 rightful precedence of that which stands almost the lowest in 
 it? I mean human physiology, or an exposition of the laws 
 of health and life. After a competent acquaintance with the 
 common branches, is there a single department in the vast 
 range of secular knowledge, more fundamental, more useful for 
 increasing our ability to perform the arduous duties and to bear 
 the inevitable burdens of life, more astonishing for the wonders 
 it reveals, or better fitted to enforce upon us a lively conviction 
 of the wisdom and goodness of God, than a study of our phys- 
 ical frame, its beautiful adaptations and arrangements, the 
 marvellous powers and properties with which it is endowed, 
 and the conditions indispensable to its preservation in a state 
 of vigor, usefulness, and enjoyment ? Yet the number in our
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 131 
 
 public schools engaged in this study, during the last year, was 
 only four hundred and sixteen ; and more than one-fifth part 
 of these were in the single town of Nantucket. 
 
 The community needs a sound and practical treatise on the 
 relative value and importance of what are called the higher 
 studies, so that these studies might be taken up in an order, 
 and pursued for a length of time, proportioned to their respec- 
 tive utility. Even if I were able to throw out any serviceable 
 hints in regard to these branches, or to assign to each of them 
 its place on a scale graduated according to their relative merits, 
 the appropriate limits of a Report like this would debar me 
 from the undertaking. 
 
 The study of human physiology, however, by which I 
 mean both the laws of life and hygiene, or the rules and obser- 
 vances by which health can be preserved and promoted, has 
 claims so superior to every other, and, at the same time, so 
 little regarded or understood by the community, that I shall 
 ask the indulgence of the Board while I attempt to vindicate 
 its title to the first rank in our schools, after the elementary 
 branches. 
 
 In civilized communities, where the rates of mortality have 
 become a statistical science, it is found that more than one- 
 fifth, almost a fourth part, of the human race die before 
 attaining the age of one year. Instead of filling the number 
 of threescore years and ten, the period spoken of by the 
 Psalmist as the allotted life of man, almost one-quarter part 
 of the race perish before attaining one-seventieth part of their 
 natural term of existence. And, before the age of five years, 
 more than a third part of all who are born have died. 
 
 After the age of two or three years, however, the annual 
 proportion of deaths rapidly diminishes. Those children who 
 have inherited feeble constitutions from their parents have been 
 thinned off, and the rest have escaped the terrible slaughtering 
 of that ignorance which presides over the nursery. Nature 
 then seems to take them under her care ; she prompts them to 
 activity, and even counsels disobedience and stratagem to
 
 132 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 secure for them the oft-prohibited boon of exercise and out- 
 door air. Still a vast majority of mankind die before attain- 
 ing one-half of that age at which the faculties of body and 
 mind reach their fullest development and vigor. Before the 
 age of twenty years, that is, before two-sevenths of the 
 scriptural period has elapsed, one-half of the human race are 
 supposed to have died. Nor is this all, or the worst ; for a 
 vast portion of those who survive suffer pains which it is 
 frightful to think upon. The sick and valetudinary, instead of 
 being here and there an individual, are a countless host ; and it 
 is rare to find any person entirely free from all ailments, 
 organic and functional. Instead of contributing their share to 
 those productions and improvements by which life is sustained, 
 and the arts of life and the resources of well-being supplied, 
 these classes are grievous burdens upon their friends or upon 
 society. The worldly prosperity of thousands of families is 
 destroyed by the diseases or infirmities of one, if not both, of 
 their heads. Children are made orphans, or mainly deprived 
 of parental nurture and supervision ; or, on the other hand, 
 parents are bereaved of their children. And further, although 
 it is most true that the calamity of sickness, or even of death 
 itself, is nothing, compared with crime, yet it is also true that 
 sickness induces poverty, which is one of the tempters to crime ; 
 and that a deranged condition of the physical system often 
 urges to vicious and destructive indulgences by the unnatural 
 appetites which it creates, and thus ill health becomes the 
 parent of guilt as well as of bodily pains. 
 
 Should any one think that this view of the subject refers too 
 much of human suffering and delinquency to an ignorance or 
 disregard of the physical laws, let him learn what the most 
 obvious and palpable of those laws enjoin ; and then let him 
 go through society, and see how systematically and flagrantly 
 they are violated, and he will be in haste to retract his former 
 opinion. I have the concurrent authority of many of our 
 most eminent physicians for saying that one-half of all human 
 disability, of the suffering and early death inflicted upon man-
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 133 
 
 kind, proceeds from ignorance, from sheer ignorance, of 
 facts and principles which every parent, by virtue of kis pa- 
 rental relation, is as much bound to know as a judge is bound 
 to know the civil or criminal law which he undertakes to ad- 
 minister, or as a juror, in a case of life and death, is bound 
 to understand the evidence on which his verdict is to be ren- 
 dered. When we reflect that every child in the community, 
 before he arrives at the age of twenty years, might and should 
 become acquainted with those organic laws upon which the 
 Creator of the body has made its health and vigor to depend, 
 how worthless in the comparison becomes a knowledge of alge- 
 bra, of ancient mythology or history, or of all the Grecian and 
 Latin lore which has come down to us from author or com- 
 mentator ! * 
 
 * Since this Report was written, I have received from England a volume of 
 extraordinary Interest and value, entitled " Report from the Poor-law Commis- 
 sioners, on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population 
 of Great Britain," 184:>. 
 
 It is an octavo of nearly five hundred pages, and was prepared under one of 
 those Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry, which, so much to the honor of 
 that country and the benefit of mankind, have been lately instituted in Great 
 Britain. 
 
 The work was compiled from the results of investigations into the condition of 
 the laboring classes, both in country and city, the peasantry, the operatives in 
 factories, the laborers in workshops, mines, and so forth. It is comprehensive in 
 its facts, and philosophical iu its deductions ; and its materials were evidently pre- 
 pared and arranged by some of the ablest and most benevolent minds in the king- 
 dom. It traces back a vast proportion of the personal sufferings, physical degen- 
 eracy, and brevity of life, of the laboring people, to their sources ; and finds their 
 proximate causes to be a want of cleanliness both of dress and person, living 
 in wet or damp apartments, insufficient or unhealthful food, and, pre-eminently, 
 the indulgence in intoxicating drinks, and the breathing of a corrupt atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 The work ought to be read by every capitalist and manufacturer, and every 
 builder of houses, in this country. I take advantage of the opportunity afforded, 
 while this Report is going through the press, to add in a note a few of the remark- 
 able facts with which the book abounds. They show to what an extent our health 
 and life are in our own hands. The appalling consequences of a violation of the 
 natural laws by the poor and laboring classes of Great Britain are the results, partly 
 of ignorance, and partly of necessity. But in this country, where wages are so much 
 higher, and where the means of a comfortable subsistence are so abundant, almost 
 all the analogous evils suffered by our people are attributable to an ignorance of 
 those laws and observances, the knowledge and practice of which are essential to 
 health and longevity. 
 
 In contrasting the comparative chances, or average length of life, of different
 
 134 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 But it may be asked whether I would have all our district 
 schools turned into medical schools, and all the children in the 
 State, males and females, educated as physicians. A few 
 
 classes, one chapter of the work exhibits the following- facts, not drawn from a 
 single city or district, but from various parts of the country : 
 
 IN TRURO. 
 
 No. of Average age of 
 
 Deaths. Deceased. 
 
 33 Professional persons or gentry, and their families . . 40 years. 
 
 138 Persons engaged in trade or similarly circumstanced, and their 
 
 families . 33 
 
 447 Laborers, artisans, and others similarly circumstanced, and their 
 
 families 28 
 
 IN DERBY. 
 
 10 Professional persons or gentry 49 
 
 125 Tradesmen 38 
 
 752 Laborers and artisans 21 
 
 BOLTON UNION. 
 
 103 Gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their fami- 
 lies 34 
 
 381 Tradesmen and their families 23 
 
 2,232 Mechanics, servants, laborers, and their families . . . . 18 ,, 
 
 BETHNAL GREEN. 
 
 101 Gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their fami- 
 lies 45 
 
 273 Tradesmen and their families 20 
 
 1,258 Mechanics, servants, and laborers, and their families . . . 16 ,, 
 
 LEEDS BOROUGH. 
 
 79 Gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their fami- 
 lies 
 
 824 Tradesmen, farmers, and their families 27 
 
 3,395 Operatives, laborers, and their families 19 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 1840. 
 
 137 Gentry and professional persons, &c 35 ,, 
 
 1 ,738 Tradesmen and their families 12 
 
 5,597 Laborers, mechanics, and servants, &c 15 
 
 WlUTKCHAPEL UNION. 
 
 37 Gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their fami- 
 lies 45 ,, 
 
 387 Tradesmen and their families 27 
 
 1,762 Mechanics, servants, and laborers, and their families . . . 22
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 135 
 
 remarks will show that no difficulty would be presented by such 
 a question. 
 
 The Laws of Health and Life are comparatively few and 
 simple. Every person is capable of understanding them. 
 Every child iu the State, before arriving at the age of eighteen 
 year;?, might acquire a competent knowledge of them, and of 
 the reasons on which they are founded. The profession of 
 medicine, on the other hand, is mainly conversant with the 
 Laws of Disease. It is these which are so numberless and 
 complex as to defy the profoundest talent, and the study of the 
 longest and most assiduous life, for their thorough comprehen- 
 sion. Infinity is their attribute. Every difference of climate, 
 of occupation, of personal constitution and habits, modifies 
 their character, multiplies their number, and perplexes their 
 intricacy. Human Physiology, or the science of health and 
 life, may be written in one book ; for Pathology, or the science 
 
 UNIONS ix THE COUNTY OF WILTS. 
 
 No. of Average age of 
 Deaths. Deceased. 
 119 Gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their fami- 
 lies 50 years. 
 
 218 Farmers and their families 48 ,, 
 
 '.',' 01 Agricultural laborers and their families 33 ,, 
 
 This afflictive catalogue might be extended. But enough has been exhibited to 
 show that health anil life are held upon conditions, and are forfeitable without re- 
 demption, by a non-compliance with them. Even the more favored classes of Eng- 
 lish society, as it appear? by these records, live out but a little more than half their 
 days ; while the ranks of the poor and laboring classes are thinned, devastated, by 
 the terrible scourges of vice, penury, and ignorance, and are utterly swept away by 
 the time they reach half the average life of their neighbors. 
 
 In Manchester, more than fifty-seven per cent of the laboring classes die before 
 they attain the age of five years; and, in a district in Bethnal Green, it was found, 
 that, out of twelve hundred and sixty-eight deaths amongst the laboring classes in 
 1839, no less than seven hundred and eighty-two, or one in one and four-sevenths, 
 died at their own residences, under five years of age. 
 
 This dreadful havoc of human life and happiness was attributable principally to 
 causes whose nature and effects are discussed in the subsequent pages of this He- 
 port. It should be remarked, however, that most of these causes exist in a 
 greater degree of energy and intensity in Eng and than in this country. Those 
 who offend much are beaten with many stripes; those who offend less are beaten 
 with fewer; but, even though they offend in ignorance, they are still beaten with 
 stripes. In regard to the whole range of the laws of health and life, Providence 
 seems to treat mere ignorance as an offence, and to punish it accordingly.
 
 136 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of diseases, thousands and ten thousands of books have been 
 written, and yet the subject seems, at the present time, to be 
 hardly nearer exhaustion than in the age of Galen or Hip- 
 pocrates. 
 
 The economy of Providence seems to be the same in regard 
 to our natural capacity for acquiring the knowledge requisite 
 for the preservation of our health that it is in regard to our 
 capacity for acquiring the knowledge requisite for the perform- 
 ance of our duties. What is essential to all is made attainable 
 by all. Even the heathen those who were unblessed by the 
 light of the Gospel were "by nature," in regard to moral 
 obligations, " a law unto themselves, their conscience bearing 
 witness, and their thoughts accusing or else excusing." And 
 so our Creator, in giving us desires to better our worldly con- 
 dition, to improve in the long catalogue of useful arts, and to 
 adorn the useful with the beautiful, to undertake great enter- 
 prises for the benefit of our contemporaries, and to make 
 better provision for the happiness of posterity ; in implanting 
 in our bosoms these noble impulses, which demand such ardu- 
 ous and long-sustained exertions, must also have given us the 
 physical capability of performing the labor, and of enduring the 
 toil, which these exalted services require. It would be an im- 
 peachment alike of his wisdom and goodness to suppose that 
 he had tormented the race by imbuing them with a class of 
 desires which reason and conscience approve, but had withheld 
 from them all physical capability of carrying those desires into 
 execution. But this physical capability is nothing without a 
 mental ability to acquire the knowledge on which it depends. 
 And hence it is just to infer that this knowledge is attainable, 
 and should be attained by all. 
 
 As it can never be well with us morally, unless we obey the 
 laws of duty ; so it can never be well with us physically, unless 
 we obey the laws of health. But we cannot obey, unless we 
 know the law to be obeyed ; and we cannot possess this. knowl- 
 edge, unless we are endowed with capacities, which, by cultiva- 
 tion, can be made competent to attain it.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 137 
 
 When we look into our own family circles, or abroad upon 
 the community, and behold the utter waste and havoc which 
 disease and infirmity so often make of human usefulness and 
 happiness, the protracted or condensed agonies of the chamber 
 of sickness, the bereavement of parents, or the orphanage of 
 children, we might be almost tempted to question the goodness 
 of the Being by whom we have been called into existence, 
 were we not assured that " affliction cometh not forth of the 
 dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground." This 
 " affliction and trouble " are designed to show us that some 
 rule has been transgressed which the Divine Being in his 
 wisdom had established. They are always monitors to warn 
 us to obedience when we have erred wilfully, or, when we 
 have erred ignorantly, to stimulate us to acquire the requisite 
 knowledge, as well as to practise upon it when acquired. 
 Every bodily pain is a special notification that some part of the 
 machinery of life is out of order. 
 
 I see no way in which this knowledge can ever be univer- 
 sally, or even very extensively, diffused over the land, except 
 it be through the medium of our Common Schools. All other 
 instrumentalities for instructing mankind reach but a small part 
 of them, and, of course, must fail extensively in accomplishing 
 any general purpose. Only a comparatively small portion of 
 our youth attend the higher seminaries of learning ; and, while 
 this species of knowledge is every way as important to females 
 as to males, the latter only enjoy the benefits of our colleges or 
 universities. Besides, the course of studies in these higher 
 seminaries is already so full as almost to forbid the introduc- 
 tion of more ; and those branches which have general usage 
 and prescription in their favor will not readily yield to others, 
 however much more intrinsically important, And hence it is 
 that students are instructed in languages, and in the recondite 
 truths of mathematics and astronomy ; they are taught all the 
 motions of the planets, and even the librations of the moon, as 
 carefully as though those mighty orbs would fly from their 
 paths or lose their balance if their course and equipoise were
 
 138 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 not prescribed anew from year to year, and to class after class ; 
 while the structure of their own bodies, and the simple and 
 beautiful laws on which life and all our capabilities of useful- 
 ness are dependent, are almost universally neglected. Lyceum 
 lectures are a medium through which something might be done 
 to inform the public mind on this subject ; but their courses are 
 generally too unsystematic and desultory to be relied upon for 
 communicating this indispensable knowledge to the whole 
 people. Besides, there are many towns, inland and sparsely 
 peopled, where no such institution as a lyceum exists. 
 
 I hope to be pardoned for evincing a feeling and a conviction 
 on this subject more deep and strong than will meet with the 
 sympathy or concurrence of others. Within the last six years 
 I have visited schools in every section of the Commonwealth, 
 seaboard and inland, city and country. Every day's observation 
 has added proof to proof, and argument to argument, respecting 
 the importance of physical training. Were I to be carried 
 blindfold, and set down in any school in the State, I could tell 
 at a glance, by seeing the mere outline of the bodies and limbs, 
 without referring to face or hands as a test, what had been the 
 habits of the children composing it. Such as have been accus- 
 tomed to live in the open air, such as have been subjected to 
 the exposures and the hardy exercises of the farm or the me- 
 chanical trade, appear almost like a different race of beings 
 when compared with those who suffer under the amazing pa- 
 rental folly of being delicately brought up. As a general fact, 
 the children of the rural population, and of those who live in 
 sparsely-settled towns upon the seaboard, have double the bodily 
 energy, the vital force, the stamina of constitution, which 
 belong to the children of cities and of crowded towns. A fuller 
 development of body, of limbs, and of brow ; a firmer texture 
 of muscle ; motions evincive, not only of greater vigor, but of 
 longer endurance ; in fine, the whole bodily appearance indi- 
 cating that they have been laid out by Nature on an ampler 
 scale, characterize the former as compared with the latter. 
 In whatever would task the physical energies, one individual
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 139 
 
 of one class would be a match for two of the other. This is 
 emphatically true of females. On the other hand, the children 
 bred in cities excel in sprightliness and vivacity. The nervous 
 temperament more generally prevails. Their perceptions are 
 quicker, and their power of commanding more readily, both 
 themselves and their attainments, greatly superior. Continu- 
 ally is the question forced upon my mind, why, with a higher 
 but perfectly practicable system of schools throughout the State, 
 conducted by teachers of adequate knowledge and refinement, 
 and with a general diffusion of the great principles of the laws 
 of health, we could not have in the country the quickness, ease, 
 and self-command which distinguish the city, and in the city 
 the bodily robustness and the mental energy which signalize the 
 country. The possession of these qualities, by each class, 
 would make a new race. 
 
 In visiting schools, I have found it a common occurrence, 
 when the hour of recess arrives, and the scholars are permitted 
 to go out and take exercise for ten minutes in the open air, 
 that some half-dozen pupils, with pale faces, narrow chests, 
 and feeble frames, will continue bending over their desks, too 
 intent upon their lessons to be aroused by the joyous shouts 
 that ring through the schoolroom from abroad. These the 
 teacher complacently points out as the jewels of his school ; 
 and fathers and mothers look on with swelling hearts and 
 glistening eyes, as the bright vision of future honors and renown 
 rises to their view. Alas, they do not know that those children 
 are victims of an over-active brain, and that every such dispro- 
 portionate mental effort is a cast of the shuttle that weaves 
 their shrouds ! Of all the pupils in the school, it is most im- 
 portant that those who are disposed to sit so long and study so 
 intensely should be lured forth to engage in some genial sport. 
 
 So, in nine-tenths of the schools in the State, composed of 
 children below seven or eight years of age, the practice still 
 prevails of allowing but one recess in the customary session of 
 three hours ; although every physiologist and physician knows, 
 that, for every forty-five or fifty minutes' confinement in the
 
 140 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 schoolroom, all children under those ages should have at least 
 the remaining fifteen or ten minutes of the hour for exercise in 
 the open air. 
 
 There is a frightful extent of ignorance on the subject of the 
 physical laws, as they appertain to the human constitution (and 
 in this sense only I use the phrase), pervading the whole com- 
 munity. Even educated men, who are not physicians, are rare 
 exceptions to this remark. The graduates of colleges and of 
 theological seminaries, who would be ashamed if they did not 
 know that Alexander's horse was named Bucephalus, or had 
 not read Middleton's octavo volume upon the Greek article, are 
 often profoundly ignorant of the great laws which God has 
 impressed upon their physical frame, and which, under penalty 
 of forfeiting life and usefulness, he has commanded them to 
 know and obey. 
 
 In travelling through the country, how often will a man, 
 who is at once intelligent and benevolent, be pained at wit- 
 nessing the location of dwelling-houses on low and marshy spots 
 of ground, where the dampness and exhalations from beneath 
 must be like the daily administration of a poison to the families 
 who reside in them ! 
 
 How few of our public houses whether the schoolhouse, 
 the court-house, the lecture-room, or the church are con- 
 structed with any suitable regard to ventilation ! And even 
 when they have been constructed upon scientific principles, if 
 they are managed by persons who are ignorant of those princi- 
 ples, the benefits of the construction are cancelled. In cities, 
 and in many of our large manufacturing towns, there is an 
 enormous prostration of health and strength attributable to the 
 smallness and the closeness of the sleeping apartments. In this 
 way the soundest economy is defeated ; because it is for the 
 interest of any manufacturer or capitalist, whatever his depart- 
 ment of business, to employ healthy workmen. Canal-boats 
 and steamboats commit hardly less havoc upon life and com- 
 fort by their accidents and explosions, than by the poisonous 
 atmosphere in which it would almost seem as though their
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 141 
 
 conductors regarded it as a part of their official duty to steep 
 the passengers. How often are the senses offended by the 
 impurity of the atmosphere, on entering large apartments where 
 great numbers of workmen or workwomen shoemakers, 
 tailors, compositors are plying their tasks; especially in 
 the evening, when dozens of smoking lamps are each sending 
 off a stream of poison, in addition to the vitiated atmosphere 
 respired from as many pairs of lungs ! As such companies 
 often work in a thin, light dress, or even in an undress, they 
 regard only the physical sensations of heat or cold, while they 
 are neglectful of the vital necessity of pure air. 
 
 All these are flagrant, conspicuous monuments of public 
 ignorance on the subject of physiology. They are .practices, 
 which, if the common mind were once enlightened, would pass 
 away, like the barbarian rite of sacrificing a child to prevent 
 an eclipse. 
 
 How little is the diet, especially of young children, regulated 
 in accordance with the principles of physiology ! Nutrition 
 and growth depend not less on the times at which food is given, 
 than on the quality of the food itself. Yet, with most mothers, 
 feeding is the standing remedy for every manifestation of dis- 
 quiet.* 
 
 After a child has passed the period of infancy, and begins to 
 show that he has impetuous- and unborrowed impulses within, 
 he is then hired to do one thing, or to abstain from another, by 
 the promise of some dainty ; and thus he is defrauded, at the 
 very outset of life, of that inward, spontaneous emotion of 
 
 * " It is a great mistake," says Dr. A. Combe, " to treat crying as an infallible 
 sign of an empty stomach. New as the infant is to the surrounding world, it 
 shrinks instinctively from every strong sensation, whether of heat or of cold, of 
 pressure or of hardness, of hunger or of repletion. Its only way of expressing 
 all disagreeable feelings is by crying. If it is hungry, it cries ; if it is over-fed, it 
 cries; if it sutlers from the prick of a pin, it cries; if it lies too long iu the same 
 position, so as to cause undue pressure on any one part, it cries ; if it is exposed 
 to cold, or any part of its dress is too tight, or it is held in an awkward position, 
 or is exposed to too bright a light, or too loud a sound, it can indicate its dis- 
 comfort only by its cries ; nnd yet the one remedy used against so many different 
 evils is, not to find out and remove the true cause of offence, but to give it the 
 breast." Combe on Infancy, 152.
 
 142 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 pleasure which Nature has made inseparable from every right 
 action performed from a right motive ; and, instead of the feel- 
 ing of joy which would be a sufficient reward for an angel, 
 there is substituted a sensual pleasure which can only satisfy a 
 brute. Even in educated circles, it is still a common thing for 
 acquaintances and visitors to send or carry to children some 
 pernicious present of confectionery or sweetmeats, as a testi- 
 monial of, or perhaps more frequently as a lure to, affection. 
 Thus, not only selfishness, but physical disturbances, are caused, 
 and morbid appetites generated, which, before the close of life, 
 grow into tyrannical desires, involving character and happiness, 
 or subject the sufferer to agonizing struggles and mortifications 
 before they can be subdued. Such an act ought to be regarded 
 as an injury at least, if not an insult; oftentimes it is both. 
 And even amongst adults who are accounted rational men and 
 women, and who are not obnoxious in any one thing to the 
 charge of sensual indulgences, how little is the grand axiom 
 practised upon, that the temperate man is the greatest epicure ! 
 that is, that, in the long-run of life, those persons will derive 
 the greatest amount of pleasure from their natural appetites 
 who never indulge them to excess. 
 
 While such practices in the treatment of childhood and youth, 
 even in the single article of diet, continue to prevail, it will be 
 necessary that more than three hundred and sixty-five miracles 
 should be wrought in their favor, every year of their lives, 
 before they can ever become a vigorous race of men and wo- 
 men. But, until the subject of physical education is better 
 understood, any general reformation is hopeless. 
 
 In regard to exercise, many people who acknowledge it to 
 be indispensable, and a necessary of life, still conceive of it as 
 some given amount of bodily motion or of muscular activity, 
 which may be taken, once for all, at the end of a week or a 
 mouth ; or that, by securing an annual vacation, they can 
 crowd into one toilsome excursion what should be distributed 
 over the year. They do not regai-d it, like food, as a daily 
 necessity. They do not know that its utility depends wholly
 
 EEPORT FOR 1842. 143 
 
 upon certain states, either of the system in general or of the 
 digestive organs in particular. Hence inconvenience and ex- 
 pense are often incurred in order to promote health by means 
 of exercise, which, from its untimeliness or severity, is sure to 
 inflict greater evils than it was intended to avert. 
 
 Nothing is more commonly overlooked, than that the great 
 sustainers of a vigorous life air, exercise, diet depend 
 upon proportion, adaptation, adjustment ; that what is salutary 
 at one time may prove fatal at another ; and therefore that 
 there should be a presiding intelligence in every individual, by 
 which his conduct may be so modified as to correspond with 
 ever-varying circumstances. It is injurious to health to be de- 
 prived of a sufficiency of food ; but, if one is deprived of exer- 
 cise, it is better that he should be deprived of a corresponding 
 portion of food also. In the long-run, it is fatal to be deprived 
 of fresh air; but, without an adequate quantity of food, even 
 fresh air will consume the vitals of the system. Thus, the 
 hyberuating animals live without either food or air for mouths, 
 when, if they exercised and respired freely, and at the same 
 time were deprived of food, they would perish in a week. 
 
 An accurate knowledge of a few great physiological princi- 
 ples, together with a sound judgment or discretion in applying 
 them, will suffice to ward off an inconceivable amount of hu- 
 man suffering, and to confer an ability to make great additions 
 to the public welfare, instead of subtracting from it. The 
 Creator assures us that " he doth not afflict willingly nor 
 grieve the children of men;" and if, in all things, the race 
 should obey the physical laws of God, they would no more 
 suffer physical pain, than they would suffer remorse, or moral 
 pain, if in all things they would obey the moral laws of God. 
 
 This subject has its merits, which should command the atten- 
 tion of the statesman and political economist. All investments 
 to preserve or increase the public health would be reimbursed 
 many fold, in an increased capacity for production. One of 
 the most important items in a nation's wealth consists in the 
 healthfulness and vigor enjoyed by its people. All agricul-
 
 144 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 turists and manufacturers must feel the force of this remark in 
 regard to their own workmen ; and they Avould feel it still 
 more if they were obliged, at their own expense, to support 
 those workmen during all periods of sickness or incapacity to 
 labor ; and this is the relation in which the State stands to its 
 citizens. It has been said by some writers on political economy, 
 that from one-seventh to one-eighth of all the wealth of a coun- 
 try originates in the labor of each year. Hence, if any nation 
 or community should cease from production for seven or eight 
 years, the whole of its wealth houses, lands, goods, money 
 would be consumed. What a forcible idea of the value of 
 labor is presented by this fact ! Yet what a sick workman or 
 operative would be to a capitalist who was obliged to maintain 
 him, a sick citizen is to the Republic. Every sick man, every 
 man rendered unserviceable by general debility or specific ail- 
 ment, must be subtracted from a nation's available resources. 
 He not only adds nothing to the common stock, but he draws 
 his subsistence in some form and often, too, a very expen- 
 sive subsistence from the storehouse which the industry of 
 others has filled. Omitting all considerations of personal and 
 domestic suffering, of the extinction of intellectual power, and 
 of those moral aberrations which originate in physical derange- 
 ment and disease, and considering the race under the mere 
 aspect of a money-making power, in this respect it is clear, 
 that the health and strength of one community, if set in oppo- 
 sition to the debility or infirmity of another, would be sufficient, 
 not only to determine the balance of trade, but to settle all 
 other points of relative superiority. Let such information be 
 diffused through the public as all the children in our schools 
 might easily acquire, and a single generation would not pass 
 away, without the transfer of immense sums to the other side 
 of the profit-and-loss account in the national ledger. Of course, 
 I do not mean that all diseases could be abolished at once, even 
 by universal diffusion of a knowledge of their causes ; or that 
 the era foretold by the prophet would be ushered in, when " the 
 child shall die a hundred years old," and when there shall be
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 145 
 
 no " old man that hath not filled his days." The violation of 
 those beautiful and benign laws which the Creator has in- 
 wrought into our system has been too heinous, and too long 
 persevered in by the race, to be expiated or atoned for in a single 
 age. Disease and debility, transmitted through a long line of 
 ancestors, have acquired a momentum by the length of the 
 descent which cannot at once be overcome. But I do mean, 
 if this subject were generally understood, that such a change 
 would be wrought in a single generation, that a broad and 
 deep current of wealth would be made to change its direction ; 
 and, instead of millions annually flowing outward from the 
 common treasury to defray the various expenditures of sick- 
 ness, that treasury would be replenished by an equal number 
 of millions, coined in the mint, and from the ore, of labor- 
 loviug health. Yet, amid all our pecuniary speculations, this 
 grand financial operation of substituting health and strength 
 for sickness and debility that is, immense gains for immense 
 expenditures has been unheard of. 
 
 In the army and navy, where the expediency of giving bat- 
 tle has been discussed in a council of war, or afterwards, 
 when the causes of defeat have been explained by the van- 
 quished, the state of the sick-list has been made the subject of 
 inquiry. The historian, too, in his account of campaigns, 
 recognizes health and sickness as among the grand causes of 
 success or disaster. But the manly health and vigor of a peo- 
 ple engaged in the arts of peace as among the most essen- 
 tial items in a nation's valuation, as a capital ready for profit- 
 able investment in any industrial enterprise, and therefore as 
 a prolific source of public revenue as well as of private 
 wealth have been overlooked by statesmen and lawgivers, 
 in all their schemes for national aggrandizement. 
 
 The pecuniary merits of this subject may be presented under 
 another aspect. Children, at different ages and under different 
 circumstances, may be regarded as representing investments 
 of different sums of money. These investments consist in the 
 amount which has been expended for their nursing, rearing, 
 10
 
 1-16 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 clothes, board, education, aud so forth, and in the value of the 
 time of others which has been appropriated to them. Though 
 differing exceedingly in regard to different persons, yet, in this 
 country, the aggregate expense, with its accruing interest, of the 
 great majority, at the age of twenty or twenty-one years, can 
 hardly be estimated at less than from five hundred to a thou- 
 sand dollars, after deducting the value of all services performed. 
 Now, if half mankind die by the time they arrive at this age, 
 or before it, and half of these come to their untimely end 
 through the ignorance of their parents or themselves, what an 
 amazing price does our ignorance cost us ! "With what reck- 
 less prodigality do we continue to cherish it ! What spend- 
 thrifts we are, not only of the purest sources of affection and 
 domestic happiness, but of wealth ! 
 
 Compared with the economical value of physiological knowl- 
 edge to a nation, what is the utility of discovering a north-west 
 passage, or of exploring the sources of the Niger, or circum- 
 navigating a continent of ice around the south pole ? Yet no 
 systematic measures have ever been taken by any government 
 for its universal diffusion amongst the people, although it is 
 certain that such knowledge is a condition precedent, without 
 which a high point of health for the whole community can 
 never be reached. Our Common Schools are a channel through 
 which this knowledge as delightful in the acquisition as it is 
 useful in possession may be universally diffused ; and, in 
 the long-run, its legitimate products will be found to transcend 
 in value the gains of the most adventurous commerce or the 
 spoils of the most successful war. 
 
 Perhaps some may deem it a visionary notion, that any con- 
 siderable amelioration of the public health can be effected by a 
 more extended acquaintance with the physical laws. Many 
 persons attribute disease to accident or chance, or to some 
 occult or remote cause lying beyond human ken, and there- 
 fore beyond human control. Some believe diseases to be judg- 
 ments directly inflicted by Heaven upon the body for offences 
 committed against the moral law. Others, again, suppose pain
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 147 
 
 and untimely bereavement to be a part of the inevitable lot of 
 humanity, designed to test the strength of our confidence in the 
 goodness of the Creator ; and they therefore deem it a duty to 
 practise resignation to what they suppose to be the divine w-ill, 
 rather than to inquire whether there may not be a duty of pre- 
 vention as well as of acquiescence. This last view often degen- 
 erates into a sort of fatalism, a belief that what is to be will 
 be. and that our destiny is fixed irrespective of our conduct. 
 
 Amid this vagueness and confusion of thought, often ag- 
 gravated by superstitious views of the divine government, 
 the frightful extent of maladies which we bring upon ourselves, 
 as the direct consequences of our own misconduct, ceases to be a 
 subject of wonder. We attribute to Divine Providence what be- 
 longs to our own improvidence. We refer to chance what flows 
 from the violation of unchangeable law r s. Oftentimes we sub- 
 mit passively to pain, without seeking to find antidote or reme- 
 dy, when the very object of the pain is to admonish us that we 
 have oft'ended, and to quicken our intellect to discover in what 
 the offence has consisted, or to apprise our moral nature of the 
 consequences of a known disobedience. In most cases, how- 
 ever, the ignorant appeal to empiricism to relieve them from 
 the consequences of their ignorance ; and thus they aggravate 
 the evils they would remedy. An immense extent of suffering, 
 of abridgment of human life, is regularly bought and paid for 
 among us. A market of imposition is opened to supply the de- 
 mands of ignorance ; and this must continue to be so until the 
 people are more enlightened. Did the pretenders to medi- 
 cal science who infest the country in such formidable num- 
 bers confine themselves to the barbarian's practice of charms 
 and incantations, the mischief wrought by their arts would be 
 far less deplorable ; but, accustomed as they are to more potent 
 prescriptions, they commit wider havoc of human health and 
 life than the meilicine-men of the savages themselves. 
 
 In regard to this great subject, the first rule, in point of au- 
 thority as well as of reasonableness, is, that " sin is a trans- 
 gression of the law." And the consequences of a transgression
 
 148 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of the physical laws are equally visited upon the body of the 
 offender, whether he were acquainted with the laws or not. 
 An infant, though helpless, and ignorant of the quality of fire 
 into which it accidentally falls, will be consumed by it as cer- 
 tainly as a Hindoo devotee who leaps into it for self-destruc- 
 tion. In the foundering of a slave-ship at sea, the stolen victim 
 will be drowned as soon as the ruthless kidnapper. When 
 carbonic-acid gas enters the lungs, it extinguishes life with 
 equal certainty and rapidity, whether the heart of the sufferer 
 be good or evil. On this subject, therefore, the first rule, that 
 " sin is a transgression of the law," is universal ; and 
 equally universal is the last, that " the way of transgressors 
 is hard." 
 
 The hastiest glance at the condition in which we are placed 
 in this life will demonstrate, not merely the utility, but the 
 necessity, of physical education, as a department of knowledge 
 to be universally cultivated. We are introduced, at birth, into 
 the midst of the great agencies of Nature. Each one of these 
 agencies is sufficiently powerful to obliterate our senses, to 
 maim our persons, or to extinguish our lives ; and yet we are 
 profoundly ignorant of their properties and of their modes of 
 attack. We bring into life, it is true, a certain amount of vital 
 force, which is antagonistic to the forces of Nature ; but this 
 vital force at first is so feeble, that, if not protected against its 
 assailants, it is subdued at once, and life is annihilated. 
 
 The chemical affinities or forces, for instance, hold perpetual 
 combat with the vital force. Our bodies are the battle-ground 
 where these hostilities are carried on. If the vital force be 
 driven, for a single minute, from any part of our bodies or 
 organs, forthwith, in obedience to the chemical law, decompo- 
 sition, or mortification, commences ; and, if the chemical force 
 be not overborne and beat back by the vital force, the mor- 
 tification extends, and death ensues. 
 
 And, what is more, the vital force with which we are endowed 
 cannot be sustained, for an hour, without drawing for suppoi't 
 upon the hostile elements by which we are encompassed ; that
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 149 
 
 is, a certain portion of these elements is essential to our exist- 
 ence, while an excess of them is fatal to it ; and, further, the 
 result is equally fatal whether we take too much or too little. 
 Air is a necessary of life, from the first moment of our introduc- 
 tion into it ; and yet the extinction of life will ensue as certainly 
 from exposing the whole body to the action of the changes 
 and currents of air as from an entire deprivation of it. Neces- 
 sary as is the air, yet if its temperature varies very much 
 from that of the blood, either on the side of coldness or of 
 warmth, each extreme is equally fatal. And, again, if the air 
 is too moist or too dry, the vital organs are clogged by its hu- 
 midity, or inflamed by its aridness. Drink is necessary ; but, at 
 first, the urn of life is so shallow, that a few drops in excess 
 will sink it forever. Food is necessary : if withheld, death 
 follows by privation ; if administered too freely, death equally 
 follows by repletion ; and if of an unwholesome quality, then 
 it becomes a poison. Light is necessary to awaken the visual 
 sensibility of the eyes ; yet too strong a beam will extinguish 
 them forever. Sound is necessary to break the silence of the 
 ear ; yet, if too violent and shrill, it will rend the delicate organ 
 it should only have vibrated. 
 
 Now, Nature parcels out to us no fixed, definite quantities or 
 qualities of these elements, which are essential in degree, in 
 excess fatal. In the course of a year, from the melting heats 
 of summer to winter's congelations, we are carried through 
 variations in atmospheric temperature amounting to more than 
 a hundred degrees. Even in a single day or hour, this tempera- 
 ture varies to an extent utterly destructive of health and life 
 itself, if our prudence does not mitigate its changes. It varies, 
 too, from the extreme dryness of the north-west wind, which 
 will extract moisture from kiln-dried wood, to the humidity of 
 a southerly or south-easterly wind, in which a fish would hard- 
 ly perceive that it was out of its own element. We are also 
 placed in the midst of a boundless profusion and variety of ma- 
 terials for food, botli of the animal and vegetable kinds, and 
 these kinds are intermixed with attractive though poisonous
 
 150 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 substances ; and yet Nature utters no warning voice when we 
 are about to pluck and eat unwholesome fruits, nor does she 
 stretch forth a hand to arrest our hands when we are indulging 
 to a surfeit. Although, thei'efore, the vital force which we bring 
 into life, if duly nurtured and protected, will speedily obtain 
 immense accessions of strength, and power of endurance, yet it 
 is always surrounded, pressed upon, besieged, by the mightier 
 forces of Nature ; and hence not only our health and strength, 
 but our very existence, depends upon a knowledge how to adapt 
 oui'selves to these external agencies. Neither heat nor cold, 
 nor moisture nor dryness, nor food nor raiment, is meted out 
 and apportioned to us as needed for our daily use and for the 
 prolongation of life. We are left, without any revelation, to find 
 out, by our own study, what kinds, in what quantities, under 
 what circumstances, they must be used to yield us the longest 
 life ami the greatest power. As all the agencies and objects of 
 Nature which surrounds us and come in contact with us are 
 unintelligent in regard to our wants, if we also are unintelligent 
 in regard to their properties, then we and they hold the same 
 relation to each other as that of particles in a chaos. 
 
 In our early years, these adjustments, adaptations, protec- 
 tions, are left to parental knowledge and vigilance ; afterwards 
 the responsibility is transferred from parents to offspring. But 
 parents are deplorably ignorant. Hence they allow uuhealthful 
 indulgences. They inculcate false principles. They establish 
 bad habits. As an inevitable consequence, sickness and suffer- 
 ing abound. Disease or debility of some vital organ is the com- 
 mon lot rather than the occasional fact. Untimely death is so 
 frequent as no longer to excite surprise. And maladies whose 
 pains are severer than those of death are bequeathed from par- 
 ents to children as a disastrous and perpetual heritage. 
 
 Suppose any portion of our population to be as unlearned in 
 the science of physiology as a tribe of savages, and a hundred 
 reasons will be apparent why such portion would suffer more of 
 disease and physical degeneracy than savages themselves. In 
 civilized communities, there are many causes creative of disease
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 151 
 
 which have no existence in a savage state. In the former, the 
 population is always more dense than in the latter. Hence peo- 
 ple are crowded together in masses ; and this mode of living, 
 where ignorance prevails, is invariably accompanied with a 
 dearth of pure air ; and thus at once an indispensable constitu- 
 ent of health is taken away, and a prolific source of disease 
 substituted for it. In the various processes of the arts culti- 
 vated by a civilized people, unhealthful occupations are pur- 
 sued. All in-door and sedentary employments come within this 
 description. In many branches of manufacture, noxious prod- 
 ucts of gases are evolved, which the operator inhales to the 
 detriment of health, and often to the direct and obvious 
 abridgment of life. Among savages, there is no painter's 
 colic. No polisher of steel breathes steel-dust to inflame and 
 corrode his lungs. No smelter lives in an atmosphere of corro- 
 sive gases. No preparcr of beverages inhales the carbonic acid 
 which is evolved in the process of fermentation. No savage 
 tribe has ever reached such a depth of degradation as to ren- 
 der the enactment of penal laws necessary to rescue innocent 
 and helpless children from excessive labor in factories and coal- 
 mines. Amid the luxuries of a civilized community, the more 
 degraded classes are surrounded by temptations always, and 
 by opportunities occasionally, for indulging their appetites in 
 forms of excess from which barbarians are happily exempted. 
 All these are powerful agents for breaking down the health and 
 constitution of those who occupy one extreme of the social scale. 
 The other extreme is also assailed by causes hardly less potent 
 for evil. What are seductively but falsely called the refinements 
 of life ; an ability to indulge in luxuries and epicurean diet, 
 without any necessity for a corresponding degree of active ex- 
 ercise ; fashions of dress in impotent defiance of climate ; the 
 conversion of night into day ; systematic bodily indolence, low- 
 ering the tone of the system, and thus rendering necessary all 
 the guards which human art can devise against those inclemen- 
 cies of the seasons which ought to be braved instead of being 
 shrunk from, all these are mighty causes of physical deteri-
 
 152 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 oration, from which the savage whom we pity is free. These 
 are evils which, to a lamentable extent, characterize the civiliza- 
 tion of the present age. Comfort has been sought so blindly as 
 to bring a thousand discomforts in its stead. Means used to 
 prolong life have shortened it, because adopted in ignorance of 
 its conditions. Yet, much as these errors destroy the vigor, 
 abridge the years, and impair the happiness, of the parents, 
 their consequences are visited with terrible aggravation upon 
 children. 
 
 And this is true of both the classes above referred to. Were 
 the genealogy of families to be traced, it would be commonly 
 found that those who occupy what are usually called, by way 
 of distinction, the highest and the lowest grades in society, run 
 out after two or three generations. Among the very poor, mor- 
 tality is greatest below the age of five years. Among the 
 wealthy, skill and appliances pressrve their offspring through 
 the years of childhood to perish between the ages of fifteen and 
 twenty-five, just as the hopes and prospects of life are dawning 
 upon them. The lineage of the poorest comes to a termination 
 by poverty and wretchedness ; that of the richest goes off in 
 chronic and hereditary distempers, gout, apoplexy, and, espe- 
 cially among females, by consumption. Both are replenished 
 from the middling classes of society, who owe their vigor and 
 the perpetuation of their families rather to the happy fortune 
 of being compelled to labor, to be out much in the open air, 
 and to incur what they call exposures and hardships, than to 
 any knowledge of those laws which they ignorantly observe, 
 but whose observance, though ignorant, is thus generously re- 
 warded. 
 
 Can reasons so cogent and demonstrative as these be offered 
 in favor of the adoption in our schools of any of the other 
 higher branches of knowledge? Here is a study upon whose 
 cultivation the power to pursue all others with vigor and 
 alacrity depends. Algebra and other branches of mathematics 
 may discipline the intellect, and enable it to concentrate all its 
 divergent forces into a focus of light, to be thrown on any par-
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 153 
 
 ticular point. Rhetoric and logic may make us acquainted 
 with rules whereby to judge of the taste or reasonings of others, 
 or to fashion our own. An acquaintance with the learned lan- 
 guages may enable us to read a few books, written in the in- 
 fancy of society, before philosophy had acquired its present 
 depth and expansion, and when scarcely any thing was known 
 of those great civilizers of mankind, the useful arts. But 
 an observance of the physical laws and knowledge must 
 necessarily precede the observance would prepare us to 
 enter upon any one in the whole range of studies, or upon any 
 of the active duties of life, with tenfold capacity and ardor. 
 Soundness of health is preliminary to the highest success in 
 any pursuit. In every industrial avocation, it is an indispensa- 
 ble element ; and the highest intellectual eminence can never be 
 reached without it. It exerts a powerful influence over feelings, 
 temper, and disposition, and, through these, upon moral charac- 
 ter. If, now and then, as a rare exception to the general 
 course of events, an extraordinary individual appears, who, 
 without the sustaining power of bodily vigor, enlightens the 
 race by his solitary contemplations, yet it is believed that such 
 prodigies have never transmitted their powers to their offspring, 
 and that no instance has existed where great executive effi- 
 ciency has been united to intellectual or moral pre-eminence in 
 the absence of physical health. 
 
 So, too, in the common course of nature, it is as improbable 
 that a mother who is physically diseased will rear a healthy 
 family of children, as it is that an immoral mother will train 
 children to morality. 
 
 Yet, incredible as it may seem, the means of acquiring vigor, 
 quickness, endurance, have been sought for, not by the clergy- 
 man, the lawyer, the artist, the cultivator of letters, the mother, 
 but by the wrestler, the buffoon, the runner, the opera-dancer. 
 There are ten professors of pugilism in our community to one 
 of physical education in our seminaries of learning. 
 
 If opportunities for ease, and an eager competition for ener- 
 vating luxuries and refinements, take possession of society,
 
 154 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 without any corresponding knowledge of the laws of health, 
 the race itself must rapidly deteriorate. Such a degeneracy 
 must not only be considered as one of the greatest calamities 
 that can befall a people, but it must be entered on the catalogue 
 of its greatest sins. We look with abhorrence upon those bar- 
 barous tribes who practise infanticide ; but they are as little 
 conscious of the wrong of depriving their offspring of mere 
 animal life as we are of the wrong of depriving ours of health, 
 that is, of all the physical blessings which life affords ; 
 and an enlightened posterity may not be without difficulty in 
 determining which is the greater offence against nature, to 
 relieve the impotent, the diseased, the deformed child at once, 
 of all mortal suffering, or to rear a race of puny, dwarfish, 
 imbecile children, the inheritors of parental maladies, doomed 
 to suffer through all the years of their existence for offences 
 which they did not commit, and to leave to their own offspring 
 a patrimony of aggravated and redoubled miseries. 
 
 About seven millions, or one-half of the free white popula- 
 tion of the United States, are under eighteen years of age. 
 Could we allow to these only an average period of twenty four 
 or five years, after having reached majority, how important to 
 the country would be their condition as to health and strength ! 
 How much more important, yet how much less regarded, than 
 if they were an army of seven millions of men ! And what 
 significancy and impressiveness does it give to the fact, that 
 half of mankind die before reaching the age of twenty years. 
 The amount of individual, domestic, social, and public interests 
 dependent upon the physical well-being of this multitude, can- 
 not be appreciated by any finite mind. It is too vast for our 
 comprehension. We can hardly conceive of the latent power 
 which exists even in a single healthy, well-formed infant. 
 What a magazine of forces lies pent up within the narrow 
 limits of its frame ! What endurance, celerity, energy, 
 achievement ! As a mere material agent, a physical machine, 
 there is something almost sublime in the idea of its hidden 
 capacities and might. Who, without the evidence of observa-
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 155 
 
 tion and history, would be so credulous as to believe, that in 
 the tiny, flaccid arms of a group of infant children, there were 
 concealed such energies as could turn a granite quarry into the 
 dwellings and temples of a city, or convert a forest into ships, 
 or a wilderness into a garden, or almost turn the earth inside 
 out to bring up its deep-deposited treasures for human comfort 
 or embellishment? Yet we know that these helpless beings are 
 endowed with innate forces which render such achievements 
 possible and practicable ; that they can not only satisfy the 
 wants of the body, but provide in abundance for the higher 
 wants of the soul, and, during the period of a short life, can 
 prepare bounties and blessedness for continents and centuries. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the " glassy essence " of the child's 
 life may be so treated that he will become more and more fra- 
 gile ; that he will be tormented with the pains and infirmities of 
 disease, instead of exulting in the vigor and buoyancy of health ; 
 not able to impart aid to others, but constantly extorting assist- 
 ance from them ; adding nothing to the common stock, but 
 drawing his own subsistence from it ; and, instead of leaving 
 the world indebted to him for the services he has rendered it, 
 departing from it like an absconding debtor from among abused 
 creditors. And, if this is so important in regard to a single 
 individual, how vastly is this importance increased when multi- 
 plied by the number of all ! 
 
 The idea is sometimes entertained, even by men otherwise 
 intelligent, that Nature imparts to each individual a certain spe- 
 cific or fixed quantity of physical force ; that this bestowment 
 marks the extent or limit of ability ; and therefore, when we 
 have expended this quantity, whether more or less rapidly, we 
 come to a point of exhaustion, which is not only natural, but 
 necessary. In other words, the assumption is that each indi- 
 vidual has a certain capacity ; that this capacity is once filled ; 
 and, when it is exhausted, we might as well attempt to pour 
 more than its own contents from a vessel of water, as to obtain 
 more from the bodily system than the cubic measurement at 
 which it was originally gauged. The same idea is sometimes
 
 156 ANNUAL REPOETS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 more learnedly, though with equal error, expressed under an- 
 other similitude. Different individuals are said to be like so 
 many galvanic batteries, capable respectively of generating a 
 certain amount of force, according to the magnitude of the 
 machine and the perfectness of its construction. This force, it 
 is asserted, may be economized or squandered ; but, with every 
 expenditure of power, a certain portion of the machine is de- 
 composed ; and when, either by the frequency or the intensity 
 of the shocks, the whole chemical energies of the apparatus 
 are destroyed, we have nothing left but worthless oxides of 
 copper and zinc. 
 
 Nothing can be more false, or more disparaging to the benev- 
 olence and skill of the Creator, than this view of our corporeal 
 mechanism. The bodily machine has the faculty, after having 
 given off its strength, of recovering it anew. This process it 
 can repeat thousands and thousands of times. It is recupera- 
 tive, self-replenishing, self-repairing. Each muscular effort 
 may, indeed, be attended by a waste or loss of a part of the 
 muscle or organ that is used ; but, if the effort put forth is not 
 excessive, that very waste is supplied by the deposit of new 
 material which is capable of making a more vigorous effort 
 than the part whose place it has taken. Thus we receive more 
 than we give. The expenditure is followed, not by loss, but by 
 accumulation ; and this increase, or reduplication, may go on 
 for fifty years without abatement. 
 
 But these wonderful resources of the body can be developed 
 only by conforming to the laws of its organization. These 
 laws are not an isolated system, independent of and uncon- 
 nected with every thing else. They have the most intimate re- 
 lation to the properties and laws of the external world. Diet, 
 air, exercise, clothing, the changes of temperature and the vicis- 
 situdes of the seasons, light, moisture, the elevation or depression 
 of different localities, come within their purview. With every 
 new combination of circumstances, the law is modified, or, 
 rather, a new law applies to the case. The practical applica- 
 tion of the law, therefore, is a matter of adjustment, propor- 
 tion, fitness, relevancy, that is, of KNOWLEDGE.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 157 
 
 Although the proofs from which these views are derived are 
 abundant, and obvious to every intelligent observer, yet I am 
 desirous of corroborating my own opinion by testimony in 
 which the public will repose undoubting confidence. For this 
 purpose, I here introduce a few letters from eminent physicians 
 whose characters are a guaranty for the correctness of their 
 statements. The circular to which the letters are a reply is 
 prefixed. 
 
 CIRCULAR. 
 To . 
 
 M>i df-ar Sir, Ever since I became at all acquainted with the laws of 
 health and life, I have had daily and hourly occasion to lament the unneces- 
 sary as well as immense loss which is suffered, by individuals and by the 
 community, in consequence of the violation of those laws. 
 
 The loss consists in the personal suffering of many, with its attendant 
 expenses, in the impaired ability for usefulness of a still larger number, and 
 in the premature death of a vast majority of mankind. 
 
 In looking at these calamities with a view to their prevention or diminu- 
 tion, it seems to me important that a distinction should be made between 
 those transgressions of the law which arise from ignorance merely, and those 
 which are committed by yielding to the impulses of inordinate appetites. 
 For the prevention of those which flow solely from ignorance, mere knowl- 
 edge will be an antidote ; but, to prevent those which punish the improper 
 indulgences of appetite, some change must be effected in the moral condition 
 of the patient. Even in the latter case, however, a clear knowledge of the 
 benefits naturally resulting from an observance of the laws of health and 
 life would come powerfully in aid of a moral reformation. 
 
 I am aware that there is a class of cases which do not fall exclusively un- 
 der either of these heads, cases which may be called mired, because they 
 include a surrender to the dominion of appetite, notwithstanding certain 
 vague and obscure notions a sort of half-knowledge of injurious con- 
 sequences. If, however, even in this class of cases, that which alone is en- 
 titled to be called knowledge that is, a clear, vivid perception of the conse 
 quences attached to an act would have saved the victim, I see not why 
 such cases should not be arranged under the head of evils resulting from 
 ignorance. 
 
 From a retrospect of your extensive medical practice, and from your ob- 
 servations on health rind longevity, I trust you will be able to arrive at, or 
 at least to approximate, some pretty definite conclusion respecting the pro- 
 portion of sickness, physical disability, and premature death, which may be 
 fairly attributed to an ignorance of physiological principles already discov-
 
 158 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ered, and which most persons would avoid if proper attention were paid to 
 early education and habits. Or, in other words, in the present state of 
 the science of physiology, how great a proportion of disease, of suffering, of 
 a diminution of the physical capacity of usefulness, and of the abridgment 
 of life, comes from sheer ignorance (as contradistinguished from that which 
 proceeds from causes not known, or from inordinate indulgences), and which, 
 therefore, we might hope to see averted, if the community had that degree 
 of knowledge which is easily attainable by all. 
 
 Bv so doing, I think you will furnish a powerful argument in favor of 
 making those conditions on which health and life depend a subject of study, 
 not only for adults, but especially for the young ; and, in order to reach the 
 latter c!:iss as extensively as possible, you would prove the expediency of in- 
 troducing the study of physiology into our common schools, after the pri- 
 mary studies have been mastered. 
 
 Should you do me the favor to reply to this letter, I hope you will not 
 think yourself confined within the narrow outline I have sketched, but will 
 extend your remarks to any topics which will subserve the two great objects 
 I have in view, namely, the prevention of suffering, and the increase of 
 the physical capabilities of the community. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 HORACE MAXX, 
 Secretary of the Board of Education. 
 
 LETTER FROM DR. JAMES JACKSOX. 
 
 Hox. HORACE MAXX. 
 
 My dear Sir, I agree with you entirely as to the lamentable evils 
 which arise from the violation of the laws of Nature in regard to health 
 and life. You will add much to the benefits yon have already conferred on 
 the rising generation, and on the community, if you cause to be instilled 
 into the young a knowledge of the value of health, and of the means of 
 preserving it. 
 
 The evils you describe are undoubtedly, in many instances, incurred 
 from ignorance. An acquaintance with the functions of the living body, 
 and with the causes which influence those functions for good or for evil, 
 would have a great tendency to prevent such evils. But the proportion ot 
 cases in which ignorance alone, "sheer ignorance," is the cause of disease, 
 &c., is not perhaps so large as you are disposed to br-lk'vc. By far the 
 greatest proportion of cases in which the health is injured, and life is short- 
 ened or rendered useless, unnecessarily, consists of the cases you call
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 159 
 
 " mi.nd." Ignorance has a share in producing them, a greater or less share, 
 but is not the sole cause. 
 
 You now ask in how great a portion of all the cases of sickness, im- 
 paired health, ic.. ignorance is either the sole cause, or co-operates with 
 other causes in producing the result. I find it impossible to give a very 
 precise answer to this inquiry ; but I feel assured that the answer should be, 
 mare-tlian oitr-hulf. When it is brought to mind that the ignorance of par- 
 ents is included in the terms of the inquiry, the justice of the answer will 
 probably be admitted by all who are conversant with the subject. 
 
 The first great difficulty in the young, and often in those who have 
 passed their youth, is, that they are ignorant of the value of health. They 
 may acknowledge in words, but they do not realize, how much the enjoy- 
 ment of life is abridged by ill health. Still less are they aware how much 
 the usefulness of one's days may be impaired by disease, or even by chronic 
 ailments, which are scarcely called diseases. While men desire long life, 
 they too often disregard the importance of being able to use all their powers 
 and faculties unimpaired during the years they do live. The first thing, 
 therefore, is to make the young understand that they should endeavor to 
 cultivate and maintain all their powers, and be ready to bring them into 
 healthy exercise at all times. To this end, they must learn, not only to be 
 properly equipped for the warfare of life, but also not to take on the bur- 
 dens of bad habits, which will impede them in their inarch. 
 
 If these views of the importance of sound health be presented clearly 
 and fully to the young, they may then be desirous to learn the art of living 
 well. Teaching principles alone will not insure the practice of this art, but 
 it will promote it. The study of Physiology will lay the foundation. To 
 the common student, who does not intend to devote himself to medicine, it 
 would suffice to learn the great or most important functions of the human 
 system. such as those by which we convert our nutriment into blood, 
 and, distributing this to the various parts of the body, form from it the 
 various solid and fluid substances ; those by which we carry off the useless 
 materials by the various emmictories ; those by which we recognize the 
 exUtence and qualities of the material things around us; and those by 
 which we perform the voluntary motions. To these might be added the 
 changes which the body and mind undergo from infancy to old age, the 
 mutual influence of the mind and body on each other, and perhaps some 
 others. 
 
 A general acquaintance with the matters thus described, which might be 
 illustrated by demonstrations to a very limited extent on brute animals and 
 plants, could, I think, easily be communicated to young people from four- 
 teen to sixteen years of age. But this instruction in physiology would not 
 be enough. It should be followed by instruction in hygiene. This is the 
 branch of medical science which regards the preservation of health and 
 the attainment of long life. Rules on this subject may be given to those
 
 160 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 who are ignorant of physiology ; but the subject can be presented much 
 more advantageously to those who are not ignorant of it. 
 
 The advantages of such instruction as we have in view may be doubted 
 by many persons. I would not exaggerate those advantages, nor hold out 
 expectations which may be disappointed. I should not look for a marked 
 change in the habits of society in any short time. But, as knowledge of 
 this kind becomes diffused in the community, there would probably be an 
 increased desire for it ; many of the thoughtful would continue to study the 
 matter as they were growing up; and future mothers, at least, would be 
 anxious to apply their learning for the benefit of their children. If they 
 would do this successfully, the generations winch are to follow us would be 
 rising in the scale of physical well-being at least. I say physical well-being 
 at least ; but I have a full conviction that there would be some corresponding 
 moral improvement. The tendency of physical health, attained by well- 
 trained habits, must, I think, promote that manliness, that virtue, which en- 
 ables men to keep in the paths of rectitude. There would be fewer of those 
 deviations which one excuses to himself by saying he could not help it. 
 At any rate, some of the evils of life might be mitigated or averted. 
 Meanwhile, the studies proposed connect themselves readily with other 
 branches of natural history. How useful, how beneficial to the mind, are 
 all branches of natural history, I need not say to you. Perhaps I owe you 
 an apology for having been led off so much from the immediate object of 
 your inquiry. 
 
 I am, dear sir, with sincere respect, 
 
 Your friend and servant, 
 
 JAMES JACKSON. 
 6,1842. 
 
 LETTER FROM DR. S. B. WOODWARD. 
 
 STATE LCTNATIC HOSPITAL, WORCESTER, 
 
 Jan. 2, 1843. 
 HON. HORACE MANN. 
 
 Dear Sir, I have received your late letter, and improve the earliest 
 opportunity to reply. 
 
 From the cradle to the grave, we suffer punishment for the violation of 
 the laws of health and life. 
 
 In infancy, mismanagement, arising from ignorance or neglect of these 
 laws, not only destroys many lives, but impairs the health of thousands who 
 survive, gives bad development to organs essential to life, and entails the 
 elements of disease and death upon them. 
 
 The more common errors are, bandaging the body and limbs, neglect
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 161 
 
 of cleanliness, hot beds, hot and ill-ventilated apartments, bad clothing, 
 covering some parts too much and too closely, and others too little or not 
 at all ; bad food, too much feeding:, and especially administering 1 drugs for 
 those slight indispositions which, in a short time, would be removed with- 
 out remedies, &c. Thus the infant is subjected to suffering, to disease and 
 death, before it is responsible for a single error. 
 
 The exposures, imprudences, and evil habits of the young are the causes 
 of many of the diseases of that period of life, particularly of CONSUMPTION, 
 the great destroyer of this most interesting portion of the human family. 
 Many of the victims of this disease have an hereditary predisposition trans- 
 mitted from parents, and also feel the influence of a neglect of proper 
 training in the periods of infancy and childhood. 
 
 As far as I have known, the educated and wealthy classes of society 
 manage their children with less regard to the natural laws of life than the 
 common-sense yeomanry of the country. They are less healthy, less robust, 
 and die prematurely in greater proportion. 
 
 The former restrain from active pursuits, and pamper appetite too much, 
 often preferring delicacy of appearance to vigor of health ; and by this 
 mistake they bring suffering and disease upon their offspring, which is felt 
 in all after-life. 
 
 The latter, by encouraging activity, and simplicity of diet, insure for their 
 children vigorous health, a power of repelling the causes of disease, and of 
 throwing off disease when it attacks them. 
 
 Considering the many errors which we adopt, and adhere to in life ; the 
 many imprudences of which we arc guilty ; the hazards we run, and the 
 exposures which we voluntary make, which are rash and unnecessary, it is 
 not surprising that a large proportion of our suffering, and the premature 
 deaths which take place in the community, are ascribable to violations 
 of the natural laws of life and health. 
 
 Death" from old age is rare. Many of the aged die of acute disease, 
 which almost always arises from imprudent exposure, and violation of the 
 laws of health. Many such persons have sufficient general vigor to hold 
 out much longer than is common ; but the ravages of disease upon one 
 organ destroys its functions, the system succumbs to local causes, and 
 death follows. 
 
 I have no doubt that half the evils of life, and half the deaths that 
 occur among mankind, arise from ignorance of these natural laws, and 
 that a thorough knowledge of them would diminish the sufferings incident 
 to our present state of being in very nearly the same proportion. 
 
 Yours very respectfully, 
 
 S. B. WOODWABD. 
 11
 
 162 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 LETTER FROM DR. EDWARD JARVIS. 
 
 COXCORD, MASS., 13th December, 1842. 
 To THE Hox. HORACE MANN. 
 
 My dear Sir, Yours of September I received in due time, requesting 
 my opinion of the proportions of disease caused by ignorance of our organi- 
 zation and physical powers, or from neglect of this knowledge. My records 
 and data on which I could found a more accurate opinion are in Kentucky ; 
 and therefore I have hesitated until now to give any answer. 
 
 From an observation of thirteen years, I have been led to believe that 
 three-fourtlis, perhaps more, of the ailments of men come from a want of 
 sufficient knowledge of their frame, or a disregard for it. 
 
 Considering how men are educated to view life, the body, its organs 
 and powers, and their relation to external nature, it is not at all surpris- 
 ing that this should be so. Out of the ignorance of anatomy and physi- 
 ology have grown two radical errors : 
 
 1st. The body, its faculties and powers, are supposed to have an indefi- 
 nite capacity of endurance, both of use and abuse; and hence have arisen 
 innumerable disorders. 
 
 2d. Diseases, derangements, injuries, are, in some way or other, supposed 
 to be the direct acts of Providence, moving in a mysterious way, and not to 
 come from human agency, from our neglect or misuse of Heaven's gifts. 
 
 " Diseases are thy servants, Lord; 
 They come at thy command," 
 
 is more than an adjuration of the pious poet ; it is too much a common 
 faith : and therefore we are not taught to use the means in our hands, nor 
 made to feel our own responsibility for the preservation of our health. 
 
 To say nothing of those disorders that come from dissipation, I believe 
 that the whole chapter of accidental injuries is caused by violation of the 
 natural laws, through ignorance often, through temerity oftener, and, in 
 most cases, for want of that care which is usually given to the preservation 
 of property. 
 
 The ordinary diseases of the human body, fever, consumption and in- 
 flammations, and derangements of the digestive apparatus, nervous system, 
 &c., though not so palpably the consequences of the violations of the laws 
 of our members as what are called accidents, yet I doubt not that most 
 of them can be charged remotely or directly to these errors. 
 
 The earth was given us by a generous Providence for our habitation. 
 Our organs and their functions, and the necessities of our frames, are per- 
 fectly fitted to external nature. Between the wants of the animal body and 
 the elements there is a beautiful harmony. For every need of our organs 
 or our life, God has created an abundant supply. Some of these things
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 163 
 
 arc supplied to us all ready fov use, as the air for the lungs and respira- 
 tion, the light for the eye, the water for drink ; other things are given us in 
 the raw material, unfit for use. But then we have intellect given us to per- 
 ceive the powers and worth of these, and their convertibility to such shapes 
 or combinations as our bodies may require. We have also hands to do this 
 work ; and thus lias our beneficent Creator provided for our clothing, our 
 shelter, our food, and our exercise. So far, mere life is maintained. But 
 this is clone in the best manner by the use of every faculty and organ ; for 
 the exercise of every one of these is not only necessary for its own develop- 
 ment, but for the health and energy of all the rest. 
 
 By the faithful and discreet use of all these means and powers, by not 
 corrupting the air we breathe nor the water we drink ; by suiting our food 
 exactly to our powers of digestion and to the wants of nutrition ; by 
 adopting our clothing precisely to the temperature, and the power of the 
 body to sustain atmospheric changes ; by protecting ourselves, by house 
 and by fire, from the elements ; by a proper exercise of all our faculties, 
 neither timid nor rash, neither abusing nor exhausting them, nor letting 
 them rust from neglect, we may probably live to a good old age, and avoid 
 many, if not most, diseases. Certainly we may thus escape all accidents, 
 and very materially prolong life on earth. 
 
 This requires much study and continual observation, 
 
 1st. To understand the structure of our bodies. 
 
 2d. To know the relations of our organs to the external world. 
 
 3d. To learn the use and extent of our faculties. 
 
 Herein lies our fundamental deficiency. We want the proper knowledge 
 to begin with, and a habit of observation afterwards. Consequently, we have 
 a world full of almost innumerable diseases, and premature death comes 
 upon most men. Hence, in Boston, from 1811 to 1839, instead of holding 
 on in a life of vigor until finished by the exhaustion of old age, from thirty- 
 three to forty-three per cent of the population died before they passed their 
 fifth year ; and less than seven out of one hundred reached their three- 
 score and ten. In Concord, twenty-two per cent died under five years, 
 and eighteen in every hundred passed their seventieth year. The average 
 duration of life for the last thirteen years was only thirty-seven years and 
 five months ; and even this period was far from being a perfect life, for the 
 whole catalogue of diseases was fastened upon this brief earthly space. 
 
 A careful observation shows how this happens, considering the complicated 
 structure of our bodies, the almost infinite variety of circumstances that may 
 affect them for good or for evil, and the perpetual necessity of adapting the 
 material, the support and food of life, to our organization. I believe that 
 men give less time to the study of the laws that govern these matters than 
 they do to the regulations of their animals or their machinery, which con- 
 tribute to their profit or pleasure. 
 
 I can explain this better by examples.
 
 164 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 I was long in the habit of attending, in way of my profession, upon the 
 family of a very sagacious farmer. He always lived with his eyes open, and 
 was a keen observer of every thing but his own frame. Hence he was very 
 successful in raising pigs and managing cattle. He carefully watched the 
 effects of the food, and varied it to suit the appetite and health of his animals. 
 Meal, potatoes, corn, pumpkins, boiled or raw, mixed in every proportion, 
 or singly, were prepared and changed, just as he saw that the hogs would 
 thrive the best and fatten the fastest. Hay, corn, oats, meal, roots, cut-hay, 
 these were given to his oxen and horses according as he noticed the effects 
 on their strength, spirit, and power of endurance. For these purposes, he 
 had no fixed principles or inflexible habits ; but his daily observation of 
 the effects of food was his law of permanence or change. 
 
 He told me once, rather incidentally than otherwise, that for a year or two 
 he had suffered much from heart-burn, or acid stomach. He felt it some 
 after breakfast, and so much after dinner as to impair his energies, and some- 
 times so severely as to prevent the possibility of labor. On some days this 
 was very distressing. But he very rarely had this pain in the evening. On 
 inquiry, I discovered that he ate brown (rye and Indian corn) bread for break- 
 fast, and the same more plentifully for dinner ; but for supper he ate wheaten 
 bread. Occasionally, he had Indian-pudding at noon, and then his stomach 
 suffered the most distress. The same attention to the effects of his own diet 
 that he gave to the effects of their food on his cattle and hogs would have 
 detected this error in its very beginning, and might have saved him many 
 months of suffering. But, when I proposed the change, he hardly compre- 
 hended the necessity. 
 
 I know of some men who make it a rule to work their horses at the top 
 of their strength, using them only in their fullest flesh and spirit, and resting 
 them before much fatigued. But they work themselves at the bottom of their 
 strength. If they rest, it is only when nearly or quite exhausted; and they 
 return to action as soon as they gather power to crawl to their labor. 
 
 There are two opposite principles or notions somewhat common, both 
 warring against health, interfering with the vital energies, and rendering 
 the human frame more or less susceptible of disease. 
 
 First. There is a sort of stoicism relative to food, labor, and self-sacri- 
 fice. Men under the influence of this feeling eat every thing that is set 
 before them, of whatever kind, and however prepared, whether it suits 
 their digestive powers or not. To think any food that is offered them is 
 indigestible, and therefore unsuitable to them, to request any change on 
 their account, savors to them of childish fault-finding, and of unmanly self- 
 ishness. With the same feeling, they go through every variety of labor and 
 exposure to which business or pleasure, duty or kindness, may call them. 
 Through fatigue, through severe cold, storm, or heat, they run and toil, for- 
 getful of the animal machinery by which they move, and regardless of the 
 influence of the elements or over-action upon it. Of course, these feelings
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 165 
 
 and habits must open the way to digestive disturbance in some, and to colds, 
 rheumatisms, fevers, &c., in others. 
 
 Second. There is often precisely the reverse feeling, a selfish regard to 
 appetite and comfort. Governed by this, some eat more for appetite than for 
 nourishment. They regard good eating, but not good digestion. They 
 swallow crudities, perverse cookeries, and absurd mixtures, provided these 
 please the palate ; but the poor stomach is forgotten. Others err by the 
 quantity of their food : they thus over-tax their digestive powers, and often 
 derange them. If not this, they are stupid and sleepy after eating ; their 
 activity of life is for the time suspended, because all the nervous energies 
 are absorbed in aid of the over-tasked stomach. 
 
 The selfish regard to personal comfort, which avoids the exercise of some 
 or of many of the organs or powers, and thereby leaves them feeble ; which 
 abhors the ordinary exposures, and thus renders the body incapable of en- 
 during the changes of temperature which it must sometimes meet, this, 
 in various ways, disarms the system of much of its vital energy, prevents 
 the full development of life, and reduces the power of resistance to those 
 influences which are apt to engender disease. 
 
 There is one other important evil following from this ignorance of the 
 laws of health ; that is, a total misconception of the nature and location 
 of disease, and, therefore, a want of a guide to the way and means of re- 
 covery ; and many, in attempting to attain this, carry their bodies through 
 all sorts of experiments, even those of an opposite nature, to cure the same 
 disorder. On the other hand, every sort of disorder is submitted to the same 
 experiment, as if every possible combination of derangement and of remcdy 
 would produce one and the same result of health and strength. Hence arises 
 quackery, which is the natural fruit of popular ignorance upon the subject 
 in which it pretends to operate. 
 
 One man advertises that all diseases arc primarily in the blood, and for 
 this state of things he has a certain remedy. He finds many people, with all 
 kinds of ailments, to believe him ; and they gladly try his method upon them- 
 selves. Another rises, and declares that all diseases originate in the liver, and 
 straight the former patients change their faith : with no change of symptoms 
 or evidence, they suddenly cease to believe their various derangements come 
 from the blood, and become convinced that they proceed from the liver, and 
 take the corresponding medicine. From the liver to the stomach, from 
 the stomach to the nerves, their ignorant credulity bandies about their 
 fickle faith, while their poor frames endure all the trials of ignorance, and 
 their impoverishing purses pay all the cost. 
 
 The remedy for all tin's is in a better education. If our people were as 
 well taught the organization of their bodies as they are the structure of a 
 clock or a wagon; if they understood the uses, powers, and limits of the 
 animal frame as well as they do the objects and capacities of machinery, 
 they would make a much more faithful use of their health and strength, and 
 save themselves from many diseases.
 
 166 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 For this purpose, our children should be taught in school the law of their 
 members, as early and as carefully as they are taught geography or philoso- 
 phy. Anatomy and physiology should be studied, not as barren facts, but 
 as a law for their government. They should have it impressed upon them 
 as a conscientious duty to take care of their health, to develop and preserve 
 their powers of life in their fullest energy. They should feel that they have 
 no more right to impair or diminish or pervert or waste this life by negli- 
 gence, by misuse, or by over-exertion, and thus commit fractional and grad- 
 ual suicide, than they have to put an end to it by a blow in complete suicide. 
 Both of these are violations of the same law of society, of nature, and reli- 
 gion. They differ in degree, but not in kind. 
 
 Every child, then, should be first taught the nature of his own bodily ma- 
 chine, and the relation of this to external objects. Then he should be made 
 to feel a conscientious responsibility for its faithful use. Upon himself it 
 must depend whether this shall give him the highest uninterrupted pleasure, 
 or the greatest pain ; whether it supply him with wealth more than all 
 other means, or involve him in hopeless poverty. 
 
 Very truly and respectfully yours, 
 
 EDWARD JARVIS. 
 
 LETTER FROM DR. M. S. PERRY. 
 
 BOSTON, Oct. 25, 1842. 
 
 DEAR SIR, I received your letter of Sept. 23, in which you propound 
 to me the following question : " In the present state of the science of 
 phvsiology, how great a propon ion of suffering, of disease, of a diminution 
 of the physical capacity of usefulness, and of the abridgment of life, comes 
 from sheer ignorance, and which, therefore, we might hope to see averted if 
 the community had that degree of knowledge which is easily attainable by 
 all ? " 
 
 To this question, I regret to say, I cannot give any definite answer ; but 
 I have taken pains to record the exciting causes of disease (as far as they 
 could be ascertained) in fifty case;; which have come under my care since I 
 received your letter, and in twenty-live more which, within the last two 
 months, have entered the Massachusetts General Hospital. These last were 
 recorded by the resident student. Some of those that came under my care 
 were children ; but I thought I would take fifty successive cases without ref- 
 erence to age. Those that entered the hospital were adults. 
 
 The result is, that more than half of the fifty cases were induced by 
 causes which might have been avoided if the individuals had understood the 
 laws of health ; for I may safely say that not one of them did understand 
 those laws.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 167 
 
 The cause of sickness in fourteen of the cases received at the hospital 
 was ascertained. They were exposure to wet and cold, fatigue, and want 
 of exercise. Of the other cases, whose cause was not known, it is but fair 
 to suppose, from the nature of the diseases, that more than half of them 
 arose from similar causes. Allowing this supposition to be correct, we shall 
 have more than three-quarters of the twenty-five patients made sick by causes 
 which might have been avoided if they had possessed the requisite knowl- 
 edge, and been placed under circumstances where they could have applied 
 it. 
 
 I think a large majority of the patients that come under the care of physi- 
 cians are made sick from the following causes : Exposure to atmospheric 
 changes, excess in eating and drinking, fatigue, impure air, and want of ex- 
 ercise. Now, in order to avoid these exciting causes of disease, an individual 
 should not only understand the laws of physiology, but the influence of 
 physical and moral agents. Important as these subjects are, I will ven- 
 ture to say that not one individual in a hundred amongst us does under- 
 stand them ; and if you can direct the attention of the community to them, 
 and induce them to introduce the study of these sciences into our Public 
 Schools, you will confer a great blessing upon the present and future gen- 
 erations. 
 
 It is generally supposed that there has been, within the last few years, a 
 decrease in the annual mortality in this city. But in a paper lately written 
 by S. Shattuck, Esq., on the vital statistics of Boston, he says, " The average 
 value of life is greater now than during the last century, but not as great as 
 it was twenty years ago. It was at its maximum from 1811 to 1820 ; and, 
 since that time, it has somewhat decreased." He also says, " It is a melan- 
 choly fact, and one which should arrest the attention of all, that forty-three per 
 cent, or maiiij one-half, of all the deaths which have taken place within the last 
 nine years, are of persons under nine years of age ; and the proportional mortality 
 of this age has been increasing." 
 
 W. R. Gray, Esq., in a paper published in tho last number of "The Statis- 
 tical Journal," says that the rate of annual mortality has increased in Eng- 
 land, since 1820, ten per cent, and probably twelve and a half. These facts 
 show the importance of directing public attention to the causes of disease, in 
 order, if possible, to avert a still greater annual increase of suffering and 
 death. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 M. S. PERRY. 
 HORACE MANX, ESQ. 
 
 This list of authorities might be indefinitely extended. Many 
 personal interviews with eminent members of the medical pro- 
 fession have confirmed my belief in the above conclusions. But,
 
 168 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 to any one who understands even the more obvious principles 
 of physiology, the evidence which is inherent in the nature of 
 the subject supersedes the necessity of extrinsic proof. Yet 
 thousands of the more advanced scholars in our schools are 
 engaged in studying geometry and algebra, rhetoric and dec- 
 lamation, Latin and Greek, while this life-knoivledge is neg- 
 lected. Having passed through our Public Schools, through 
 select schools and academies, without ever having had their 
 attention turned to the great science of health and life, our 
 young men and women, who are, or who are soon to be, the 
 fathers and mothers of the next generation, devote their leisure 
 time to the reading of novels and the other bubble literature of 
 the day, and neglect that knowledge on which so much of person- 
 al and almost all of domestic happiness and hopes are so obvi- 
 ously founded. In the fallacious tranquillity of ignorance, per- 
 nicious indulgences are yielded to, indispensable observances 
 are omitted, Tinhealthful habits are formed ; and, as the inevi- 
 table consequence, debility or sickness ensues, old age is ante- 
 dated, feeble parents are succeeded by feebler children, the 
 lineage dwindles and tapers from less to less, the cradle and 
 swaddling-clothes are frequently converted into the coffin and 
 the shroud, occasional contributions are sent off to deformity, 
 to idiocy, and to insanity, until, sooner or later, after incredible 
 sufferings, abused and outraged Nature, finding all her com- 
 mandments broken, her admonitions unheeded, and her punish- 
 ments contemned, applies to the offending family her sovereign 
 remedy of extinction. 
 
 Considering, then, the paramount importance of this subject, 
 it seems to me desirable that it should be commended to the 
 favor of the public, not merely by argument and the authority 
 of distinguished names, but by a presentation of some of its 
 leading and most essential doctrines. The duty of prescribing 
 text-books, and of regulating the studies in our schools, is de- 
 volved by the Legislature upon the school committees. These 
 committees are chosen annually by the people. The people, 
 then, are to be reached, not by coercion of law, but by per-
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 1G9 
 
 suasion and conviction. And I am so well satisfied that the 
 people of Massachusetts are competent to understand and appre- 
 ciate the preponderating merits of this study, and that, to en- 
 sure it priority over any and all others of the higher branches 
 pursued in our schools, it only needs to have its claims pre- 
 sented before the tribunal of an intelligent public opinion, that 
 I propose to occupy the residue of this Report with a brief 
 outline of the more obvious principles of physiological science, 
 and of their practical bearing upon the great interest? of health 
 and life. 
 
 What we are accustomed to call the Human System is a 
 variety of systems. It is not one, but many. Between these 
 different systems, there is the most remarkable diversity of ap- 
 pearance, structure, functions, uses ; yet all are harmoniously 
 associated together for the formation of a complex whole. 
 
 1. In the first place, as a foundation and framework for all 
 the rest, there is the Osseous or Bony System, consisting of 
 about two hundred and forty different pieces. A great portion 
 of these are levers. They are adapted to raise weights, or to 
 overcome other resistances. Had the farmer and the manufac- 
 turer, or the mechanic of any kind, a mind properly instructed 
 on this subject, how elevating and delightful it would be for 
 them to trace analogies and resemblances between the labo- 
 riously-wrought utensils and instruments which they use, and 
 those similar but more perfect instruments, which, by the be- 
 nevolence of God, grow unconsciously into symmetry and 
 strength, and operate with such precision and celerity in their 
 own bodies and limbs ! 
 
 Some of our bones are not levers, but defences ; and some 
 serve the double purpose of a defence for what they contain, 
 and as a centre of motion for some other parts ; yet all of these 
 grow where they are needed, of the requisite size, form, solidi- 
 ty, strength, without oversight or direction of ours, so that, 
 when we wake up to consciousness of our formation (if we 
 ever do wake up to that consciousness), there we find these 
 solid portions of our frame, each fitted to its appropriate place,
 
 170 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 and each performing its assigned duty, according to the benevo- 
 lent intentions of its Divine Architect. 
 
 2. There is the Muscular System. This is wholly different 
 from the osseous or bony. The oue is solid and almost unbend- 
 ing ; the other pliant, flexible, elastic. The muscles are fas- 
 tened at each end to some bone, or some organ intended to be 
 moved by them. They all have the power of contracting them- 
 selves, that is, of diminishing their own length ; and, by so 
 doing, they bring their extremities nearer together, and thus 
 cause motion. If the bone to which one end of a muscle is 
 attached is a fixed point, then the whole motion is communi- 
 cated to the organ or part to which the other end is fastened. 
 Such is the case with the muscles of the eye, one end being 
 attached to an immovable bone, and the other to some part of 
 l.he eye-ball ; and thus all its variety of motions, whether to 
 the right or left, upwards, downwards, or obliquely, are effect- 
 ed. The infant uses all these muscles, and is excited to emo- 
 tions of wonder and delight by the visible objects which 
 surround him, before he knows that he has either an organ of 
 vision, or muscles to direct it. This is not to be wondered at ; 
 but it is to be wondered at, that so many persons go through a 
 long life as ignorant as an infant of these beautiful facts. In 
 the human body, there are said to be between four hundred and 
 forty and four hundred and fifty different muscles. With these, 
 all the myriads of different motions of which we are capable are 
 performed. The muscles overlay, interlace, and cross each 
 other in all directions ; and yet so admirable is their arrange- 
 ment, and so exquisite the skill with which they are fitted to 
 play upon each other, that their whole work is done without 
 perceptible friction and in absolute silence. What machine or 
 mill made by the art of man, consisting of more than four hun- 
 dred bauds or cords, moving more than two hundred solid 
 pieces, and having the requisite number of joints and pullies, 
 was ever so skilfully constructed as to move inaudibly for fifty 
 or seventy years? In the most rapid and dexterous operation 
 which an artisan ever performs ; when the tool, which he grasps
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 171 
 
 in one hand to fashion the material which he holds in the other, 
 moves with such velocity as almost to elude eye-sight, neither 
 the tool nor the material has half the motions, which, at the 
 same time, are taking place in the muscles of the eye and hand 
 of the operator. Yet the work of man we admire, while, our 
 whole lives long, we regard with stupid indifference the work 
 of the Creator. 
 
 3. Next in order may be mentioned the Nervous System. 
 Of this system, the grand, central body is the brain, which is a 
 mass or congeries of nervous matter. The brain sends off 
 nerves to each of the five senses, and to every part of the body. 
 The pairs of nerves which go to the eye, the ear, and the or- 
 gans of taste and smell, pass to their points of destination by 
 the shortest convenient route. Through these media the mind 
 holds intercourse with the external world. It is along these 
 lines of communication that impressions from outward objects 
 are transmitted inward, and that each different property of 
 color, sound, odor, taste, makes itself perceived in the dark and 
 silent chambers of the brain. A few years ago an apparatus 
 was invented in England, which consisted of bundles of metallic 
 wires, several miles in length, each wire being carefully wound 
 round with some covering impenetrable to moisture, and the 
 whole placed under ground to secure them from injury. At 
 each extremity of these wires there was a system of correspond- 
 ing signs ; and the apparatus was so adjusted, that, by means 
 of galvanism, any motion produced at one end of the train 
 would write out its corresponding and intelligible sign at the 
 other. In this way, information could be communicated along 
 the whole track with the speed of lightning. The invention 
 attracted great attention from the learned. Something of the 
 kind has lately been projected in this country ; and perhaps, at 
 a future period, it may be improved, and applied to purposes 
 of practical utility. But what is this compared with the optic 
 nerve, which, although only two or three inches in length, 
 makes known to us the existence of objects, however magnifi- 
 cent or minute, with all their variety and splendor of coloring,
 
 172 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 alike whether they are within the reach of our fingers, or 
 whether they are stars in the depths of immensity ? Yet we 
 accord our admiration to the mechanism of man, but, through 
 general ignorance and stupidity, withhold it from the infinitely 
 greater skill of the Maker of man. 
 
 With what a variety of sounds does the nerve of hearing 
 a little soft cord two inches long, and not larger than a straw 
 make us acquainted ! No arithmetic can compute the num- 
 ber of sounds which come from the hum or chirp of insects ; 
 from the song of birds ; from the occupations, the speech, or 
 the music of men ; from the voices of animals ; from trees and 
 streams ; from the ocean and the air ; and yet with what facil- 
 ity and distinctness does this bit of nervous matter communi- 
 cate the whole to the mind, so that we can readily assort or un- 
 ravel these sounds, and refer each to its true origin ! and all 
 this is effected without any artificial change of stops or keys. 
 
 If we admire a single instrument of many strings, or a ca- 
 thedral organ with its many pipes, what ought we to think of 
 that minute contrivance, the ear, which, within a space of less 
 than one square inch, vibrates to every sound in the vast 
 orchestra of Nature ! 
 
 By far the largest branch of nerves which the brain sends 
 off passes down in the interior or hollow of the spinal column, 
 and is thence distributed to every part of the body. This 
 branching, or ramification, of the nerves is inconceivably minute. 
 They penetrate all parts of the frame, and stand as sentinels at 
 every point, to warn us of the approach of danger. There is 
 no spot on the surface of the body so minute that we can touch 
 it with the point of the sharpest needle, without striking we 
 know not how many of these nervous filaments, which imme- 
 diately give us notice of the aggression. In fineness, as com- 
 pared with the nerves, a spider's web or the thread of a silk- 
 worm is as cord or cable. 
 
 But the nerves which descend along the interior of the spine, 
 though alike to the eye, to the touch, or even to any chemical 
 test, are wholly different in their functions. That part of the
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 173 
 
 branch which occupies the posterior or back side of the column 
 is appropriated to the transmission of sensations to the mind. 
 They are the nerves through which we feel. Those, on the 
 other hand, which occupy the anterior or front side, are nerves 
 of motion, those by means of which we act or move. If the 
 nerves of motion were cut or broken off at any point, all parts 
 of the body below the point of separation would lose the power 
 of motion ; and, therefore, though the extremest pain from 
 laceration or burning were suffered in any part dependent on 
 those nerves, yet we should be unable to escape or withdraw 
 from it. On the other hand, if the nerves of sensation were 
 destroyed, our feet or hands might lie in the fire and be con- 
 sumed, without our feeling any sense of pain as a warning to 
 remove them. The rapidity with which communications are 
 made along these thoroughfares is amazing, being equalled only 
 by that of light, electricity, galvanism, or other of the impon- 
 derable bodies. If a man in a crowd feels the heel of another 
 beginning to press upon his foot, the intelligence is forwarded 
 to the brain along the nerves of sensation ; and forthwith an 
 order is despatched from the brain along the nerves of motion 
 for the removal of the foot out of harm's way. If the person 
 enjoys good health and has ordinary quickness, the infoi'rnation 
 will be transmitted to the brain, and the order sent back to the 
 foot in sufficient season to save it from injury. This process 
 takes place in all cases when the hand is exposed to be burned 
 by any heated substance, whether solid or fluid. The attention 
 of thousands has been arrested by the celerity of movement 
 with which the hand has been withdrawn from contact with a 
 basin of hot water or a hot shovel, who never knew or thought 
 of the wonderful mechanism by which, in the momentary inter- 
 val between the touch and the escape, a message had been sent 
 from the hand to the brain, delivered, considered, and an an- 
 swer, exactly adapted to the exigency of the case, forwarded to 
 the scene of action by another post-route, in season for the 
 removal of the endangered member. In the case of the jug- 
 gler, the tumbler, and the rope-dancer, with what inconceivable
 
 174 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 velocity and frequency must the couriers of the mind pass up 
 the nerves of sensation with their intelligence, and down the 
 nerves of motion with their orders ! 
 
 There is still a third set of nerves, which are connected with 
 the involuntary motions of the vital organs, with the beating 
 of the heart, with the motions of the stomach in digestion, of 
 the lungs in respiration, &c. 
 
 4. Again: there is the digestive system, by which the crude 
 and heterogeneous masses that are taken as food are broken 
 down and dissolved in such a manner, that they can be carried 
 by the circulatory system to every part of fae body, to be- 
 come, in one place, bone ; in another, muscle ; in another, brain ; 
 in others, hair or teeth or skin ; here to suffuse the cheek 
 with the beautiful hues of health, and there to light up the eye 
 with the fires of intelligence. 
 
 5. Another system is that of the blood-vessels, or of the 
 circulation. It was said above that no part of the surface of the 
 body could be pricked with the point of the finest needle, with- 
 out striking a nerve ; and this is equally true in regard to the 
 blood-vessels ; that is, both the nerves and the blood- ve>si- Is 
 lie so closely side by side, that a needle cannot find any unoc- 
 cupied space or interstice between them. Although the whole 
 blood of the system pours through the heart, and issues forth 
 from it into the aorta in one great stream, yet this stream is 
 afterwards so minutely subdivided as to reach every part of the 
 -body. Not the space of a pin's point is deprived of it ; for, if 
 the blood should cease to nourish any part, that part would im- 
 mediately perish with mortification. Hence the current must 
 have its winding passages, its arches, its culverts ; and, when it 
 reaches the bones, it must descend into them, as by subter- 
 ranean channels, to permeate and nourish their solid structure. 
 Nor does this process of circulation consist, as we are accus- 
 tomed to suppose, in the mere flowing round and round of the 
 same fluid. The blood carries nutritious particles as its freight, 
 and every point in the whole body is a port where it unlades 
 its treasures ; and, iu return, it receives the waste or used-up
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 175 
 
 particles, which every part of a healthy body is constantly 
 throwing off. 
 
 Besides all these there are the lungs, or the respiratory sys- 
 tem, the systems of absorbents, lymphatics, secretories, excre- 
 tories, &c., all going to make up that one mechanism, 
 which with brevity we call the human system. Physiologists 
 enumerate more than twenty of the elementary or compound 
 tissues of which the body is composed. 
 
 But what I mainly aim at here is to direct attention to the 
 differences which obtain amongst all these component parts, and, 
 therefore, to the necessity of some knowledge of each. How 
 entirely unlike each other, both in structure and function, are 
 the solid and fluid portions ! the bones and the blood, the 
 opaque muscle and the transparent humors of the eye, the vege- 
 tative and almost insentient hair, and the keenly living nerve, 
 the stomach which is the principal organ of digestion, and the 
 lungs which are the principal organs of respiration. One 
 thousandth part of what we daily take into the stomach would 
 kill us instantaneously if taken into the lungs. What is indis- 
 pensable to the lungs would extinguish life in a moment if 
 taken into the blood-vessels. And so of the rest. The truth 
 of practical importance to be noted here is, that each system 
 not only has its peculiar uses, but its peculiar diseases, and 
 therefore needs its peculiar care. The hard and cohesive bones 
 are liable to become either brittle or soft. The softer parts, 
 the heart, for instance, are liable to ossification, which is only 
 a bone made in a wrong place. The muscles are attacked by 
 rheumatism and spasms, the lungs by consumption, the liver 
 by hepatisis, and the digestive organs, which in this country are 
 abused more than any others, by a host of maladies greater than 
 any other. 
 
 Hence the necessity of our knowing each organ and its func- 
 tions ; for how can one wisely superintend a complicated ma- 
 chine who is only acquainted with one, or with but a few, of 
 its parts? All these various systems are brought together, 
 compacted, and harmonized into one. Within the narrow com-
 
 176 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 pass of our frames are collected, and placed side by side, all 
 contradictory and conflicting elements, earthy matter which 
 will not burn, and phosphorus Avhich takes fire by exposure to 
 the open air ; oil and water ; fire and water ; acid and alkali ; 
 solid and fluid ; vegetable and animal ; iron, and the oxygen 
 that corrodes it. And these are not only made to agree, but to 
 co-operate ; they are not merely tolerant of, but essential to, 
 each other. Each, however apparently hostile, is indispensable 
 to the well-being of all the rest. Such are the wonderful inge- 
 
 o O 
 
 nuity and marvellous adaptations of a mechanism, respecting 
 which, though our life and welfare are dependent upon it, we 
 are content to remain in profound ignorance. 
 
 What but an ignorance of the plurality of our vital organs 
 can account for the fact that men are so heedless of an attack 
 upon any one of them, because the rest are in a sound condi- 
 tion? An ambitious student thinks little of an over-excitement 
 of the brain, because, as he says, he is perfectly well in other 
 respects, his digestion is good, his lungs are sound, his mus- 
 cles are strong. But when the over-working of the brain 
 brings on inflammation, and this matures into insanity, of what 
 avail, then, is his good digestion, or his sound lungs, or his 
 strong muscles, but to render him a more formidable and de- 
 structive madman ? A mother is subject to colds and coughs ; 
 but her appetite is good, her nervous system is steady, and her 
 mind clear. Why should she be alarmed at occasional pains 
 in the side? But when successive exposures prolong a cold 
 into a permanent inflammation, and consumption follows, every 
 vital part, however vigorous before, must perish with the 
 lungs. And so of each of the many vital organs on which 
 life is dependent. We retain existence only on the condition 
 of taking care of them all. We talk about the seat of life, as 
 though the vital principle had some one fortress or citadel, by 
 the defence of which our existence would always be safe. But 
 life has no such one citadel ; or, if it has, it is assailable through 
 a hundred gates, at any one of which death may enter and 
 expel it.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 177 
 
 The various systems of the body are not only designed to 
 work harmoniously together, but, in a healthy ami proper child, 
 they are endued with proportionate and corresponding ener- 
 gies : they are pre-adapted to last and to work for equal 
 periods of time. The stomach was not made to last for ten 
 years, and then to break down, the lungs for twenty, the heart 
 for thirty, and the brain for forty or fifty, and so on ; but an iden- 
 tical term of existence was imparted to all, so that they might 
 run on in the race of life together, and come simultaneously to 
 their goal. Yet, owing to our ignorance and mismanagement of 
 ourselves, and especially to the mismanagement of children by 
 ignorant parents, one or another of these great vital organs is 
 destroyed while the rest are in comparative health and vigor ; 
 or some two organs, by different abuses, incur diseases which 
 require incompatible remedies, so that what is done to cure the 
 disease of one aggravates that of the other. Not one individ- 
 ual in a hundred, in our times, dies of old age, that is, after 
 each of the vital powers has expended its quantum of force, 
 and when the whole sink together to a peaceful close. In more 
 than ninety-nine cases in every hundred, death is a terrible 
 struggle between the vital energy of a majority of the organs, 
 which cling with strong tenacity to life, and the fierce disease 
 or premature decay of some other, which drags them reluctant 
 and resisting down to the grave. Thus are the value and pro- 
 ductive force of the healthful organs annihilated and lost. A 
 business partnership or corporation may be dissolved, and each 
 of its constituent members may enter some other sphere of 
 industry to provide support for a dependent family, or to add 
 something to the common weal. But, in this partnership of 
 the vital powers, the withdrawing of any one partner causes 
 not only a dissolution of the firm, but the death of all the other 
 members. There is no survivorship. If one perishes, all 
 perish. How often do we see this exemplified, when, from the 
 decay of some one only of the vital powers, a clergyman, who 
 is a minister of religious consolation and hope to his people, is 
 removed in the prime of his life and in the midst of his use- 
 
 12
 
 178 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 fulness ; or a mother, on whose counsel and guidance a family 
 of children are leaning for support, sinks to an untimely grave ; 
 or a statesman, upon whose life the welfare of millions seemed 
 to hang, is hurried prematurely to the tomb ! In such cases 
 we ungratefully and impiously attribute the event to the inter- 
 ference of our heavenly Father, when we might as well em- 
 bark all our treasures, our friends, and our family, on board a 
 ship which had some one fatal defect, and because she foundered 
 in the first gale, or was dashed to pieces on the nearest rocks, 
 throw the responsibility upon Heaven for not having suspended 
 the laws of Nature to save us from the consequences of our 
 own folly. Why did our Creator give us these faculties of in- 
 quiry, of forethought, of prevention, if we are not to use 
 them? And what the necessity of our using them, if he were 
 always to stand by, and rescue us from the effects of our pre- 
 meditated fool-hardiness? The possession of the power is 
 accompanied by the obligation to use it ; that is, to learn and 
 to obey the wise and beneficent laws of the Creator. His lan- 
 guage in regard to the physical law seems to be the same as 
 in regard to the moral, that it is easier for heaven and earth 
 to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail. 
 
 The first developed power of the infant is that of taking the 
 food, which is to be metamorphosed into the tissues of its 
 body, to be turned, by the transforming power of the organs, 
 from dead substance into living and sentient material. The 
 main preparation of food for the purpose of nutrition is effected 
 in the stomach. The stomach is an organ of curious construc- 
 tion, and it is endowed with astonishing properties. Its appear- 
 ance is simply that of an oval or oblong sac, or bag, suspended 
 across the body from left to right, just below the diaphragm, 
 and a little below midway of the trunk, the largest end 
 being situated on the left side of the body. It is separated 
 from the heart and lungs only by the diaphragm. On the 
 upper side of the stomach, and towards the left, there is an 
 opening, where the food which we swallow is received ; and 
 at its other extremity, on the right, another opening, through
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 179 
 
 which the food, when properly digested, passes out. If the 
 stomach had no property beyond that of a common bag or ves- 
 sel made of cloth or skin, it is obvious that it would hold, in a 
 quiescent state, whatever was poured into it, except so far as 
 motion might be communicated to its contents from without. 
 But it is indispensable, for the purposes of digestion, that the 
 food taken into the stomach should be kept in constant motion ; 
 otherwise the solid and heaviest particles would sink to the 
 bottom, the lightest would float upon the top, and their specific 
 gravities would be their law of arrangement. But, without 
 continual agitation, the simplest food could no more be turned 
 into chyme (which is its condition when it passes out of that 
 organ) than cream could be turned into butter without that 
 agitation which we call churning. And could the food be 
 ever so well digested, yet, without this motion, how could it be 
 thrown out afterwards? The stomach is therefore endued with 
 the power of spontaneous or involuntary motion. Food is the 
 natural excitant of this motion. Hence, in every healthy 
 stomach, as soon as food enters it, motion is commenced, and 
 is continued until digestion is completed, and its contents, in 
 the form of chyme, are discharged. To effect this motion, the 
 stomach possesses two distinct sets of muscular coats, each coat 
 consisting of fibres which pass around, respectively, in opposite 
 directions. Suppose an egg, instead of a hard shell, to have a 
 soft skin, and suppose this skin to consist of two sets of mus- 
 cular fibres, one of which should run around it from the large 
 end to the small one, while the other set should run round in 
 the opposite direction, that is, in the line of the shortest cir- 
 cumference. If the longer fibres of this covering should con- 
 tract (and it has been before mentioned that the power of 
 contraction, or shortening themselves, is the property of all 
 muscles), it is obvious that the egg would be made more 
 nearly round, and its contents compressed from the ends to- 
 wards the middle. If, then, these longer fibres should relax, 
 and the shorter ones contract, the egg would be elongated ; 
 the contents being pressed outwards towards the ends. Now
 
 180 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 these sets of fibres might be so alternately contracted and 
 relaxed as to drive the contents of the egg round and round, 
 from side to side, and from end to end. And such is the struc- 
 ture and action of the stomach. 
 
 These motions of the stomach are primarily necessary for 
 the purpose of mingling with the food a certain ingredient 
 which is indispensable to digestion. This ingredient is a fluid, 
 and is called the gastric juice. It is effused or exuded from the 
 mucous membrane or inner coat of the stomach. For the pro- 
 cess of digestion there is no substitute for this fluid, nor has 
 any thing like it ever been prepared by the art of man. Boil- 
 ing in water, for any length of time, will not digest food. 
 Roasting, baking, the action of fire in any form, or of steam, 
 or of any chemical solvents, will not accomplish the object. 
 So far as we know, there is but one agent in the world which 
 has this power, and but one place where that agent is found. 
 That agent is the gastric juice, and the stomach the place of its 
 preparation. 
 
 As soon as a mouthful of solid food is received into this or- 
 gan, its flexible sides immediately contract upon it ; and, if not 
 interfered with by having another mouthful forced in too soon, 
 they clasp it, and hold it for the space of a minute. By this 
 clasping movement, the gastric juice is shed out or expressed, 
 and then, by the motion of the food round and round, the juice 
 is intimately mingled with its whole mass. Important practi- 
 cal rules will, by and by, be deduced from these arrangements 
 of Nature. 
 
 The natural food of the infant being milk, and this being a 
 fluid, it is obvious that the above-described motions of the mus- 
 cular coats can propel it round and round until each drop of 
 it is brought into contact with the gastric juice, by whose agency 
 and mixture it is coagulated. This is the first step in the pro- 
 cess of its digestion. Yet so ignorant of this fact are many 
 mothers, that, when an infant throws up a little curd from the 
 stomach, they take it as a sign of sickness, and hastily adminis- 
 ter an emetic.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 181 
 
 Bnt what shall be done when the child begins to require 
 more solid food, bread, meat, fruit, vegetables? The coats 
 of the stomach, which are softer and more flexible than wash- 
 leather, remain as before. The inner surfaces of this organ do 
 not now become harder to correspond with the more solid food 
 received. They are not converted into a triturating apparatus, 
 like the gizzard of a fowl, for the purpose of breaking down 
 and grinding the solid food which the system is now prepared 
 to assimilate. Nor is this organ suddenly provided with any 
 cracking machine, like that of a lobster, by which hard bodies 
 shells or bones can be pulverized and adapted to the wants 
 of the system. What corresponding provision, then, has Nature 
 made to meet the new wants of its child? 
 
 Simultaneously with the period when the body requires more 
 concentrated aliment, and the stomach is prepared to receive 
 substances of a firmer texture, the teeth appear. Whoever 
 knows the structure of the stomach, and therefore its inability 
 for effecting the minute mechanical division of any hard, tena- 
 cious, or cohesive material, can have no doubt as to the neces- 
 sity and proper function of the teeth. And here is the first 
 great sin against the laws of health, committed, with few excep- 
 tions, by all the people of this country. We eat, not merely 
 with indecent, but with unhealthful haste. As a nation, we 
 have a profusion and an attractiveness of food such as no other 
 people upon the earth enjoys. We consume quantities which 
 would astonish the inhabitants of other countries ; and these 
 quantities are often swallowed en masse, almost as a wild 
 animal gorges its prey, and, of course, without that mastica- 
 tion which is indispensable to health. In eating, we dispense 
 with the use of the teeth, as though our stomachs were provided 
 with some machinery a grater, a pestle and mortar, or an 
 upper and nether millstone to do the work of comminution. 
 But, such not being the case, it follows, that, if we would enjoy 
 health, our food must be finely ground before it is swallowed ; 
 for nothing is more certain than that food which is insufficiently 
 masticated will be imperfectly digested ; that what is irnper-
 
 182 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 fectly digested tends to produce disorder through the whole ali- 
 mentary canal, and cannot make good blood ; and, without good 
 blood, we cannot have good health, good spirits, or the full use 
 of any of our faculties either bodily or mental. 
 
 Another reason for retaining the food in the mouth for a long 
 time is, that there are certain glands, opening into the mouth 
 about the cheeks and jaw-bones, which throw a great quantity 
 of saliva into this cavity during the process of mastication. 
 Food saturated with this saliva before entering the stomach is 
 much more easily digested. The saliva, too, has a strong 
 affinity for air ; and in this way the oxygen of that element is 
 carried into the stomach, and there, by its combining with 
 other elements, caloric is given off, which helps to raise the 
 stomach to a higher temperature, and thus aids the process of 
 digestion. 
 
 That food may be taken slowly, it ought to be taken in com- 
 pany, and with agreeable conversation. Mental pleasures 
 should save our meals from the grossness of mere animal 
 enjoyment. Cheerfulness should always preside at the table. 
 Food fails of half its nourishing qualities when eaten in soli- 
 tude, in sullenness, or with any painful or dissocial feelings. 
 No family will enjoy a full measure of health, any more than 
 of domestic tranquillity, who are habitually selfish, morose, or 
 unkind at their meals. Care and anxiety of mind should never 
 be guests at the family board. The very secretions of the body 
 are vitiated by anger, solicitude, or any of the painful emotions. 
 The fruits of the labor of man never nourish us so much as 
 when they are taken with good will towards all mankind ; and 
 it is one of the physical conditions of deriving the greatest 
 benefit from the bounties of Heaven, that they shall be received 
 with gratitude to their Author. 
 
 Another strong argument in favor of taking our food slowly 
 is founded on our knowledge of the capacity of the stomach. 
 Man is sometimes defined to be an omnivorous animal ; which 
 seems to be understood by many people to mean, not that he 
 is capable of eating some of all kinds of food, but that he is
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 183 
 
 able to eat all of each kind. Instead of supposing that the 
 stomach does not occupy more than one-twelfth of the cavities 
 of the trunk, they seem to reverse this proportion, and to grad- 
 uate their indulgence of appetite accordingly. An ordinary- 
 sized stomach of au adult is generally said to be capable of 
 holding about three pints ; and some physiologists are of the 
 opinion that the quantity of gastric juice poured into this organ 
 at a hearty meal is one pint. Supposing, however, that only two- 
 thirds or oue-half of this quantity of gastric juice is poured 
 into that organ at a meal : if we eat slowly, the stomach is 
 filled with the food and with the gastric juice at the same time ; 
 and, when the natural limit of its distention is reached, appetite 
 vanishes, and a feeling of satisfaction ensues. But if we eat 
 rapidly or gormandize, the stomach is filled with food alone, 
 and the gastric solvent must be afterwards injected ; that is, 
 when this organ is already brimmed, its muscular coats must 
 be strained or distended for the reception of more. As diges- 
 tion cannot begin until this juice is intimately mingled with the 
 food, the stomach labors to discharge a sufficient quantity of it, 
 and also to make room to receive it. Though full, it must 
 force in more as the means of preparing its contents for egress. 
 It is obvious that such a strain upon its muscular fibres must 
 weaken them. They become like a bow which has been bent 
 so far as to lose its elasticity. A few repetitions of such abuse 
 will impair the tension of the muscles for years, perhaps for 
 life. Instances occur where, through a beastly indulgence of 
 appetite, the muscular coats of this organ are so strained that 
 they lose their contractile power, and remain, like a man 
 beneath a load which he cannot lift. In such cases, the 
 stomach becomes a motionless, that is, a lifeless organ ; the 
 food remains a foreign substance, and death speedily ensues. 
 
 Another fact deserves remark under this head. The watery 
 parts of our beverage, or liquid food, are not digested, but ab- 
 sorbed. In eating slowly, time is given for this process of 
 removal ; but, in eating rapidly, the orgau is encumbered, at 
 once and without relief, by the accumulated bulk and weight of 
 all we swallow.
 
 184 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 And again : however solid the food we take, whether meat, 
 unsodden vegetables, or the fruit of nuts, hardly less solid 
 and indigestible than'the shell that encloses them, it must all 
 be reduced to a pulp, to a soft, semi-fluid substance, before it 
 is prepared to pass out of the stomach, to be carried into the 
 circulation, and be deposited, in infinitely minute particles, over 
 the system, as a part of the living organization. Now, as 
 every one knows, all solid masses, when saturated with or 
 steeped in water until they become soft, are greatly enlarged 
 in bulk. If, then, the stomach is filled with solids, how much 
 must it be overstrained when the volume of these solids is en- 
 larged by their being reduced to a fluid ! The farmer is 
 familiar with cases of this kind ; for it is the cause of death to 
 neat cattle or horses who gorge themselves with dry grain, and 
 then have access to water. 
 
 I will add but one more reason why all our food should be 
 masticated until it is ground to a powder, and, being mixed 
 with saliva, become almost a fluid, before it is thrown into 
 the stomach. The gastric juice cannot penetrate at once to the 
 interior of solid lumps, or hard knots of food, of compact 
 muscle, or of tendinous or ligamentous substances. In such 
 cases, it must commence the dissolving process on their out- 
 sides ; and only wheii the outer layer is dissolved and removed 
 can it begin to operate upon the next layer, and so on, until 
 the whole process of solution is effected. This occupies much 
 time ; and, while the gastric juice is at work on the exterior of 
 the mass, a most uuhealthful fermentation, or chemical change, 
 caused by heat and moisture, is going on in its interior. 
 
 Yet notwithstanding all this accumulation of mischiefs, so 
 obvious as soon as stated, how common it is for most parents 
 to hurry children at their meals, even beyond the rate prompted 
 by the keenness of young appetites ! Not only example but 
 commands are added to the impulses of hunger ; and thus a 
 habit of gorging food, as unseemly as it is unhealthful, is 
 formed, which lasts them through the shortened life it allows. 
 Derangement, weakness, inflammation of all the digestive or-
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 185 
 
 gans throughout their whole extent, dyspepsia, that prolific 
 mother of diseases, follow in the train of this unbecoming and 
 unnatural practice. The food being the material from which 
 all the tissues of the body are formed, the crystalline 
 humors of the eye, the exquisitely-delicate substance of the 
 brain and nerves, the finely-wrought muscles, unless this 
 food is well prepared before it enters the circulation to be dis- 
 tributed over the frame, it is in vain to expect organs which 
 are sound to the core ; it is in vain to expect muscles, com- 
 pacted to the power of greatest endurance, or acuteness of the 
 senses, or nerves quick answering to the commands of the will. 
 A spinner, from wool half combed, half carded, and full of knots 
 and tangles, may as well expect to draw out an even and 
 beautiful thread ; a weaver, from a thread, here sleazy, and 
 there twisted to a wire, now coarse as cord, and now atten- 
 uated to a spider's line, may as well expect to form the elegant 
 product of the loom ; and a manufacturer, through all the stages 
 of whose work the unskilfulness of each preceding process has 
 redoubled the difficulties and imperfections of all succeeding 
 ones, may as well expect to command the highest prices in the 
 market, or to win the highest premiums at the fair, as anyone, 
 subjected to the universal law of mortality, who thus violates 
 the very preliminaries and antecedents of health, can expect to 
 attain to that vigor and robustness of limb and frame, or to 
 reach the full term of life, or to enjoy the mental capacities, 
 for which a bounteous Providence had originally endowed 
 him. 
 
 Yet how many of our social regulations pertaining to diet 
 are a systematic infraction of these laws of Nature ! Some of 
 them could not have contravened those laws more had such 
 been the express purpose of their adoption. The arrange- 
 ments of many families, the short intermissions of our schools, 
 and, in some instances, of our churches and other public as- 
 semblies, the haste of travellers, the brief time occupied in eat- 
 ing in boarding-houses for work-people, whether mechanics in 
 shops, or laborers on public works, or operatives in factories ;
 
 186 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 all these practices tend powerfully to depress the standard of 
 health amongst us, and to expose us on all sides to the invasion 
 of disease. In all these and in other particulars, the customs 
 of our people have been adopted in ignorance of the laws of 
 physiology, and they never will be reformed until that igno- 
 rance is dispelled. Passengers in railroad-cars and on board 
 steamboats seem to eat with a rapidity suggested by their new 
 powers of locomotion, as though the processes of Nature could 
 be expedited by their impatience of delay. Students in acade- 
 mies and colleges, when eating at a common table, are no ex- 
 ceptions to this general statement ; and though an hour of 
 mental relaxation and of social excitement of hilarity, genial 
 yet gentlemanly is needed in an especial manner by students 
 at their meals, yet, in many of our literary institutions, they 
 are subjected to the Auburn and Sing-Sing discipline of eating 
 in perfect silence. 
 
 Another wide departure from Nature's " Health Regula- 
 tions," in regard to diet, consists in eating at unseasonable 
 times. Different nations, ancient and modern, as well as dif- 
 ferent classes in the same nation, vary greatly from each other 
 in respect both to the hours of meals and the frequency of their 
 succession ; and much has been said of the relative propriety 
 of their customs. But a universal rule, as it regards the indi- 
 vidual, is, never to eat, either while the previous meal is still 
 undergoing the process of digestion, or immediately after that 
 process is completed. After food is received into the stomach, 
 it is warmed if too cold, it is cooled if too warm, until it ac- 
 quires the temperature of about 100. If too dry, the stomach 
 demands moisture ; if too watery, the water is drained off until 
 it is prepared to be mingled with the gastric juice. In a healthy 
 adult, the process of digesting a hearty meal occupies from three 
 to five or six hours, according to the more or less digestible 
 quality of the food. Now, Avhen the follicles of the stomach 
 have given out what gastiic juice they contain, when the work 
 of digestion has so far advanced that the qualities of the food 
 are chemically changed from what they were when received,
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 187 
 
 what can be more unnatural or absurd than to introduce a new 
 mass of raw material, which requires a new exuding of, and 
 saturation by, the gastric juice, already exhausted, and which 
 must be miugled by the action of the stomach with the food of 
 the preceding meal, now half prepared or nearly prepared to 
 leave the organ? If in any culinary preparation an equal 
 quantity of new raw material were introduced just as the pro- 
 cess of cooking the original should be completed, it would" 
 hardly make the compound more unsavory to the palate than 
 this practice makes the chyme unhealthful to the body. Yet 
 how often is this done, either through ignorance, or to gratify 
 appetite, or to subserve some temporary convenience about 
 meals, or, what is worse than all, for the monstrous purpose 
 of eating a meal or two in advance ! To wrap ourselves in furs 
 and flannels during the heats of summer, as a preparation for 
 winter's cold, would not be a greater outrage against Nature 
 than to eat in advance of hunger. A rule, never violated with- 
 out incurring serious penalties, either immediate or remote, is, 
 not to eat a second time until the previous contents of the stom- 
 ach have been digested and are passed away, and that organ 
 has had a season of repose. Alternate action and rest is the 
 universal law of every power and faculty, both of body and 
 mind. So, too, after taking even a moderate meal, all severe 
 exertion, whether mental or physical, should, for a brief season, 
 be remitted. Especially is this important in regard to students 
 and others who lead sedentary lives. 
 
 Following the course of Nature, I should be next led to trace 
 the steps by which the digested food is carried to the blood, to 
 be distributed through the circulation for the growth and nour- 
 ishment of every part of the body. But my present object 
 being only to show the practical and every-day value of physio- 
 logical knowledge, I pass by, with a single remark, those 
 wonderful processes which Nature performs in the secret labo- 
 ratory of the system. "Whoever feels delight in tracing effects 
 to causes, or loves to contemplate the wisdom and beneficence 
 of the Creator, will find, in this department of his works, au
 
 188 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 inexhaustible source of intellectual gratification ; and, at every 
 step of his progress, exclamations of thankfulness and adora- 
 tion will burst spontaneously from his lips. But it must suffice 
 to observe, that after the aliment, in a fit state for nutrition, 
 has been passed from the stomach, and has received the appro- 
 priate secretions from the liver and pancreas, it is then taken 
 up, or drawn out from the great alimentary canal, through tubes 
 ' or ducts which are microscopically fine and inconceivably nu- 
 merous. These tubes or ducts (technically called lacteals, 
 from the Latin word lac, signifying milk, because the substance 
 which they take up very nearly resembles milk in its color and 
 consistence), after traversing winding passages, and passing 
 through various ganglia, are at length all gathered into one 
 tube or channel called the thoracic duct, which ascends behind 
 the heart in a direction towards the left shoulder, and empties 
 its precious contents into the left subclavian vein, just before 
 that vein pours the returning blood of the whole system into 
 the heart. 
 
 Over our nourishment, after it passes from the stomach, until 
 its stream is mingled with the blood, and reaches the heart, we 
 have no control, except through medicinal agents. On leaving 
 the stomach, it descends, as it were, into subterranean channels, 
 beyond our reach or direction ; and, in the invisible recesses 
 of the body, it passes through organs whose uses are not 
 known, and is subjected to chemical changes which the art of 
 the physiologist has not yet detected ; but, on reaching the 
 heart, that vital stream may be said to re-appear upon the sur- 
 face, because in that organ it is directly subject to mechanical 
 action from without. 
 
 The human heart is sometimes said to be a double organ ; 
 but by this it is only meant that its right and left sides perform 
 different operations, the right side of the heart propelling the 
 blood into the lungs, and the left side propelling it over the 
 rest of the body. These sides of the heart, though similar in 
 their general structure and uses, and constituting the same 
 general organ, are yet, as to the course of the blood, distant from
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 189 
 
 each other the entire length of their respective circulations ; 
 that is, the blood in the right side of the heart cannot reach its 
 left side (although separated only by a thin partition) without 
 going through the lungs, and the blood in the left side cannot 
 reach the right side without going round the whole system, 
 except through the lungs. 
 
 But when the blood, now enriched with nourishment from 
 the food, enters the lungs, it is emphatically ours. Here, in a 
 large sense, our strength, our health, our life, are placed in our 
 own keeping. Here is an organ by whose proper use a vast 
 portion of all the diseases which afflict humanity may be pre- 
 vented. Here is a point, too, where many diseases may be 
 met and cured. Here we are invested with almost unlimited 
 power over health and life, and attached to this power is a 
 corresponding responsibility. 
 
 That our blood is our life is not only the declaration of 
 Scripture, but the common conviction of mankind. But no 
 part of our animal organism, no part of animated nature with 
 which we are acquainted, is so short-lived as the blood. The 
 insects which live but for a season, the tribes of ephemera 
 which die on the day of their birth, are common emblems of 
 the brevity of life ; but the shortest of their terms of existence 
 is longevity, compared with the vital principle of the blood. 
 Water, milk, the expressed juices of vegetables, unfermented 
 liquors, will ordinarily remain for hours unchanged ; but the 
 blood will perish irrecoverably in a few minutes, if not reno- 
 vated by a foreign power. It is probably the most perishable 
 of all organized living substances. Yet this blood has inex- 
 haustible resources of life in pure air. On this element it con- 
 stantly relies. Without air, the life of the blood expires, like 
 the flame of a candle beneath an extinguisher ; but give it air, 
 and its vital power will subsist for days and sometimes for 
 weeks, even though no food or drink is taken into the system. 
 Let the lacteals pour into the blood the results of their most 
 perfect elaboration, ami, without air, it dies forthwith, and the 
 process of corruption or putrefaction commences. Food is an
 
 190 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 occasional want, air a perpetual oue. So indispensable, so 
 continual, so instant at all times, is the necessity of pure air to 
 vitalize the blood and sustain the life of man ! 
 
 In the course of its circulation, the blood comes to the lungs 
 in search of life, that is, of pure air. From the trunk, from 
 the brain, from all the extremities, it is hastened onward to the 
 lungs, just as a diver ascends to the surface of the water in 
 quest of breath. As the blood is driven into the lungs bv the 
 strong propulsion of the heai't, so the air is forced downwards 
 into the same organs by a pressure equal to a weight of (bur- 
 teen pounds on the surface of each square inch. The lungs 
 are the common ground where these two great life-sustaining 
 agents meet ; and here they are sure to meet, unless forcibly 
 kept from each other by the most egregious folly and wicked- 
 ness of man. If air is admitted into the lungs to greet the 
 blood on its arrival there, and to impart its vital properties to 
 that fluid, then the blood flows back rejoicingly to every part 
 of the body, carrying health, spirits, strength, activity, endur- 
 ance, and bountifully dispensing a gladsome sense of existence 
 wherever it goes. But if, on the other hand, the air is debarred 
 from admission into the lungs, or if only impure air is admit- 
 ted, then the blood flows back in its course, languid, infectious, 
 inflicting torpor upon every sense, and disease upon every 
 organ. Hence it is not too much to say, that the relation of 
 the blood and the air to each other, and the mechanism of the 
 lungs where these wonder-working agencies meet to recipro- 
 cate benefits, constitute one of the most valuable as well as 
 most interesting departments of worldly knowledge. 
 
 The air, as it is seen and felt and breathed, appears to be a 
 simple, unconipounded body; but, in reality, it is composed 
 of three ingredients, as different from each other as light from 
 darkness, or fire from ice : and a chemist will separate these 
 three elements from each other as readily as an expert seam- 
 stress will untwist a cord composed of three difFe rent-colored 
 threads. These three ingredients are oxygen, nitrogen or 
 azote, and carbonic-acid gas. The oxygen constitutes twenty-
 
 REPOET FOR 1842. 191 
 
 one parts in a hundred of the whole bulk. Dr. Combe says, 
 that about seventy-eight parts in a hundred are nitrogen ; and 
 the residue only, or one per cent, is carbonic-acid gas. Some 
 physiologists differ a little from this authority in regard to the 
 proportion of carbonic acid in the air. But this is not material. 
 Dr. Combe further says, that, at every breath, " eight or eight 
 and a half per cent of the oxygen or vital air has disap- 
 peared, and been replaced by an equal amount of carbonic 
 acid." This being the case, it follows that breathing the same 
 air only three or four times successively would exhaust it of 
 all its oxygen, and leave carbonic acid in its place. 
 
 The oxygen of the air is the supporter of human life. Every 
 thing else may be as it should be, perfectness of organization, 
 soundness in every part, nourishment, temperature, but take 
 away oxygen, and almost instantaneously the strongest man is 
 a corpse. This ingredient, which is the supporter of life, is 
 identically the same with that which supports combustion. 
 Wherever the flame of a candle will of itself go out, a man 
 will die. Keeping this universal truth in view, that it is the 
 same principle which supports human life and which supports 
 combustion, and every individual will have a thousand illustra- 
 tions at hand to show the relation in which he stands to this 
 vital element of the air. Few persons are unacquainted with 
 the experiment of letting down a caudle into a stagnant well, 
 vault, or pit of any kind ; and it is understood, that if, in such 
 places, a candle will not burn, a man will not live. Carbonic 
 acid being much heavier than an equal bulk of oxygen or 
 nitrogen, it settles in the lowest places. It therefore fills up 
 any depressions or excavations which remain for a long time 
 unoccupied or unopened. It becomes the sediment of the atmos- 
 phere as mud is the sediment of water. When a stream flows 
 rapidly, the earthy particles or impurities which it may con- 
 tain are mingled with the whole mass of the water ; but, if the 
 stream expands into a quiet lake, the earthy materials subside 
 to the bottom. So in regard to the air : whenever it is in mo- 
 tion, the carbonic acid is held in mechanical solution with its
 
 192 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 whole body ; but this ingredient will rest at the bottom of unoc- 
 cupied vaults, wells, &c., until it is expelled from them by some 
 mechanical force, or neutralized by some chemical agency. 
 If ever there were any one who had so little philosophy in his 
 composition as to apply an extinguisher to a candle without 
 thinking why he succeeds in putting out its flame, he has only 
 to learn that it is because the extinguisher cuts off the stream 
 of air that sustained the blaze. Our lungs are in precisely the 
 same condition : if isolated from the air, we perish by suffoca- 
 tion ; but, organically speaking, it is not, as most people sup- 
 pose, because life departs, but because it ceases to come. If 
 Othello " put out the light" of the candle by an extinguisher 
 before smothering Desdemoua in her bed, he only repeated in 
 the second operation, so far as the natural laws are concerned, 
 what he had done in the first. We kindle our fires by repeated 
 blasts from the mouth or from a hand-bellows ; we apply a 
 sheet-iron blower to a grate ; all our stoves and furnaces are so 
 constructed that we can graduate the current of admitted air ; 
 and we should at once discard the workman as a bungler, who 
 should fail in any of the contrivances for that purpose. The 
 smith and the forger increase the intensity of heat for their 
 respective operations by the use of a stationary bellows worked 
 by the arm or by steam ; the engineers of the steamship and 
 locomotive admit a quantity of air into the fire-chamber exactly 
 proportioned to the amount of work to be done ; and in all 
 these cases we say, colloquially, that we increase the draught 
 of air; but it is an increase of the quantity of oxygen only 
 which produces these results. Let the draught which is applied 
 consist of nitrogen, or of carbonic acid, and the fire, instead of 
 being roused, will be extinguished in an instant. Even gun- 
 powder will not burn without oxygen. It is not the seventy- 
 nine huudredths, therefore, of nitrogen and of carbonic acid, 
 but the twenty-one huudredths of oxygen, to which we are alike 
 indebted for the mechanical power of steam, for the brilliant 
 flame of lamps, the genial heat of fires, and for our own physi- 
 cal existence from minute to minute. And yet, with all these
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 193 
 
 proofs and examples continually before our eyes, we fly, as a 
 people, from the invigorating influence and exhilarations of the 
 open sky ; there is a more and more eager quest for indoor and 
 enervating employments ; we strive to circumvent Nature by 
 occupying winter apartments whose doors and windows are 
 almost hermetically sealed ; we sleep in narrow and close 
 rooms ; we send our children to inhale disease in uuventilated 
 schoolhouses ; we attend the lecture-room or other large as- 
 sembly, where there are no provisions for a change of air ; and 
 many mechanics and operatives, although they know, from 
 constant experience, that their own machinery will cease to 
 move if fresh air is not supplied to the engine, still breathe an 
 atmosphere themselves which would hardly keep their own 
 fires alive. Amid an almost universal want of knowledge 
 respecting the physical laws, each man's ignorance is kept in 
 countenance by that of his fellows. 
 
 It was remarked above, that, keeping the fact in view that 
 the oxygen of the air is alike the supporter of life and of com- 
 bustion, every man could find numberless illustrations, in his 
 daily experience, of his constant dependence upon this element 
 for the continuance of life. The application of this truth is 
 still more direct and significant when we consider that it is no 
 other than this very process of combustion itself by which the 
 degree of warmth necessary to our existence is kept up in our 
 bodies. In healthy lungs and blood-vessels, no less than in 
 the fireplaces and furnaces of our dwellings, or in smitheries, 
 forges, and locomotives, is there a constant combustion going 
 on while life lasts. Strange as it may seem, yet it is still true, 
 that, every living man is on fire, though in some, as we might 
 naturally infer from their torpidity and sluggishness, there are 
 only a few smouldering and decaying embers, enveloped in 
 their own soot and cinders, and on the verge of extinction. 
 The standing temperature of our bodies, at all seasons of the 
 year, is 98. If our temperature falls below that, and so con- 
 tinues, the machinery will no longer play, and life ceases. The 
 mean temperature of our atmosphere, for the whole year, is 
 
 13
 
 194 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 about 47. Sometimes, however, it falls to a dozen or more 
 degrees below zero, making, in such cases, a difference of one 
 hundred and ten or more degrees between our own tempera- 
 ture and that of the air by which we are surrounded. Our 
 persons are just like any other substance enveloped in a me- 
 dium colder than itself. It is a universal law that there is a 
 constant tendency to equilibrium among bodies of different 
 temperatures, and, of course, a constant loss of heat on the 
 part of the warmer body. Whenever, therefore, the tempera- 
 ture of the atmosphere is below 98 (and, in our climate, it 
 is always so, except during a very few hours of a very few 
 days in the year), heat is constantly radiating from our bodies 
 into the surrounding air. With the thermometer below zero, 
 and with lungs and blood as much exposed to the open air as 
 in a living subject, a man of ordinary size, if instantly struck 
 dead, would probably lose every particle of his warmth in half 
 an hour. And yet, with sufficient food, and a proper quantity 
 of exercise, many men travellers, shipwrecked sailors, and 
 others have been known to sustain the system at the life- 
 point of 98 for hours and even days together, without any 
 aid from artificial fires. This striking result is effected by the 
 generation of heat that is, literally by fires within them- 
 selves. Material capable of being burned in this connec- 
 tion, it would be strictly correct to call it fuel is derived 
 from our food, and from the tissues of the body previously 
 formed from the food. This fuel is carried into the blood. In 
 the lungs, the oxygen of the air is also absorbed into the blood ; 
 and here, therefore, the combustible material and the supporter 
 of combustion meet. Fire is kindled, by means of which :he 
 temperature of our bodies is i-aised to 98. And not only so, 
 but a quantity of surplus heat is generated sufficient to repair 
 the immense loss occasioned by our being immersed in an 
 atmosphere so much colder than ourselves, and which is con- 
 stantly stealing from us so much of our warmth. 
 
 This combustible material is called carbon. Chemically, it 
 is the same material with the combustible part of our wood,
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 195 
 
 coal, peat, or other fuel. The blood of every person in health 
 is richly freighted with it. A part of this carbon is obtained 
 directly from our food ; a portion of it is obtained from the 
 wa.?te or used-up particles of the body. In a healthy subject, 
 every organ is undergoing a rapid process of waste and reno- 
 vation. All muscular efforts, all nervous activity, cause a loss 
 of the very substance of the muscles and nerves themselves ; 
 but new particles, fresh, young, and vigorous, take the place 
 of the old ones. The old, however, though detached and cast 
 off from the living tissues, are not worthless. They are thrown 
 into the current of the blood ; and as they consist, to a consid- 
 erable extent, of carbon, they are burned. This is the same 
 economy which a man practises when he repairs or pulls down 
 his old house ; he uses the waste materials of the old dwelling 
 to keep up a fire to warm himself in the new one. 
 
 If any one doubts that an active fire is sustained in the in- 
 terior of the body, let him explain how it is that the lungs of a 
 person in health are never cold. Such a person may remain 
 for hours in an atmosphere below zero : he breathes eighteen 
 or twenty times a minute, and, therefore, eighteen or twenty 
 times a minute he admits a blast of this ice-like atmos- 
 phere into the whole substance of the lungs. Frost may 
 f'riuge his eyes ; icicles depend from his mouth ; his ears, 
 cheeks, and nose may be frozen : and yet his lungs will expe- 
 rience no sensation of coldness. Suppose the interior of our 
 hands, our arms, or our feet, were, like the lungs, permeated by 
 tubes, or hollowed out like honeycomb, and that an atmos- 
 phere below the point of congelation were constantly rushing 
 iuto these tubes, or cells, abstracting their heat and imparting 
 it.s own cold, how long before they would be frost-bitten? 
 Nothing but the genial warmth generated in the lungs by the 
 carbon of the body and the oxygen of the air saves them, dur- 
 ing any cold winter's day, from such a fatal catastrophe. 
 
 In bulk, the principal ingredient of the air is nitrogen. It 
 constitutes more than seven-tenths of the whole mass of the 
 air. This ingredient, so far as the lungs are concerned, seems
 
 196 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 to have no active properties. It is a mere diluent. If oxygen 
 composed the whole body of the air, almost every thing, except 
 ice and granite, would be consumed in it. A common candle 
 would be burnt out in a few minutes. Should fire ever escape 
 from our control, it would end in a universal conflagration. 
 By the stimulus of pure undiluted oxygen, received into the 
 lungs, all vital movements would be so accelerated, that life 
 would be consummated in a few days. But nitrogen reduces 
 the stimulus of the air to that precise degree which conduces 
 at once to the greatest activity and the longest duration of 
 existence. 
 
 Carbonic acid constitutes but a very little of the whole bulk 
 of the air, being estimated by some chemists at one per cent, 
 though by others at somewhat more. Its properties are strik- 
 ingly distinct from those of either of the ingredients with 
 which it is combined. Oxygen, as has been said, is the sup- 
 porter of life ; nitrogen is neutral ; but carbonic acid is a 
 deadly poison. Constituting, however, so small a portion as it 
 does, and being equally diffused through the whole mass of 
 what we call pure air, it works no mischief. It is only when 
 breathed by itself, or when it is a large proportional of what 
 we breathe, that its destructive properties are manifested. 
 When breathed alone, death immediately ensues. 
 
 Whenever combustion takes place, this carbonic acid, this 
 deadly poison, is generated rapidly and in great quantities. 
 AVlieu oxygen and carbon combine in the body, they evolve 
 heat, and carbonic acid also. It is the same operation pre- 
 cisely which is carried on when a brazier or pan of charcoal 
 is burned in our rooms. The oxygen of the air in the room 
 combines with the carbon in the coal, and gives out heat and 
 carbonic acid. So in the body, the oxygen of the air received 
 into the blood through the lungs combines with the carbon 
 already in the blood, and gives out both the heat and the gas. 
 If, then, there were not some mode of expelling this gas as 
 fast as it is formed, \ve should soon be killed by a poison of 
 our own creating. It has been said that the blood goes to the
 
 REPORT FOR 1342. 197 
 
 lungs in quest of oxygen. That, however, is not its only er- 
 rand. It goes there, also, to discharge the carbonic acid which 
 has been generated by the combustion that has taken place dur- 
 ing the circulation of the blood around the body. The lungs, 
 therefore, are a contrivance not only to introduce oxygen into 
 the blood, but to take carbonic acid out of it. We know that 
 if we burn coal in a close room, and breathe the gas which it 
 exhales, it Avill produce suffocation and death. So if the lungs 
 were closed, that is, if we should cease to throw off the car- 
 bonic acid produced by the burning of carbon in the blood, it 
 would equally cause suffocation and death. Hence a chimney 
 for its egress, and a current of inflowing air, are necessary to 
 carry off this deadly ingredient from our rooms ; and many 
 persons are aware of this fact, who seem to be either ignorant 
 or heedless that a similar current of pure air is equally neces- 
 sary to remove this fatal poison from their lungs. 
 
 From the above, it will be perceived that every breathing 
 thing is a laboratory where the work of destroying the vital 
 property of the air, and of producing poison in its stead, is 
 constantly going on. And although the quantity of the air is 
 exceedingly great, being said to cover the whole globe to the 
 height of fifty miles, and doubtless existing, though in an ex- 
 tremely rarefied state, to the height of a hundred miles or 
 more, yet, in process of time, with all the myriads of lungs 
 which belong to all the orders of animated nature unceasingly 
 at work, why should not its whole mass be gradually changed 
 from wholesomeness to poison, from life to death? At any 
 rate, as carbonic acid is much heavier than oxygen or nitrogen, 
 why should it not accumulate upon the surface of the earth, 
 filling all its valleys, overflowing its plains, and rising, like a 
 deluge, along its hill-sides, until, at length, the last island peak 
 of the highest mountain should be submerged, and universal 
 silence and death reign over animated nature, self-destroyed 
 by converting into poison the very element which had been 
 given for its existence. 
 
 But in this case, as in all others, where a presumptuous
 
 198 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 philosophy has conjectured that Divine Providence was at fault 
 in any of its arrangements, that philosophy has ouly to push 
 its researches farther, to turn the very difficulties which it en- 
 countered into new evidences of adorable wisdom. In the 
 economy of Nature, ample provision is made for the reconver- 
 sion of the carbonic acid into carbon and oxygen. This pro- 
 cess may take place spontaneously in order to restore the 
 equilibrium between them ; and, during the operation, as much 
 heat may be absorbed, and pass into a latent state, as had been 
 given out in the formation of the acid. The most obvious and 
 beautiful provision, however, consists in the relation which the 
 animal and vegetable worlds hold to each other. Animal and 
 vegetable nature constitute a whole. Each is the supplement 
 of the other. Oxygen is the life of the animal kingdom ; 
 carbonic acid is the nutriment of the vegetable. All breathing 
 existences consume the oxygen, and produce the acid, while 
 vegetable existences consume the acid, and produce the oxygen. 
 The countless myriads of lungs, in their ceaseless heavings, 
 are constantly absorbing the latter from the air, and ejecting a 
 stream of the former, compared with which the volume of 
 the Mississippi or the Amazon would be but a rill. But, on the 
 other hand, the tenfold myriads of the blades of grass and the 
 leaves which make verdant the forest and the field absorb our 
 poison as their nourishment ; and, in its stead, they elaborate 
 and pour forth a flood of oxygen for the susteutatiou of the ani- 
 mated world. Thus decomposition and recomposition are 
 equal. The ebb and flow of the mighty tide of conscious and 
 unconscious life are mutually sustained. As water is evapo- 
 rated from the surface of the ocean and the laud into the sky, 
 to be thence precipitated in fertilizing showers, and, after 
 gladdening the earth and replenishing the sea, is again carried 
 upwards on its perpetual circuit of beneficence ; so the animal 
 and vegetable worlds prepare, each for the other, these ele- 
 ments of their respective existences, and pass them backward 
 and forward, as from hand to hand, in continual exchange ; 
 the ever-restless winds being the unchartered medium of the 
 beneficent commerce.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 199 
 
 For maintaining the wonderful relationship which exists be- 
 tween the corruptible blood within us and the life-preserving 
 air without, the lungs are the appropriate and principal organ. 
 Doubtless, the air is brought into contact with the blood 
 through the skin, especially when that important and vital 
 organ is kept clean ; but this can be effected only to a very 
 limited extent. The common mart, where the air goes to ex- 
 change its oxygen for carbonic acid, and where the blood goes 
 to exchange its carbonic acid for oxygen, is the lungs. 
 
 To an ignorant observer, the lungs are a large, unshapely, 
 unattractive mass, of a reddish hue, having neither beauty 
 of form, structure, or coloring. But the philosophic observer 
 cannot look upon them for a moment, and consider their curi- 
 ous internal construction and their important functions, with- 
 out an overflow of that intellectual delight which springs from 
 .seeing an adaptation of the simplest means to accomplish ends 
 of extraordinary niceuess and difficulty. 
 
 The lungs are very large, occupying the whole internal cavity 
 of the chest (with the exception of the heart, which is, ordi- 
 narily, only about the size of the owner's clinched hand), and 
 therefore filling almost all the space between the breast-bone and 
 the shoulder-blades, and between the bottom of the neck and the 
 diaphragm, or middle line of the trunk. It is, therefore, obvious 
 that, in a full-sized man, they are of sufficient capacity to hold 
 many quarts of air and blood. Their internal structure is 
 spongy and porous in the highest degree. This sponginess of 
 structure results from the fact, that, throughout their whole sub- 
 stance, they are pervaded by three sets of vessels ; the first 
 two being for the blood, the third for the air. The blood is 
 driven from the right side of the heart into the lungs through 
 one channel only, the pulmonary artery ; but. as soon as 
 this artery reaches the lungs, it branches out into a countless 
 number of tubes, which spread and divide until they permeate 
 every part of the whole mass of the organ. Should we im- 
 agine a tree with its trunk branching out into limbs, and its 
 limbs branching out into twigs, until the latter became so thick
 
 200 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 as almost to exclude the light by their crossings and interfa- 
 cings, such a tree would be a good representation of the man- 
 ner in which the pulmonary artery branches out into blood- 
 vessels on reaching the lungs. But, when the blood reaches 
 the extremities of its thread-like vessels, it does not stop and 
 return back to the heart by the same passages which conveyed 
 it out. It flows onward and through the lungs ; the second 
 set of vessels being only a continuation of the first. The 
 tubes which carried the blood outwards, after reaching their 
 extreme point, bend and turn backwards towards the heart ; 
 and as in going out they had become more and more numer- 
 ous by division, so, on their return, they become fewer and 
 fewer by union with each other, until, at last, they are all 
 gathered into one channel, the pulmonary vein, and re- 
 turned to the left side of the heart. As in the one case they 
 were divided from a trunk into branches, and from branches 
 into twigs ; so, in the other, they are united from twigs into 
 branches, and from branches into a trunk. It is like one great 
 thoroughfare leading into a city, which, on reaching its con- 
 fines, begins to divide and diverge into numberless streets, 
 lanes, and alleys ; and these, after traversing every part of the 
 place, converge towards a common outlet, which leads from 
 the city on the opposite side by another great thoroughfare. 
 Such are the two sets of blood-vessels, arterial and venous, 
 which occupy the body of the lungs ; and from whose num- 
 ber and closeness to each other, one might suppose that no 
 room would be left for any thing else. But the spaces for the 
 reception of the air are almost as numerous as those for the 
 reception of the blood. 
 
 The air finds access to the lungs through the mouth and nos- 
 trils. It descends through the windpipe, which, at the bottom 
 of the neck, divides into two branches, one going to the right, 
 the other to the left lung. As soon as these two air-passages 
 reach the body of the lungs, they branch out in the same man- 
 ner that the blood-vessels do ; so that, throughout the whole 
 substance of these organs, an air-cell lies side by side with a
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 201 
 
 blood-vessel. The sides or walls which separate the air-cells 
 from the blood-vessels are exceedingly thin, filmy, and gauze- 
 like. They are so strong as to keep the air and the blood each 
 in its own passages, and yet of so fine a texture as to allow the 
 carbonic acid of the blood to escape into the air-cells, and the 
 oxyjreu of the air to be absorbed into the blood-vessels. They 
 allow each one to come to the other, which is life ; they prevent 
 each one from extravasating into the other, which is death. 
 The air which we inhale at a single breath, if received into the 
 circulation, would destroy life in a minute. The blood which 
 at any one time occupies the lungs, could it burst its bounds, 
 would also destroy life instantaneously. Yet in this receptacle 
 of the lungs do these two necessary yet opposite elements 
 meet, while life lasts, to reciprocate benefits, each approach- 
 ing the very limits of danger, but never transgressing them 
 without some fault or improvidence on our part. 
 
 One fact must be noticed in this connection, the importance 
 and bearing of which will be seen hereafter. The air does 
 not, like the blood, flow through the lungs. Its egress is by 
 the same passages as its ingress. 
 
 It is necessary here to introduce a single paragraph in rela- 
 tion to another vital organ of the body. Although this may 
 seem a digression, yet it will not be found so in the sequel. 
 
 The briefest outline of physiological science would be radi- 
 cally defective if it took no notice of the skin. Surprising as it 
 may at first seem, this simple envelope of the body is a vital 
 organ ; because, if any considerable proportion of it were to be 
 destroyed, death would ensue, as certainly as though we were 
 to remove the brain, or take out the heart. The skin consists 
 of three layers, or coats. The exterior coat is a comparatively 
 rough, hard substance, and is insentient. Its object is the pro- 
 tection of the two interior coats, as the bark or rind of a tree 
 protects those fibres of the wood in which the processes of 
 vegetable life are carried on. The second coat contains that 
 coloring-matter which gives to different races or individuals 
 their peculiar hue or complexion. It is often said that differ-
 
 202 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ences in regard to human rights and privileges are founded 
 upon the skin, but this is not philosophically correct ; for, as far 
 as any such differences are founded on color, all the coloring- 
 matter residing in one only of the three membranes, those 
 differences are obviously founded only on a third part of the 
 skin. The interior coat is the living or true skin. It is per- 
 vaded by nerves and blood-vessels. In a healthy person, these 
 blood-vessels, although invisible to the eye, are in a state of the 
 greatest activity. The three coats or the whole membrane 
 are perforated by an inconceivable number of apertures called 
 pores. Through these pores a great deal of the waste matter of 
 the system is excreted or discharged. While taking vigorous 
 exercise, perspiration flows out from the body through these ori- 
 fices, and collects in drops. This is called sensible perspiration, 
 because its quantity is so great as to be perceptible to the senses. 
 The phenomenon of sensible perspiration is an occasioual one, 
 essential to health, but more or less frequent according to the 
 habits of the individual. But there is an insensible perspiration, 
 which is habitual. Languor, cold, numbness, seize every part 
 of the body if its insensible perspiration is checked ; and, un- 
 less it can be revived, these sensations of coldness and torpor 
 will prove the harbingers of death. The watery particles ex- 
 uded through the pores are a combination of hydrogen which 
 we take into our stomach with our food, and of oxygen which 
 we inhale through the lungs. But the perspiration is far from 
 being pure, limpid water. It contains salts, fatty or uuctuous 
 matter, and other impurities. It collects dust also as its parti- 
 cles fly through the air and come in contact with the skin, or as 
 they are commuuicated to our persons by our clothes. The heat 
 of the body vaporizes the watery part of the perspiration, and, 
 in so doing, it loaves a sediment at the mouth of every pore, 
 like a sand-bar at the mouth of a river. Unless this sediment 
 is removed by frequent washings and friction of the whole per- 
 son, it will accumulate, harden, and incrust the entire surface, 
 and form a loathsome and disgusting amalgam of dirt and 
 grease. But when exercise is taken sufficient to throw out the
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 203 
 
 waste parts of the system through the pores, and then these 
 nauseous obstructions are removed by daily ablution, the cur- 
 rents of life will flow out to the surface, and to all the extremi- 
 ties, full, deep, and majestically strong. The jockey under- 
 stands this perfectly well in regard to his horses, though so 
 ignorant of it in regard to himself; and a gentleman who 
 rarely Avashes or brushes his own person would discharge a 
 groom who should neglect to wash and curry his horses. The 
 best antidote and remedy for most cutaneous disorders or erup- 
 tions is cleanliness. We are accustomed to call such maladies 
 diseases of the skin ; but they are often no more diseases of the 
 skin than a burn is. They are diseases of unclean habits. 
 For their removal or prevention, the practices of the commu- 
 nity must be altered ; but this will not be done without the 
 diffusion of physiological knowledge. 
 
 I hope I have now given such an outline of the principal 
 vital organs and functions as will render the practical remarks 
 which are to follow intelligible and instructive. 
 
 It is manifest from what has been said, brief and incomplete 
 as it is, that the health, vigor, and longevity of the human 
 family are almost entirely dependent upon three things : 
 
 1. A sufficient quantity of wholesome and nutritious food, 
 well prepared before it is sent into the stomach. 
 
 2. The due vitalization of the blood in the lungs. 
 
 This vitalization of the blood is effected by our inhaling the 
 necessary amount of pure air, which, as I shall presently show, 
 is utterly impossible without active exercise. 
 
 3. Personal cleanliness, by which is meant cleanliness of the 
 whole surface of the body. 
 
 And surely it is a truth fitted to awaken our most fervent 
 gratitude to the Author of our existence, that he has placed 
 these three great conditions of pur physical well-being under 
 our own control. Of the nature or essence of the vital princi- 
 ple we are as yet ignorant. Some of the internal ganglia also 
 are mysteries to the profoundest science. Of the more subtile
 
 204 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 movements in the interior of the system, we can take no availa- 
 ble cognizance. These inward vital processes are not subject 
 to our volition. The heart will not continue to beat, nor the 
 blood to flow, at the bidding of the mightiest of the earth. 
 The sculpture-like outline of the body ; its gradual and sym- 
 metrical expansion from infancy to manhood, every day another 
 and yet the same ; the carving and grooving of all the bones 
 and joints ; the weaving of the muscles into a compact and 
 elastic fabric, and their self-lubricating power, by which, though 
 pressed together in the closest order and crossing each other in 
 all directions, they yet play their respective parts without per- 
 ceptible friction; the winding-up of the heart, so that it will 
 vibrate the seconds of threescore years and ten without repair 
 or alteration ; the chanuelling-out of the blood-vessels, more 
 numerous than all the rivers of a continent, and so thoroughly 
 permeating every part, that there is no desert or waste spot left 
 where their fertilizing currents do not flow ; the triple layer of 
 the skin with its infinite reticulations ; the culling and exact 
 depositing of the material of that most divinely-wrought organ, 
 the brain, for whose exquisite workmanship it would seem as 
 though air and light and herft and electricity had all been 
 sifted and winnowed, and their finest particles selected for its 
 composition ; the diffusion of the nerves over every part of 
 the frame, along whose darksome and attenuated threads the 
 messengers of the mind pass to and fro with the rapidity of 
 lightning; the fashioning of the vocal apparatus, so simple in 
 its mechanism, and yet so varied in its articulation and its 
 musical range and compass ; the hollowing-out of the ear, 
 which secures to us all the utilities and blessings of social inter- 
 course ; the opening of the eye, on whose narrow retina all the 
 breadth and magnificence of the material universe can be depic- 
 tured ; and, finally, the power of converting the coarse, crude, 
 dead materials of our food into sentient tissues, and miracu- 
 lously enduing them with the properties of life, over all these, 
 as well as over various other processes of formation and growth, 
 our will has no direct control. They will not be fashioned, or
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 205 
 
 cease to be fashioned, at our bidding. It was in this sense that 
 the question was put, " Which of yon, by taking thought, can 
 add one cubit unto his stature ?" It is not by " taking thought," 
 but by using the prescribed means, by learning and obeying 
 the physical laws, that the stature can be made loftier, the 
 muscles more vigorous, the senses quicker, the life longer, and 
 the capacity of usefulness almost indefinitely greater. 
 
 It is diet, oxygenation of the blood, and personal purity or 
 cleanliness, which have the prerogative of accomplishing these 
 objects ; and these are in our power, within our legitimate 
 jurisdiction : and, if we perform our part of the work faithfully 
 and fully in regard to these things, Nature will perform her 
 part of the work faithfully and fully in regard to those subt- 
 ler and nicer operations which lie beyond our immediate con- 
 trol. 
 
 On the first point, that of diet, I have already said as 
 much as the limits of this Report will warrant. 
 
 In regard to the second point, the proper oxygeuation of 
 the blood, a few observations will make it apparent that this 
 vital operation may be defeated in any one of three different 
 ways, or, with more fatal despatch, in all of them acting to- 
 gether. 
 
 1. Even when the lungs are sound and of good size, the blood 
 may fail to be vitalized by our breathing impure air, that is, 
 air of which less than twenty-one hundredth parts are oxygen. 
 As breathing the air once unfits it for being breathed again 
 until it has come in contact with vegetation, or been otherwise 
 renovated in the great laboratory of Nature, it follows that a 
 quantity of new air should be supplied to the lungs just as fast 
 as we exhale the old. This is most perfectly done under the 
 open sky ; and hence the universal fact, other things being 
 equal, that those who live most out of doors enjoy the best 
 health. In our apartments and houses, fresh air should be 
 admitted just as fast as the oxygen of the old is destroyed by 
 our own breathing, or by fires and lights ; and it should be 
 borne in mind, that, as the same process is going on in us and
 
 206 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 in a common fire or flame, a few lights in a room will consume 
 as much oxygen as a man. Now, the mother violates this rule 
 when she sinks her babe in the pillows of a cradle or crib, 
 and, by so covering it up as to impede the access of fresh air to 
 its lungs, may with almost literal truth be said to bury it alive ; 
 because, in such case, the infant is compelled to breathe the 
 same air the second time, or, perhaps, many limes. Parents 
 violate this rule when, for the sake of guarding against what 
 they call the inclemency of the season, they make their chil- 
 dren sleep, or sleep themselves, in a small room, with 
 closed doors, and with windows carefully calked in order to 
 keep out the cold. A child who has been physically well 
 trained will not suffer so much by sleeping with the windows 
 of its apartment open, when the thermometer is at zero, as by 
 habitually lying all night in a close, pent-up apartment. This 
 law is flagrantly violated when children are kept in-doors for 
 days together, although the weather be as cold as our latitude 
 will permit, instead of being sent out daily, and several times a 
 day, to take such vigorous exercise as will keep them warm, in 
 the open air ; or, at least, in some place where the sun's light 
 can come.* This law is most absurdly and cruelly violated by 
 teachers who supply only impure air for their pupils to breathe, 
 at the same time that they require them to study. An engineer 
 might as well require his locomotive to go when he shuts off 
 the draught from the fire-chamber. The Pharaohs who demand 
 intelligent study in the absence of pure air are as tyrannical 
 as the Pharaoh who exacted a full tale of bricks without straw, 
 with the aggravating circumstance against them, that this 
 tyranny is exercised upon children instead of men. A great 
 many of our private dwellings, especially those which are used 
 as boarding-houses, and, almost universally, our public edi- 
 fices, are constructed in open disregard of the laws of physi- 
 ology. 
 
 The immediate effects of breathing impure air are lassitude 
 
 * The Neapolitans have an excellent proverb, that where the sun does not come 
 the physician must.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 207 
 
 of the whole system, incapability of concentrated thought, ob- 
 tuseness and uncertainty of the senses, followed by torpor, diz- 
 ziness, faintness, and, if long continued, by death. When 
 great mental efforts are put forth simultaneously with the in- 
 halation of impure air, so much black blood is forced into the 
 brain iu order to sustain its energies, that a fit of apoplexy at 
 once closes the scene. Instances of this will occur to every 
 observant mind. That of the late Chief Justice Parker of 
 Massachusetts, of Mr. Emmet of New York, and Mr. Pinck- 
 ney of Charleston, were obviously cases of this kind. Had 
 their court-rooms been well ventilated, it may be considered as 
 almost certain that neither of these melancholy events would 
 have happened. Those great men were sacrifices to the bar- 
 barous manner in which the court-rooms of a community call- 
 ing itself civilized had been constructed. They were pro- 
 foundly learned in the laws of the land, but as profoundly 
 ignorant or disregardful of the laws of Nature. The eminent 
 and excellent Chief Justice of Massachusetts was just as much 
 the victim of a violated law as the malefactors whom he was 
 trying when he died.* 
 
 Different races of animals exhibit to our daily observation 
 the consequences of a more or less perfect oxygeuation of the 
 blood. Frogs, toads, lizards, and reptiles generally, are so 
 constituted or organized, that only a part of their blood flows 
 through their lungs at each circulation. The residue of it, 
 therefore, goes round twice, thrice, or even more times, with- 
 out imbibing oxygen or throwing off carbonic acid. Hence 
 their general character of inactivity, dulness, and stupidity. 
 They remain iu one position and almost motionless during the 
 greater part of their lives, and exhibit a very low form of ani- 
 mated existence. The standing temperature of their blood is 
 
 * In the British House of Commons, during the memorable session of 1835, 
 when the importance of the interests at stake, and the equal balancing of parties, 
 occasioned an unusually close attendance and very lengthened sittings, the lives 
 of several of the members were sacrificed in consequence of the bad condition of 
 the air ; and the health of many more, even the most robust among them, was very 
 seriously impaired. Dr. A. Combe.
 
 208 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 several degrees lower than that of most other animals, the 
 natural consequence of its imperfect oxygenation. But, on the 
 other hand, the organization and structure of most birds are 
 such, that (hey breathe, iu proportion to their bulk, a far greater 
 quantity of air than man. Their standard of temperature is 
 several degrees higher than that of the human species. Hence 
 their vivacity and celerity of motion, or, rather, their incapa- 
 bility of rest. They are much upon the wing, or flitting from 
 spray t;> spray, overflowing with music which seems to pour 
 out of itself; and they evince an existence crowded with glad- 
 some emotions. Just so far as we, by our architectural ar- 
 rangements, or by our confinement of children within doors, 
 administer impure air for their breathing ; just so far do we 
 take from them the warmth, vivacity, and joyousness of birds, 
 and inflict upon them, in its stead, the coldness, torpor, and 
 stupidity of frogs, toads, and lizards. 
 
 2. The second cause which prevents that due oxygenation 
 of the blood which is so essential to health, vigor, and length of 
 days, is a deficiency in the size of the lungs themselves. Men 
 of a lively expression, florid countenance, and such great mus- 
 cular activity as makes motion a pleasure, and inaction a pain, 
 and who are so ardent that their common feelings are almost 
 passions, that is, men of a high sanguineous temperament, 
 always have a large chest. A large chest is synonymous with 
 large lungs; for, if not interfered with, the lungs determine 
 the size of the chest, as the brain determines the size of the 
 cranium. Just in proportion as the capacity, or roominess, of 
 the lungs is lessened, must the quantity of the air which is 
 brought into contact with the blood be diminished. And, as 
 the quantity of the air admitted to contact with the blood is 
 diminished, in the same ratio must the oxygeuation of that 
 fluid be reduced. To have small lungs, therefore, or, what is 
 the same thing, a small chest, is a calamity to the health, as 
 well as a deformity to the person. All animals, in their highest 
 state of physical development, have a full, capacious chest. 
 Indeed, the greatest energy of the digestive organs, the richest
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 209 
 
 nutrition carried by the blood to the various parts of the sys- 
 tem, and especially the greatest quickness and power of ten- 
 sion in the muscles, cannot exist without large lungs, that 
 is, without a large chest. As well might vegetation flourish 
 without heat or moisture. What a deep and capacious chest 
 have the highest specimens of that noble animal, the horse ! 
 It is in that spacious laboratory that his fleetness and endurance 
 are generated ; and generated so rapidly, that he champs the bit 
 and becomes impatient of the reins that debar him from giving 
 loose to his pent-up energies. So of the ox, whether the wild 
 buffalo of the prairies, or the domesticated animal which is so 
 serviceable to man. In those emblems of beauty, which, in all 
 ages, have delighted the sculptor, the painter, and the poet ; 
 in the lion, the swan, the dove, or the wild pigeon which cuts 
 the air with such amazing speed, and sustains itself so long 
 upon the wing, in all these, the first feature which catches 
 the artist's eye is the broad, expanded, full-rounded chest. 
 This part of the body, then, is not only the seat of the highest 
 energy, but the type of the most perfect elegance. Such was 
 the universal sentiment amongst those worshippers of beauty, 
 the Greeks. Had Phidias or Praxiteles sculptured a Jupiter 
 with a narrow and sunken chest, or a Venus whom a con- 
 tracted zone would clasp, not all the renown of their previous 
 works, nor their countrymen's idolatry of genius, could have 
 saved them from public insult or judicial ostracism. 
 
 Persons suffer under the misfortune and ugliness of small 
 lungs from different causes. They come by hereditary trans- 
 mission. If both the parents have small lungs, it is almost 
 certain that their offspring will be afflicted with the same de- 
 formity. In such cases, however, the infirmity of the children 
 may, to a great extent, be remedied by inducing them to take 
 much exercise, especially of the chest and upper extremities, 
 in the open air. This, if continued through childhood and 
 youth, will result in a great expansion of these organs ; for, 
 under favorable circumstances, Nature always seems anxious 
 to retrieve her losses. 
 14
 
 210 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 There are also certain mechanical trades in which the body 
 is continually bent forward, or confined in a sitting posture, 
 the hands being fixed at one point, and the shoulders forced 
 round towards that point, as though they were striving to look 
 at each other ; all of which tends to cramp the chest, and to 
 make its interior and fore part convex instead of concave, and, 
 of course, to dwarf the size and impede the play of the lungs. 
 In such cases, the workman should stand as much as possible, 
 instead of sitting ; and, when not engaged in his employment, 
 should practise counteracting exercises. 
 
 The growth of the lungs may also be impeded by artifi- 
 cial or mechanical compression, in perverse imitation of the 
 Chinese, who swathe the foot from birth, and confine it through 
 life in a small, inelastic shoe ; or of the tribe of Flathead Indians, 
 who deform the head by fastening a hard board upon the fron- 
 tal portion of the cranium. And the victim of Chinese fashion 
 may as well expect to walk or dance with the grace and light- 
 ness of a Camilla, or the tribe of Flathcads to attain the intel- 
 lectual stature of Lord Bacon or Dr. Franklin, as any one can 
 expect to enjoy vigor of body, buoyancy of spirits, or energy 
 of intellect, who is doomed by any tyrant, whether of law or 
 of custom, to interdict the free motion and enlargement of 
 this vital organ, the lungs. It is matter for rejoicing that those 
 monsters of cruelty who invented the iron boot and the thumb- 
 screw for the torture of their victims did not understand 
 enough of physiological laws to know that they could inflict 
 far more various and enduring tortures by enclosing the whole 
 body in one thick-ribbed incasement, and thus, at once, coun- 
 terwork all vital processes. Such a contrivance, too, Avould 
 have caused not merely pain to the individual, but deteriora- 
 tion of the progeny ; and, for all those who had any pride of 
 family, would have been far more effectual in entailing bodily 
 and mental imbecility, and consequent obscurity and disgrace, 
 upon their descendants, than any attainder of blood, or act of 
 outlawry. 
 
 To obviate the dwindling and debilitating effects of this
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 211 
 
 practice upon the race, the community must allow its children 
 to grow up without any obstruction to the development of this 
 vital part of their frame. The main hope of remedy lies in a 
 better training of the young, in keeping the yoke from the 
 necks of those \vlio have never been degraded and enfeebled 
 by it ; for so enervating .to the whole system is this practice, 
 so deeply injurious to intellectual and moral manifestations is 
 it to send continually, and for years, a current of uuosyge- 
 nated, black blood to the brain, that the victims of the custom 
 become almost unable to appreciate any argument or persua- 
 sion addressed to their reason or religion. The minds of such 
 persons run to fancies and vagaries, while common sense 
 seems obliterated. This, indeed, might be predicted from a 
 knowledge of physiological laws. Sapping, as the habit does, 
 the vital force alike of body, intellect, and moral sentiments, it 
 belongs to that class of offences which seem, in the very act 
 of commission, to take away from the offender both the de- 
 sire and the ability to reform, and which inflict the last act of 
 degradation, a willing bondage. 
 
 Let any one who has not robbed himself of the power of 
 reflection consider, for a moment, the collocation or juxtaposi- 
 tion of four of the great vital organs, the lungs, heart, 
 stomach, and liver, upon which a compression around the 
 upper and central part of the body directly acts. On the right 
 and left sides of the chest, from the neck to the diaphragm, or 
 midway line of the trunk, are situated the lungs. Between 
 their right and left lobes, and a little backward towards the 
 spine, is suspended the heart, which, in its ceaseless and unin- 
 terrupted play, provides for itself just as much space as it 
 needs. Immediately below is the stomach, which, when dis- 
 tended witli food, is only separated from the heart and the 
 lungs by that thin membrane the diaphragm. On the right 
 of the stomach, and backwards to the spine, is the liver, whose 
 secretions are so essential to the formation of healthy chyle, 
 and to the action of the abdominal viscera. The healthy 
 stomach, after a meal, is in continual motion, contracting and
 
 212 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 expanding, rolling, lifting itself up, first at one end and then at 
 the other, until the work of digestion is completed, and the 
 organ has disburdened itself of its contents. The heaving 
 and subsiding of the lungs at every breath, and the systole 
 and diastole of the heart, as it alternately receives and ejects 
 the vital stream, have, as every one knows, neither intermis- 
 sion nor pause from birth till death. Indeed, any intermission 
 or pause in the action of these organs is death. If permitted 
 to fulfil the wise ordinations of Nature, each one provides for 
 itself ample space for all its movements. Neither interferes 
 with or molests its fellow. They rather assist each other. 
 The full distention of the lungs in breathing helps the con- 
 tractile muscles of the stomach ; and the pressure of the 
 chyme, as it passes along the duodenum, forwards the biliary 
 secretions. 
 
 No mechanism ever invented by the art of man runs so 
 quietly, so forcibly, or so long. There is no clogging, no 
 stifling, no friction. The ribs are hung on hinges, which, at 
 every act of inhalation, open like the bows of a bellows, to 
 enlarge the apartment where these vital organs are plying their 
 work, and preparing the precious pabulum of life. But sup- 
 pose the Avails which enclose these busy operators to be so con- 
 tracted, that all, in their desire for the necessary space, begin 
 to encroach upon each other's limits. Suppose, by further 
 compression, each one to become like a man in a crowd, un- 
 able to move hands or feet. Encumbered, choked, tliAvarted in 
 its exertions, each organ will strive to thrust the others from a 
 space which is too straitened for all ; and thus the force which 
 every one needs for completing and perfecting its own work is 
 expended in hostile though useless aggressions upon its allies. 
 The stomach cannot stir up the food, move it from side to side, 
 and mingle it with the gastric solvent. The lungs from above 
 press upon it with a dead weight. The heart can but half 
 open for the admission, and therefore cannot contract vigor- 
 ously for the swift propulsion, of the blood ; and thus the 
 momentum of its current is lost before it reaches the extremi-
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 213 
 
 tics. The liver cannot concoct its secretions, and such as it 
 prepares are driven from it at unseasonable times. The fine 
 lacteal ducts find only coarse and half-prepared material for 
 nourishment, and this chokes and inflames their minute chan- 
 nels as they bear it onward laboriously to the blood. As an 
 inevitable consequence, innutritions blood is poured into the 
 right side of the heart. But, rich and strong blood being the 
 natural stimulus of that organ, it now works languidly in 
 forcing the stream forward to the lungs, both from want of 
 room and of the appropriate excitement. When the lazy current 
 of blood reaches the lungs to throw off its poisonous carbonic- 
 acid gas, and to seek that life-giving elixir, the oxygen of the 
 air, it finds all the air-cells crowded together and almost 
 closed, or occupied only by corrupted air ; and hence it is 
 obliged to return to the left side of the heart almost as 
 black and lifeless as when it emerged from the right : or, 
 to illustrate the subject by a metaphor before used, the diver, 
 having in vain come to the surface after air, is compelled, 
 though at the risk of suffocation, to sink again to the bottom 
 without refreshment. From the left side of the heart, the 
 blood now starts upon its course a second time, without vitali- 
 zation ; and hence it issues in a tardy, pestiferous stream, 
 diffusing a painful sense of languor over all the limbs, and 
 blunting the acuteness of every sense, until at last its muddy 
 current ascends to the sacred temple of the brain, to spread 
 clouds and darkness through all its mansions. From this 
 capitol of the realm it returns, again to contend with the same 
 obstructions, and, instead of being the antagonist, to become 
 the ally of all the chemical forces in their attack upon the 
 citadels of life. 
 
 A single additional remark will suffice to show, that any 
 constriction around any part of the body will impede the cur- 
 rent that drives the machinery of life. As a general rule, the 
 arteries, through which the blood is propelled outward from 
 the heart, lie deep beneath the surface. This course serves to 
 secure them from external injuries ; and as the blood flows
 
 214 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 more freely from an opened artery than from a vein, and is 
 with more difficulty stanched, our exposure to its loss is greatly 
 diminished by such an arrangement. Most of the veins, on 
 the other baud, lie at or near the surface. In persons of high 
 health, the veins start out, and exhibit themselves above the 
 common surface ; and this seems to have been carefully re- 
 garded by the ancient sculptors in their representations of 
 physical strength. From the fact that so much of the blood 
 flows near the surface, on its return to the heart and lungs, it 
 is easy to see that any ligature around trunk or limb must 
 impede the current as it hastens onAvard to renew the life 
 which it has lost. Suppose the engine-men of the fire-depart- 
 ment, when called out to extinguish a conflagration, should lay 
 heavy weights all along upon the hose through which the 
 water ought freely to flow : could they reasonably expect to 
 subdue the flames, and save property and life from destruc- 
 tion? Certainly with as much reason as any person who ob- 
 structs the free flow of the blood by bands or ligatures over 
 any part of the body can expect to enjoy a full measure of 
 health; 
 
 The injury, however, of constricting the blood-vessels by 
 pressure upon the surface, is different in different parts. A 
 tight cord around the neck is fatal. Hence this mode has been 
 adopted by several nations for executing the punishment of 
 death upon criminals. If the structure of the human system 
 were understood, a severe mechanical compression around the 
 body would be considered a misfortune and a disgrace next in 
 order to a noose about the neck. It is a less speedy process, 
 indeed, for extinguishing life, than strangulation ; but, in its 
 effects upon the criminal and upon offspring, it inflicts the pain 
 of a hundred deaths. 
 
 But any tight band or ligature a hat, neck-cloth, glove, 
 boot, shoe fastened around any part of the body is propor- 
 tionally injurious. That painful and disabling malady 
 swelled limbs is oftentimes occasioned by the ignorant prac- 
 tice of binding something so tight upon or around the limb as
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 215 
 
 to prevent the free flow of the blood back to the heart. A rule, 
 as universal as it is intelligible, in regard to the closeness of 
 our garments, is, that they should always allow a free motion 
 of the parts beneath them. If, for instance, the sleeve of a 
 coat fits so tightly to the arm that the arm cannot turn within 
 the sleeve without turning the sleeve also, then it is so tight as 
 to check the circulation and to injure health. And so of any 
 other part of the dress. But, when the body and the limbs 
 move freely within the dress, a friction on the skin is caused 
 which is highly salutary. 
 
 3. The third cause of an imperfect oxygenation of the blood 
 is the ivant of exercise. 
 
 A person may have well-developed lungs, and live constant- 
 ly in pure air ; and yet, without exercise, his blood will be but 
 half oxygenated, and he will suffer consequent debility of body 
 and mind. 
 
 A few simple propositions will place the relation in which we 
 stand to active exercise in a clear light. 
 
 1. Every muscular exertion is necessarily attended by a com- 
 pression of the muscle exerted ; that is, every muscle in a state 
 of tension is more compact, and therefore occupies less space, 
 than when it is relaxed. The muscles are respectively sur- 
 rounded by or enclosed in a membranous sheath or coat, just 
 as the arm, finger, or other part is surrounded by its skin. 
 This sheath is always so well lubricated, that although the 
 different muscles are close-packed together, yet they slide 
 upon each other without embarrassment. Of the rapidity with 
 which they must play upon one another, we may form some 
 conception in looking at a juggler's arms or a musician's fin- 
 gers. Within these sheaths (or fascia, as they are technically 
 called) the Avhole body of the muscle, when we exercise, is 
 compressed ; or, to use a familiar but more expressive phrase, 
 it is squeezed. This compression of the muscle sends out its 
 blood, just as the compression of any flexible tube or cylinder 
 would send out its contents. The blood, for a reason hereafter 
 to be stated, can move only in one direction. In the general
 
 216 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 circulation (as distinguished from the pulmonary), the arterial 
 blood moves outward towards the extremities. When it reaches 
 the extremities, it passes from the arteries, through capillary 
 tubes of almost inconceivable fineness, into the veins, where, 
 losing its arterial character, it becomes venous blood, and flows 
 backwards to the heart. Hence the obvious effect of every 
 muscular effort is to quicken the circulation of the blood. 
 
 2. The blood being the natural stimulus to the action of the 
 heart, if more blood is received, the stimulus is increased, and, 
 of course, the pulsations of that organ are increased also, both 
 in frequency and force. The heart must throw out as much 
 blood as it receives ; and, when an increased volume is thrown 
 into it by the compression of the muscles, its beat must be more 
 rapid, and, as the organ is more distended also, it must throw 
 out more at each beat. 
 
 3. As the blood thrown from the right side of the heart 
 has no place of escape except into the lungs, and as this fluid 
 is also the natural stimulus of the lungs, it follows, that, as the 
 quantity of blood injected into these organs is increased, their 
 motions also must be accelerated. 
 
 This statement has been or may be tested by every one for 
 himself. Let a man, while sitting in a state of perfect repose 
 at the bottom of Banker-hill Monument, count the number of 
 his pulsations per minute, and take note, as well as he can, 
 of their force. Let him also note the number of his respira- 
 tions per minute, and their depth, that is, the quantity of air 
 which he inhales at each breath ; and then let him ascend the 
 staircase, though at a moderate step, to its summit, and there 
 compare the frequency and strength of his pulsations, and the 
 number and fulness of his respirations, with what they were 
 before he started, and he will find how vastly the latter ex- 
 ceed the former ! And so of any vigorous exercise. The whole 
 philosophy of this is, that muscular exertion or, which is 
 the same thing, muscular compression sends more blood to 
 the heart ; whereupon that engine increases the rapidity and 
 length of its strokes, to propel the current forward towards the
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 217 
 
 lungs ; and then the lungs are inflated to their lowest depths to 
 meet the increased demand of the blood for oxygen. And 
 what is remarkable is, that we cannot by any act of the will 
 force ourselves to deep and rapid breathing for any consider- 
 able length of time, without exercise ; nor can we prevent 
 deep and rapid breathing while engaged in strong muscular 
 efforts. This is a natural operation, and can be effected only 
 by using the appointed natural means. 
 
 Observe the breathing of a person long unused to exercise. 
 If the capacity of the lungs is such that they would require one, 
 two, or more quarts of air for their full inflation, such a person, 
 while in a state of repose, will inhale scarcely half a pint, and 
 hence will defraud himself of at least three-fourths of the vital 
 element which his system requires. An indolent person could 
 enjoy a full measure of health and vigor, only on condition 
 that the whole arrangement of his physical structure, and all 
 the laws of Nature which pertain to it, should be reversed for 
 his accommodation. 
 
 It was stated above, that, while the lungs contain two sets of 
 vessels for the blood, one for its ingress, the other for its 
 egress, they contain but one set for the air. Hence the air 
 returns outward through the same passages by which it entered 
 the lungs ; or, to sacrifice dignity to expressiveness of phrase, 
 it goes out backwards. The consequence of this is, that feeble 
 and shallow breathing ventilates only the upper part of the 
 lungs. But the principal bulk of these organs lies lower down 
 in the chest. Hence the small quantity of air taken into the 
 lungs by an indolent person at each successive breath reaches 
 but a part of the blood which is flowing through them. The 
 rest of the stream passes on, lifeless and corrupting. And 
 hence, too, that general paleness of hue, that insecurity of step, 
 that threatening to sink or drop down while attempting to stand 
 or sit upright, that feeling of necessity for some mechanical sup- 
 port around the body in order to maintain it in an erect pos- 
 ture, and that universal heaviness of motion, as though all the 
 muscular bands were stretching, instead of tightening, on the
 
 218 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 application of force, which characterize those who disdain 
 manual labor, and look upon active exercise as derogating 
 from personal dignity. To the eye of the physiologist or lover 
 of Nature, these signs of feebleness are more revolting than the 
 deformity of a hump-back or a club-foot. 
 
 The reason why the blood, on a compression of the muscles, 
 must be driven forward, and not backward, is, that the veins are 
 provided, at brief intervals along their whole length, with valves, 
 which allow this fluid to pass only in one direction. It flows 
 forward freely through these valves ; but they shut to prevent 
 its retrogression. How, except by some such mechanical con- 
 trivance, could the blood of a full-grown man, while he is in a 
 standing posture, ascend for a distance of fifty inches from his 
 feet to his heart? Without these valves, the weight of the 
 whole column of blood would press upon its base ; and when 
 we consider the meandering of its streams, and the fineness of 
 the capillary tubes through which it must pass, a force suffi- 
 cient to drive it upwards to the heart, unsupported by these 
 valves, would be almost inconceivable. 
 
 So far as the circulation of the blood is concerned, these 
 facts show the difference between passive exercise, such as 
 riding in a carriage or sailing in a boat, and the athletic exer- 
 tions of manual labor or of gymnastic sports. Every jolt of a 
 vehicle, of course, will drive the blood forward a little, just 
 as any fluid is agitated by the motion of the vessel containing 
 it, and the valves in the veins will prevent its falling back ; 
 but how miserable a substitute is this for that alternate com- 
 pression and relaxation of the muscles, which sends the blood 
 forward in successive and beautiful jets, which also sends for- 
 ward the whole mass of the blood, not allowing, as is the case 
 with all slothful, inactive persons, auy stagnant, noisome pool, 
 or even particle, to remain behind to breed corruption and 
 offence ; and which rewards with the priceless boon of health 
 the labors of the husbandman, the artisan, or the sailor ! 
 
 On the due oxygeuation of the blood, and on its lively circu- 
 lation through the system, depends another result, and one, too,
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 219 
 
 of the most remarkable character in the whole animal organism. 
 I refer to the growth of the body, and the constant reproduction 
 of its tissues. 
 
 A vulgar opinion prevails, that every part of the body of a 
 man is changed once in seven years ; so that, speaking of the 
 corporeal substance, it might be said that no part of our frame, 
 however gray or decrepit with age we may appear, is more than 
 seven years old. Whether this opinion may or may not be 
 erroneous in one sense that is, whether a man who dies at a 
 hundred may not carry some atom, molecule, or monad, to the 
 grave, which he brought into life is what we have no certain 
 means of determining, though it is highly probable that he 
 does not ; but there can be no doubt that the saying is grossly 
 incorrect, in making a general allowance of seven years for the 
 renewal of the system. How many times must the skin of 
 an infant who weighs but six or eight pounds at birth be 
 changed, in order to accommodate itself to the gradual en- 
 largement of its owner, until he weighs a hundred and sixty or 
 eighty pounds ! it being kept in mind that the skin has made 
 a good "fit" during all the time. This adaptation of the en- 
 velope to the daily growth of the owner is not effected by 
 stretching, for whatever is stretched in one direction must be 
 diminished in some other ; but a square inch or square foot of 
 the skin of an adult is heavier and thicker than that of a child. 
 During the whole period of a child's growth, therefore, how 
 many times must this entire integument change in every 
 seven years, and even in a single year ! The man most ex- 
 travagant in his wardrobe prepares far fewer garments for his 
 body than Nature prepares skins. And if the skin must be cast 
 off and reproduced so many times in order to adapt itself to 
 the growth of the parts it contaius, then these parts must 
 change nearly or quite as many times in order to suit the 
 capacity of their covering. Look at the hands and feet of the 
 infant and of the full-grown man, and consider with how many 
 new pairs of each he must have been furnished for all the 
 intermediate sizes.
 
 220 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 But this is not all. It is supposed that every exertion of a 
 muscle is attended by an actual loss of a portion of its sub- 
 stance. In the adult state, when we retain substantially the 
 same weight from year to year, the old material which is lost 
 is replaced only by an equal quantity of new. But, during the 
 season of growth, not only the material which is lost must be 
 replaced, but such an additional quantity must be added as 
 will increase the mass or weight of the individual from day to 
 day. Perhaps this presents to us a better idea than any thing 
 else can of the changes from old to new which are constantly 
 going on in a healthy body. We see it with our eyes in regard 
 to the nails and hair. The whole of the finger-nails are changed 
 several times a year, at least ; and the hair grows far more 
 rapidly than the nails. The particles incorporated into our 
 system are not designed to last long ; but the beauty of the 
 operation is, that the used-up portions are skilfully taken out, 
 one after another, and new ones, larger, stronger, and better, 
 substituted for them. No healthy person consists of precisely 
 the same particles for any two successive days. 
 
 How infinitely superior is this to any specimen of human 
 workmanship ! If we cause friction in any part of a machine, 
 as in the iron band or tire of a wheel, for instance, it wears 
 away and is gone. Not so with the hand or the foot, or any 
 part of the body : there is a repairing energy, a constructive 
 faculty, in these, which has the power, not only of replacing 
 what is lost by friction, but of thickening and hardening the 
 exposed parts. "Were there any such self-protecting ability in 
 a wooden wheel, then, when its circumference should begin to 
 wear away, it would, of its own vital efficiency, prepare and 
 deposit a rim of iron to protect the wood ; and if this, too, 
 were in danger of being ground off, it would then defend itself 
 by one of steel or platinum. 
 
 What a wonderful invention should we deem it to be, if a 
 shipwright could discover some mode by which, whenever de- 
 cay or dry-rot should attack the innermost timber of his vessel,
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 221 
 
 that vessel should be endued with the power of seizing the 
 unsound atom, and of hurrying it along from point to point, 
 until at last it should be thrown out into the sea ; and, in the 
 mean time, a sound particle should be seen winding its way 
 among thick layers of iron and wood, changing its course, if 
 need were, to avoid obstacles, though always holding on stead- 
 fast in the same general direction, until at last it should settle 
 down in the precise place from which its predecessor had been 
 ejected, whether that place were at the bottom of the keel or 
 at the top of the mast ! And the wonder would be immeasura- 
 bly increased, if the new particles, while they imitated the 
 shape, should exceed the size, of their predecessors, and the 
 process should be repeated again and again, until a pleasure- 
 boat became a steamship or a man-of-war. Yet a process ex- 
 actly like this is going on, every moment, in the body of every 
 healthy child, and with greater rapidity and frequency in pro- 
 portion to the degree of health enjoyed. 
 
 This is not mere curious speculation. These facts have the 
 greatest practical significancy. The change of material in the 
 body is almost exactly proportioned to the quantity of pure air 
 breathed, and to the amount of healthy exercise taken ; because 
 on these mainly depends the assimilation of the food. With- 
 out such change of matter, there cannot be any healthy growth ; 
 and hence the small bones and loose flesh as soft and puffy 
 as though it were wind-swollen of those children who are 
 delicately reared. Such children cannot have elastic, bounding 
 muscles ; for theirs are the old, flaccid muscles whose material 
 ought to have been renewed mouths ago. They cannot have 
 bright eyes and roseate cheeks ; for the old, defaced lenses of 
 the eye are still in use, and strong exercise in the open air 
 has never projected the blood outward to fill the vessels of the 
 true skin with the hues of beauty and the glow of health. In 
 regard to those young men who have suffered the misfortune 
 of a luxurious domestic training, who have been taught to dis- 
 dain labor, and have hardly been allowed to wash their own 
 faces or tie their own shoes, it is often alleged, as an excuse for
 
 222 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 their inaptitude, their want of dexterity and resource, in the 
 emergencies of life, that they have never been accustomed or 
 disciplined to contrive and to think in the adaptation of means 
 to ends, or in tracing relations between causes and effects. 
 But this is far from being all. Their imbecility does not come 
 merely from a want of practice, but from their being obliged to 
 use an old brain, the substance of which ought to have been 
 renovated all its fibres taken up and relaid many times 
 by vigorous exercises, and by a responsible application to some 
 department of business. In such persons the half-decayed 
 nerves have become almost non-conductors of volition ; and the 
 brain, through the want of a renewal of its substance, is too 
 loose and spongy for the manifestation of thought. This organ, 
 too, like all other parts of the body, being dependent upon 
 these changes for its growth, must be small as well as lifeless 
 without them, or its growth will be only in the animal, instead 
 of the intellectual and moral regions. 
 
 On this view of the subject may be founded the true philo- 
 sophical definition of Youth and Old Age. Those who, by an 
 intelligent attention to diet, pure air, exercise, and cleanliness, 
 cause frequent changes in the particles of which the body is 
 composed, may be said to be young at any age ; while those 
 who, by over-eating, uncleauliuess of person, and a deficient 
 oxygenation of the blood, whether by breathing impure air, by 
 a compression of the chest, or by inactive habits of life, effect 
 no such change in the constituent particles of which their 
 bodies are composed, may, with equal truth, be called old at 
 any age after the days of infancy have passed. In this sense 
 it is often literally true that one individual at seventeen may 
 be older than another at seventy ; and some children of seven 
 years of age are already superannuated. 
 
 In the account of the miraculous feeding of the children of 
 Israel with manna in the wilderness, it is related that no skill 
 could preserve the heaven-descended bread in a state of purity 
 (with the exception of the Sabbath) but for a single day ; and 
 the sacred historian uses very pungent and unsavory words in
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 223 
 
 describing the odious qualities of that which was kept for a 
 longer period ; but the manna of the second or of the third 
 day's keeping must have had ambrosial sweetness, as compared 
 with the whole substance and animal economy of those who, by 
 contemning useful labor, or thinking it ungenteel to practise 
 vigorous exercises, fail to renew, frequently, the whole substance 
 of the body. 
 
 Labor was appointed at the creation. At the same time that 
 God made man, He made a garden, and ordered him to " dress 
 it and keep it ; " that is, to work in it, and, of course, to pre- 
 pare the necessary utensils to aid him in its cultivation. Hence 
 agriculture and the mechanic arts are coeval with the race, and 
 are of divine institution. All mankind have been, now are, and 
 we may suppose always will be, created with the same neces- 
 sity for bodily exertion as Adam was. If labor were not neces- 
 sary for the fruits it produces, it would be so for ourselves. 
 Nor can I concede that those who would rear their children 
 without some industrial occupation, or without systematic mus- 
 cular exercise of some kind, are wiser than the Maker of the 
 race ; or that they love their offspring better than He loved our 
 first parents before they had committed any transgression. 
 Although, in a certain narrow sense, it is sometimes said that 
 labor is a curse, yet, as it is the inevitable condition of our 
 well-being in this life, those who strive to avoid this curse 
 always incur a greater one. 
 
 Among the most pernicious consequences resulting from a 
 general ignorance of Physiology is the prevalent opinion that 
 a weakly child must be prepared for a profession, or appren- 
 ticed to some in-door occupation. The plain statement of this 
 reasoning is, that, because a child is weak and puny at the 
 beginning, he must be subjected by his training to further ener- 
 vating processes. Instead of selecting an employment by which 
 the feeble would be fortified, they are subjected to new debili- 
 tations. If deficiency of constitutional vigor is a plausible 
 argument in favor of discarding healthful occupations in regard 
 to one generation, it must be decisive for the next, and must
 
 224 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 continue to gather force as the family deteriorates. Hence, to 
 a great extent, that abandonment by our young men of the 
 invigorating employments of agriculture and the handicrafts, 
 the consequent crowding of the professions, and the eager com- 
 petition for inactive occupations, an evil self-aggravating, 
 and reproductive of its own kind. If the weakly and igno- 
 rant father cannot work out of doors, he will be likely so 
 to rear his children that they cannot work even in the house ; 
 and the grandchildren may be able to work nowhere. Each 
 generation of such a lineage adds something to the stock of 
 debility and disease which it inherits, and entails the whole 
 upon its posterity. 
 
 The slightest acquaintance with the laws of health will teach 
 us another most important fact. Every day we hear people, 
 who are suffering under some form of indisposition, wondering 
 what could have occasioned it, and protesting that they had 
 subjected themselves to no more than ordinary exertions or 
 exposures. This may be very true, and yet a fatal disease be 
 contracted. Life is an active power ; but it is constantly sur- 
 rounded and assailed by the ever-active agencies of Nature, 
 which, in a certain sense, are hostile to it. Hence, as soon as 
 the body ceases to be animated, it is speedily decomposed by 
 these natural agencies, and reduced to its original elements. 
 Now, the vital force is subject to great changes. After severe 
 bodily effort, after great mental anxiety and exhaustion, or 
 after a change from active to inactive habits, from breathing 
 pure air to breathing that which is impure, and from various 
 other debilitating causes, the energy of the vital force is re- 
 duced ; and it is then in danger of being overborne by exterior 
 forces which before were harmless. Suppose the ordinary 
 vital force to be represented by one hundred, and the usual 
 assailing forces to be equal to fifty. It is obvious that, in such 
 a case, the latter will be subordinated to the former, and be- 
 come ministers to its welfare. But suppose, from any debili- 
 tating cause whatever, the efficiency of the vital force is reduced 
 to twenty-five ; then it is equally obvious that it must succumb
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. '2-5 
 
 to the antagonist forces of Nature, now twice as strong as 
 itself, and the individual who before had put forth exertions 
 or confronted exposures with impunity is now instantaneously 
 overborne in the encounter. A clear perception of this truth 
 would shield our health from many dangers. 
 
 A man in perfect health may be said to be lord over the cli- 
 mate in which he lives ; but, if health be broken down, the 
 climate is lord over him. All Nature seems to wage war upon 
 him, treating him as some tribes of wild animals are said 
 to treat any one of their number which has broken a limb or 
 become decrepit with age ; all falling upon him to kill him. 
 The food which before nourished now distresses him ; the 
 cold winds which once braced his frame, and exhilarated his 
 spirits, now inflict consumption and asthma upon him ; heat 
 fevers his blood ; and every pore becomes an inlet through 
 which disease enters. Health alone can place us in harmony 
 with external Nature. 
 
 Another prolific source of evil would be removed by a 
 knowledge of Physiology. All ignorant people regard disease 
 as some foreign substance or body which has effected a lodge- 
 ment in one or another part of the frame, and whose removal 
 is necessary to the restoration of health. They make no dis- 
 tinction between an organ and its function, between the agent 
 and the office it performs. Hence their remedial measures 
 are all designed to expel some intruder, instead of substi- 
 tuting a healthy for a diseased action in any vital organ. 
 Their imaginations personify disease as an impurity in the 
 blood or a foul accumulation in the stomach ; and the impos- 
 tors who prey upon their ignorance and credulity have no diffi- 
 culty in creating evidence to confirm their belief by giving 
 such medicines as make the dupes declare they do not wonder 
 they were sick. If the simple difference between an organ and 
 its functions were understood, it would put an end to an other- 
 wise endless amount of quackery. 
 
 Suppose the intimacy of the relation which exists between 
 
 the brain and the stomach to be generally known, and the very 
 
 15
 
 226 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 selfishness as Avell as the reason and conscience of men would 
 remonstrate against all intemperance, whether of appetite or 
 of passion. The pneumo-gastric nerve connects the brain 
 directly with the stomach, and establishes such a sympathy 
 between them, that each becomes a sufferer from any abuse or 
 misfortune of the other. Let a man in high health, with the 
 keenest appetite, when sitting down to enjoy the most attrac- 
 tive meal, be suddenly informed of some great calamity which 
 has befallen his reputation or his fortunes, and not only does 
 his appetite vanish, but he is seized with intolerable loathing 
 and nausea at the mere thought of the food which had before 
 diffused so agreeable a stimulus over his system. This is the 
 effect of the brain on the stomach, through the medium of the 
 pneumo-gastric nerve. So, if any thing highly acrid or noxious 
 is taken into the stomach of the greatest philosopher or states- 
 man, his luminous and mighty mind is plunged into darkuess : 
 it reels, or is stricken with temporary madness or paralysis, 
 beneath the injury. If these facts were really understood and 
 believed as clearly as we understand and believe that fire will 
 burn, what an argument would they furnish against malevo- 
 lence or misanthropy ! and what a dissuasive against bringing 
 into contact with the delicate coats of the stomach as the 
 ignorant so often do those fiery compounds of food or bever- 
 age, those hot and acrid condiments, which, if applied to the 
 palms of the hands or the soles of the feet, would actually 
 blister and excoriate them ! Never did the crew of a founder- 
 ing vessel shriek louder for help than the brain cries out for 
 relief under such inflictions. Knowledge alone can interpret 
 its powerful remonstrances. 
 
 Again : if the principles of Physiology were understood, 
 every discreet man could modify their application to suit his 
 varying circumstances of health or condition. No two indi- 
 viduals have identically the same constitution, or powers of 
 action or of resistance. But a book cannot be written for 
 every man. So no one individual remains always in the same 
 condition of strength or health. But no man can always have
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 227 
 
 a medical adviser at his side. Each one, therefore, should be 
 master of general principles, to be modified by himself accord- 
 ing to ever-changing circumstances. Each man should know, 
 too, that no great enlargement of his powers, either of body or 
 mind, can be effected at once ; but that almost any enlarge- 
 ment, however great, may be eifected by degrees. 
 
 I have thus, although in a manner necessarily cursory and 
 imperfect, glanced at certain leading principles and observ- 
 ances, the knowledge and practice of which are essential to 
 the promotion of human health, the prolongation of human 
 life, the extension of human usefulness, and the rearing of a 
 nobler race of men. Restricted, however, within narrow limits, 
 as compared with the extent of the subject, I have felt con- 
 strained to omit many considerations of an interesting and 
 useful character. My only hope and object have been, so to 
 exhibit the practical and immediate utility of understanding 
 this subject, that every reader, even of this brief outline, 
 would be stimulated to seek for more extensive and exact 
 information. 
 
 As my whole life and studies have been devoted to pursuits 
 foreign to that of the healing art, and as I have never enjoyed 
 any greater opportunity to become acquainted with the laws 
 of health and life than are possessed by almost any member 
 of the community, I can hardly hope to have escaped all errors 
 and mistakes in the views above presented. Still less can I 
 suppose that I have unfolded the manifold merits of the sub- 
 ject, or given such attractiveness to its charms, or prominence 
 to its importance, as any gentleman of the medical profession 
 would have done. But, deeply commiserating those sufferings 
 and calamities of my fellow-beings which seem to me to be 
 uo part of the ordination of a merciful Providence, but to be 
 directly chargeable to human ignorance and error, I have felt 
 an irresistible impulse to point out the way for their relief, or, 
 at least, for their mitigation. Any degree of knowledge which 
 shall begin the great work of enlightening the public mind on 
 this theme must be accounted valuable. On this, as on all
 
 228 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 other topics, limited acquisitions must precede higher attain- 
 ments, as certainly as the twilight must come before the morning. 
 It is no argument against attempting to diffuse knowledge, that 
 it cannot be made perfect and universal at once. Three-quar- 
 ters of a century ago, the fact of the identity of electricity and 
 lightning was known to scarcely a dozen men in the world. 
 Now, it is not only a matter of universal knowledge among 
 the educated, but even children are familiar with it ; and every 
 individual in the community participates in the practical bene- 
 fits of the discovery of Franklin. In the same way, an 
 acquaintance with the fundamental laws of health and life 
 may be and must be popularized. The reasons are far stronger 
 in the latter case than in the former ; for where lightning has 
 ever destroyed one victim, or one dollar's worth of property, 
 the infraction of the physical laws has destroyed its thousands 
 of lives and its millions of wealth. It may be alleged, in- 
 deed, that, if a knowledge of Physiology should become the 
 common possession of mankind, it would produce only partial 
 benefits, because men will not act as well as they know how 
 to act. But with equal truth it may be said that all men do 
 not use those means of protection which are founded on the 
 science of electricity. Yet it cannot be denied, on the other 
 hand, that multitudes do avail themselves of that pi-otection, 
 and that an immense amount of life and property is thus annu- 
 ally saved, which would otherwise be lost. But let the truth 
 of the allegation be admitted in its fullest extent : the answer 
 is, that men will never act b&tter than they know ; and hence, 
 though reform and amelioration may not, in all cases, follow 
 knowledge, yet they will follow it in many, while they will 
 precede it in none. 
 
 It may be said further, that the great body of our teachers 
 are incompetent to give instruction in this science. The an- 
 swer to this is, that, if not competent, they should become so ; 
 for no person is qualified to have the care of children, for a 
 single day, who is ignorant of the leading principles of Physi- 
 ology.
 
 REPORT FOR 1842. 229 
 
 All writers on education maintain that tlie course of a pu- 
 pil's instruction should be modified, to some extent, according 
 to his future calling or destination in life ; and the common 
 sense of the community ratifies their opinion. All admit that 
 the future mechanic should study the principles of natural 
 philosophy ; the future merchant, book-keeping ; the sailor, 
 navigation ; and so forth. If all, then, ought to aim at the 
 enjoyment of good health and long life, all ought to become 
 acquainted with the principles of Physiology. 
 
 In bringing this Report to a close, I would add, that what 
 I have said of the comparative merits of this study is not 
 intended as the slightest disparagement of any other which is 
 pursued in our schools. For all of them, in their appropriate 
 places, I have a due appreciation. Nor would I have any of 
 the common or elementary branches displaced for the introduc- 
 tion of this. But, when considered as a competitor for adop- 
 tion among the more advanced studies now pursued, I believe 
 that its intrinsic merits entitle it to an unquestionable priority. 
 The greatest happiness and the greatest usefulness can never 
 be attained, without that soundness of physical organization 
 which confers the power of endurance, and that uninterrupted 
 enjoyment of health which ransoms the whole of our time and 
 means from sickness and its expenditures. In the great work 
 of education, then, our physical condition, if not the first step 
 in point of importance, is the first in the order of time. On 
 the broad and firm foundation of health alone can the loftiest 
 and most enduring structures of the intellect be reared ; and if, 
 on the sublime heights of intellectual eminence, the light of 
 duty and of benevolence of love to God and love to man 
 can be kindled, it will send forth a radiance to illumine and 
 bless mankind.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 THE following is my Seventh Annual Report : 
 During the past year I have collected some interesting sta- 
 tistics respecting the schoolhouses in the Commonwealth. 
 The number of schoolhouses owned by the towns and 
 
 districts in the State is ..... 2,710 
 
 The number rented is .192 
 
 Total 2,902 
 
 From fifteen to twenty towns made no return on this subject. 
 Their houses, owned and rented, would increase the number 
 of such as are occupied for the public schools of the Common- 
 wealth to at least 3,000. 
 
 During the five years immediately following the communi- 
 cation, by the Board to the Legislature, of the Report on 
 Schoolhouses, the amount of money expended by about two 
 hundred and ninety of the three hundred and eight towns in 
 the State, for the erection and permanent repairs of school- 
 liouses, was . . . . . . . $634,326.80 
 
 Under the two heads, the items are as follows : 
 For erecting new houses, including the price of 
 
 land, fixtures, and appurtenances . . . $516,122.74 
 For making permanent and substantial repairs 
 
 on old ones 118,204.06 
 
 Total expended for schoolhouses in five years . $634,326.80 
 
 230
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 231 
 
 The expenditure for this object in towns not heard from 
 would swell this amount to more than six hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars. If we leave out the single city of Boston, 
 the above expenditure is doubtless greater than the value of 
 all the schoolhouses in the State at the time of the organiza- 
 tion of the Board. The number of new houses erected in the 
 towns heard from is four hundred and five. The number of 
 old ones on which substantial and permanent repairs have been 
 made is four hundred and twenty-nine. 
 
 SCHOOL-RETURNS 
 
 The number of towns which failed to make Returns the past 
 year was eleven. This is a larger number than for several 
 previous years. Hence all the aggregates are less than they 
 should be, although the relative proportion among them is not 
 materially affected. 
 
 Every town which fails to make its annual Return, as pre- 
 scribed by law, forfeits its distributive share of the income of 
 the school-fund. The number of delinquent towns shows the 
 expediency of the law. If so many are remiss, notwithstand- 
 ing the forfeiture, we might reasonably apprehend that the 
 object of the law would be frustrated were the penalty for- 
 borne. 
 
 The Returns for the last school-year (1842 3) show a 
 gratifying advancement in most of the elements that make up 
 the general prosperity of common schools. 
 
 ATTENDANCE OF CHILDREN UPON SCHOOL. 
 
 In the school-year 18412, the number of children 
 returned, as between the ages of four and sixteen, 
 was . . 185,058 
 
 In 1842-3, the number between the same ages was 184,896 
 
 Less . .162
 
 232 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 In 18412, the number of children of all ages in 
 
 all the schools in summer was .... 133,448 
 Do. in 1842-3 138,169 
 
 Increase in the numbers attending school in summer, 4,721 
 In 1841-2, the number of children of all ages in all 
 
 the schools in winter was ..... 159,056 
 
 Do. in 1842-3 . 161,020 
 
 Increase in the numbers attending school in winter . 1,964 
 In 1841-2, the average attendance in all the schools 
 
 in summer was ....... 96,525 
 
 Do. in 1842-3 . 98,316 
 
 Increase in the average attendance upon school in 
 
 summer ........ 1,791 
 
 In 1841-2, the average attendance in all the schools 
 
 in winter was ....... 117.542 
 
 Do. in 1842-3 119,989 
 
 Increase in the average attendance upon school in 
 
 winter ........ 2,447 
 
 From these facts it appears that the evils of absence from 
 
 school have been slightly mitigated within the last year. 
 
 How great they still continue to be will appear from the 
 
 following comparison : 
 
 The whole number of children returned as 
 
 between the ages of 4 and 16 is . . 184,896 
 
 Deduct twelve thousand as the number 
 supposed to be in attendance upon acad- 
 emies and private schools, and not de- 
 pending upon the public schools for an 
 education 12,000 
 
 Number dependent upon the public 
 
 schools 172,896
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 233 
 
 Number brought forward .... 172,896 
 Average attendance in summer of those 
 between 4 and 16 (deducting those un- 
 der four years of age, thus) . . . 98,316 
 Number under four years of age . . 7,337 
 
 90,979 
 
 81,917 
 
 Which gives 90,979 as the average attendance, in 
 summer, of those between four and sixteen years 
 of age, who are supposed to be wholly dependent 
 for an education upon public schools ; while the 
 average absence of the same class was 81,917, or 
 almost one-half. 
 
 Again, as before : 
 
 Whole number of children in the State, between four 
 and sixteen years of age . . . 184,896 
 
 Deduct 12,000, as above, for those sup- 
 posed to be in attendance upon academies 
 and private schools, and not depending 
 upon the public schools for an education, 12,000 
 
 Number dependent upon public schools 
 
 for an education ...... 172,896 
 
 Average attendance in winter of those between four 
 and sixteen (deducting those over sixteen years 
 of age, thus) 119,989 
 
 Number over sixteen years of age . . 12,526 
 
 Average attendance in ivinter, of those between four 
 and sixteen, who are supposed to be wholly de- 
 pendent for an education upon the public schools, 
 107,463 out of 172,896, or a little less than eleven- 
 seventeenths ....... 107,463 
 
 What ought the mechanic, the manufacturer, or the farmer, 
 on a large scale, to expect, if, from any cause, he should lose
 
 234 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the services of his operatives or laborers for almost one-half, 
 or even for one-third, of the time, year after year? Could he 
 expect or deserve any thing but ruin ? And can all our valued 
 institutions be upheld on cheaper conditions than belong to the 
 common and material interests of life? 
 
 APPROPRIATIONS. 
 
 In 18412, the amount of money raised by taxes for the 
 support of schools, that is, for paying the wages of teachers, 
 and for board and fuel, was .... $516,051.89 
 
 Do. in 1842-3 . . 510,592.02 
 
 Difference $5,459.87 
 
 This shows an apparent falling-off; but the towns not heard 
 from would increase the amount to a considerably larger sum 
 than that for the year 1841-2. Besides, there was, in fact, a 
 generous increase in the appropriations generally, throughout 
 the State ; the great deficit being in the city of Boston, 
 which expended on this item $16,618.28 less for the last than 
 for the preceding year. 
 
 The above-mentioned appropriations include only a part of 
 our annual expenditures for public schools. If the cost of 
 schoolhouses, of school-libraries, apparatus, &c., should be 
 added, it would appear that Massachusetts now supports her 
 public schools at an annual expense varying but little from 
 one dollar a head for every man, woman, and child belonging 
 to the State. This outlay being made, however, every child 
 in the Commonwealth has a right to attend school without 
 fee, or any further contribution whatever. 
 
 That this expenditure is not burdensome is manifest from 
 two considerations : first, because it is voluntarily assessed 
 by the inhabitants of the respective towns upon themselves ; 
 and, secondly, because a sum nearly equal to half as much 
 more is annually paid by individuals to academies and private
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 235 
 
 schools, where, to a great extent, the same branches are taught 
 as in the public schools. 
 
 Ill regard to the other items shown by the returns, there 
 appears to be no material change from the last year. 
 
 The town of Brighton, in the county of Middlesex, stands 
 this year, as it did the last, at the head of all the towns in the 
 Commonwealth in regard to the liberality of its appropria- 
 tions for the support of schools ; having raised five dollars 
 and ninety-nine cents for each child in the town between the 
 ages of four and sixteen years. 
 
 Last year, the town of Dana, in the county of Worcester, 
 stood at the foot of the list ; but this year it has so increased 
 its appropriation as to take an elevated and respectable stand 
 among the towns in the State, having resigned its place at 
 the bottom of the catalogue to the town of Pawtucket in the 
 county of Bristol. The latter town raised but one dollar and 
 eighteen cents for the education of each child belonging to it 
 between the ages of four and sixteen. 
 
 SCHOOL-LIBRARIES . 
 
 From Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 (inclusive), 1843, the sum of 
 money drawn by towns and school-districts from the school- 
 fund, in behalf of school-libraries, in accordance with the re- 
 solves of March 3, 1842, and March 7, 1843, was $11,295.00 
 During the same time, there has been received 
 into the State Treasury, in behalf of said fund, 
 
 the sum of 12,400.24 
 
 So that, in addition to the inestimable benefits 
 secured to the districts by a possession of 
 the libraries, the capital of the school-fund 
 has increased during the last year the sum 
 of 1,105.24 
 
 A resolve of the legislature, of the 7th March, 1843, pro- 
 vided that a resolve of March 3, 1842, concerning school-
 
 236 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 district libraries, should be " extended to every city and 
 town in the Commonwealth, not heretofore divided into school- 
 districts, in such manner as to give as many times fifteen 
 dollars to any such city or town as the number sixty is con- 
 tained, exclusive of fractions, in the number of children be- 
 tween the ages of four and sixteen years in said city or town ; 
 provided evidence be produced to the treasurer, in behalf of 
 said city or town, of its having raised and appropriated for 
 the establishment of libraries a sum equal to that which, by 
 the provision of this resolve, it is entitled to receive from the 
 school-fund." In regard to this resolve, my opinion has been 
 asked, whether a town " not divided into school-districts " 
 could make any such provision for a part of its children as 
 would entitle it to receive the bounty of the State : that is, 
 to make the case as simple as possible, suppose a town has 
 one hundred and twenty children between four and sixteen ; 
 can it, by appropriating fifteen dollars in behalf of sixty of 
 those children, make a valid demand for fifteen dollars upon 
 the school-fund? or must it appropriate thirty dollars in be- 
 half of the one hundred and twenty children before it can 
 receive any thing from that fund ? To this inquiry I have not 
 hesitated to reply, that I believe a sound construction of the 
 resolve, as well as sound policy, requires that a town not 
 districted should appropriate a sum sufficient for all its chil- 
 dren as a condition precedent to receiving any thing. Should 
 a different construction prevail, the very object of the re- 
 solve might be defeated in regard to the most necessitous 
 portion of our children. A few men, connected with wealthy 
 and large schools in central and populous places, might raise 
 the requisite sum for their own schools by voluntary contribu- 
 tion, and then vote against the granting of a town-tax for 
 supplying libraries to the poor and sparsely-populated por- 
 tions of the town ; while such portions, having no corporate 
 powers as districts, and feeling unable to raise the requisite 
 amount by contribution, might for a long time, if not always, 
 be deprived of the benefits of a library. "When a town ad-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 237 
 
 ministers its schools in its corporate capacity, it must legislate 
 uniformly for all parts of its territory and for all its children. 
 
 ToAvards the close of the last year, but too late for an 
 insertion of the fact in my last Annual Report, I was author- 
 ized and requested by the Honorable Martin Brimmer, the 
 present mayor of the city of Boston, to cause to be printed, 
 at his expense, such a number of copies of an excellent work 
 on education, entitled " The School and the Schoolmaster," 
 as would supply one copy each to all the school-districts, and 
 one copy each to all the boards of school-committee-men, in 
 the Commonwealth. This commission was most joyfully 
 executed on my part ; and, during the months of February and 
 March last, the volumes were all prepared and ready for dis- 
 tribution. I authorized the school-committee-men of the re- 
 spective towns to receive the donation in behalf of themselves 
 and of the several districts within their jurisdiction ; and by 
 circulars, and in various other ways, the most extensive 
 publicity to the fact was given. The work was of great 
 value, having been prepared by the joint labors of the Rev. 
 Dr. A. Potter, of Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., and 
 of George B. Emerson, Esq., of Boston, Mass., both dis- 
 tinguished writers and educators. The great body of the 
 volumes was soon called for. They have been read extensive- 
 ly, and with great satisfaction and profit ; and the gratitude 
 of the community has been expressed, as with one voice, to- 
 wards the donor, both for the generosity that prompted the gift, 
 and the judgment that dictated the selection. 
 
 This brings to a close what I have to say in reference to the 
 condition and progress of education in Massachusetts during 
 the last year. 
 
 For the six years during which I have been honored with 
 an appointment to the office of Secretary of the Board of 
 Education, I have spared neither labor nor expense in fulfilling 
 not only that provision of the law which requires that " the 
 Secretary shall collect information," but also that injunction, 
 not less important, that he shall " diffuse as widely as possible,
 
 238 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 throughout every part of the Commonwealth, information of 
 the most approved and successful methods of arranging the 
 studies and conducting the education of the young." For this 
 purpose, I have visited schools in most of the free States and 
 in several of the slave States of the Union ; have made my- 
 self acquainted with the different laws relative to public in- 
 struction which have been enacted by the different legislatures 
 of our country ; have attended great numbers of educational 
 meetings, and, as far as possible, have read whatever has been 
 written, whether at home or abroad, by persons qualified to 
 instruct mankind on this momentous subject. Still I have 
 been oppressed with a painful consciousness of my inability to 
 expound the merits of this great theme in all their magnitude 
 and variety, and have turned my eyes again and again to some 
 new quarter of the horizon, in the hope that they would be 
 greeted by a brighter beam of light. Under these circum- 
 stances, it was natural that the celebrity of institutions in 
 foreign countries should attract my attention, and that I should 
 feel an intense desire of knowing whether, in any respect, 
 those institutions were superior to our own ; and, if any thing 
 were found in them worthy of adoption, of transferring it for 
 our improvement. 
 
 Accordingly, early last spring, I applied to the Board for 
 permission to visit Europe, at my own expense, during the then 
 ensuing season, that I might make myself personally acquainted 
 with the nature and workings of their .<ystt-ms of public in- 
 struction, especially in those countries which had long en- 
 joyed the reputation of standing at the head of the cause. 
 
 In addition to this, the severe and unmitigated labor which I 
 had been called to perform during the last six years, in dis- 
 charging the duties of my office, had exhausted my whole capi- 
 tal of health ; and I felt, that, without some change or relief, 
 my labors in the cause would soon be brought to an inevitable 
 close. 
 
 I am happy to add that Gov. Morton, as Chairman of the 
 Board, and all the other members of that body, signified their
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 239 
 
 cordial approval of tny plan, and gave me their full con- 
 sent. 
 
 Accordingly, on the 1st of May last, I embarked for Europe ; 
 and, before the end of thirteen days, I was visiting schools on 
 the other side of the Atlantic. 
 
 In my travels, I visited England, Ireland, and Scotland ; 
 crossed the German Ocean to Hamburg ; thence went to Magde- 
 burg, Berlin, Potsdam, Halle, and Weissenfels, in the kingdom 
 of Prussia ; to Leipsic and Dresden, the two great cities in the 
 kingdom of Saxony ; thence to Erfurt, Weimar, Eisenach, &c., 
 on the great route from the middle of Germany to Frankfort on 
 the Maine ; thence to the Grand Duchy of Nassau, of Hesse 
 Darmstadt, and of Baden ; and, after visiting all the principal 
 cities in the Rhenish Provinces of Prussia, passed through 
 Holland and Belgium to Paris. 
 
 In the course of this tour, I have seen many things to deplore 
 and many to admire. I have visited countries where there is 
 no national system of education at all, and countries where 
 the minutest details of the schools are regulated by law. I 
 have seen schools in which each word and process, in many 
 lessons, was almost overloaded with explanations and commen- 
 tary ; and many schools in which four or five hundred children 
 were obliged to commit to memory, in the Latin language, the 
 entire book of Psalms and other parts of the Bible, neither 
 teachers nor children understanding a word of the language 
 which they were prating. I have seen countries in whose 
 schools all forms of corporal punishment were used without 
 stint or measure ; and I have visited one nation in whose ex- 
 cellent and well-ordered schools scarcely a blow has been 
 struck for more than a quarter of a century. On reflection, it 
 seems to me that it would be most strange, if, from all this 
 variety of system and of no system, of sound instruction and 
 of babbling, of the discipline of violence and of moral means, 
 many beneficial hints for our warning or our imitation could 
 not be derived ; and as the subject comes clearly within the 
 purview of my duty, " to collect and diffuse information re-
 
 240 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 specting schools," I venture to submit to the Board some of the 
 results of my observations. 
 
 On the one hand, I am certain that the evils to which our 
 own system is exposed, or under which it now labors, exist in 
 some foreign countries in a far more aggravated degree than 
 among ourselves ; and if \ve are wise enough to learn from the 
 experience of others, rather than await the infliction consequent 
 upon our own errors, we may yet escape the magnitude and 
 formidableness of those calamities under which some other 
 communities are now suffering. 
 
 On the other hand, I do not hesitate to say, that there are 
 many things abroad which we, at home, should do well to imi- 
 tate ; things, some of which are here, as yet, mere matters of 
 speculation and theory, but which, there, have long been in 
 operation, and are now producing a harvest of rich and abun- 
 dant blessings. 
 
 Among the nations of Europe, Prussia has long enjoyed the 
 most distinguished reputation for the excellence of its schools. 
 In reviews, in speeches, in tracts, and even in graver works 
 devoted to the cause of education, its schools have been ex- 
 hibited as models for the imitation of the rest of Christendom. 
 For many years, scarce a suspicion was breathed that the gen- 
 eral plan of education in that kingdom was not sound in theory 
 and most beneficial in practice. Recently, however, grave 
 charges have been preferred aginst it by high authority. The 
 popular traveller, Laing, has devoted several chapters of his 
 large work on Prussia to the disparagement of its school-sys- 
 tem. An octavo volume, entitled " The Age of Great Cities," 
 lias recently appeared in England, in which that system is 
 strongly condemned ; and during the pendency of the famous 
 Factories' Bill" before the British House of Commons, in 
 1843, numerous tracts were issued from the English press, not 
 merely calling in question, but strongly denouncing, the whole 
 plan of education in Prussia, as being not only designed to pro- 
 duce, but as actually producing, a spirit of blind acquiescence 
 to arbitrary power, in things spiritual as well as temporal, as
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 241 
 
 being, in fine, a system of education adapted to enslave, and 
 not to enfranchise, the human mind. And even in some parts 
 of the United States, the very nature and essence of whose in- 
 stitutions consist in the idea that the people are wise enough to 
 distinguish between what is right and what is wrong, even 
 here some have been illiberal enough to condemn, in advance, 
 every thing that savors of the Prussian system, because that 
 system is sustained by arbitrary power. 
 
 My opinion of these strictures will appear in the sequel. But 
 I may here remark, that I do not believe either of the first two 
 authors above referred to had ever visited the schools they pre- 
 sumed to condemn. The English tract-writers, too, were in- 
 duced to disparage the Prussian system from a motive foreign 
 to its merits. The " Factories' Bill," which they so vehemently 
 assailed, proposed the establishment of schools to be placed 
 under the control of the church. Against this measure, the dis- 
 senters wished to array the greatest possible opposition. As 
 there was a large party in the kingdom who doubted the ex- 
 pediency of any interference on the part of government in re- 
 spect to public education, it was seen that an argument derived 
 from the alleged abuses of the Prussian system could be made 
 available to turn this class into opponents of the measure then 
 pending in Parliament. Thus the errors of that system, unfor- 
 tunately, were brought to bear, not merely against proselytizing 
 education, but against education itself. 
 
 But, allowing all these charges against the Prussian system 
 to be true, there were still two reasons why I was not deterred 
 from examining it. 
 
 In the first place, the evils imputed to it were easily and nat- 
 urally separable from the good which it was not denied to pos- 
 sess. If the Prussian schoolmaster has better methods of teach- 
 ing reading, writing, grammar, geography, arithmetic, &c., so 
 that, in half the time, he produces greater and better results, 
 surely we may copy his modes of teaching these elements, 
 without adopting his notions of passive obedience to govern- 
 ment, or of blind adherence to the articles of a church. By 
 
 16
 
 242 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the ordinance of Nature, the human faculties are substantially 
 the same all over the world ; and hence the best means for their 
 development arid growth in one place must be substantially the 
 best for their development and growth everywhere. The spirit 
 which shall control the action of these faculties when matured, 
 which shall train them to self-reliance or to abject submis- 
 sion, which shall lead them to refer all questions to the stand- 
 ard of reason or to that of authority, this spirit is wholly 
 distinct and distinguishable from the manner in which the fac- 
 ulties themselves should be trained ; and we may avail our- 
 selves of all improved methods in the earlier processes, without 
 being contaminated by the abuses which may be made to follow 
 them. The best style of teaching arithmetic or spelling has 
 no necessary or natural connection with the doctrine of heredi- 
 tary right ; and an accomplished lesson in geography or gram- 
 mar commits the human intellect to no particular dogma in 
 religion. 
 
 In the second place, if Prussia can pervert the benign influ- 
 ences of education to the support of arbitrary power, we surely 
 can employ them for the support and perpetuation of republican 
 institutions. A national spirit of liberty can be cultivated more 
 easily than a national spirit of bondage ; and, if it may be made 
 one of the great prerogatives of education to perform the un- 
 natural and unholy work of making slaves, then surely it must 
 be one of the noblest instrumentalities for rearing a nation of 
 freemen. If a moral power over the understandings and affec- 
 tions of the people may be turned to evil, may it not also be 
 employed for good? 
 
 Besides, a generous and impartial mind does not ask whence 
 a thing comes, but what it is. Those who, at the present day, 
 would reject an improvement because of the place of its origin, 
 belong to the same school of bigotry with those who inquired 
 if any good could come out of Nazareth ; and what infinite 
 blessings would the world have lost had that party been pun- 
 ished by success ! Throughout my whole tour, no one princi- 
 ple has been more frequently exemplified than this, that
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 243 
 
 wherever I have found the best institutions, educational, 
 reformatory, charitable, penal, or otherwise, there I have al- 
 ways found the greatest desire to know how similar institutions 
 were administered among ourselves ; and, where I have found 
 the worst, there I have found most of the spirit of self-compla- 
 cency, and even an offensive disinclination to hear of better 
 methods. 
 
 The examination of schools, schoolhouses, school-systems, 
 apparatus, and modes of teaching, has been my first object, at 
 all times and places. Under the term " schools," I. here in- 
 clude all elementary schools, whether public or private ; all 
 normal schools ; schools for teaching the blind and the deaf 
 and dumb ; schools for the reformation of juvenile offenders ; 
 all charity foundations for educating the children of the poor, 
 or of criminals ; and all orphan establishments, of which last 
 class there are such great numbers on the Continent. When 
 practicable and useful, I have visited gymnasia, colleges, and 
 universities ; but, as it is not customary in these classes of insti- 
 tutions to allow strangers to be present at recitations, I have 
 had less inducement to see them.* 
 
 * When not engaged in visiting schools, I have visited great numbers of hos- 
 pitals for the insane and for the sick, and also of prisons. This I have done not 
 only from a rational curiosity to know in what manner these classes of our fellow- 
 beings are treated abroad, but in the hope of finding something by which we 
 might be enlightened and improved in the management of the same classes at 
 home. 
 
 In regard to lunatic asylums, I have seen none superior, nor any in all re- 
 spects equal, to our State institution at Worcester. 
 
 In regard to prisons, I have found them, almost uniformly, and especially on the 
 Continent, in a most deplorable condition, often worse than any of ours were 
 twenty-five years ago, before the commencement amongst us of that great reform 
 in prison discipline which has already produced sucli beneficent results. Great 
 Britain, however, now furnishes some admirable models for the imitation of the 
 world. In the city of Dublin, I visited a prison containing about three hundred 
 female convicts. It was superintended by a female. The whole was a perfect pat- 
 tern of neatness, order, and decorum ; and the moral government was as admirable 
 as the material administration. As the lady-principal conducted me to the different 
 parts of the establishment, speaking to me with sucli sorrow and such hope of the 
 different subjects of her charge, and addressing them as one who came to console 
 and to save, and not to punish or avenge, always in tones of the sweetest affec- 
 tion, yet modified to suit the circumstances of each offender, I felt, more vividly 
 than I had ever done before, to what a sublime height of excellence the female
 
 244 . ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 I have seen no institution for the blind equal to that under 
 the care of Dr. Howe, at South Boston ; nor but one, indeed 
 (at Amsterdam), worthy to be compared with it. In many 
 of them, the blind are never taught to read ; and in others they 
 learn only a handicraft, or some mere mechanical employment. 
 Generally speaking, however, music is taught ; and in Germany, 
 where the blind, like all other classes of society, are taught 
 music very thoroughly, I saw a common mode of performance 
 ou the organ which is very unusual in America. The organs 
 were constructed with a set of keys for the feet, so that the 
 feet could always play an accompaniment to the hands. 
 
 In Paris, the new edifice for the blind now just completed 
 is, in its architectural construction and arrangement, an admi- 
 rable model for this class of institutions. 
 
 In regard to the instruction given to the deaf and dumb, I 
 am constrained to express a very different opinion. The 
 schools for this class, in Prussia, Saxony, and Holland, seem 
 to me decidedly superior to any in this country. The point of 
 difference is fundamental. With us, the deaf and dumb are 
 taught to converse by signs made with the fingers. There, 
 incredible as it may seem, they are taught to speak with the 
 lips and tongue. That a person utterly deprived of the organs 
 of hearing who, indeed, never knew of the existence of voice 
 or sound should be able to talk, seerns almost to transcend 
 the limits of possibility ; and surely that teacher is entitled to 
 the character of a great genius as well as benefactor, who con- 
 ceived, and successfully executed, a plan, which, even after it 
 is accomplished, the world will scarcely credit. In the coun- 
 tries last named, it seems almost absurd to speak of the dumb. 
 There are hardly any dumb there ; and the sense of hearing, 
 when lost, is almost supplied by that of sight. 
 
 character can reach, when it consecrates its energies to the work of benevolence. 
 Amid these outcasts from society, she spends her days and her nights ; but, with her 
 convictions and sentiments of duty and of charity towards the lost, they must be 
 days and nights which afford her more substantial and enduring happiness than 
 queens, or those who by their fascinations govern the governors of man, can ever 
 enjoy.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 245 
 
 It is a great blessing to a deaf mute to be able to converse in 
 the language of signs. But it is obvious, that, as soon as he 
 passes out of the circle of those who understand that language, 
 he is as helpless and hopeless as ever. The power of 
 uttering articulate sounds of speaking as others speak 
 alone restores him to society. That this can be done, and 
 substantially in all cases, I have had abundant proof; nay, 
 though an entire stranger, and speaking a foreign language, I 
 have been able to hold some slight conversation with deaf and 
 dumb pupils who had not completed half their term of study. 
 
 With us, this power of conferring the gift of speech upon 
 the deaf and dumb is so novel a fact, and, as it seems to me, 
 one of such intrinsic importance, that I feel authorized, if not 
 required, to give a brief description of the mode in which it is 
 effected. 
 
 It is a common opinion, in regard to deaf and dumb persons, 
 that the organs of speaking, as well as the organs of hearing, 
 are defective ; but this is an error, the incapacity to speak 
 resulting only from the incapacity to hear. 
 
 MODE OF TEACHING THE DEAF AND DUMB TO SPEAK BY THE 
 UTTERANCE OF ARTICULATE SOUNDS. 
 
 An uninstructed deaf and dumb child must arrive at a con- 
 siderable age before he would be conscious of the fact of 
 breathing ; that is, before his mind would propose to itself, 
 as a distinct idea, that he actually inhales and exhales air. 
 Having no ear, it would be still later before he would recognize 
 any distinction between such inhalations and expulsions of the 
 air as would be accompanied by sound, and such as would not. 
 The first step, therefore, in the instruction of a deaf and dumb 
 child, is to make him conscious of these facts. To give him 
 a knowledge of the fact that he breathes, the teacher, seating 
 himself exactly opposite to the light, takes the pupil upon his 
 lap or between his knees, so that the pupil's eye shall be on a 
 level with his own, and so that they can look each other directly
 
 246 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 in the face. The teacher now takes the pupil's right hand 
 in his left, and the pupil's left hand in his right. He places 
 one of the pupil's hands immediately before his own lips, and 
 breathes upon it. He then brings the pupil's other hand into 
 the same position before his (the pupil's) lips, and, through the 
 faculty of imitation, leads him to breathe upon that, just as his 
 first hand had been breathed upon by the teacher. This exer- 
 cise is varied indefinitely as to stress or intensity of breathing ; 
 and the lessons are ..repeated again and again, if necessary, un- 
 til, in each case, the feeling caused by the expulsion of air 
 from the pupil's mouth on the back of one hand becomes 
 identical with the feeling on the back of the other hand caused 
 by the expulsion of air from the teacher's mouth. Sometimes 
 a little play mingles with the instruction ; and a light object, 
 as a feather or a bit of paper, is blown by the breath. 
 
 Another accompaniment of simple breathing is the expansion 
 and subsidence of the chest, as the air is alternately drawn 
 into it and expelled from it. To make the pupil acquainted 
 with this fact, one of his hands is held before the teacher's 
 mouth, as above described, while the other is laid closely 
 upon his breast. The pupil readily perceives the falling motion 
 of the chest when the air is emitted from the lungs, and the 
 rising motion when it is inhaled. His hands are then trans- 
 ferred to his own mouth and chest, where the same acts, per- 
 formed by himself, produce corresponding motions and sensa- 
 tions. These processes must, of course, be continued for 
 a greater or less length of time, according to the aptitude 
 of the scholar. 
 
 The next step is to teach the fact of sounds, and their effect 
 or value. For this purpose, a third person should be present, 
 standing with the back towards the teacher and pupil. The 
 teacher and pupil being placed as before, and the teacher hold- 
 ing the back of one of the pupil's hands before his (the teach- 
 er's) mouth, and placing the other upon his breast, breathes 
 as before. The only effect of this is the mere physical sensa- 
 tions produced upon the pupil's hands. But now the teacher
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 247 
 
 speaks with a loud voice, and the person present turns round 
 to answer. The same effect would be produced by calling upon 
 a dog or other domestic animal. Here the pupil perceives an 
 entire new state of facts. The speaking is accompanied by 
 a new position of the organs of speech, and by a greatly in- 
 creased action of the chest ; and it is immediately followed 
 by a movement or recognition on the part of the third person. 
 The pupil's hands are then transferred to his own mouth and 
 chest, and he is led to shape his organs of speech in imitation 
 of the teacher's, and to make those strong emissions of breath 
 which produce sound. When this sound has been produced 
 by the pupil, both the teacher and the third person intimate, 
 by their attention and their approval, that a new thing has been 
 done ; and, from that moment, the peculiar effort and the vi- 
 brations necessary to the utterance of sounds are new facts 
 added to the pupil's store of knowledge. 
 
 These exercises having been pursued for a sufficient length 
 of time, the teacher begins to instruct in the elementary sounds. 
 The letter h is the first taught, being only a hard breathing, 
 and therefore forming the connecting link between simple 
 breathing and the utterance of the vowel-sounds. 
 
 Here it is obvious that the teacher must be a perfect master 
 of the various sounds of the language, and of the positions into 
 which all the vocal organs must be brought in order to enun- 
 ciate them. All the combined and diversified motions and 
 positions of lips, teeth, tongue, uvula, glottis, windpipe, and so 
 forth, must be as familiar to him as the position of keys or 
 chords to the performer on the most complicated musical in- 
 strument. For this purpose, all the sounds of the language 
 and of coui'se all the motions and positions of the organs 
 necessary to produce them are reduced to a regular series 
 or gradation. The variations requisite for the vowel-sounds 
 are formed into a regular sequence ; and a large table is pre- 
 pared in which the consonant-sounds are arranged in a scien- 
 tific order. To indicate the difference between a long aud 
 a short sound, a long sound is uttered accompanied by a slow
 
 248 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 motion of the hand, and then a short sound of the same vowel 
 accompanied by a quick motion. 
 
 As the pupil has no ear, he cannot, strictly speaking, be said 
 to learn sounds : he only learns motions and vibrations, the 
 former by the eye, the latter by the touch. The parties being 
 seated as I have before described, so that the light shines full 
 upon the teacher's face, one of the pupil's hands is placed upon 
 the teacher's throat, while he is required at the same time 
 to look steadfastly at the teacher's mouth. The simplest sound 
 of the vowel a is now uttered and repeated by the teacher. 
 He then applies the pupil's other hand to his (the pupil's) 
 throat, and leads him to enunciate sounds until the vibrations 
 produced in his own throat resemble those which had been 
 produced by the utterance of the teacher. At this stage of the 
 instruction, the pupil understands perfectly what is desired ; and, 
 therefore, he perseveres with effort after effort, until at last, 
 perhaps after a hundred or five hundred trials, he hits the exact 
 sound, when, conscious of the same vibration in his own organs 
 which he had before felt in those of the teacher, at the same 
 moment that the teacher recognizes the utterance of the true 
 sound, their countenances glow into each other with the origi- 
 nal light of joy, and not only is a point gained in the instruction 
 which will never be lost, but the pupil is animated to renewed 
 exertions. 
 
 The sound of the German vowels being so different from 
 our own, it is difficult to elucidate this subject to one not ac- 
 quainted with the German language. But let any one lay his 
 finger upon the middle of the upper side of the pomum adamij 
 and press it against the wind-pipe, and then enunciate succes- 
 sively the sounds of the "letters a and e, and he will instanta- 
 neously perceive how much higher that part of the throat is 
 raised, and how much more it is brought forward, in the latter 
 case than in the farmer. And not only is there a striking dif- 
 ference in the motions of the wind-pipe when these two vowels 
 are sounded, but, in sounding the letter e, almost all the vocal 
 organs are changed from the position which is necessary for
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 249 
 
 enunciating the letter a. The tongue is brought much nearer 
 to the roof of the mouth, the lips are partially drawn together, 
 and the whole under jaw is raised nearer to the upper. Thus 
 every different sound in the language requires a different posi- 
 tion and different motions of the vocal organs. Hence the 
 work of teaching the deaf and dumb to speak consists in train- 
 ing them to arrange the organs of speech into all these posi- 
 tions, and to practise at will all this variety of motions. When 
 the pupil looks at the organs of the teacher, and feels of them, 
 then their positions and motions become to him a visible and 
 tangible alphabet, just as our spoken alphabet is an audible one. 
 For the guttural sounds, the hand must be placed upon the 
 throat. For the nasal, the teacher holds one of the pupil's 
 fingers lightly against one side of the lower or membranous 
 part of the nose, and, after the vibration there has been felt, 
 places another of his fingers against the same part of his 
 own nose. 
 
 During all these processes, the eye is most actively employed. 
 The teacher arranges his own organs in the manner necessary 
 for the production of a given sound, and holds them in that 
 position until the pupil can arrange his own in the same way. 
 Sometimes the pupil is furnished with a mirror, that he may 
 see that his own organs are conformed to those of the teacher. 
 If any part of the pupil's tongue is unmanageable, the teacher 
 takes his spatula (an instrument of ivory or horn in the shape 
 of a spoon-handle) , and raises or depresses it, as the case may 
 require. 
 
 But some of the elementary sounds are begun or completed 
 with closed lips ; and in such case, the cheeks not being 
 made of glass, the pupil cannot see the position or motions 
 of the tongue. To obviate this difficulty, Mr. Reich of Leip- 
 sic uses a tongue made of Indian rubber, which he can bend or 
 twist at pleasure, till it becomes a type or model of the form 
 he wishes the pupil's tongue to assume. 
 
 Later in the course of instruction, the pupils are taught the 
 meaning of Italic letters and emphasis. If a child asks for a
 
 250 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 piece of white paper for instance, a piece of gray is given him ; 
 and, when he intimates that he asked for white, the question is 
 written down with the word " white " underscored, and then a 
 piece of white paper is given. Another exercise teaches him a 
 corresponding stress of the voice in speaking. 
 
 An extraordinary fact, and one which throws great light 
 upon the constitution of the mind, is, that the deaf and dumb, 
 aiter learning to read, take great delight in poetry. The 
 measure of the verse wakes up a dormant faculty within them, 
 giving them the pleasure of what we call time, although they 
 have no ear to perceive it. 
 
 Such is a very brief outline of the laborious processes by 
 which the wonderful work of teaching the dumb to speak is 
 accomplished ; and so extraordinary are the results, that I have 
 often heard pupils in the deaf and dumb schools of Prussia 
 and Saxony read with more distinctness of articulation and 
 appropriateness of expression than is done by some of the chil- 
 dren in our own schools who possess perfect organs of speech, 
 and a complement of the senses. Nay, so successful are the 
 teachers, that in some instances they overcome, in a good 
 degree, difficulties arising from a deficiency or malformation 
 of the organs themselves, such as the loss of front teeth, the 
 tied tongue, and so forth. In some of the cities which I visited, 
 the pupils who had gone through with a course of instruction 
 at the deaf and dumb school were employed as artisans or me- 
 chanics, earning a competent livlihood, mingling with other 
 men, and speaking and conversing like them. In the city of 
 Berlin, there was a deaf and dumb man named Habermaass, 
 who was so famed for his correct speaking that strangers used 
 to call to see him. These he would meet at the door, conduct 
 into the house, and enjoy their surprise when he told them that 
 he was Habermaass. A clergyman of high standing and char- 
 acter, whose acquaintance I formed in Holland, told me, that, 
 when he was one of the religious instructors of the deaf and 
 dumb school at Groningen, he took a foreign friend one day to 
 visit it ; and, when they had gone through the school, his friend
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 251 
 
 observed, that that school was very well, but that it was the 
 deaf and dumb school which he had wished to see. Were it 
 not for the extraordinary case of Laura Bridgman, which 
 has compelled assent to what would formerly have been regard- 
 ed as a fiction or a miracle, I should hardly venture to copy 
 au account of the two following cases from the work of Mr. 
 Moritz Hill, the accomplished instructor of the deaf and dumb 
 school at Weissenfels. They refer to the susceptibility of cul- 
 tivation of the sense of touch, which he asserts to be generally 
 very acute in the deaf and dumb. The importance of this will 
 be readily appreciated when we consider how essential light is 
 to the power of reading language upon the lips and the muscles 
 of the face. In darkness, the deaf and dumb are again cut off 
 from that intercourse with humanity which has been given to 
 them by this benevolent instruction. Mr. Hill gives an account 
 of a girl whose facility in reading from the lips was so remarka- 
 ble, that she could read at a great distance by an artificial 
 light, and even with very little light. She was found to be in 
 the habit of conversing in the night with a maid-servant after 
 the light was extinguished. And this was done only by placing 
 her hand upon the naked breast of her companion. The other 
 case was that of a boy who could read the lips by placing his 
 hand upon them in the dark, in the same way that Laura reads 
 the motions of another's fingers in the hollow of her own hand. 
 
 Mr. Hill also mentions instances in which the facility ac- 
 quired is so great, that the motions of the face can be read by 
 the deaf and dumb when only a side view of the countenance 
 can bo obtained, and consequently only a partial play of the 
 muscles seen. 
 
 The following are among the reasons which the German 
 teachers of the deaf and dumb give for preferring the method 
 of speaking by the voice to that of speaking by signs on the 
 fingers and by pantomime : 
 
 1. Loud speaking is the most convenient mode of intercourse, 
 and the one most in accordance with human nature. 
 
 2. The deaf and dumb, as well as the man possessed of all
 
 252 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 his senses, has a natural impulse to express his feelings, 
 thoughts, &c., by sounds. 
 
 In confirmation of this reason, I may say, that it is remark- 
 ably confirmed by the case of Laura Bridgman, Avho, though 
 deaf, dumb, and blind, makes a different sound though an 
 inarticulate one, a mere noise for each of her acquaintances. 
 
 3. Experience has long shown, that even those who are born 
 deaf and dumb, and still more those who have become so later 
 in life, can attain fluency in oral expression. 
 
 4. Experience has also shown, that, with the deaf and dumb 
 who have acquired a facility in speaking, all subsequent instruc- 
 tion is more successful than with those who have been taught 
 merely the language of signs and writing. 
 
 5. Loud speaking is of great use to the deaf and dumb, not 
 only as a means of learning, but of imparting their knowledge. 
 They learn by imparting, and thus obtain more definite ideas 
 of what they already know. It is a means of further cultiva- 
 tion, also, even when it is wearisome, monotonous, inexpres- 
 sive, or absolutely disagreeable ; for people soon become accus- 
 tomed even to such imperfect speech, as to the imperfect speech 
 of a little child. The peculiar advantages even of a low degree 
 of acquisition are, 1. The exercise and strengthening of the 
 lungs. 2. The aid it gives to the comprehension and retaining 
 of words, as well as to the power of recalling them to memory. 
 3. It has an extraordinary humanizing power ; the remark 
 having been often made, and with truth, that all the deaf and 
 dumb who have learned to speak have a far more human ex- 
 pression of the eye and countenance than those who have only 
 been taught to write. 
 
 6. Important as speaking is for easy intercourse with others, 
 it is quite as important, indeed more so, to many of the deaf 
 and dumb, to acquire a facility in comprehending what is 
 spoken to themselves ; because very few of those who have 
 intercourse with the deaf and dumb have time, means, or 
 inclination to hold written communication with them. But, if 
 the deaf and dumb have acquired the art of reading language
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 253 
 
 from the mouth of the speaker, people will converse with them 
 willingly, and they will then have a wide school in which to 
 carry forward their acquisitions. For these reasons, it is 
 desirable for the deaf and dumb to cultivate, with all assiduity, 
 the observation of the language of the lips, even if they are 
 obliged to relinquish speaking on account of being unintel- 
 ligible. 
 
 As a consequence of the above views, the German teachers 
 of the deaf and dumb prohibit, as far as possible, all intercourse 
 by the artificial language of signs, in order to enforce upon the 
 pupils the constant use of the voice. At a later period, how- 
 ever, all are taught to write. 
 
 I found a class in the school for the deaf and dumb in Paris, 
 which the instructor was endeavoring to teach to speak orally ; 
 but it is not certain that the experiment will succeed in the 
 French language, that language having so many similar 
 sounds for different ideas. With the English language, how- 
 ever, a triumph over this great natural imperfection might un- 
 doubtedly be won ; and it was an object certainly with some 
 of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, when 
 they petitioned tile legislature last winter for power to incor- 
 porate upon that institution a department for the deaf and 
 dumb to exchange the limited language of signs for the uni- 
 versal language of words, in the instruction of this class of 
 children in our State. Had the members of the legislature 
 seen and heard what I have now often seen and heard, but 
 which I then knew of only by report, I cannot but believe that 
 that application would have found a different fate. 
 
 The success in teaching the deaf and dumb in Germany, 
 and the means by which it is accomplished, furnish some inval- 
 uable hints in regard to the teaching of other children. 
 
 1. In teaching these children to speak, if difficult and com- 
 plicated sounds are given before easy and simple ones, some of 
 the vocal organs will be at fault, in regard either to position or 
 motion ; and, if the error is continued but for a short period, 
 false habits will be acquired, which it will be almost impossible
 
 254 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 for any subsequent skill or attention to eradicate. No uniu- 
 structed person, therefore, should tamper with this subject. 
 No one should attempt to teach the deaf and dumb to speak 
 who has not carefully read the best treatises upon the art, or 
 witnessed the practice of a skilful master. The effect of false 
 instruction in regard to the voice-producing muscles furnishes 
 a striking analogy to that false mental instruction given by 
 incompetent parents and teachers, by which all the intellectual 
 and moral fibres of a child's nature are coiled and knotted into 
 a tangle of errors, from which they can never be wholly extri- 
 cated even by a life of exertion. 
 
 2. After a few of the first lessons, it is ordinarily found that 
 the keenest relish for knowledge is awakened in the minds of 
 the pupils. They evince the greatest desire for new lessons, 
 and a pleasure that seems almost ludicrously disproportionate 
 in the acquisition of the most trivial things. This arises, in 
 the first place, from that appetite for knowledge which Nature 
 gives to all her children ; and, in the second place, from the 
 teacher's arranging all subjects of instruction in a scientific 
 order, and giving to his pupils, from the beginning, distinct and 
 luminous ideas of all he teaches. Were instruction so arranged 
 and administered in regard to other children, we might, as a 
 general rule, expect similar results. 
 
 So ardent, indeed, is the thirst of the deaf and dumb chil- 
 dren for knowledge, that one of the most frequent cautions 
 given to teachers by the masters of the art is, not to indulge 
 them in the gratification of their desires to such a degree as to 
 impair health or produce injurious mental excitement. 
 
 3. Perhaps no relation in life illustrates the necessity or the 
 value of love aud confidence between teacher and pupil more 
 strikingly than this. Conceive of a child placed before his 
 teacher, watching every shade of muscular motion with his 
 eye, catching the subtlest vibrations with his hand, and ex- 
 pending his whole soul in striving to conjecture what muscles 
 are to be moved ; and then suppose the feeling of shame or 
 mortification, of fear or fright, to be superinduced, withdrawing
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 255 
 
 all attention from eye and hand, choking the utterance and 
 paralyzing all the faculties ; and, were the pupil to remain in 
 this state till he became as old as Methuselah, he would never 
 succeed in uttering even an elementary sound, unless it might 
 be that of the interjection O ! Such, though to a less extent, 
 is the obstruction which fear, or contemptuous manners in a 
 teacher, oppose to the progress of all children. 
 
 In comparing the present condition of the deaf and dumb 
 and the blind with what it was only a few years ago, there is 
 one fact too significant to be omitted. Judge Blackstone pub- 
 lished his celebrated Commentaries on the English law in 
 1765. In vol. i., book 1, chap. 8, there occurs the following 
 sentence, which was then the acknowledged law in Westminster 
 Hall, and for which he quotes Lord Coke, Fitzherbert, and 
 others : 
 
 "A man who is born deaf, dumb, and blind, is looked upon by the law as 
 in the same state with an idiot ; he being supposed incapable of any under- 
 standing, as wanting all those senses which furnish the human mind with 
 ideas." 
 
 Surely it cannot be denied that education has done something 
 for mankind since this doctrine was sent forth as a great prin- 
 ciple of law. 
 
 One of the points of greatest importance which an educational 
 survey of Europe suggests is this : 
 
 WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES TO A PEOPLE OF HAVING A 
 UNIVERSAL OR ONLY A PARTIAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION? 
 
 All institutions in the old countries (a? they are sometimes 
 called) have arrived at a greater degree of maturity than with 
 us. What is good has had time and opportunity to work out 
 a more full development of its benign effects ; and what is evil, 
 to inflict upon mankind a fuller measure of calamity. It is so, 
 emphatically, in regard to education. We have the seeds of
 
 256 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the same evils and of the same benefits which there have ger- 
 minated and been matured, and are now bearing luxuriant 
 harvests of misery or of blessings. We shall do well, then, to 
 look to their course, both for things to copy and things to avoid ; 
 because reason cannot predict any thing so certainly from its 
 apparent natural tendencies as experience demonstrates it in 
 its practical results. 
 
 Where government has not established any system of educa- 
 tion, the whole subject, of course, is left to individual enter- 
 prise. In such cases, a few men, always a small minority, 
 who appreciate the value of knowledge, will establish schools 
 suited to their own wants. The majority will be left without 
 any adequate means of instruction, and hence the mass will 
 grow up in ignorance. Here the foundation of the greatest 
 social inequalities is laid. Wherever this social inequality 
 is once established, its tendency is to go on increasing and re- 
 doubling from generation to generation. And this is but a part 
 of the evil. Suppose after the existence, though only for a short 
 period, of such a state of things, some more philanthropic or 
 more statesman-like class of the community attempts to substi- 
 tute a universal for the partial system. Their wise and benev- 
 olent project immediately encounters the opposition of those 
 who are already provided for. Why should we, say the latter, 
 after having incurred trouble and expense in erecting schools 
 suited to our wants, not only abandon them, but incur new 
 trouble and expense in erecting schools for you. Your plan is 
 untried, and we may well entertain doubts of its success. Be- 
 sides, our children have already derived from our schools some 
 cultivation of mind and some refinement of manners ; and, 
 even if you were to have schools, we could not allow our chil- 
 dren to associate with yours. Our teachers, too, have been se- 
 lected in reference to our own views in government and religion ; 
 and, before we unite with you in regard to literary and moral 
 education, we must know whether you will unite with us in re- 
 gard to political and religious. Thus the better educated classes 
 of the community, who ought to be the promoters of knowledge
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 257 
 
 and refinement among their inferiors, stand as a barrier against 
 improvements. 
 
 The private teachers form another obstacle. In such a state 
 of things as I have supposed, they stand towards each other in 
 the relation of competitors ; but their interest prompts them to 
 unite against the introduction of a new class of schools, which 
 would diminish the patronage bestowed upon their own. When 
 the " Central Society of Education," in England, were lately 
 prosecuting their inquiries in relation to the relative number of 
 children in school and out of school in different towns, they 
 were obliged to proceed with the greatest caution, lest they 
 should alarm the fears of the private teachers, and obtain either 
 no answers or false answers to their questions ; and, in some 
 instances, the teachers combined, and sent on forged lists of 
 schools and scholars, in order to diminish the force of the argu- 
 ment for a national system, by showing that schools enough 
 already existed. This fact was communicated to me by a gen- 
 tleman engaged in the inquiry. 
 
 Another evil is that the partial system, or rather the absence 
 of system, so far from being attended with less expense than 
 the universal, is always attended with greater. This is true 
 in regard to the expense of schoolhouses as well as of tuition. 
 In England, where there is no national system, I saw many 
 schoolhouses, in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, and else- 
 where, not capable of accommodating more than from one 
 hundred to four or at most five hundred pupils, which cost 
 from one hundred thousand to three or four hundred thousand 
 dollars apiece. One edifice for a private school, such as I have 
 seen in England, not capable of containing more than five 
 hundred scholars, cost as much as twenty of the plain and 
 substantial grammar-school houses in Boston, each one of 
 which will contain that number. Such is the natural differ- 
 ence of acting from a set of ideas or a frame of mind which 
 embraces the whole people, or only a part of them, in its plans 
 for improvement, of acting from aristocratical or from repub- 
 lican principles. If the schoolhouses which I saw in the most 
 
 17
 
 258 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 wealthy and populous cities of Prussia are a fair specimen of 
 those in the rest of the kingdom, it would not take more than 
 a hundred of such as I saw in England to equal the expense 
 of all in the whole kingdom of Prussia, where the children 
 of fourteen millions of people are almost universally in at- 
 tendance. 
 
 Arrange the most highly civilized and conspicuous nations 
 of Europe in their due order of precedence, as it regards the 
 education of their people, and the kingdoms of Prussia and 
 Saxony, together with several of the western and south-west- 
 ern states of the Germanic Confederation, would undoubtedly 
 stand pre-eminent, both in regard to the quantity and the qual- 
 ity of instruction. After these should come Holland and Scot- 
 laud ; the provision for education in the former being much the 
 most extensive, while in the latter, perhaps, it is a little more 
 thorough. Ireland, too, has now a national system which is 
 rapidly extending, and has already accomplished a vast amount 
 of good. The same may be said of France. Its system for 
 national education has now been in operation for about ten 
 years : it has done much, and promises much more. During^ 
 the very last year, Belgium has established such a system ; and 
 before the revolution of 1830, while it was united with Hol- 
 land, it enjoyed that of the latter country. England is the only 
 one among the nations of Europe, conspicuous for its civiliza- 
 tion and resources, which has not, and never has had, any sys- 
 tem for the education of its people. And it is the country 
 where, incomparably beyond auy other, the greatest and most 
 appalling social contrasts exist ; where, in comparison with 
 the intelligence, wealth, and refiuemeut of what are called the 
 higher classes, there is the most ignorance, poverty, and crime 
 among the lower. And yet in no country in the world have 
 there been men who have formed nobler conceptions of the 
 power and elevation and blessedness that come in the train of 
 mental cultivation ; and in no country have there been be- 
 quests, donations, and funds so numerous and munificent as in 
 England. Still, owing to the inherent vice and selfishness of
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 259 
 
 their system, or their no system, there is no country in which 
 so little is effected, compared with their expenditure of means ; 
 and what is done only tends to separate the different classes of 
 society more and more widely from each other. 
 
 The statement of a few facts will show the amount ex- 
 pended, the inequality of the expenditure, and the compara- 
 tively little benefit derived therefrom. 
 
 A few years ago, a parliamentary commission was instituted 
 to inquire into the amount and state of piiblic charities in Eng- 
 land and Wales. The commission sat for -a long time, and 
 made most voluminous reports, the mere digest or index of 
 which fills two thousand three hundred and forty-one printed 
 folio pages. From these I select the following facts : 
 
 The annual income of the charity funds for schools is set 
 down in these reports at 312,545 ; but some schools very 
 richly endowed were not included in the investigation : and, in 
 conversation with several most intelligent men, members of 
 parliament, and others, I found their opinions to be, that, as 
 the respective amounts of the charity funds were rendered by 
 persons who had an interest in undervaluing them, the above 
 aggregate was doubtless much below their real value ; and that 
 probably 500,000 would be a moderate estimate of their total 
 annual income. This is equivalent to almost two million five 
 hundred thousand dollars of our money. It is easy to see, that 
 if this sum were consolidated, and then distributed on princi- 
 ples of equality, it would be productive of incomputable good. 
 Yet in a country where such splendid endowments for the 
 cause of education have been made, and their income is now 
 annually disbursed, there are, according to the estimate of a 
 late British writer, more than a million and a half of children, 
 of a suitable age to attend school, who " are left in a condition 
 of complete ignorance." 
 
 The following are instances of the present mode of distribut- 
 ing the income of the above-mentioned funds, the county and 
 the town being given where the school exists which is sup- 
 ported by the fund named :
 
 260 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 At Dimstable, county of Bedford, 330 10s. annual income 
 (a pound is equivalent to almost five dollars of our money) sup- 
 ports forty boys. 
 
 At Bedford, same county, a school with 90 income teaches 
 four hundred and twenty children. 
 
 County of Berkshire, town of Reading, 1,043 15s. 9d. 
 teaches twenty-two boys. 
 
 At Tilehurst, same county, 16 10s. _6d. teaches one hundred 
 children. 
 
 County of Cambridge, town of Bassingbourne, 7 6s. 4d. 
 teaches one hundred and sixty children ; while in Ely, same 
 county, 231 Is. teaches twenty-four only. 
 
 County of Cornwall, town of St. Stephen's, 192 13s. 4d. 
 teaches six boys ; and in the town of St. Bunyan, same coun- 
 ty, 8 8s. teaches one hundred and fifty children. 
 
 County of Devonshire, town of Plymouth, 596 12s. 3d. 
 teaches seventeen boys ; while in Brixham, same county, 78 
 teaches two hundred children. 
 
 County of Hertfordshire, town of Berkharastead, 269 
 teaches thirty children ; while in Therfield, same county, 2 
 teaches forty. 
 
 County of Kent, town of Greenwich, 625 14s. 4d. teaches 
 twenty boys ; while in Sundridge, same county, 10 teaches 
 seventy children. 
 
 County of Lancashire, town of Manchester, 2,608 3s. lid. 
 teaches eighty ; while in Bibchester, same county, 20 teaches 
 one hundred. 
 
 There is a single class of schools in England, those 
 founded for giving instruction in the Latin and Greek lan- 
 guages, sixty-five of which have an income not exceeding 
 20, and fifteen have an income of more than 1,000. Several 
 of this class have an income of four, five, or more thousand 
 pounds per annum. 
 
 But this is enough to show how unequally the means of 
 education are distributed in England, even where they are en- 
 joyed at all, and how difficult it must be to introduce a general
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 261 
 
 system for the whole people, when many or most of the lead- 
 ing families already have schools of their own. Such, too, is 
 the natural consequence of having no national system, one 
 in which the whole people can participate. These facts are 
 full of admonition to us ; for this is the state of things towards 
 which, eight years ago, we were rapidly tending.* 
 
 * A few extracts from documents authenticated by the government itself will 
 serve still further to show the inequality of the means of education which exists 
 in England. 
 
 One of the late parliamentary committees on education describes the condition 
 of a schoolroom in the following words : 
 
 " In a garret, up three pair of dark, broken stairs, was a common day-school, 
 \rithforty children, in a compass of ten feet by nine. On a perch, forming a tri- 
 angle with a corner of the room, sat a cock and two hens ; under a stump bed, 
 immediately beneath, was a dog-kennel, in the occupation of three black terriers, 
 whose barking, added to the noise of the children and the cackling of the fowls 
 on the approach of a stranger, was almost deafening 1 . There was only one small 
 window, at which sat the master, obstructing three-fourths of the light. There 
 are several schools in the same neighborhood which are in the same condition, 
 filthy in the extreme." 
 
 In the same town, I saw a schoolhouse erected for the wealthier classes, which 
 cost more than four hundred thousand dollars ! 
 
 In the same report, it is said that " one master, being asked if he taught morals, 
 answered, " That question does not belong to my school : it belongs more to girls' 
 schools." 
 
 Another master, who stated that he used the globes, was asked if he had both, 
 or one only. " Both," was the reply: " how could I teach geography with one ? " 
 It appeared that he thought both necessary, because one represented one half, 
 and the other the remaining half, of the world. " He turned me out of school," 
 says the agent, " when I explained to him his error." 
 
 It is thought unlucky for teachers to count their scholars. " It would," said a 
 mistress, " be a flat flying in the face of Providence. No, no : you sha'n't catch 
 me counting; see what a pretty mess David made of it when he counted the 
 children of Israel ! " 
 
 The Kev. Edward Field, inspector of national schools, in his report (1840), 
 after speaking in commendation of certain schools, adds, " This guarded and 
 qualified praise I am unable to extend to the teachers of dame schools. Too 
 often, the rule of such schools, when any profitable instruction is given, is a 
 harsh one; and, in others, the honest declaration of one dame would apply to 
 many, ' It is but little they pays me, and it is but little I teaches them.' " 
 
 Some of the accounts trace this ignorance, as a cause, to its legitimate effects. 
 
 "In the locality where, in the year 1S38, the fanatic who called himself Sir 
 William Courteuay raised a tumult which ended in the loss of his own life and 
 the life of several of his deluded followers, out of forty-five children above 
 fourteen, only eleven were, on investigation, found able to read and write; and, 
 out of one hundred and seventeen under fourteen, but forty-two attended 
 school, and several of these only occasionally. Out of these forty-two, only six 
 could read and write."
 
 262 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 A. fact closely connected with the preceding is an enormous 
 disproportion in the salaries of teachers ; these salaries de- 
 
 In February, 1840, Mr. Seymour Tremenheere, assistant poor-law commis- 
 sioner, reported on the state of education in that part of Wales in which the 
 Chartists, under Frost, made a sudden rising. From this report, it appears 
 that in five parishes, having an aggregate population of 85,000, there were but 
 80 schools, and only 3,308 children in attendance. 
 
 The following are extracts from a late report of the National (Church) School 
 Society : 
 
 " There is only one small school for the daily education of the poor in the 
 whole parish, containing about 12,000 inhabitants ; that school educates about 
 100. Aa one result of this neglect, the parish became last year the focus of 
 Chartism ; and the most bitter spirit of disaffection still exists among the lower 
 classes." 
 
 " The population of the village of which I am the incumbent is not less 
 than 20,000; there is no free school in the whole place; hundreds of children 
 receive no education whatever." 
 
 "I am vicar of a parish which contains a population of 10,000 souls; and I 
 grieve to say there is but one schoolroom in it." 
 
 " Our situation is briefly as follows : The parish contains 1,500 souls ; there 
 is nothing which can with propriety be called a school. The demoralization 
 and extreme ignorance which prevail among this mass of human beings are 
 truly deplorable. No language of mine can convey any idea of its extent." 
 
 " I find a population of 10,000 souls committed to my charge, with only one 
 church, and a still smaller school in connection witli the church." 
 
 " The population of the township is about 15,000; we have no definite school; 
 we rent two small places, which swallows up the subscriptions." 
 
 " The district belonging to my church contains a population of 5,000; and I 
 regret to say that the children are in a state of darkness and ignorance beyond 
 description." 
 
 " This parish is without a building of any kind wherein to assemble the 
 children, either for a Sunday or a week school." 
 
 "I am the curate of a poor parish with 3,000 of population; and there is no 
 schoolhouse of any kind." 
 
 "This district has a population of 8,000. The only instruction which the 
 children receive is given to about 100 for an hour or two on the Sunday." 
 
 Such quotations as the above might be almost indefinitely extended. 
 
 The Manchester Statistical Society, in their report on the state of education 
 in York, remark, that "however imperfect the education received at Sunday 
 schools may be, when compared with a reasonable or a foreign standard, it 
 affords, nevertheless, the most valuable training within the reach of the great mass 
 of the industrious population of England." 
 
 Upon tliis, an able writer, of the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful 
 Knowledge," remarks, " Yet this training extends only to a few hours every 
 week: is given by persons who are generally elevated only a little above their 
 scholars, and whose only valuable recommendation is, that they are, in general, 
 animated by a benevolent and pious spirit. There are, however, indirect effects 
 which abate the good of Sunday schools, particularly in the spirit of sectarian- 
 ism and bigotry, which, as at present constituted, they tend to foster; the 
 undue opinion of themselves which they are apt to engender in the minds of 
 the teachers; the rivalry which they excite and the jealousies which they keep
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 263 
 
 pending rather upon the endowment of the school than upon 
 the qualifications of the teacher. I have seen a teacher who 
 
 up between different schools; and, above all, the pauperizing influence, which, 
 more than other charity-schools, they exert on the scholars. So long, indeed, 
 as scarcely any other book than the Bible is employed in Sunday schools,; 
 the training which they afford must be very defective, unapproached in its ex- 
 cellence as is that holy book when well understood and rightly used. But 
 an exclusive acquaintance with it is not sufficient to expand the mind, and pre- 
 pare it for the duties of life. Without the aid of other knowledge, it is not pos- 
 fible that those distinctions and qualifications should be made which parts at 
 least of the Sacred Scriptures require, and which are rendered necessary by the 
 lapse of ages and by the existence of a totally different order of circumstances. 
 If these distinctions and qualifications are not made, the most erroneous con- 
 clusions may be drawn from the Bible, and the most unrighteous purposes may 
 be in appearance made to receive a sanction from it. The Scottish Covenanters 
 justi tied their murders by appealing to the severities practiced by the Israelites. 
 The German Anabaptists made use of the disinterestedness of the first Chris- 
 tians in sharing their property with the destitute in an emergency, in order to 
 authorize their spoliation of the goods of others. The madman Thorn appealed 
 to the Bible iu support of his delusions. Chartism flourished most vigorously, 
 and in its most offensive form, in cases where the Scriptures were the text- 
 book." 
 
 The civil commotion which has prevailed, during the greater part of the last 
 year, over a considerable portion of Wales, affords a fresh instance of the per- 
 version of the Bible in the hands of ignorance. Large bodies of the farmers 
 of Wales, feeling themselves aggrieved by the number of turnpike-gates, and 
 the high rates of toll exacted for passing through them, combined together, 
 and commenced the work of midnight demolition. In the prosecution of their 
 enterprise, several lives have been lost, and a vast amount of property destroyed. 
 A military force has been marched into the country to put down the disturbances ; 
 and a judicial commission, raised to try the offenders, is now sitting. These 
 violators of the law, and depredators upon private property, profess to be very 
 religious. They derive their name, and justify their outrages, from Scripture. 
 They call themselves " Rebeccaites," or " Rebecca and her Daughters; " and they 
 quote the following text as a sanction of their proceedings : " And they blessed 
 Uebecca, and said unto her, Thou art our sister : be thou the mother of thousands 
 of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of tho.-e which hate them." 
 Gen. xxiv. 61. According to their interpretation of this passage, they are the 
 seed of llebeeca, and the owners of turnpike stock are " those which hate them;" 
 whose " GATES," therefore, they are commanded to "possess," that is, to de- 
 stroy. 
 
 The following extract is from " The Thirty-fifth Report of the British and 
 Foreign School Society : " 
 
 ' In the house of correction at Lewes, of 846 prisoners, 48 only could read 
 and write well : -252 couid read and write a little ; only 6 had any idea of Chris- 
 tian doctrine; 294 knew nothing of our Saviour; 4SK) had heard of him, but knew 
 little more than his name; 54 knew something of his history." 
 
 Such, in the end, are the inevitable consequences when the rich neglect the 
 poor; the educated, the ignorant. 
 
 The history of the world is rife with proofs of the evils of ignorance; but the 
 present condition of England demonstrates that ignorance becomes more and
 
 264 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 received from eight to ten thousand dollars a year, by the 
 side of one, apparently his equal, who had not half as many 
 hundreds. 
 
 There is another and a most formidable evil resulting from 
 the absence of a national system, and of that supervision of 
 the schools which a national system imports. I refer to the 
 character of the text-books for schools, which infamous com- 
 pilers and infamous teachers conspire to introduce into them 
 as one of the attractions for degraded children. Bad men, in 
 any walk of life, always look to the market which they can 
 supply, and not to the quality of the productions they offer 
 for sale. When the education of a portion of the people is 
 very high, while that of another portion is very low, some of 
 the books prepared for the schools will be very good, while it 
 is quite as certain that others will be as bad as human iniquity 
 can make them. In some of the book-shops in England, I 
 saw text-books for schools, on no single page of which should 
 a child ever be allowed to look, books for the young, filled 
 with vile caricatures and low ribaldry, at once degrading to 
 the taste, and fatal to the moral sensibilities. 
 
 Before the establishment of the present National Board of 
 Education for Ireland, the same evils existed there. In one 
 of the reports of the commissioners for inquiring into the state 
 of the Irish schools, they say, " We have already adverted to 
 the deplorable want of such qualification in a great majority 
 of those who now teach in the common schools, and to the 
 pernicious consequences arising from it. Their ignorance, we 
 have reason to believe, is not seldom their least disqualification ; 
 and the want of proper books often combines with their own 
 opinions and propensities in introducing into their schools such 
 as are of the worst tendency." Again : speaking of the advan- 
 tages to be derived from the establishment of a Board of Educa- 
 tion who should exercise a supervisory power over the books 
 
 more dangerous just in proportion to the freedom of the institutions amongst 
 which it is allowed to exist. Shall we take warning from these examples, or 
 are we of those " who will not be persuaded though one should rise from the 
 dead"?
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 265 
 
 to be used, they say, " From the execution of this part of the 
 plan, we anticipate advantages of the utmost importance to the 
 whole country, inasmuch as we cannot doubt that the books 
 thus prepared will, by degrees, be universally adopted in every 
 school, whether public or private ; and, while education is thus 
 facilitated by a uniform system of instruction, the evils arising 
 from the want of proper books adapted to the inferior schools 
 will be removed, and the children be no longer exposed to the 
 corruption of morals and perversion of principles too often arising 
 from the books actually in use." 
 
 Such are some of the mature, full-grown calamities which 
 result from the neglect of a state or nation to establish a gen- 
 eral system of education for its people, and from leaving this 
 most important of all the functions of a government to chance 
 and to the speculations of irresponsible men. 
 
 We can never fully estimate the debt of gratitude we owe to 
 our ancestors for establishing our system of common schools. 
 In consequence of their wisdom and foresight, we have all 
 grown up in the midst of these institutions ; and we have been 
 conformed to them in all our habits and associations from our 
 earliest childhood. A feeling of strangeness, of the loss of 
 something customary and valuable, would come over us, were 
 they to be taken away or abolished. How different it would 
 be if these institutions were strangers to us ! if, every time we 
 were called to do any thing in their behalf, we should violate 
 a habit of thought and action instead of fulfilling one ! how 
 different, if every appropriation for their support were a new 
 burden ! if every meeting for their administration were an 
 unaccustomed tax upon our time, and we were obliged to await 
 the slow progress of an idea in the common mind for the adop- 
 tion of any improvement ! Emphatically how different, if the 
 wealthy and leading men of the community had gathered them- 
 selves into sects and cabals, each one with his hand against all 
 the rest, unless when they should temporarily unite to resist 
 the establishment of a system for the equal benefit of all ! It 
 is in consequence of what was done for us two hundred years
 
 266 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ago that we are now carrying on a work with comparative 
 ease, which in many of our sister States, as well as in some 
 foreign countries, must be accomplished, if accomplished at all, 
 with great labor and difficulty. Can there be a man amongst 
 us so recreant to duty, that he does not think it incumbent 
 upon him to transmit that system, in an improved condition, to 
 posterity, which his ancestors originated for him? 
 
 Let any one examine those voluminous reports of the evi- 
 dence, taken before parliamentary commissioners in England, 
 on the subject of education, and he will be astonished to find 
 men of the highest capacities, and of the most extensive attain- 
 ments on other subjects, faltering and doubting on the easiest 
 points of this, and groping their way after plans and arrange- 
 ments, which here have not only been long reduced to practice, 
 but are familiar to the whole body of the people. 
 
 SCHOOLHOUSES. 
 
 With the exception of the magnificent private establishments 
 in England and France, I have seen scarcely a schoolhouse in 
 Europe worthy to be compared even with the second-rate class 
 of our own. And even those princely edifices were far inferior 
 to ours in their fittings-up and their internal arrangements. 
 In Scolland, and in some parts of England, the schools for the 
 poorer classes were crowded to a degree of which we have 
 never seen an example, and of which we can hardly form a 
 conception. I have seen more than four hundred children in 
 two rooms, only thirty feet by twenty each ; and in Lancasterian 
 schools, a thousand children in a single room. In Prussia, 
 and in the other states of Germany which I visited, the school- 
 houses were of a very humble character. I should here make 
 one exception in favor of Leipsic, in the kingdom of Saxony, 
 which, in addition to having one of the best systems of educa- 
 tion, if not the very best, to be found in any city of Germany, 
 has also excellent schoolhouses ; and the one last erected as a 
 charity-school for poor children is the best of these.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 267 
 
 One most valuable feature, however, belongs to all school- 
 houses of the larger kind. They are uniformly divided into 
 class-rooms, and an entire room is appropriated to each class ; 
 so that there is no interruption of one class by another. But 
 the rooms themselves are small in every dimension, excepting 
 the distance between the scholars' seats and the floor. In this 
 respect, they resemble those formerly built among ourselves. I 
 saw scarcely one where the children, while seated at their 
 desks, could touch the floor with their feet. In regard to their 
 present and our old ones, it may be said, that if one of these 
 low-studded rooms, with its enormously high seats, should by 
 any chance be preserved for a thousand years, and should then 
 be revealed to posterity as the ruins of Pompeii and Hercula- 
 neum have been to us, the antiquarians of that remote day 
 would be likely to infer, from an inspection of the low ceiling 
 and the great distance between the seats and the floor, that the 
 children of their ancestors were a race of monsters, giants at 
 one end, and pygmies at the other. 
 
 Nor did I see a single public school in all Germany, in which 
 each scholar, or each two scholars, had a desk to themselves. 
 A few private schools only had adopted this great improve- 
 ment. Backs to the seats, too, were almost as rare as single 
 desks. The universal plan, whether for schools, gymnasia, or 
 colleges, is to have one long bench, or form, on which ten or a 
 dozen pupils can sit, with a table or desk before it of equal 
 length, to be used in common by the occupiers of the seats. 
 Each room has an aisle, or vacant space, along the wall on one 
 side, and sometimes on both. 
 
 One striking peculiarity of almost all Prussian and Saxon 
 schoolhouses is, that they contain apartments for the residence 
 of the teacher and his family. 
 
 In many places in Holland, I found that arrangements had 
 been made, on scientific principles, for warming and ventilating 
 the schoolrooms ; but in Germany never. In the schools of 
 the latter country, whether high or low, there was an astonish- 
 ing degree of ignorance or inattention to the laws of health
 
 263 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 and life, so far as they depend upon breathing pure air. The 
 atmosphere of the rooms was often intolerable. In the hottest 
 summer-days, ouly one window of a room full of children 
 would be open ; and, when the door was opened for their egress 
 or ingress, the window was closed. The stoves by which the 
 rooms are warmed in winter resemble very much, in the prin- 
 ciples of their construction, those which we call " air-tight ; " 
 and they are often so placed as to be fed at a door outside of 
 the room, so as to prevent even that slight change of air which 
 is caused when that in the room is used to sustain the combus- 
 tion of the fuel. To my very frequent question, in what man- 
 ner the rooms were ventilated, the universal reply was, " By 
 opening a door or window," a very insufficient theory, and 
 one which, I fear, poor as it is, is seldom reduced to practice. 
 When I surveyed the condition of things in Massachusetts, pre- 
 paratory to making that part of my last report which relates to 
 human physiology, I almost came to the conclusion that there 
 could be no part of the civilized world where less atteution was 
 paid to the laws of health and life than among ourselves. My 
 present opinion is, that, ignorant and inattentive as we are, 
 there is no part of the world that is not as much or even more 
 so. What benefits, then, must flow to mankind from a universal 
 knowledge and practice of the principles of the beautiful and 
 noble science of physiology ! 
 
 Were one to attempt a philosophical explanation of that leth- 
 argy of character, that want of activity and enterprise, Tor 
 which the Germans are so proverbial, I think he would fail of 
 a just solution of the problem if he left out of the account 
 the errors of their physical training. I visited a very great 
 number of hospitals for poor children, orphans, &c., some of 
 which were very extensive, containing a thousand children. 
 The dormitories of all were large, common, generally unventi- 
 lated rooms, with beds placed side by side, and as near each 
 other as they could be conveniently arranged. I have often 
 seen from a hundred to a hundred and fifty beds in the same 
 apartment. But the bedding was the most extraordinary.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 269 
 
 Though in the middle of summer, each child was supplied with 
 two feather-beds ; one for himself to lie on, the other to lie on 
 him. The usual outfit which I saw in the hospitals and other 
 places for children was one sheet and two feather-beds for each 
 child ; and these feather-beds would weigh from ten to twenty 
 pounds each. Where the principal or assistant teacher of the 
 school slept in the same room, the bed allotted to him had an 
 increased weight of feathers, corresponding to the received 
 ideas of his rank and dignity. In some instances, the enor- 
 mous feather-beds under which the inhabitants sleep Aveigh 
 forty or more pounds. In many of the best hotels in the first 
 cities of Germany, such a thing as a woollen blanket is not to 
 be found. Occasionally I found these in prisons ; for it seems 
 to be considered as a part of the punishment of a malefactor 
 to be debarred from sleeping under a feather-bed. Such is the 
 universal custom of the country. Every respectable man and 
 child sleeps between two feather-beds, summer and winter. 
 The debilitating effect of such a practice both upon body and 
 mind must be incalculable. If the leading members of the 
 Holy Alliance wish to abase their subjects into a voluntary 
 submission to arbitrary power, if they design so to enervate 
 their spirits that they will never pant for the joys and the im- 
 munities of liberty, and so to impair their vigor of body that 
 they will have no energy to achieve it, they can do no one 
 thing more conducive to these ends than to perpetuate this na- 
 tional custom of low ventilation and sleeping between feather- 
 beds.* 
 
 * The only public edifice I saw in Europe which enjoys a perfect luxury of 
 ventilation was the British House of Parliament. The arrangements for this 
 object were conceived by that celebrated chemist, Dr. Reid, and executed under 
 his superintendence. The plan is scientific, and the apparatus for executing it 
 complete. 
 
 In the external wall of the House of Commons, a great number of orifices open 
 into the out-door air; every alternate brick for a space of perhaps twenty feet 
 square being removed from the wall. Through these orifices, the crude air or 
 unmanufactured -irti \V is admitted. Stretched from above the upper Hue of these 
 orifices, that is, from the ceiling of the room, into which they open inwardly, and 
 reaching to the floor at an angle of 45", is a sheet or screen of coarse cloth, through 
 which all the air received is strained or sifted. By this means, all particles of coal-
 
 270 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 READING-BOOKS. 
 
 I have made it a poiut to look particularly into the reading- 
 books used in schools. Wherever I have been, I have observed 
 
 smoke, soot, or other impurity, held in mechanical solution with the atmosphere, 
 are intercepted, and only pure external air is allowed to enter. Havin.' passed 
 through this sieve, or strainer, the air may now be conducted from tins apartment 
 in either one of two directions, as it requires or does not require to be wanned. 
 If it requires to be warmed, it passes through a room filled with a great number 
 of heated iron pipes, which raise it to the desired temperature. Another iia-.-agt- 
 way is provided when it does not require to be warmed; and, by opening cliiieieut 
 doors, it is directed into one or the other of these at pleasure. Here, too, it is fur 
 ther purified from any admixture of foul gases by exposure to the action of chlo- 
 ride of lime; and, on great occasions, it is scented wiih cologne-water or other 
 perfume. Further on, it passes through a third apartment, which is the identical 
 place where Guy Fawkes was said to have hidden his gunpowder to blow up the 
 British I'arlUmeut in 1605. In this room is a system of iron conduits, or water- 
 pipes, lying upon the floor, and crossing each other after the manner of network, 
 or meshes. At brief intervals along the whole course of these pipes are little 
 perforated caps, like the top of a pepper-box. These pipes are filled with water, 
 under a heavy pressure. On the turning of a grand cock, this water is driven out 
 through the minute orifices above mentioned in beautiful, line jets, which, striking 
 the upper ceiling of the apartment, rebound and fall back to the floor in the finest 
 drops. During hot days, this apparatus is kept playing all the time while the 
 Houses are in session, thereby imparting a delicious coolness and freshness to the 
 air before it enters the halls. In addition to these jets of water, designed to cool 
 and freshen the air, bags of ice are suspended in this apartment, the melting of 
 which, by absorbing the caloric of the atmosphere, acts as a refrigerator. The air, 
 being now cleansed, purified, warmed, cooled, or scented, is prepared to enter the 
 hall of the House. For this purpose it is carried beneath the whole extent of the 
 floor. This floor is perforated throughout with small holes a little larger than a 
 pipe-stem or goose-quill; and through these the air is filtrated, so to speak, 
 into the room above. But, to prevent any current perceptible to the feet or limbs, 
 the floor of the House is covered with a hair carpet, so that the air may ri-e im- 
 perceptibly through its meshes. Similar provision is also made for carrying a full 
 supply of fresh air into the galleries, so that they are not dependent upon that 
 which has ascended from the breathers below. The upper or over-lu ad ceiling 
 of the House is not tight, although, to one looking at it from bdow.it exhibits no 
 opening. Through this ceiling, the foul air is carried off into the attic, though this 
 foul air is far purer than that which common Londoners breathe; for it is thrown 
 in in such quantities that only a very small portion of it reaches any human lungs. 
 Funnels are also placed over the great gas-burners by which the House is lighted, 
 and the current of air which rushes up through these is very rapid. 
 
 The arrangements for ventilating the House of Lords are almost precisely sim- 
 ilar to those for the House of Commons, which I have described. When the foul 
 or used-up air from both Houses has reached the attic, the currents are conducted 
 into a common passage, or channel. Ti. rough tiii; channel the uir is now carried 
 down to the level of the earth. Here it enters the lower end of .1 vast cylindrical 
 brick tower, eighty feet in height. The diameter of the tower is perhaps fifteen or 
 twenty feet at the bottom; but it tapers gradually to the top, so that it exhibits the
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 271 
 
 a mai'ked distinction between the foreign and our own, as it 
 regards the character of the selections of which they are corn- 
 appearance of a truncated cone. About ten feet from the bottom, a grating of iron 
 bars is laid across the interior of the tower, and on these a coal-fire is kept burn- 
 ing. Thus the tower acts as a chimney. The air, rarefied by the fire, rapidly 
 ascends, creating a vacuum below, which causes the air from the attics of the two 
 Houses to rush in, and then the pressure of the external air through the orifices 
 first described keeps up the current through its whole course. 
 
 One or two men are constantly employed in superintending this apparatus, 
 directing the currents of air, so that they may be admitted at the proper tempera- 
 ture, purified, cooled by the fountains, or warmed by the pipes, as the varying 
 days or seasons of the year may require. Beneath the Houses, at places where 
 the pressure or crowd on great state occasions is likely to be most dense, large 
 fans are provided, which, being rapidly revolved, force up through the orifices in 
 the floor a much greater quantity of air thau would ascend from the natural effect 
 of a mere difference of temperature. 
 
 It is now between six and seven years that an hourly register has been kept 
 of the state of the thermometer and barometer, as they are affected by the air 
 that enters the Houses. The velocity and volume of the air is also noted; all the 
 great passages being so contrived, that they can be more or less opened and closed 
 at pleasure. From the " woolsack," or speaker's chair, in the House of Lords, a 
 vertical tube descends to the basement below. At the upper end of this tube, a 
 thermometer is suspended for inspection by the members. The attendant in the 
 basement, by means of a cord and pulley, can let down this thermometer at any 
 moment, mark its condition in his register, and immediately replace it without its 
 being missed in the hall above. 
 
 In summer, the members are not only cooled by the water and the ice in the 
 rooms below, but also by the velocity of the current of air; that is, a current 
 of air, at the temperature of 05, may be so increased in velocity as to produce 
 sensations of coolness as great as another less rapid current would do at the 
 temperature of 00". Sometimes a hundred and twenty cubic feet a minute are sup- 
 plied to each pair of lungs. 
 
 All these circumstances are noted, from hour to hour, by clerks and superin- 
 tendents; but it is left for the profound and scientific mind of Dr. Reid to strike 
 the equations and evolve the grand results. That gentleman assured me, that, 
 since the adoption of this system, hardly a cough had been heard in either 
 House (excepting, I presume, all coughs prepense, for the suppression of 
 speeches). 
 
 All the offices, committee-rooms, &c., belonging to the Houses, are ventilated 
 substantially in the same way. 
 
 The provisions for warming and ventilating the new Houses of Parliament are 
 on a still grander scale. The entire edifice, including the halls for the two 
 Houses, offices, committee-rooms, &c., is 900 feet long; and, on the grand or prin- 
 cipal floor, there are between two and three hundred rooms. At one end of the 
 building is to be the clock tower, at the other end the Victoria tower. From the 
 summit of these towers, as high above earthly impurities and miasms as is prac- 
 ticable, the air is to be taken. It is to pass down these towers more or less 
 down one or the other according to the course and strength of the wind to the 
 basement of the structure. Here it is to be turned and conducted, in a horizontal 
 direction, to a spacious reservoir in the centre. While moving towards this cen-
 
 272 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 posed. A great proportion of the pieces which make up our 
 compilations consist of oratorical, sentimental, or poetical 
 pieces. The foreign reading-books, on the other hand, partake 
 more largely of the practical or didactic. Ours savor more of 
 literature or belles-lettres ; theirs, of science and the useful arts. 
 
 Perhaps the best mode of giving a definite idea of the char- 
 acter of the foreign reading-books would be to quote a specifi- 
 cation of subjects from the table of contents of some specimen- 
 book. 
 
 The following is from the table of contents of a German 
 " First Reading Book, for the lowest classes in elementary 
 schools : " 
 
 "1st PART. LESSON 1, The parental home; 2, Building materials, 
 stone, lime, wood ; 3, Construction, iron and glass ; 4, The four elements ; 
 5, Comparison of building materials; 6, The inner parts of houses; 7, 
 House utensils and tools ; 8, Clothing; 9, Food; 10, Inhabitants of houses; 
 11, Household animals and their uses; 12, Continuation, the winged 
 tribe; 13, Injurious animals in the house ; 14, Conduct towards beasts ; 15, 
 Language, advantage of man over beasts. 
 
 "2d PART. QUALITIES OF THINGS. LESSON 1, Colors; 2, Forms; 
 3, Qualities which a house may have ; 4, Qualities of some building mate- 
 rials ; 5, Qualities which an apartment may have ; 6, Qualities which tools 
 may have; 7, Qualities which a road may have; 8, Qualities which water 
 may have; 9, Qualities which food may have; 10, Qualities which articles 
 of clothing may have; 11, Qualities which an animal may have, bodily 
 qualities; 12, What one learns from the actions of beasts; 13, Qualities 
 which a man may bave, bodily qualities of a man ; 14, Continuation, 
 moral qualities ; 15, Qualities which man must not have." 
 
 A selection from the residue of the lessons follows : 
 
 "LESSON 17, Sounds and tones of beasts; 19, Sounds of inanimate 
 things; 20, Properties and actions of plants and animals; 21, Actions in 
 school; 23, Household arrangements; 25, Country occupations; 26. Con- 
 duct of children towards others ; 41, Adding to the name of a thing a word 
 of quality. 
 
 tral point, it can be turned into any one of a number of channels, and receive such 
 I'h.inge.* warming, refrigeration, perfuming, medication, &c. as may be de- 
 sired. From this great heart, it is to be driven in all directions towards every part 
 of the vast edifice; and, by a system of doors and valves, to be let into or shut off 
 from auy apartment of the many-mansioned building at pleasure.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 273 
 
 "3dPAHT. MORAL INSTRUCTION. LESSON 2, Order in families; 3, 
 Duties of parents," &c., &c. 
 
 Then follow " stories for exciting and cultivating moral ideas 
 and sentiments ; " and the book closes with songs and prayers 
 " for the awakening and animating of religious feeling." 
 
 The following titles are from " A Course of Elementary 
 Reading" by J. M. McCullock, D.D. Eleventh edition, Edin- 
 burgh, 1842 : 
 
 "1. PHYSICAL SCIENCE. On the pleasures of science ; General proper- 
 ties of bodies, Impenetrability, Extension, Figure, Divisibility, Inertia; 
 Attraction of Cohesion ; Attraction of Gravity ; First lines of Mechanics ; 
 Motion; Momentum; Centre of Gravity; The Mechanical Powers; Press- 
 ure of Watery Fluids ; Capillary Attraction ; The Winds ; Aqueous Va- 
 por; Clouds and Mists, Rain, Dew, Snow, Hail; Powers of Vision; The 
 Quantity of Matter in the Universe. 
 
 "2. CHEMICAL SCIENCE. Properties of Free Caloric ; Radiation; Con- 
 ductors ; Chemical Attraction ; Simple Bodies ; Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitro- 
 gen, Carbon, Sulphur, Phosphorus; The Metals; Compound Bodies, 
 Atmospheric Air ; Water ; Effects of Caloric, &c., &c. 
 
 "3. NATURAL HISTORY. The Three Kingdoms of Nature. Minerals: 
 Diamond, Flint, Asbestos, Clay, Slate, &c., &c. The Malleable Metals : 
 Platina, Gold, Mercury, Silver, Copper, Iron, &c., c. Clothing from Ani- 
 mals : Fur, Wool, Silk, Leather. Vegetable Physiology : Motion of the 
 Sap, Leaves, The Seed, Germination, &c. Circulation of the Blood. Vege- 
 table Clothing : Flax, Hemp, Cotton. The Animal Economy," &c., &c. 
 
 The Fourth Part of this work consists of pieces classed un- 
 der the head of " Geography and Topography ; " then follow 
 Religious, Moral, and Miscellaneous pieces, in prose and 
 poetry, which complete the book. 
 
 There are hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of reading-books 
 in the different languages abroad. I have selected the above 
 as a fair specimen of what I saw ; and I believe most educators 
 will agree with me in thinking them far better suited to the 
 tastes and capacities of the young than most of our own. 
 
 APPARATUS, ETC. 
 
 I have seen but little of school apparatus abroad which is 
 not to be found in good schools at home. The blackboard is 
 
 18
 
 274 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 a universal appendage to the schoolroom, and is much more 
 used than with us. Indeed, in no state or country have I ever 
 seen a good school without a blackboard, nor a successful 
 teacher who did not use it frequently. 
 
 Generally speaking, the infant schools of England and Scot- 
 , land are admirably supplied with abundant and appropriate 
 'apparatus. The schoolrooms are literally lined with cards 
 from which to teach the alphabet, with short sentences in Eng- 
 lish, and a few texts of Scripture or moral maxims. Delinea- 
 tions of various plants, trees, animals, beasts, birds, fishes ; 
 of different races of men, with their varieties of physiognomy 
 and costume ; of portraits of kings, queens, and distinguished 
 personages ; a compass, a clock-face, &c., are profusely pro- 
 vided. 
 
 In Holland, I saw what I have never seen elsewhere, but 
 that which ought to be in every school, the actual weights 
 and measures of the country. These Avere used, not only as a 
 means of conveying useful knowledge, but of mental exercise 
 and cultivation. 
 
 There were seven different liquid measures, graduated accord- 
 ing to the standard measures of the kingdom. The teacher 
 took one in his hand, held it up before the class, and displayed 
 it in all its dimensions. Sometimes he would allow it to be 
 passed along by the members of the class, that each one might 
 have an opportunity to handle it and to form an idea of its 
 capacity. Then he would take another, and either tell the 
 class how many measures of one kind would be equivalent to 
 one measure of the other ; or, if he thought them prepared for 
 the questions, he would obtain their judgment upon the relative 
 capacity of the respective measures. In this way he would go 
 through with the whole series, referring from one to another, 
 until all had been examined and their relative capacities under- 
 stood. Then followed arithmetical questions founded upon the 
 facts they had learned; such as, if one measure-full of wiue 
 costs so much, what would another measure-full cost (designat- 
 ing the measure), or four, or seveu other measures-full. The 
 same thing was then done with the weights.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 275 
 
 It is easy to see how much more exact and permanent would 
 be the pupil's knowledge of all weights and measures, obtained 
 in this way, than if learned by heart from the dry tables in a 
 book ; and also how many useful and interesting exercises 
 could be founded upon them by a skilful teacher. I believe it 
 would be difficult to find many men in the community, of middle 
 age, who can now repeat all those tables of weights and meas- 
 ures, which, as school-boys, they could rehearse so volubly ; or 
 who, were they now to see actual sets of weights and measures, 
 could call all the different ones by their true names, or could 
 distinguish each denomination from the others if not seen iu 
 juxtaposition with them. Having learned the tables by rote, 
 the words have long ago vanished from the mind, and the ideas 
 never were in it. 
 
 Something of the same kind should be done also in our 
 schools in reference to numbers. Children learn the nume- 
 ration-table without any adequate notion of the rapid increase 
 of the successive denominations, or how vast the numbers are 
 which they rattle off with such volubility. I have often tested 
 the knowledge of the older classes iu our schools, as to their 
 comprehension of large numbers, by asking them this question : 
 If a man were to count one each second for ten hours in a 
 day, how many days would it take him to count a million ? And, 
 ia the same class, the answers have frequently varied from one 
 day to thirty ; and this when each one of the scholars could work 
 any sum in the arithmetic. They had never learnt, by actual 
 counting, the ratio of decimal increase ; and nothing but prac- 
 tice will ever give an idea of it. Dr. Howe, of the Blind Insti- 
 tution at South Boston, says he considers " a peck of beans or 
 corn an indispensable part of the apparatus of his school." If 
 a boy says he has seen ten thousand horses, make him count 
 ten thousand kernels of corn, and he never will see so many 
 horses again. 
 
 In the public schools of Holland, too, large sheets or cards 
 were hung upon the walls of the room, containing fac-similes 
 of the inscription and relief face and reverse of all the cur-
 
 276 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 rent coins of the kingdom. The representation of the gold 
 coins were yellow ; of the silver, white ; and of the copper, 
 copper-color. 
 
 In the schools both of Holland and Germany, I occasionally 
 saw printed sheets suspended from the walls of the schoolroom, 
 containing practical advice and directions respecting important 
 emergencies or duties of life ; such as the best mode of pro- 
 ceeding to resuscitate a drowned person, of curing a burn, of 
 stanching a ruptured blood-vessel, &c., &c. 
 
 In all the class-rooms for little children in Germany were 
 reading-frames or reading-boards for elementary instruction in 
 language. These consist of parellel and horizontal laths, or 
 bars (called in America slats, in England sloats), with 
 grooves, into which small squares of pasteboard or blocks of 
 wood, having letters printed upon them, could be inserted. 
 The manner in which these are used will be described here- 
 after, under the head of " Reading." 
 
 In the schools for the deaf and dumb, I saw admirable col- 
 lections of natural objects for the use of the pupils. These 
 were not merely an assortment of shells and minerals, which 
 generally fills up our conceptions of cabinets of this kind, but 
 assemblages of different seeds of plants, particularly all those 
 used for food or in the arts, of dried plants, &c., &c., arranged 
 neatly in boxes, so that they could easily be handled without 
 loss or injury. I found similar collections in other schools, but 
 not on so large a scale ; for it is peculiarly necessary that the 
 deaf and dumb should see the objects of their lessons. These 
 they are made to describe in spoken as well as in written 
 words, and to connect their history with geographical knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 In the deaf and dumb school at Dresden, I saw a very large 
 collection of models of every description of utensil, also of 
 many machines, mills, carts, &c., &c., made from wood by the 
 pupils themselves. With the names and uses of every part of 
 these they were made familiar. A vocabulary thus learned is 
 much more fully impressed upon the memory than by any
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 277 
 
 other conceivable mode ; and, as it regards a knowledge of the 
 things themselves, it is the only way of imparting it. 
 
 lu a large charitable establishment at the Hague, destined 
 for poor young children, whose parents brought them to the 
 school early in the morning and left them till night, when they 
 were ready to return home from their day-labor, I saw an ex- 
 cellent collection of this sort, from which the youngest children 
 could derive much practical and useful knowledge. The great 
 Burger and Real schools are generally supplied with fine instru- 
 ments for lessons and practice in natural philosophy, chemistry, 
 and mechanics. In Carlsruhe, besides the admirable endow- 
 ment of such apparatus, which both the State and the friends 
 of education have furnished to this class of schools, the Grand 
 Ducal cabinets, the physical cabinet, collections of natural 
 objects, picture-gallery, botanic garden, even the palace-garden, 
 and also the Grand Ducal court-library, library of the Grand 
 Ducal physical cabinet, that of the directors of the technical 
 courts, and also the workshops and manufactories of the city 
 and environs, are open at all times to the pupils. Pupils study- 
 ing in the forest department are taken to the governmental 
 woodlands to study botany, &c., among the trees and flowers ; 
 those of the architectural schools, the mining schools, &c., are 
 empowered and even enjoined by law to visit the public works 
 in progress, in company with their teachers. 
 
 These facts, besides being valuable as suggestions to us, 
 afford us an idea of the greater practical turn given to educa- 
 tion in those countries than amongst ourselves. 
 
 Many of the charity-schools of Holland contained paintings 
 of no inconsiderable excellence and value. In Germany, where 
 every thing (excepting war and military affairs) is conducted 
 on an inexpensive scale, the walls of the schoolrooms were 
 often adorned with cheap engravings and lithographs of dis- 
 tinguished men, of birds, beasts, and fishes ; and, in many 
 of them, a cabinet of natural history had been commenced. 
 And throughout all Prussia and Saxony, a most delightful im- 
 pression was luft upon my mind by the character of the persons
 
 '218 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 whose portraits were thus displayed. Almost without excep- 
 tion, they were likenesses of good men rather than of great 
 ones, frequently of distinguished educationists and benefactors 
 of the young, whose countenances were radiant with the light 
 of benevolence, and the very sight of which was a moral lesson 
 to the susceptible hearts of children. In this respect, they con- 
 trasted most strongly with England, where the great always 
 takes precedence of the good, and where there are fifty monu- 
 ments and memorials for Nelson and Wellington to one for 
 Howard or Wilberforce. 
 
 In the new building for the " poor school," at Leipsic, there 
 is a large hall in which all the children assemble in the morn- 
 ing for devotional purposes. Over the teacher's desk, or pulpit, 
 is a painting of Christ in the act of blessing little children. 
 The design is appropriate and beautiful. Several most forlorn- 
 lookimjr, half-naked children stand before him. He stretches 
 out his arms over them, and blesses them. The mother stands 
 by with an expression of rejoicing such as only a mother can 
 feel. The little children look lovingly up into the face of the 
 .Saviour. Others stand around, awaiting his benediction. In 
 the background are aged men, who gaze upon the spectacle 
 with mingled love for the children and reverence for their ben- 
 efactor. Hovering above is a group of angels, hallowing the 
 scene with their presence. 
 
 LANCASTERIAN OR MONITORIAL SCHOOLS. 
 
 I saw many Lancasteriau or Monitorial schools in England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland, and a few in France. Some mere ves- 
 tiges of the plan are still to be found in the "poor schools" 
 of Prussia ; but nothing of it remains in Holland or in many 
 of the German States. It has been abolished in these countries 
 by a universal public opinion. Under such an energetic and 
 talented teacher as Mr. Crossley, of the Borough Road School 
 in London, or under such men as I found several of the Edin- 
 burgh teachers to be, and especially those of the Madras Col-
 
 EEPORT FOR 1843. 279 
 
 lege at St. Andrew's, the monitorial system where great 
 numbers must be taught at a small expense may accomplish 
 no inconsiderable good. But at least nine-tenths of all the 
 monitorial schools I have seen would suggest to me the idea 
 that the name " monitorial" had been given them by way of 
 admonishing the world to avoid their adoption. One must see 
 the difference between the hampering, blinding, misleading 
 instruction given by an inexperienced child, and the develop- 
 ing, transforming, and almost creative power of an accom- 
 plished teacher ; one must rise to some comprehension of the vast 
 import and significance of the phrase " to educate," before 
 he can regard with a sufficiently energetic contempt that boast 
 of Dr. Bell, " Give me twenty-four pupils to-day, and I will give 
 you back twenty-four teachers to-morrow." 
 
 SCOTCH SCHOOLS. 
 
 There are some points in which the schools of Scotland are 
 very remarkable. In the thoroughness Avith which they teach 
 the intellectual part of reading, they furnish a model worthy 
 of being copied by the world. Not only is the meaning of all 
 the important words in the lesson clearly brought out, but the 
 whole class or family of words to which the principal word be- 
 longs are introduced, and their signification given. The pupil not 
 only gains a knowledge of the meaning of till the leading words 
 contained in his exercise, but also of their roots, derivatives, and 
 compounds, and thus is prepared to make the proper discrimi- 
 nations between analogous words whenever he may hear or 
 read them on future occasions. For instance, suppose the 
 word " circumscribe " occurs in the lesson : the teacher asks from 
 what Latin words it is derived; and, being answered, he then 
 asks what other English words are formed by the help of the 
 Latin preposition " circum," This leads to an explanation 
 of such words as circumspect, circumvent, circumjacent, circum- 
 ambient, circumference, circumflex, circumfusion, circumnavi- 
 gate, circumstance, circumlocution, &c., &c. The same thing
 
 280 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 would then be done in reference to the other etymological 
 component of "circumscribe" viz., " scribo ; " and here the 
 specific meaning of the words describe, inscribe, transcribe, 
 ascribe, prescribe, superscribe, subscribe, &c., &c., would be given. 
 After this might come the nouns, adjectives, and adverbs into 
 which this word enters as one of the elements, such as scrip- 
 ture, manuscript, &c. The teacher says, " Give me a word 
 which signifies to copy." 
 
 Pupils. Transcribe. 
 
 T. To write in a book, or on a tablet. 
 
 P. Inscribe. 
 
 T. To write upon, or on the outside of, as on a letter. 
 
 P. Superscribe. 
 
 T. To write beneath or under. 
 
 P. Subscribe. 
 
 T. A man goes around to obtain the names for a book or 
 newspaper, or to get promises of money for stocks or for 
 charity. What does he want? 
 
 P. Subscriptions. 
 
 T. And what are those called who give him their names? 
 
 P. Subscribers. 
 
 T. And what is a copy called? 
 
 P. Transcription. 
 
 T. Or by way of abbreviation? 
 
 P. Transcript. 
 
 The same is done when a derivative of the Latin word " pes" 
 occurs, as in the words impediment, pedestal, pediment, impede, 
 expedite ; or of the word " duco," in induce, produce, tra- 
 duce, reduce, adduce, conduce, inducement, induction, deduction, 
 reduction, production ; and then the names of the agents or 
 persons performing these several acts are given. 
 
 So of words in which the Greek " grapho " is an element, 
 as geography . chirography, graphic, paragraph, telegraph, graph- 
 ite (a mineral), &c. 
 
 The same exercises take place in regard to hundreds of other 
 words.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 281 
 
 The Scotch teachers, the great body of whom are graduates 
 of colleges, or have attended the university before beginning to 
 keep school, are perfectly competent to instruct in this thorough 
 manner. I think it obvious, however, that this mode of teach- 
 ing may be carried too far, as many of our words, though 
 wholly or in part of Latin or Greek derivation, have lost their 
 etymological signification, and assumed a conventional one. 
 
 But all this admirable in its way was hardly worthy 
 to be mentioned in comparison with another characteristic 
 of the Scottish schools ; viz., the mental activity with which the 
 exercises were conducted, both on the part of teacher and pupils. 
 I entirely despair of exciting in any other person, by a descrip- 
 tion, the vivid impressions of mental activity or celerity which 
 the daily operations of these schools produced in my own mind. 
 Actual observation alone can give any thing approaching to 
 the true idea. I do not exaggerate when I say that the most 
 active and lively schools I have ever seen in the United States 
 must be regarded almost as dormitories, if compared with the 
 fervid life of the Scotch schools ; and, by the side of theirs, 
 our pupils would seem to be hybernating animals just emerging 
 from their torpid state, and as yet but half conscious of the 
 possession of life and faculties. It is certainly within bounds 
 to say that there were six times as many questions put and 
 answers given, in the same space of time, as I ever heard put 
 and given in any school in our own country. 
 
 But a few preliminary observations are necessary to make 
 any description of a Scotch school intelligible. 
 
 In the numerous Scotch schools which I saw, the custom of 
 place-taking prevailed, not merely in spelling, but in geogra- 
 phy, arithmetic, reading, defining, &c. Nor did this consist 
 solely in the passing-up of the one giving a right answer above 
 the one giving a wrong. But, if a scholar made a very bright 
 answer, he was promoted at once to the top of the class : if he 
 made a very stupid one, he was sentenced no less summarily 
 to the bottom. Periodically, prizes are given ; and the fact of 
 having been " dux " (that is, at the head of the class) the
 
 282 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 greatest number of times is the principal ground on which the 
 prizes are awarded. In some schools an auxiliary stimulus is 
 applied. The fact of having passed up so many places (say ten 
 or twelve) entitles the pupil to a ticket ; and a given number 
 of these tickets is equivalent to being " dux " once. When this 
 sharper goad to emulation is to be applied, the spectator will 
 sec the teacher fill his hand with small bits of paste-board ; and 
 a> the recitation goes on, and competition becomes keen, and 
 places are rapidly lost and won, the teacher is seen occasionally 
 to give one of these tickets to a pupil as a counter, or token 
 that he has passed up above so many of his fellows ; that is, 
 he may have passed up above four at one time, six at another, 
 and two at another : and, if twelve is the number which enti- 
 tles to a ticket, one will be given without any stopping or speak- 
 ing ; for the teacher and pupil appear to have kept a silent 
 reckoning, and, when the latter extends his hand, the former 
 gives a ticket without any suspension of the lesson. This gives 
 the greatest intensity to competition ; and, at such times, the 
 children have a look of almost maniacal eagerness and anxiety. 
 I have said that questions were put by the teacher with a 
 rapidity almost incredible. When once put, however, if not 
 answered, they are not again stated in words. If the first 
 pupil cannot answer, the teacher rarely stops to say, " Next ; " 
 but every pupil having his eye on the teacher, and being 
 alive in every sense and faculty, and the teacher walking up 
 and down before the class, and gesticulating vehemently with 
 his arm extended, and accompanying each motion with his eye, 
 he points to the next, and the next, until perhaps, if the ques- 
 tion is difficult, he may have indicated each one in a section, 
 but obtained an answer from none. Then he throws his arm and 
 eye around towards one side of the room, inviting a reply from 
 any one ; and, if still unsuccessful, he sweeps them across the 
 other side : and all this will take but half a minute. Words 
 being too slow and cumbrous, the language of signs prevails ; 
 and, the parties being all eye and ear, the interchange of ideas 
 has an electric rapidity. While the teacher turns his face and
 
 EEPORT FOR 1843. 28$ 
 
 points his finger towards a dozen pupils consecutively, inviting 
 a reply, perhaps a dozen arms will be extended towards him 
 from other sections or divisions of the class, giving notice that 
 they are ready to respond ; and in this way a question will be 
 put to a class of fifty, sixty, or eighty pupils in half a minute 
 of time. 
 
 Nor is this all. The teacher does not stand immovably fixed 
 to one spot (I never saw a teacher in Scotland sitting in a 
 schoolroom) ; nor are the bodies of the pupils mere blocks, rest- 
 ing motionless in their seats, or lolling from side to side as 
 though life were deserting them. The custom is for each pupil 
 to rise when giving an answer. This is ordinarily done so 
 quick, that the body of the pupil, darting from the sitting into 
 the standing posture, and then falling back into the first posi- 
 tion, seems more like some instrument sent suddenly forward 
 by a mechanical force, and then rapidly withdrawn, than like 
 the rising and sitting of a person in the ordinary way. But it 
 is obvious that the scene becomes full of animation when 
 leave being given to a whole division of a class to answer a 
 dozen or twenty at once spring to their feet, and ejaculate at the 
 top of their voices. The moment it is seen that the question 
 has been rightly answered, and this is instantaneously shown 
 by the manner of the teacher, all fall back, and another ques- 
 tion is put. If this is not answered, almost before an attentive 
 spectator can understand it, the teacher extends his arm and 
 flashes his eye to the next, and the next, and so on ; and, when a 
 rapid signal is given to another side of the room, a dozen pupils 
 leap to the floor and vociferate a reply. 
 
 Nor can the faintest picture of these exciting scenes be given 
 without introducing something of the technical phraseology used 
 in the school. 
 
 If a pupil is not prompt at the moment, and if the teacher 
 means to insist upon an answer from him (for it will not do to 
 pass by a scholar always, however dull), he exclaims, in no very 
 moderate or gentle voice, "Come away," or "Come away 
 now ; " and if the first does not answer, and the next does, he
 
 284 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 directs the latter to pass above the former by the conventional 
 phrase, " Take him down." If a whole section stands at fault 
 for a moment, and then one leaps up, and shouts out the reply, 
 the teacher exclaims, " Dux, boy ; " which means that the one 
 who answered shall take the head of the class. 
 
 Suppose the teacher to be hearing his class in a reading-les- 
 son, and that the word "impediment" occurs, something very 
 like the following scene may take place : 
 
 Teacher. " Impediment," from what Latin words? 
 
 Pupil. In and pes. 
 
 T. What does it mean? 
 
 P. To oppose something against the feet, to keep them 
 back. 
 
 T. How is the word "pes" used in statuary? 
 
 P. In pedestal, the block on which a statue is raised. 
 
 T. In architecture? 
 
 P. Pediment. 
 
 T. In music? 
 
 P. Pedal, a part of an organ moved by the feet. 
 
 T. In botany ? 
 
 P. Pedicle, or footstalk of a flower. 
 
 T. Give me a verb. 
 
 P. Impede. 
 
 T. A noun. 
 
 P. Impediment. 
 
 T. An adjective which imports despatch in the absence of 
 obstacles. 
 
 P. Expeditious. 
 
 T. An adjective meaning desirable or conducive. 
 
 P. (Hesitates.) T. Come away. (To the next.) Come 
 away. (He now points to half a dozen in succession, giving to 
 each not more than a twinkling of time.) 
 
 Ninth pupil. Expedient. 
 
 T. Take 'em down. (This pupil then goes above eight.) 
 
 All this does not occupy half the time in the class that it 
 takes to read an account of it.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 285 
 
 In a school where a recitation in Latin was going on, I wit- 
 nessed a scene of this kind. The room, unlike the rooms 
 where the children of the common people are taught, was 
 large. Seventy or eighty boys sat on deskless, backless 
 benches, arranged on three sides of a square or parallelo- 
 gram. A boy is now called upon to recite, to pass a Latin 
 noun, for instance. But he does not respond quite so quickly 
 as the report of a gun follows the flash. The teacher cries out, 
 " Come away." The boy errs, giving perhaps a wrong gender, 
 or saying that it is derived from a Greek verb, when, in fact, it 
 is derived from a Greek noun of the same family. Twenty boys 
 leap forward into the area, as though the house were on fire, 
 or a mine or an ambush had been sprung upon them, and 
 shout out the true answer in a voice that could be heard forty 
 rods. And so the recitation proceeds for an hour. 
 
 To an unaccustomed spectator, on entering one of these 
 rooms, all seems uproar, turbulence, and the contention of angry 
 voices, the teacher traversing the space before his class in a 
 state of high excitement ; the pupils springing from their seats, 
 darting to the middle of the floor, and sometimes, with extended 
 arms, forming a circle around him, two, three, or four deep 
 (every finger quivering from the intensity of their emotions), 
 until some more sagacious mind, outstripping its rivals, solves 
 the difficulty, when all are in their seats again, as though by 
 magic, and ready for another encounter of wits. 
 
 I have seen a school kept for two hours in succession in this 
 state of intense mental activity, with nothing more than an 
 alternation of subjects during the time, or perhaps the relaxa- 
 tion of singing. At the end of the recitation, both teacher and 
 pupils would glow with heat, and be covered with perspiration, 
 as though they had been contending in the race or the ring. 
 It would be utterly impossible for the children to bear such 
 fiery excitement if the physical exercise were not as violent as 
 the mental is intense. But children who actually leap into the 
 air from the energy of their impulses, and repeat this as often 
 as once in two minutes on an average, will not suffer from sup- 
 pressed activity of the muscular system.
 
 286 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The mental labor performed in a given period in these 
 schools, by children under the age of twelve or fourteen years, 
 is certainly many times more than I have ever seen in any 
 schools of our own composed of children as young. With us, 
 the lower classes do not ordinarily work more than half the 
 time while they are in the schoolroom. Even many members 
 of the reciting classes are drowsy and listless, and evidently 
 following some train of thought if they are thinking at all 
 whose scene lies beyond the Avails of the schoolhouse, rather 
 than applying their minds to the subject-matter of the lesson, 
 or listening to those who are reciting, or feigning to recite it. 
 But, iu the mode above described, there is no sleepiness, no 
 droning, no inattention. The moment an eye wanders, or a 
 countenance becomes listless, it is roused by a special appeal ; 
 and the contagion of the excitement is so great as to operate 
 upon every mind and frame that is not an absolute non-con- 
 ductor to life. 
 
 One sees at a glance how familiar the teacher who teaches 
 in this way must be with the whole subject, in order to com- 
 mand the attention of a class at all. 
 
 I was told by the Queen's Inspector of the schools iu Scot- 
 land, that the first test of a teacher's qualification is his 
 power to excite and to sustain the attention of his class. If 
 a teacher cannot do this, he is pronounced, without further 
 inquiry, incompetent to teach. 
 
 There are some good schools iu England, such as the Nor- 
 mal School at Battersea, those of the Home and Colonial Infant 
 School Society, and the Borough Road School, in London, and 
 some others ; but, as I saw nothing in these superior to what 
 may be seen in good schools at home, I omit all remarks upon 
 them.* 
 
 * The famous school at Norwood, eight or ten miles from London, where 
 more than a thousand of the pauper children of London are collected, is an 
 extraordinary sight, without being an extraordinary school.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 287 
 
 PRUSSIAN AND SAXON SCHOOLS. SUBJECTS TAUGHT. MODES 
 OF TEACHING, GOVERNING, ETC. 
 
 The questions which the friends of education in Massachu- 
 setts have been most anxious to hear answered iu regard to 
 the schools of Prussia, Saxony, and some other parts of Ger- 
 many, are such as these : What branches are taught in them? 
 What are the modes and processes of teaching? What incite- 
 ments or motive-powers are employed for stimulating the pupils 
 to learn? In fine, what is done when teacher and pupils meet 
 each other face to face in the schoolroom? how is it done, and 
 with what success? 
 
 In regard to the grand principles on which our own school- 
 system is organized, we look for no substantial improvement. 
 Our schools are perfectly free. A child would be as much 
 astonished at being asked to pay any sum, however small, for 
 attending our common schools, as he would be if payment were 
 demanded of him for walking in the public streets, for breath- 
 ing the common air, or enjoying the warmth of the unappro- 
 priable sun. Massachusetts has the honor of establishing the 
 first system of free schools in the world ; and she projected a 
 plan so elastic and expansive in regard to the course of studies 
 arfd the thoroughness of instruction, that it may be enlarged 
 and perfected, to meet any new wants of her citizens, to the end 
 of time. Our system, too, is one and the same for both rich 
 and poor ; for as all human beings, in regard to their natural 
 rights, stand upon a footing of equality before God, so, iu this 
 respect, the human has been copied from the divine plan of gov- 
 ernment, by placing all citizens on the same footing of equality 
 before the law of the land. For these purposes, therefore, we 
 do not desire to copy or to study the systems of foreign nations, 
 usually so different from our own : we hope, rather, that they 
 will study and copy ours. 
 
 And further, in regard to the general organization and main- 
 tenance of the Prussian and other German schools, AVC already 
 have extensive means of knowledge. The Report of M. Cousin,
 
 288 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 formerly Minister of Public Instruction iu France, upon the 
 Prussian system ; the Report of Dr. Bache, late President of 
 Girard College, in regard to all kinds of charitable foundations 
 for instruction in Europe ; the admirable Report of Professor 
 Stowe, made to the General Assembly of Ohio in 1837 ; 
 together with various articles to be found iu reviews and other 
 periodicals published within the last twenty years, will supply 
 the general reader with all that he will care to kuow ou these 
 topics. My purpose, therefore, is to confine myself to those 
 poiuts respecting which we have not as yet adequate means of 
 information ; and to refer to what has been sufficiently detailed 
 by other inquirers, only when necessary for the sake of giving 
 unity and intelligibleness to my own remarks. 
 
 I ought to premise that I have visited but a small number of 
 the thirty-eight German States, and seen comparatively but a 
 few of the schools in that great Confederation. My tour was 
 made through Prussia, Saxony, the Grand Duchy of Nassau, 
 of Hesse-Darmstadt, Baden, and a few of the smaller States, 
 together with Hamburg and Frankfort, the largest of the free 
 cities belonging to the Confederation. This cautionary state- 
 ment is necessary, because travellers are apt to generalize their 
 facts, making particular instances represent whole countries ; 
 and perhaps readers are quite as prone to this generalization as 
 writers. Prussia contains a population of fourteen or fifteen 
 millions, Saxony about two millions ; and, in the schools of 
 these and other German States, I spent from six weeks to two 
 months, using all practicable diligence in going from place to 
 place, visiting schools and conversing with teachers and school- 
 officers by day, and examining educational pamphlets, reports, 
 &c., at night. But, of course, I could visit only a small part of 
 the schools which represent a population of eighteen or twenty 
 millions. Perhaps 1 saw as fair a proportion of the Prussian 
 and Saxon schools as one would see of the schools iu Mas- 
 sachusetts who should visit those of Boston, Newburyport, 
 Lexington, New Bedford, Worcester, Northampton, and Spring- 
 field.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 289 
 
 The authority and control assumed by the above-mentioned 
 governments over the youth of the State are very extensive. 
 The impartial observer, however, is bound to admit that this 
 assumption is not wholly for the aggrandizement of the rulers ; 
 that authority is not claimed in the mere spirit of arbitrary 
 power, but, to a great extent, for the welfare of the subject. 
 A gentleman who formerly resided in one of the smaller Ger- 
 man States, and who there exercised the office of judge, a part 
 of whose functions was the appointment of guardians to minors 
 and others (in this respect analogous to one of the duties of our 
 Judges of Probate), told me that it was the common custom 
 of himself and his brethren in office, when a guardian appeared 
 to render his annual account, to require him to produce the 
 ward, as well as the account, for the inspection of the court ; 
 and no final account of a guardian was ever settled without a 
 personal inspection of the ward by the judge. In these inter- 
 views, not a little could be learned, by the personal manners, 
 address, and appearance of the ward, as to the fidelity with 
 which the guardian had attended to the health, habits, and 
 education of his charge. 
 
 Another fact which will strike the visitor to these countries 
 with mingled sorrow and joy is the number and the populous- 
 ness of their orphan establishments. In the great cities, almost 
 without exception, one or more of these is to be found. The 
 wars of Europe have torn away the fathers from the protection 
 of their families ; and, for long periods, almost all that many 
 thousands of children knew of the parent, who should have 
 been their guide and counsellor until mature age, was, that he 
 died in the camp, or added another unit to the slaughtered 
 hosts of the battle-field. But it must be allowed that the gov- 
 ernments have done something, however inadequate, to atone 
 for their enormous guilt. The orphan-houses, originally estab- 
 lished mainly for this class of bereaved children, have been, 
 since the general pacification of Europe, appropriated to 
 orphans of other classes. Here their living, including board, 
 clothes, lodging, and excellent instruction in all the element- 
 
 19
 
 290 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ary branches, with drawing, music, &c., are gratuitously fur- 
 nished. 
 
 In the Royal Orphan House, at Potsdam, for instance, there 
 are a thousand boys, all the children of soldiers. They seem 
 collected there as a monument of the havoc which war makes 
 ,of men. Connected with this, though in another place, is an 
 establishment for the orphan daughters of soldiers. The insti- 
 tution for boys differed from most others of the same class 
 which I saw, in paying great attention to physical training. 
 As the boys are destined for the army, it is thought important 
 to give them agility and vigor ; and, at the age of fourteen, the 
 institution discards those who are not healthy. It is not yet 
 discovered that activity and energy are necessary in any occu- 
 pation save that of killing our fellow-men. The boys practise 
 gymnastic exercises, such as climbing poles, ascending ropes, 
 flinging their bodies round and round over a bar while they 
 hold on only by the bend of the legs at the knee-joints, vault- 
 ing upon the wooden-horse, &c., until their physical feats 
 reach a point of perfection which I have never seen surpassed, 
 except by professional circus-riders or rope-dancers. It is of 
 these pupils that Dr. Bache says, " I have never seen a body 
 of young men all so well physically developed ; a result pro- 
 duced by constant attention to their education on this point." 
 In the dormitories, however, I saw the same fearful assemblage 
 of feather-beds as elsewhere, a hundred and forty in a room. 
 But the rooms had the redeeming circumstance of being well 
 ventilated. 
 
 The Frauke Institute, at Halle, founded about the beginning 
 of the last century, now numbering nearly three thousand 
 pupils (a small part only, at the present time, are orphans), is 
 considered the parent of this class of institutions in Germany ; 
 and a more admirable establishment of the kind, or one con- 
 ducted with more intelligence and utility, probably does not 
 exist in the world. 
 
 Another class of institutions should challenge the admiration 
 of all civilized people, and be imitated in every nation. I refer
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 291 
 
 to schools established in connection with prisons. When a 
 Prussian parent has forfeited his liberty by the commission of 
 a crime, and is therefore sequestered from society and from his 
 family, his children are not left to abide the scorn of the com- 
 munity, nor abandoned to the tender mercies of chance. The 
 mortification o having a disgraced parent seems enough, with- 
 out the life-long calamity of a neglected youth. Hence such 
 children are taken and placed under the care of a wise and 
 humane teacher, who supplies to them that parental guidance 
 which it has been their affliction to lose. Indeed, such care is 
 taken in selecting the teachers of these schools, that the trans- 
 fer into their hands generally proves a blessing to the children. 
 Thus society is saved from the depredations and the expense 
 of a second, perhaps of a third and a fourth generation of crim- 
 inals, through these acts of foresight and prevention, acts 
 which are as clearly connected with sound worldly policy as 
 with those higher moral and religious obligations which bind 
 the conscience of every citizen and legislator. 
 
 Prussia and Saxony have still another class of institutions 
 of the most beneficent description ever devised by man. These 
 are reformatory establishments for youthful offenders ; or, as 
 they are most expressively and beautifully called in the lan- 
 guage of the country, Redemption Institutes. The three prin- 
 cipal establishments of this class which I visited were, one 
 at Hamburg, under the care of Mr. Wichern ; one just outside 
 the Halle gate of the city of Berlin, superintended by Mr. Kopf ; 
 and one at Dresden under Mr. Schubert. At this latter place, 
 for the first and only time in Germany, I heard correct physio- 
 logical principles advocated in theory, and thoroughly carried 
 out in practice. Here the feather-bed as a covering was dis- 
 used and condemned, the woollen blanket being substituted 
 for it ; and the principal, not knowing my views upon the sub- 
 ject, began to defend his abandonment of the common practice 
 with something of the zeal of a reformer.* 
 
 * At an orphan school, iiear by, woollen was also used as a covering instead of 
 feathers ; but here the principal apologized for the absence of the latter, by saying 
 the children and the institution were too poor to afford them.
 
 292 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Some of the facts connected with the Redemption Insti- 
 tute at Hamburg are so extraordinary, and illustrate so 
 forcibly the combined power of wisdom and love in the refor- 
 mation of vicious children, that I cannot forbear detailing 
 them. 
 
 The school of Mr. J. H. Wichern is called the Rauhe 
 Haus, and is situated four or five miles out of the city of 
 Hamburg. It was opened for the reception of abandoned 
 children of the very lowest class, children brought up in the 
 abodes of infamy, and taught, not only by example but by pre- 
 cept, the vices of sensuality, thieving, and vagabondry, chil- 
 dren who had never known the family tie, or who had known 
 it only to see it violated. Hamburg having been for many 
 years a commercial and/ree city, and, of course, open to adven- 
 turers and renegades from all parts of the world, has many 
 more of this class of population than its own institutions and 
 manners would have bred. The thoughts of Mr. Wichern 
 were strongly turned towards this subject while yet a student 
 at the university ; but want of means deterred him from 
 engaging in it, until a legacy left by a Mr. Gercken enabled 
 him to make a beginning in 1833. He has since devoted his 
 life and all his worldly goods to the work. It is his first aim 
 that the abandoned children whom he seeks out on the high- 
 way, and in the haunts of vice, shall know and feel the bless- 
 ings of domestic life ; that they shall be introduced into the 
 bosom of a family : for this he regards as a divine institution, 
 and therefore the birthright of every human being, and the only 
 atmosphere in which the human affections can be adequately 
 cultivated. His house, then, must not be a prison, or a place 
 of punishment or confinement. The site he had chosen for his 
 experiment was one enclosed within high, strong walls and 
 fences. His first act was to break down these barriers, and to 
 take all bolts and bars from the doors and windows. He began 
 with three boys of the worst description ; and, within three 
 months, the number increased to twelve. They were taken 
 into the bosom of Mr. Wichern' s family : his mother was
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 293 
 
 their mother, and his sister their sister. They were not pun- 
 ished for any past offences, but were told that all should be 
 forgiven them if they tried to do well in future. The defence- 
 less condition of the premises was referred to, and they were 
 assured that no walls or bolts were to detain them ; that one 
 cord only should bind them, and that the cord of love. The 
 effect attested the all but omnipotent power of generosity and 
 affection. Children from seven or eight to fifteen or sixteen 
 years of age, in many of whom early and loathsome vices had 
 nearly obliterated the stamp of humanity, were transformed 
 not only into useful ' members of society, but into characters 
 that endeared themselves to all within their sphere of acquaint- 
 ance. The education given by Mr. Wichern has not been an 
 aesthetic or literary one. The children were told at the begin- 
 ning that labor was the price of living, and that they must earn 
 their own bread if they would secure a comfortable home. 
 He did not point them to ease and affluence, but to an honora- 
 ble poverty, which, they were taught, was not in itself an evil. 
 Here were means and materials for learning to support them- 
 selves ; but there was no rich fund or other resources for their 
 maintenance. Charity had supplied the home to which they 
 were invited ; their own industry must supply the rest. Mr. 
 Wichern placed great reliance upon religious training ; but 
 this did not consist in giving them dry and unintelligible dog- 
 mas. He spoke to them of Christ, as the benefactor of man- 
 kind, who proved by deeds of love his interest in the race ; 
 who sought out the worst and most benighted of men to give 
 them instruction and relief; and who left it in charge to those 
 who came after him, and wished to be called his disciples, to 
 do likewise. Is it strange that, enforced by such a practical 
 exemplification of Christian love as their fatherly benefactor 
 gave them in his every-day life, the story of Christ's words 
 and deeds should have sunk deeply into their hearts, and melted 
 them into tenderness and docility? Such was the effect. The 
 most rapid improvement ensued in the great majority of the 
 children ; and even those whom long habits of idleness and
 
 294 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 vagabondry made it difficult to keep in the straight path had 
 long seasons of obedience and gratitude, to which any aberra- 
 tion from duty was only an exception. 
 
 As the number of pupils increased, Mr. Wichern saw that 
 the size of the family would seriously impair its domestic char- 
 acter. To obviate this, he divided his company into families 
 of twelve ; and he has erected nine separate buildings, situated 
 in a semicircle around his own, and near to it, in each of which 
 dwells a family of twelve boys or of twelve girls, under the 
 care of a House-Father or House-Mother, as the assistants are 
 respectively called. Each of these families is, to some extent, 
 an independent community, having an individuality of its own. 
 They eat and sleep in their own dwelling; and the children 
 belonging to each look up to their own particular father or 
 mother, as home-bred children to a parent. The general meet- 
 ing every morning, at first in the chamber of Mr. Wichern's 
 mother, but afterwards, when the numbers increased, in the 
 little chapel, and their frequent meetings at Avork, or in the 
 play-ground, form a sufficient, and, in fact, a very close bond 
 of union for the whole community. Much was done by the 
 children themselves in the erection of their little colony of 
 buildings ; and, in doing this, they were animated by a feeling 
 of hope and a principle of independence in providing a dwell- 
 ing for themselves, while they experienced the pleasures of 
 benevolence in rendering assistance to each other. Mr. Wichern 
 mentions, with great satisfaction, the good spirit of the architect 
 who came upon the premises to direct in putting up the first 
 house. This man would not retain a journeyman for a day 
 or an hour who did not conduct with the utmost decorum 
 and propriety before the children who were assisting in the 
 work. 
 
 Instruction is given in reading, writing, arithmetic, singing, 
 and drawing ; and, in some instances, in higher branches. 
 Music is used as one of the most efficient instruments for soft- 
 ening stubborn wills, and calling forth tender feelings ; and its 
 deprivation is one of the punishments for delinquency. The
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 295 
 
 songs and hymns have been specially adapted to the circum- 
 stances and wants of the community ; and it has often hap- 
 pened that the singing of an appropriate hymn, both at the 
 gatherings in the mother's chamber, which were always more 
 or less kept up, and in the little chapel, has awakened the first- 
 born sacred feeling in obdurate and brutified hearts. Some- 
 times a voice would drop from the choir, and then weeping 
 and sobbing would be heard instead. The children would 
 say they could not sing ; they must think of their past lives, 
 of their brothers and sisters, or of their parents living in vice 
 and misery at home. On several occasions, the singing exercise 
 had to be given up. Frequently the children were sent out to 
 the garden to recover themselves. An affecting narrative is 
 recorded of a boy who ran away, but whom Mr. Wichern pur- 
 sued, found, and persuaded to return. He was brought back 
 on Christmas Eve, which was always celebrated in the mother's 
 chamber. The children were engaged in singing the Christmas 
 hymns when he entered the room. At first, they manifested 
 strong disapprobation of his conduct ; for he was a boy to whose 
 faults special forbearance had been previously shown. They 
 were then told to decide among themselves how he should be 
 punished. This brought them all to perfect silence ; and, after 
 some whispering and consulting together, one who had for- 
 merly been guilty of the same fault of ingratitude, under still 
 less excusable circumstances, burst out in a petition for his 
 forgiveness. All united in it, reached out to him a friendly 
 hand ; and the festival of the Christmas Eve was turned into a 
 rejoicing over the brother that had been lost, but was found. 
 The pardon was not in words merely, but in deeds. No refer- 
 ence to the fact was afterwards made. A day or two after, he 
 was sent away on an errand to the distance of half a mile. He 
 was surprised and affected by this mark of confidence ; and 
 from that time never abused his freedom, though intrusted to 
 execute commissions at great distances. But he could never 
 after hear certain Christmas hymns without shedding tears ; 
 and long subsequently, in a confidential commuuication to Mr.
 
 296 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Wichern respecting some act of his former life (an unburden- 
 ing of the overladen conscience, which was very common with 
 the inmates, and al \vays voluntary : for they were told on their 
 arrival that their past life should never be spoken of unless 
 between them and himself), he referred to the decisive effect 
 of that scene of loving-kindness upon his feelings and char- 
 acter. 
 
 One peculiar featui-e of this institution is, that the children 
 are not stimulated by the worldly motives of fame, wealth, or 
 personal aggrandizement. The superintendent does not inflame 
 them with the ambition, that if they surpass each other at 
 recitation, and make splendid displays at public examinations, 
 they shall, in the end, become high military officers or congress- 
 men, or excite the envy of all by their wealth or fame. On 
 the other hand, so far as this world's goods are concerned, he 
 commends and habituates them to the idea of an honorable 
 poverty ; and the only riches with which he dazzles their 
 imaginations are the riches of good works. He looks to them 
 as his hope for redeeming others from the sphere whence they 
 were taken ; and there have been many touching instances of 
 the reformation of parents and families, for whom the natural 
 affection fi^st sprang up in these children's hearts after they 
 had learned the blessings of home. 
 
 One of the most interesting effects of this charity is the 
 charity which it reproduces in its objects ; and thus it is shown 
 that, in the order of nature, the actions of good men, provided 
 they are also wise, not less than good seed, will produce 
 thirty or sixty or a hundred fold of beneficent fruit. Mr. 
 "NVirhern makes a great point of celebrating Christmas ; and 
 the friends of the school are in the habit of sending small sums 
 of money, and articles of various kinds, to adorn the festival. 
 This money has often been appropriated, voluntarily, by the 
 children, to charitable purposes. They frequently give away 
 their pennies ; and instances have happened where they have 
 literally emptied their little purses into the hands of poverty 
 and distress, and taken off their own clothes to cover the naked.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 297 
 
 On one occasion, six poor children had been found by some of 
 the scholars, and invited to the Christmas festival. There 
 they were clothed, and many useful aud pleasing articles made 
 by the givers were presented to them. One of the boys read a 
 passage from the history of Christ ; and the Christmas songs 
 and other songs of thanksgiving and praise were sung. To the 
 sound of the organ which a friend had presented to the little 
 chapel, some verses welcoming the strangers succeeded. The 
 guests then departed, blessing the house and its kind inhab- 
 itants ; but who can doubt that a voice of gladness more 
 precious than all worldly applauses sprang up unbidden and 
 exulting in the hearts of the little benefactors? 
 
 But, among numerous less conspicuous instances of the change 
 wrought by wise aud appropriate moral means in the char- 
 acter of these so lately abandoned children, the most remark- 
 able occurred at the time of the great Hamburg fire, in May, 
 1842. In July, 1843, I saw the vast chasm which the confla- 
 gration had made in the centre of that great city. The second 
 day of the fire, when people were driven from the city in 
 crowds, and houseless and half-frantic suffere'rs came to the 
 Rauhe House for shelter, the children some of whom had 
 friends aud relatives in the city became intensely excited, 
 and besought Mr. "Wichern for leave to go in and make them- 
 selves useful to the sufferers. Xot without great anxiety as to 
 the force of the temptations for escape or for plunder that 
 might assail them in such an exposed and tumultuous scene, he 
 gave permission to a band of twenty-two to accompany him, on 
 condition that they would keep together as much as possible, 
 and return with him at an appointed time. This they readily 
 promised, nor did they disappoint him. Their conduct was 
 physically as well as morally heroic. They rushed into the 
 greatest dangers to save life and property ; and, though some- 
 times pressed to receive rewards, they steadfastly refused them. 
 At stated intervals, they returned to the appointed place to 
 re-assure the confidence of their superior. On one occasion, a 
 lad remained absent long beyond the time agreed upou ; but at
 
 298 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 last he appeared, quite exhausted by the labor of saving some 
 valuable property. Mr. Wichern afterwards learned from the 
 owner not from the lad that he had steadily refused the 
 compensation offered to and even urged upon him. When 
 the company returned home at the appointed time, he sent forth 
 another band under the care of a House-Father ; and these 
 exerted themselves in the same faithful and efficient manner. 
 This was clone as long as the necessity of the case required. 
 From this time, the Rauhe House was the resort of the poor 
 and homeless ; and not for days only, but for weeks. The 
 pupils shared with them their food, and even slept upon the 
 ground to give their beds to the destitute, sick, and injured. I 
 can hardly refrain from narrating many other facts of a similar 
 character connected witli this institution ; for if the angels 
 rejoice over a rescued sinner, why should not we partake of 
 that joy when it is our brother who is ransomed ? 
 
 In his last report, Mr. Wichern says the institution was 
 actually so impoverished by the demand made upon it at that 
 time, and the demands upon public charity have since been so 
 great in that unfortunate city, that the inmates have been 
 almost reduced to suffering for the necessaries of life, particu- 
 larly as they were induced to receive several children rendered 
 homeless by that calamity. To this object, however, even the 
 children of the house were ready and willing to contribute por- 
 tions of their wardrobe, and they submitted cheerfully to other 
 privations. Mr. Wicheru regretted, above all other things, the 
 necessity of refusing many applications ; and it is but doing 
 JHStice to the citizens of Hamburg to state, that, on an appeal 
 made by him for funds to erect a new building, they were gen- 
 erously and promptly raised by those who had such unusual 
 claims upon their charity. 
 
 A single remark I must be allowed to make. When an 
 individual effects so much good, it seems to be often thought 
 that he accomplishes it by virtue of some charm or magic, or 
 preternatural influence, of which the rest of the world cannot 
 partake. The superintendent of the Rauhe House is a refuta-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 299 
 
 tion of this idea. Laboriously, perseveringly, unintermittingly, 
 he uses MEANS for the accomplishment of his desired ends. 
 When I put to him the question, in what manner he produced 
 these transforming effects upon his charge, his answer was, 
 " By active occupations, music, and Christian love." Two or 
 three things should be stated in explanation of this compendious 
 reply. When a new subject comes to the Rauhe House, he is 
 first received into Mr. Wichern's own family. Here, under 
 the wise and watchful guardianship of the master, he is 
 initiated into the new life of action, thought, feeling, which 
 he is expected to lead. His dispositions are watched, his char- 
 acter is studied ; and, as soon as prudence allows, he is trans- 
 ferred to that one of the little colonies whose House-Father is 
 best qualified to manage his peculiarities of temperament and 
 disposition. Soon after the opening of the establishment, and 
 the increase of its numbers, Mr. Wichern found that it would 
 be impossible for him to bestow the requisite care and over- 
 sight upon each one of his pupils which his necessities de- 
 manded. He cast about for assistance ; and though he was 
 able to find those in the community who had enough of the 
 spirit of benevolence and self-sacrifice to undertake the difficult 
 labor to which his own life was devoted, yet he soon found that 
 they had not the other requisite qualifications to make their 
 benevolent purposes available. He could find enough well- 
 intentioned persons to superintend the work-shops, gardens, 
 &c. ; but they had not intellectual competency. So he could 
 find schoolmasters who could give good lessons ; but they were 
 not masters of any handicraft. He was therefore driven, as he 
 says, to the expedient of preparing a class of teachers to 
 become his auxiliaries in the work. For this end, he has 
 superadded to his original plan a school for the preparation of 
 teachers, first to supply himself, then to send abroad to open 
 other institutions similar to his own, and thirdly to become 
 superintendents of prisons. This last object he deems very 
 important. Questions about prison-architecture, he says, have 
 given a new literature to the world ; but as yet nothing, or but
 
 300 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 little, is done to improve the character or increase the qualifica- 
 tions of prison-keepers. I have often felt the force of this 
 remark in the numerous Continental prisons which I have 
 visited. Though the masters of the prisons have generally 
 appeared to be very respectable men, yet the assistants or 
 deputy-turnkeys have very often seemed to belong to a low 
 order of society, from whose manners, conversation, or treat- 
 ment of the prisoners, no good influence could be expected. 
 
 This second institution of Mr. "Wichern is in reality a normal 
 school, which the necessities of his situation suggested, and 
 forced him to establish. 
 
 During the ten years of the existence of this institution, 
 there have been one hundred and thirty-two children received 
 into it. Of these, about eighty were there on the 1st of July, 
 1843. Only two had run away, who had not either voluntarily 
 returned, or, being brought back, had not voluntarily remained. 
 The two unreclaimed fugitives committed offences, fell into the 
 hands of the civil magistrate, and were imprisoned. 
 
 Who can reflect upon this history, where we see a self-sacri- 
 ficing man, by the aids of wisdom and Christian love, exorcis- 
 ing, as it were, the evil spirits from more than a hundred of the 
 worst children whom a corrupted state of society has engen- 
 dered, who can see this, without being reminded of some case, 
 perhaps within his own personal knowledge, where a passionate, 
 ignorant, and perverse teacher, who for the sake of saving a 
 few dollars of money, or from some other low motive, has been 
 put in possession of an equal number of fine-spirited children, 
 and has, even in a shorter space of time, put an evil spirit into 
 the bosom of them all? When visiting this institution, I was 
 reminded of an answer given to me by the head master of a school 
 of a thousand children in London. I inquired of him what moral 
 education or training he gave to his scholars ; what he did, for 
 instance, when he detected a child in a lie. His answer was 
 literally this : " I consider," said he, " all moral education to be 
 a humbug. Nature teaches children to lie. If one of my boys 
 lies, I set him to write some such copy as this : ' Lying is a
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 301 
 
 base and infamous offence.' I make him write a quire of paper 
 over with this copy ; and he knows very well, that, if he does 
 not bring it to me in a good condition, he will get a flogging." 
 On hearing this reply, I felt as if the number of things in sur- 
 rounding society which needed explanation was considerably 
 reduced. 
 
 What is most remarkable in reference to the class of institu- 
 tions now under consideration is the high character of the men 
 for capacity, for attainments, for social rank who preside over 
 them. At the head of a private orphan house in Potsdam is the 
 venerable Von Turk. According to the laws of his country, 
 Von Turk is a nobleman. His talents and acquisitions were 
 such, that, at a very early age, he was elevated to the bench. 
 This was, probably, an office for life, and was attended with 
 honors and emoluments. He officiated as judge for fourteen 
 years ; but, in the course of this time, so many criminal cases 
 were brought before him for adjudication, whose only cause 
 and origin were so plainly referable to early neglect in the 
 culprit's education, that the noble heart of the judge could no 
 longer bear to pronounce sentence of condemnation against the 
 prisoners ; for he looked upon them as men, who, almost with- 
 out a paradox, might be called guiltless offenders. While hold- 
 ing the office of judge, he was appointed school inspector. The 
 paramount importance of the latter office grew upon his mind 
 as he executed its duties, until at last he came to the full concep- 
 tion of the grand and sacred truth, that the vocation of the 
 teacher, who saves from crime and from wrong, is much more 
 intrinsically honorable than that of the magistrate, who waits 
 till they are committed, and then avenges them. He immedi- 
 ately resigned his office of judge, with its life-tenure and its 
 salary ; travelled to Switzerland, where he placed himself under 
 the care of Pestalozzi ; and, after availing himself for three 
 years of the instructions of that celebrated teacher, he returned 
 to take charge of an orphan asylum. Since that time, he has 
 devoted his whole life to the care of the neglected and destitute. 
 He lives in as plain and inexpensive a style as our well-off
 
 302 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 farmers and mechanics, and devotes his income to the welfare 
 of the needy. I was told by his personal friends that he not 
 only deprived himself of the luxuries of life, but submitted to 
 many privations, in order to appropriate his small income to 
 others whom he considered more needy ; and that his wife and 
 family cordially and cheerfully shared such privations with him 
 for the same object. To what extent would our own commu- 
 nity sympathize with or appreciate the act, if one of the judges 
 of our higher courts, or any other official dignitary, should 
 resign an office of honor and of profit to become the instructor 
 of children ! 
 
 Even now, when the once active and vigorous frame of this 
 patriarchal man is bending beneath the weight of years, he 
 employs himself in teaching agriculture, together with the 
 branches commonly taught in the Prussian schools, to a class 
 of orphan boys. What warrior, who rests at last from the 
 labors of the tented field after a life of victories ; what states- 
 man, whose name is familiar in all the courts of the civilized 
 world ; Avhat orator, who attracts towards himself tides of men 
 wherever he may move in his splendid course, what one of all 
 these would not, at the sunset of life, exchange his fame and 
 his clustering honors for that precious and abounding treasury 
 of holy and beneficent deeds, the remembrance of which this 
 good old man is about to carry into another world ! Do we 
 not need a new spirit in our community, and especially in our 
 schools, which shall display only objects of virtuous ambition 
 before the eyes of our emulous youth, and teach them that no 
 height of official station, nor splendor of professional renown, 
 can equal in the eye of Heaven, and of all good men, the true 
 glory of a life consecrated to the welfare of mankind ? 
 
 CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 The first element of superiority in a Prussian school, and 
 one whose influence extends throughout the whole subsequent 
 course of instruction, consists in the proper classification of the
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 303 
 
 scholars. In all places where the numbers are sufficiently 
 large to allow it, the children are divided according to ages 
 and attainments ; and a single teacher has the charge only of a 
 single class, or of as small a number of classes as is practica- 
 ble. I have before adverted to the construction of the school- 
 houses, by which, as far as possible, a room is assigned to each 
 class. Let us suppose a teacher to have the charge of but one 
 class, and to have talent and resources sufficient properly to en- 
 gage and occupy its attention, and we suppose a perfect school. 
 But how greatly are the teacher's duties increased and his dif- 
 ficulties multiplied if he have four, five, or half a dozen 
 classes under his personal inspection ! While attending to the 
 recitation of one, his mind is constantly called off to attend to 
 the studies and the conduct of all the others. For this, very 
 few teachers amongst us have the requisite capacity ; and 
 hence the idleness and the disorder that reign in so many of 
 our schools, excepting in cases where the debasing motive of 
 fear puts the children in irons. All these difficulties are at once 
 avoided by a suitable classification, by such a classification as 
 enables the teacher to address his instructions at the same time 
 to all the children who are before him, and to accompany them 
 to the playground, at recess or intermission, without leaving 
 any behind who might be disposed to take advantage of his 
 absence. All this will become more and more obvious as I 
 proceed with a description of exercises. There is no obstacle 
 whatever save prescription, and that vis inertia of mind which 
 continues in the beaten track because it has not vigor enough 
 to turn aside from it to the introduction, at once, of this 
 mode of dividing and classifying scholars in all our large towns. 
 
 METHOD OP TEACHING YOUNG CHILDREN ON THEIR FIRST 
 ENTERING SCHOOL. 
 
 In regard to this as well as other modes of teaching, I shall 
 endeavor to describe some particular lesson that I heard. The 
 Prussian and Saxon schools are all conducted substantially upon
 
 304 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the same plan, and taught in the same manner. Of course, 
 there must be those differences to which different degrees of 
 talent and experience give rise. 
 
 In Professor Stowe's excellent report, he says, "Before the 
 child is even permitted to learn his letters, he is under conver- 
 sational instruction frequently, for six months or a year ; and 
 then a single week is sufficient to introduce him into intelligent 
 and accurate plain reading." I confess, that, in the numerous 
 schools I visited, I did not find this preparatory instruction car- 
 ried on for any considerable length of time before lessons in 
 which all the children took part were commenced. 
 
 About twenty years ago, teachers in Prussia made the im- 
 portant discovery, that children have five senses, together with 
 various muscles and mental faculties, all which, almost by a 
 necessity of their nature, must be kept in a state of activity, 
 and which, if not usefully, are liable to be mischievously em- 
 ployed. Subsequent improvements in the art of teaching have 
 consisted in supplying interesting and useful, instead of mis- 
 chievous occupation for these senses, muscles, and faculties. 
 Experience has now proved that it is much easier to furnish 
 profitable and delightful employment for all these powers than 
 it is to stand over them with a rod and stifle their workings, 
 or to assume a thousand shapes of fear to guard the thousand 
 avenues through which the salient spirits of the young play 
 outward. Nay, it is much easier to keep the eye and hand and 
 mind at work together than it is to employ either one of them 
 separately from the others. A child is bound to the teacher by 
 so many more cords, the more of his natural capacities the 
 teacher can interest and employ. 
 
 In the case I am now to describe, I entered a classroom of 
 sixty children of about six years of age. The children were 
 just taking their seats, all smiles and expectation. They had 
 been at school but a few weeks, but long enough to have con- 
 tracted a love for it. The teacher took his station before them, 
 and after making a playful remark which excited a light titter 
 around the room, and effectually arrested attention, he gave a
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 305 
 
 signal for silence. After waiting a moment, during which every 
 countenance was composed and every noise hushed, he made 
 a prayer consisting of a single sentence, asking that, as they 
 had come together to learn, they might be good and diligent. 
 He then spoke to them of the beautiful day, asked what they 
 knew about the seasons, referred to the different kinds of fruit- 
 trees then in bearing, and questioned them upon the uses of 
 trees in constructing houses, furniture, &c. Frequently he threw 
 in sportive remarks which enlivened the whole school, but 
 without ever producing the slightest symptom of disorder. 
 During this familiar conversation, which lasted about twenty 
 minutes, there was nothing frivolous or trifling in the manner 
 of the teacher : that manner was dignified, though playful ; and 
 the little jets of laughter which he caused the children occa- 
 sionally to throw out were much more favorable to a receptive 
 state of mind than jets of tears. 
 
 Here I must make a preliminary remark in regard to the 
 equipments of the scholars, and the furniture of the schoolroom. 
 Every child had a slate and pencil, and a little reading-book of 
 letters, words, and short sentences. Indeed, I never saw a 
 Prussian or Saxon school, above an infant school, in which 
 any child was unprovided with a slate and pencil. By the 
 teacher's desk, and in front of the school, hung a blackboard. 
 The teacher first drew a house upon the blackboard ; and here 
 the value of the art of drawing a power universally possessed 
 by Prussian teachers became manifest. By the side of the 
 drawing, and under it, he wrote the word " house " in the German 
 script hand, and printed it in the German letter. With a long 
 pointing-rod, the end being painted white to make it more 
 visible, he ran over the form of the letters ; the children, 
 with their slates before them, and their pencils in their hands, 
 looking at the pointing-rod, and tracing the forms of the letters 
 in the air. In all our good schools, children are first taught to 
 imitate the forms of letters on the slate, before they write them 
 on paper ; here they were first imitated on the air, then on 
 slates, and subsequently, in older classes, on paper. The next 
 20
 
 306 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 process was to copy the word " house," both in script and in 
 print, on their slates. Then followed the formation of the 
 sounds of the letters of which the word was composed, and the 
 spelling of the word. Here the names of the letters were not 
 given as with us, but only their powers, or the sounds which 
 those letters have in combination. The letter h was first se- 
 'lected and set up in the reading-frame (the same before 
 described as part of the apparatus of all Prussian schools for 
 young children) ; and the children, instead of articulating our 
 alphabetic h (aitch), merely gave a hard breathing, such a 
 sound as the letter really has in the word " house." Then the 
 diphthong au (the German word for " house " is spelled 
 " haus ") was taken and sounded by itself in the same way. 
 Then the blocks containing h and au were brought together, 
 and the two sounds were combined. Lastly, the letter s was 
 first sounded by itself, then added to the others ; and then the 
 whole word was spoken. Sometimes the last letter in a word 
 was first taken and sounded, after that the penultimate, and so 
 on, until the word was completed. The responses of the chil- 
 dren were sometimes individual, and sometimes simultaneous, 
 according to a signal given by the master. 
 
 In every such school, also, there are printed sheets or cards, 
 containing the letters, diphthongs, and whole words. The 
 children are taught to sound a diphthong, and then asked in 
 what words that sound occurs. On some of these cards, there 
 are words enough to make several short sentences ; and, when 
 the pupils are a little advanced, the teacher points to several 
 isolated words in succession, which, when taken together, make 
 a familiar sentence ; and thus he gives them an agreeable sur- 
 prise, and a pleasant initiation into reading. 
 
 After the word " house " was thus completely impressed upon 
 the minds of the children, the teacher drew his pointing-rod 
 over the lines which formed the house ; and the children imi- 
 tated him, first in the air, while they were looking at his mo- 
 tions, then on their slates. In their drawings, there was, of 
 course, a great variety as to taste and accuracy ; but each seemed
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 307 
 
 pleased with his own, for their first attempts had never been 
 so criticised as to produce discouragement. Several children 
 were then called to the blackboard to draw a house with chalk. 
 After this, the teacher entered into a conversation about houses. 
 The first question was, " What kind of a house was that on the 
 blackboard?" Then the names of other kinds of houses were 
 given. The materials of which houses are built were men- 
 tioned, stone, brick, wood ; the different kinds of wood ; 
 nails, and where they were made ; lime, and whence it came, 
 &c. When the teacher touched upon points with which the 
 children were supposed to be acquainted, he asked ques- 
 tions ; when he passed to subjects beyond their sphere, he gave 
 information, intermingling the whole with lively remarks and 
 pleasant anecdotes. 
 
 And here one important particular should not be omitted. In 
 this as well as in all other schools, a complete answer was 
 always required. For instance, if a teacher asks, " What are 
 houses made of ? " he does not accept the answer, " Of wood " 
 or " Of stone ; " but he requires a full, complete (yollstandig) 
 answer, as " A house may be made of wood." The answer 
 must always contain an intelligible proposition, without refer- 
 ence to the words of the question to complete it. And here, 
 also, the greatest care is taken that the answer shall always be 
 grammatically correct, have the right terminations of all arti- 
 cles, adjectives, and nouns, and the right grammatical transpo- 
 sitions according to the idioms and structure of the language. 
 This secures, from the beginning, precision in the expression of 
 ideas ; and if, as many philosophers suppose, the intellect could 
 never carry forward its processes of argument or investigation 
 to any great extent, without using language as its instrument, 
 then these children, in their primary lessons, are not only led 
 to exercise the intellect, but the instrument is put into their 
 hands by which its operations are facilitated. 
 
 When the hour had expired, I do not believe there was a 
 child in the room who knew or thought that his playtime had 
 come. No observing person can be at a loss to understand
 
 308 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 how such a teacher can arrest and retain the attention of his 
 scholars. It must have happened to almost every one. at some 
 time in his life, to be present as a member of a large assembly, 
 when some speaker, in the midst of great uproar and confusion, 
 has arisen to address it. If, in the very commencement of his 
 exordium, he makes what is called a happy hit which is an- 
 swered by a response of laughter or applause from those who 
 are near enough to hear it, the attention of the next circle will 
 be aroused. If, then, the speaker makes another felicitous sally 
 of wit or imagination, this circle, too, becomes the willing sub- 
 ject of his power ; until, by a succession of flashes, whether 
 of genius or of wit, he soon brings the whole audience under 
 his command, and sways it as the sun and moon sway the tide. 
 This is the result of talent, of attainment, and of the success- 
 ful study both of men and of things ; and whoever has a suf- 
 ficiency of these requisites will be able to command the atten- 
 tion of children, just as a powerful orator commands the 
 attention of men. But the one no more than the other is the 
 unbought gift of Nature. They are the rewards of application 
 and toil superadded to talent. 
 
 Now, it is obvious, that, in the single exercise above described, 
 there were the elements of reading, spelling, writing, grammar, 
 and drawing, interspersed with anecdotes, and not a little gen- 
 eral information ; and yet there was no excessive variety, nor 
 were any incongruous subjects forcibly brought together. 
 There was nothing to violate the rule of " one thing at a time." 
 
 Compare the above method with that of calling up a class 
 of abecedarians, or, what is more common, a single child ; 
 and while the teacher holds a book or a card before him, and, 
 with a pointer in his hand, says a, and he echoes a ; then b, and 
 he echoes b ; and so on until the vertical row of lifeless and 
 ill-favored characters is completed ; and then of remanding him 
 to his seat to sit still and look at vacancy. If the child is 
 bright, the time which passes during this lesson is the only 
 part of the day when he does not think. Not a single faculty 
 of the mind is occupied, except that of imitating sounds ; and
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 309 
 
 even the number of these imitations amounts only to twenty- 
 six. A parrot or an idiot could do the same thing. And so of 
 the organs and members of the body. They are condemned 
 to inactivity ; for the child who stands most like a post is 
 most approved, nay, he is rebuked if he does not stand like 
 a post. A head that does not turn to the right or left, an eye 
 that lies moveless in its socket, hands hanging motionless at 
 the side, and feet immovable as those of a statue, are the points 
 of excellence while the child is echoing the senseless table of 
 a, b, c. As a general rule, six months are spent before the 
 twenty-six letters are mastered, though the same child would 
 learn the names of twenty-six playmates or twenty-six play- 
 things in one or two days. 
 
 All children are pleased with the idea of a house, a hat, a 
 top, a ball, a bird, an egg, a nest, a flower, &c. ; and when 
 their minds are led to see new relations or qualities in these 
 objects, or when their former notions respecting them are 
 brought out more vividly, or are more distinctly defined, their 
 delight is even keener than that of an adult would be in ob- 
 taining a new fact in science, or in having the mist of some 
 old doubt dispelled by a new discovery. Lessons on familial- 
 objects, given by a competent teacher, never fail to command 
 attention ; and thus a habit of mind is induced of inestimable 
 value in regard to all future study. 
 
 Again : the method I have described necessarily leads to con- 
 versation, and conversation with an intelligent teacher secures 
 several important objects. It communicates information. It 
 brightens ideas before only dimly apprehended. It addresses 
 itself to the various faculties of the mind, so that no one of 
 them ever tires or is cloyed. It teaches the child to use lan- 
 guage, to frame sentences, to select words which convey his 
 whole meaning, to avoid those which convey either more or 
 less than he intends to express ; in fine, it teaches him to seek 
 for thoughts upon a subject, and then to find appropriate lan- 
 guage in which to clothe them. A child trained in this way 
 will never commit those absurd and ludicrous mistakes into
 
 310 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 which uneducated men of some sense not unfrequently fall ; 
 viz., that of mismatching their words and ideas, of hanging, 
 as it were, the garments of a giant upon the body of a pygmy, 
 or of forcing a pygmy's dress upon the huge limbs of a giant. 
 Appropriate diction should clothe just ideas, as a tasteful and 
 substantial garb fits a graceful and vigorous form. 
 
 The above-described exercise occupies the eye and the hand 
 as well as the mind. The eye is employed in tracing visible 
 differences between different forms, and the hand in copying 
 whatever is presented, with as little difference as possible. 
 And who ever saw a child that was not pleased with pictures, 
 and an attempt to imitate them ? Thus the two grand objects 
 so strenuously insisted upon by writers in regard to the later 
 periods of education and the maturer processes of thought are 
 attained ; viz., the power of recognizing analogies and dissimi- 
 larities. 
 
 I am satisfied that our greatest error in teaching children 
 to read, lies in beginning with the alphabet, in giving 
 them what are called the " Names of the Letters," a, b, c, &c. 
 How can a child to whom Nature offers such a profusion of 
 beautiful objects, of sights and sounds and colors, and in 
 whose breast so many social feelings spring up, how can 
 such a child be expected to turn with delight from all these 
 to the stiff and lifeless column of the alphabet? How can 
 one, who as yet is utterly incapable of appreciating the remote 
 benefits which in after-life reward the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge, derive any pleasure from an exercise which presents 
 neither beauty to his eye, nor music to his ear, nor sense to his 
 understanding? 
 
 Although, in former reports and publications, I have dwelt 
 at length upon what seems to me the absurdity of teaching to 
 read by beginning with the alphabet, yet I feel constrained to 
 recur to the subject again ; being persuaded that no thorough 
 reform will ever be effected in our schools until this practice is 
 abolished. 
 
 When I first began to visit the Prussian schools, I uniform-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 311 
 
 ly inquired of the teachers, whether, in teaching children to 
 read, they began with the names of the letters as given in 
 the alphabet. Being delighted with the prompt negative which 
 I invariably received, I persevered in making the inquiry, until 
 I began to perceive a look and tone on their part, not very 
 flattering to my intelligence, in considering a point so clear 
 and so well settled as this to be any longer a subject, for 
 discussion or doubt. The uniform statement was, that the 
 alphabet, as such, had ceased to be taught, as an exercise pre- 
 liminary to reading, for the last fifteen or twenty years, by 
 every teacher in the kingdom. Whoever will compare the 
 German language with the English will see that the reasons 
 for a change are much stronger in regard to our own than in 
 regard to the foreign tongue. 
 
 The practice of beginning with the names of letters is 
 founded upon the idea that it facilitates the combination of them 
 into words. On the other hand, I believe that if two children, 
 of equal quickness and capacity, are taken, one of whom can 
 name every letter of the alphabet at sight, and the other does 
 not know them from Chinese characters, the latter can be most 
 easily taught to read, in other words, that learning the letters 
 first is an absolute hinderauce. 
 
 The advocate for teaching the letters asks if the elements of 
 an art or science should not be first taught. To this I would 
 reply, that the names of the letters are not elements in the 
 sounds of words, or are so only in a comparatively small 
 number of cases. To the twenty-six letters of the alphabet 
 the child is taught to give twenty-six sounds, and no more. 
 According to Worcester, however, who may be considered 
 one of the best authorities on this subject, the six vowels 
 only, have, collectively, thirty-three different sounds. In addi- 
 tion to these, there are the sounds of twenty consonants, of 
 diphthongs and triphthongs. The consonants also vary in sound, 
 according to the word in which they are used, as the hard and 
 soft sound of c and of g ; the soft and the hissing sound of s ; 
 the soft or flat sound of x, like gz ; the soft and sharp sound of
 
 312 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 th, as in this and thin ; the different sounds of the same letters, 
 as in chaise, church ; and the same sounds of different letters, 
 as in tion, sion ; in cial, tial, sial ; cious, ceous, tious ; geous, 
 gious, &c. It would be difficult, and would not compensate for 
 the trouble, to compute the number of different sounds which 
 a good speaker gives to the different letters and combina- 
 tions of letters in our language, not including the changes 
 of rhetorical emphasis, cadence, and intonation ; but, if ana- 
 lyzed, they would be found to amount to hundreds. Now, how 
 can twenty-six sounds be the elements of hundreds of sounds 
 as elementary as themselves ? Generally speaking, too, before 
 a child begins to learn his letters, he is already acquainted with 
 the majority of elementary sounds in the language, and is in 
 the daily habit of using them in conversation. Learning his 
 letters, therefore, gives him no new sound : it even restricts 
 his attention to a small part of those which he already knows. 
 So far, then, the learning of his letters contracts his practice ; 
 and were it not for keeping up his former habits of speaking, 
 at home and in the play-ground, the teacher, during the six 
 months or year in which he confines him to the twenty-six 
 sounds of the alphabet, would pretty nearly deprive him of the 
 faculty of speech. 
 
 But there is another effect of learning the names of the let- 
 ters first, still more untoward than this. The letter a, says 
 Worcester, has seven sounds, as in fate, fat, fare, far, fast, fall, 
 liar. In the alphabet, and as a name, it has but one, the long 
 sound. Now, suppose the words of our language in which this 
 letter occurs to be equally divided among these seven classes. 
 The consequence must be, that, as soon as the child begins to 
 read, he will find one word in which the letter a has the sound 
 he has been taught to give it, and six words in which it has a 
 different sound. If, then, he follows the instruction he has re- 
 ceived, he goes wrong six times to going right once. Indeed, 
 in running over a score of his most familiar words, such as 
 pa, ma, father, apple, hat, cat, rat, ball, fall, call, warm, swarm, 
 man, can, pan, ran, brass, glass, water, star, &c., he does not
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 313 
 
 find, in a single instance, that sound of a which he has been 
 taught to give it in the alphabet. In an edition of Worcester's 
 Dictionary before me, I find more than three thousand words 
 whose initial letter is a ; and yet, amongst all these, there are 
 not a hundred words in which this initial letter has the long or 
 alphabetical sound ; that is, the cases are more than thirty where 
 the young reader would be wrong, if he followed the instruction 
 given him, to one where he would be right. This, surely, is a 
 most disastrous application of the principle, that the elements 
 of a science must be first taught. 
 
 The letter e, the most frequent vowel in the English language, 
 has five sounds, as in mete, met, there, her, fuel ; and the re- 
 marks above made in relation to the letter a apply in nearly 
 their full force to this vowel. So of the rest. Such is the 
 facility which learning the names of the letters gives to read- 
 ing ! 
 
 In regard to all the vowels, it may be said, not only that, in 
 the very great majority of cases, their sounds when found in 
 words are different from their names as letters, so that, the 
 more perfectly the child has learned them as letters, the more 
 certain will he be to miscall them in words, but that these 
 different sounds follow each other in books in the most pro- 
 miscuous manner. Were there any law of succession among 
 these sounds, so that the short sound of any one vowel should 
 universally follow the long sound ; the obscure, the broad, &c. ; 
 or were one of the sounds used twice in succession, and then 
 another of them once, and so on, following some rule of alter- 
 nation, the evil would be greatly mitigated. The sagacious 
 thrower of dice, by retaining in his mind a long series of the 
 throws last made, calculates with some approach to certainty 
 what face will next turn up ; for, in the long-run, the numbers 
 of the different faces turned up will be nearly equal. But no 
 finite power can tell by any calculation according to the doctrine 
 of chances, or by proceeding on the law of exhaustion, what 
 sound of any vowel will next turn up in reading a book of 
 English. There is, too, in the human mind, a faculty corre-
 
 314 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 spending to the law of periodicity, sometimes followed by Na- 
 ture, so that if an event in Nature happens every other year, or 
 once in seven, or in forty years, the sagacious and philosophic 
 mind penetrates to the law, and grasps it. But the succession 
 of the different vowel-sounds in the English language is as law- 
 less as chaos, and leaves all human acumen or perspicacity iu 
 bewilderment. 
 
 Did the vowels adhere to their own sounds, the difficulty 
 would be greatly diminished ; but not only do the same vow- 
 els appear in different dresses, like masqueraders, but, like har- 
 lequins, they exchange garbs with each other. How often does 
 e take the sound of a, as in there, where, &c. ; and i, the sound 
 of e ; and o, the sound of u and u, the sound of o ; and y 
 and i are always changing places. 
 
 In one important particular, the consonants are more perplex- 
 ing than the vowels. The very definition of a consonant, as 
 given in the spelling-books, is, " a letter which has no sound, 
 or only an imperfect one, without the help of a vowel." And 
 yet the definers themselves, and the teachers who follow them, 
 proceed immediately to give a perfect sound to all the conso- 
 nants. If a consonant has " only an imperfect sound," why, 
 in teaching children to read, should not this imperfect sound be 
 taught them? And again: in giving the names of the conso- 
 nants, why should the vowel be sometimes prefixed, and some- 
 times suffixed? In b, c, d, &c., the vowel follows the conso- 
 nant, as be, ce, de ; in f, I, m, &c., the vowel precedes it, as 
 ef, el, em. But, when found in words, the vowel precedes the 
 consonant iu the first class of cases as often as it follows it ; 
 and, in the latter class of cases, it follows as often as it precedes. 
 The name of the letter b is written be ; but Avhere is the sound 
 of be in ebb, web, ebony, ebullition, abode, abound, and in hun- 
 dreds of other cases ? The name of the letter c is written ce : 
 but, in the first place, c is always sounded like s or k ; and, in 
 the second place, where is there any similitude to the sound of 
 ce in the words cap, cite, cold, cube, cynic f Where, too, is the 
 sound of ce in words where either of the vowels precedes the
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 315 
 
 c, as in accent, echo, ichthyology, occasion, &c. ? The princi- 
 ple of this remark applies to hundred?, probably to thousands, 
 of cases. So, too, if b is be, then be is bee, the name of an 
 insect ; and if I is el, then el is eel, the name of a fish. 
 
 The name-sound of the letter r, as taught in the alphabet, is 
 ar but where is this sound in all those cases where r precedes 
 the vowel in the formation of a syllable or word, as in rain, 
 rest, rich, rock, run, rye f They are not sounded ar-ain, ar-est, 
 &c. ' 
 
 If such an accumulation of evidence were insufficient to con- 
 vince any reasonable person, it would be easy to go through 
 with all the letters of the alphabet, and to show, in regard to 
 the vowels that, when found in words, they receive only oc- 
 casionally the sounds which the child is taught always to give 
 them as letters ; and, in regard to the consonants, that 
 they never, in any case, receive the sounds which the child is 
 taught to affix to them. I believe it is within bounds to say, 
 that we do not sound the letters, in reading, once in a hundred 
 times, as we were taught to sound them when learning the 
 alphabet. Indeed, were we to do so in one-tenth part of the 
 instances, we should be understood by nobody. What analogy 
 can be pointed out between the rough breathing of the letter h, 
 in the words when, where, how, &c., and the name-sound 
 (aytch, aitch, or aych, as it is given by different spelling-book 
 compilers) of that letter as it is taught from the alphabet ? 
 
 This subject might be further illustrated by reference to other 
 languages, the Greek, for instance. Will the names of the 
 letters, kappa, omicron, sigma, mu, omicron, sigma, make the 
 word kosmos f And yet these letters come as near making that 
 word as those given by the Her. Mr. Ottiwell Wood, at a late 
 trial in Lancashire, England, did to the sound of his own name. 
 On Mr. Wood's giving his name to the court, the judge said, 
 " Pray, Mr. Wood, how do you spell your name ? " to which the 
 witness replied, " O double T, I double U, E double L, double 
 U, double 0, D." In the anecdote, it is added that the learned 
 judge at first laid down his pen in astonishment ; and then, after
 
 316 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 making two or three unsuccessful attempts, declared lie was un- 
 able to record it. Mr. Palmer, from whose prize essay this 
 anecdote is taken, gives the following account of the manner in 
 which children were taught to read the first sentence in Web- 
 ster's old spelling-book : En-o, no, emm-ai-en, man, emm-ai-ioy, 
 may, pee-you-tee, put, o-double-eff, off, tee-aitch-ee, the, ell-ai- 
 double-you, law, o-eff, of, gee-o-dee, God. 
 
 Some defenders of the old system have attempted to find an 
 analogy for their practice in the mode of teaching to sing by 
 first learning the gamut. They compare the notes of the gamut, 
 which are afterwards to be combined into tunes, to the letters of 
 the alphabet to be afterwards combined into words. But one or 
 two considerations will show the greatest difference between 
 the principal case and the supposed analogy. In written music, 
 there is always a scale consisting of at least five lines, and of 
 course with four spaces between, and often one or two lines and 
 spaces above or below the regular scale ; and both the name of 
 a note and the sound to be given it can always be known by 
 observing its place in the scale. To make the cases analogous, 
 there should be a scale of thirty-three places at least for the six 
 vowels only ; and this scale should be enlarged so as to admit 
 the twenty consonants, and all their combinations with the vow- 
 els. Such a scale could hardly be crowded into an octavo page. 
 The largest pages now used would not contain more than a sin- 
 gle printed line each ; and the matter now contained in an oc- 
 tavo volume would fill the shelves of a good-sized library. If 
 music were taught as unphilosophically as reading, if its eight 
 notes were first arranged in one straight vertical line, to be 
 learned by name, and then transferred to a straight horizontal 
 line, where they should follow each other promiscuously, and 
 without any clew to the particular sound to be given them in 
 each particular place, it seems not too much to say, that not one 
 man in a hundred thousand would ever become a musician. 
 
 The comparison sometimes made between reading and arith- 
 metic fails for the same reasons. In arithmetic, the Arabic 
 figures, when standing by themselves, have an invariable value ;
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 317 
 
 and, when combined, their value is always determined by a cer- 
 tain law of decimal progression. The figure 5 is always five. 
 It may be 5 units, 5 tens, 5 hundreds, &c. ; but it is always five, 
 and whether it is 5 units, 5 tens, or 5 hundreds, is infallibly 
 known by the place it occupies. If we knew that the vowel a 
 would always be long if found at the end of a word, that it 
 would be short if found one place to the left, grave if found 
 two, and broad if found three, and so on, there would then be 
 one element of comparison between the cases, and the argu- 
 ment might have, what it now seems to want, a shadow of 
 plausibility. 
 
 There is one fact, probably within every teacher's own obser- 
 vation, which should be decisive on this subject. In learning 
 the alphabet, children pronounce the consonants as though they 
 were either preceded or followed by one of the vowels ; that is, 
 they sound b as though it were written be, and / as though writ- 
 ten ef. But, when they have advanced ever so little way in read- 
 ing, do they not enunciate words where the letter b is followed 
 by one of the other vowels, or where it is preceded by a vowel, as 
 well as words into which their own familiar sonud of be enters? 
 For example, though they have called b a thousand times as if 
 it were written be, do they not enunciate the words ball, bind, 
 box, bug, &c., as well as they do the words besom, beatific, &c. ? 
 They do not say be-all, be-ind, be-ox, be-ug, &c. Do they not 
 articulate the words ebb, web, &c., where the vowel comes first, 
 or the words bet, bell, beyond, &c., where the vowel is short or 
 obscure, as well as they do those words which have their old ac- 
 customed sound of b, with the long sound of e f So of the letter 
 /, which they have been accustomed to sound as though writ- 
 ten ef. Do they not articulate the word fig as well as they do 
 the first syllable of the word effigy ? Nay, except they are very 
 apt, and remember in a remarkable manner the nonsense that 
 has been taught them, do they ever call fig ef-ig, or father, 
 ef-ather? Happy incapacity of a bright nature to be turned 
 into a dunce ! 
 
 The teachers in Prussia and Saxony invariably practise what
 
 318 ANNUAL KEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 is called by them the lautir (pronounced lauteer) method. In 
 Holland, the same method is universally adopted. With us, it 
 is known by the name phonic. It consists in giving each letter, 
 when taken by itself, the sound which it has when found in 
 combination ; so that the sound of a regular word of four 
 letters is divided into four parts, and a recombination of the 
 sounds of the letters makes the sound of the word. 
 
 There are two reasons why this lautir or phonic method is 
 less adapted to the English language than to the German : 
 first, because our vowels have more sounds than theirs ; and, 
 secondly, because we have more silent letters than they. This 
 is an argument, not against their method of teaching, but in 
 favor of our commencing to teach by giving words before let- 
 ters. And I despair of any effective improvement in teaching 
 young children to read, until the teachers of our primary 
 schools shall qualify themselves to teach in this manner, I 
 say, until they shall qualify themselves ; for they may attempt 
 it in such a rude and awkward way as will infallibly incur a 
 failure. As an accompaniment to this, they should also be 
 able to give instruction according to the lautir or phonic 
 method. It is only in this way that the present stupefying and 
 repulsive process of learning to read can be changed into one 
 full of interest, animation, and instructiveness, and a toilsome 
 work of months be reduced to a pleasant one of weeks. 
 
 Having given an account of the readiug-lesson of a primary 
 class just after they had commenced going to school, I will 
 follow it with a brief account of a lesson given to a more 
 advanced class. The subject was a short piece of poetry 
 describing a hunter's life in Missouri. It was first read, the 
 reading being accompanied with appropriate criticisms as to 
 pronunciation, tone, &c. It was then taken up verse by verse, 
 and the pupils were required to give equivalent expressions in 
 prose. The teacher then entered into an explanation of every 
 part of it, in a sort of oral lecture, accompanied with occa- 
 sional questions. This was done with the greatest minuteness.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 319 
 
 Where there was a geographical reference, he entered at large 
 into geography ; where a reference to a foreign custom, he 
 compared it with their customs at home : and thus he explained 
 every part, and illustrated the illustrations themselves, until, 
 after an entire hour spent upon six four-line verses, he left 
 them to write out the sentiment and the story in prose, to be 
 produced in school the next morning. All this was done with- 
 out the slightest break or hesitation, and evidently proceeded 
 from a mind full of the subject, and having a ready command 
 of all its resources. 
 
 An account of one more lesson will close what I have to say 
 on the subject of reading. The class, consisting of young lads, 
 belonged to a Burger school, which they were just about leav- 
 ing. They had been reading a poem of Schiller, a sort of 
 philosophical allegory, and, when it was completed, the 
 teacher called upon one of them to give a popular exposition 
 of the meaning of the piece. The lad left his seat, stepped to 
 the teacher's desk, and, standing in front of the school, occu- 
 pied about fifteen or^ tAventy minutes in an extemporaneous 
 account of the poem, and what he supposed to be its meaning 
 and moral. 
 
 ARITHMETIC AND MATHEMATICS. 
 
 Children are taught to cipher, or, if need be, to count, soon 
 after entering school. I will attempt to describe a lesson which 
 I saw given to a very young class. Blocks of one cube, two 
 cubes, three cubes, &c., up to a block of ten cubes, lay upon 
 the teacher's desk. The cubes on each block were distinctly 
 marked off, and differently colored, that is, if the first inch 
 or cube was white, the next would be black. The teacher 
 stood by his desk, and in front of the class. He set up a block 
 of one cube, and the class simultaneously said one. A block 
 of two cubes was then placed by the side of the first, and the 
 class said tiuo. This was done until the ten blocks stood by 
 the side of each other in a row. They were then counted 
 backwards, the teacher placing his finger upon them, as a sig-
 
 320 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 nal that their respective numbers were to be called. The next 
 exercise was, " Two comes after one, three comes after two," 
 and so on to ten ; and then backwards, " Nine comes before 
 ten, eight comes before nine;" and so of the rest. The 
 teacher then asked, '' What is three composed of? " 
 
 A. Three is composed of one and two. 
 
 Q. Of what else is three composed? 
 
 A. Three is composed of three ones. 
 
 Q. What is four composed of? 
 
 A. Four is composed of four ones, of two and two, of three 
 and one, 
 
 Q. What is five composed of? 
 
 A. Five is composed of five ones, of two and three, of two 
 twos and one, of four and one. 
 
 Q. What numbers compose six? seven? eight? nine? To 
 the latter the pupil would answer, " Three threes make nine ; 
 two, three, and four make nine ; two, two, and five make nine ; 
 three, four, and two make nine ; three, five, and one make 
 nine," &c. The teacher then placed similar blocks side by 
 side, while the children added their respective numbers together, 
 " two twos make four," " three twos make six," &c. The 
 blocks were then turned down horizontally to show that three 
 blocks of two cubes each were equal to one of six cubes. 
 Such questions were then asked as, " How many are six less 
 than eight? five less than seven?" &c. Then, " How many are 
 seven and eight?" The answer was given thus : " Eight is one 
 more than seven ; seven and seven make fourteen, and one 
 added makes fifteen : therefore eight and seven make fifteen." 
 
 Q. How many are six and eight? 
 
 A. Eight are two more than six ; six and six make twelve, 
 and two added make fourteen. Or it might be thus : Six are 
 two less than eight ; eight and eight are sixteen ; two taken 
 from sixteen leave fourteen ; therefore eight and six are four- 
 teen. They then counted up to a hundred on the blocks. 
 Towards the close of the lesson, such questions as these were 
 put, and readily answered : " Of what is thirty-eight com- 
 posed ? "
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 321 
 
 A. Thirty-eight is composed of thirty and eight ones, of 
 seven fives and three ones; or sometimes thus, of thirty- 
 seven and one, of thirty-six and two ones, of thirty-five and 
 three ones, &c. 
 
 Q. Of what is ninety composed? 
 
 A. Ninety is composed of nine tens, of fifty and forty, &c. 
 
 Thus, with a frequent reference to the blocks to keep up 
 attention by presenting an object to the eye, the simple num- 
 bers were handled and transposed in a great, variety of ways. 
 In this lesson, it is obvious that counting, numeration, addition, 
 subtraction, multiplication, and division were all included ; yet 
 there was no abstract rule or unintelligible form of words given 
 out to be committed to memory. Nay, these little children 
 took the first steps in the mensuration of superficies and solids 
 by comparing the length and contents of one block with those 
 of others. 
 
 When the pupils were a little farther advanced, I usually 
 heard lessons recited in this way : Suppose 4321 are to be 
 multiplied by 25.* The pupil says, five times one are five 
 ones, and he sets down 5 in the unit's place ; five times two 
 tens, or twenty ones, are a hundred, and sets down a in 
 the ten's place ; five times three hundred are one thousand 
 and five hundred, and one hundred to be carried make one 
 thousand six hundred, and sets down a 6 in the hundred's 
 place ; five times four thousand are twenty thousand, and one 
 thousand to be carried make twenty-one thousand. The next 
 figure in the multiplier is then taken, twenty times one are 
 twenty, and a 2 is set down in the ten's place ; twenty times 
 two tens are four hundred, and a 4 is set down in the hundred's 
 place ; twenty times three hundred are six thousand, and a 6 
 is set down in the thousand's place ; twenty times four thou- 
 
 * Thus : 4321 
 25 
 
 21605 
 8642 
 
 106025 
 21
 
 322 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 sand are eighty thousand, and an 8 is set down in the ten 
 
 thousand's place. Then come the additions to get the product. 
 
 Five ones are five, two tens are twenty, and these figures are 
 
 respectively set down ; four hundred and six hundred make a 
 
 thousand, and a is set down in the hundred's place ; one 
 
 .thousand to be carried to six thousand makes seven thou- 
 
 ! sand, and one thousand more makes eight thousand, and an 8 
 
 is set down in the thousand's place ; eighty thousand and 
 
 , twenty thousand make one hundred thousand, and a is set 
 
 I down in the ten thousand's place, and a 1 in the hundred 
 
 thousand's place. It is easy to see, that, where the multiplier 
 
 and multiplicand are large, this process soon passes beyond 
 
 mere child's play. 
 
 So in division. If 32756 are to be divided by 75, the pupil 
 says, How many hundred times are seventy-five, or seventy- 
 five ones, contained in thirty-two thousand and seven hun- 
 dred, or in thirty-two thousand and seven hundred ones? 
 four hundred times ; and he sets do\vu a 4 in the hundred's 
 place in the quotient ; then the divisor seventy-five is multiplied 
 (as before) by the four hundred, and the product is set down 
 under the first three figures of the dividend ; and there are two 
 thousand and seven hundred remaining. This remainder is set 
 down in the next line, because seventy-five is not contained in 
 two thousand seven hundred any number of hundred times. 
 And so of the residue of the process. 
 
 When there is danger that an advanced class will forget the 
 value of the denominations they are handling, they are required 
 to express the value of each figure in full throughout the whole 
 process, in the manner above described. 
 
 I shall never forget the impression which a recitation by a 
 higher class of girls produced upon my mind. It lasted an 
 hour. Neither teacher nor pupil had book or slate. Questions 
 and answers were extemporaneous. They consisted of prob- 
 lems in Vulgar Fractions, simple and compound ; in the Rule 
 of Three, Practice, Interest, Discount, &c. A few of the first 
 were simple ; but they soon increased in complication and dim-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 323 
 
 culty, and in the amount of the sums managed, until I could 
 hardly credit the report of my own senses, so difficult were 
 the questions, and so prompt and accurate the replies. 
 
 A great many of the exercises in arithmetic consisted in 
 reducing the coins of one State to those of another. In Ger- 
 many, there are almost as many different currencies as there are 
 States ; and the expression of the value of one coin in other 
 denominations is a very common exercise. 
 
 It struck me that the main differences between their mode of 
 teaching arithmetic and ours consist in their beginning earlier, 
 continuing the practice in the elements much longer, requiring 
 a more thorough analysis of all questions, and in not separating 
 the processes, or rules, so much as we do from each other. 
 The pupils proceed less by rule, more by an understanding of 
 the subject. It often happens to our children, that, while 
 engaged in one rule, they forget a preceding. Hence many of 
 our best teachers have frequent reviews. But there, as I stated 
 above, the youngest classes of chikken were taught addition, 
 subtraction, multiplication, and division, promiscuously. And 
 so it was in the later stages. The mind was constantly carried 
 along, and the practice enlarged in more than one direction. 
 It is a difference which results from teaching, in the one case, 
 from a book ; and, in the other, from the head. In the latter 
 case, the teacher sees what each pupil most needs, and, if he 
 finds any one halting or failing on a particular class of ques- 
 tions, plies him with questions of that kind until his deficiencies 
 are supplied. 
 
 In algebra, trigonometry, surveying, geometry, &c., I inva- 
 riably saw the teacher standing before the blackboard, drawing 
 the diagrams, and explaining all the relations between their 
 several parts, while the pupils in their seats, having a pen and 
 a small manuscript book, copied the figures, and took down 
 brief heads of the solution ; and at the next recitation they 
 were required to go to the blackboard, draw the figures and 
 solve the problems themselves. How different this mode of 
 hearing a lesson from that of holding the text-book in the left
 
 324 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 hand, while the fore-finger of the right carefully follows the 
 printed demonstration, under penalty, should the place be lost, 
 of being obliged to recommence the solution ! 
 
 GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 Great attention is paid to grammar, or, as it is usually called 
 in the plan of studies, the German language. But I heard 
 very little of the ding-dong and recitative of gender, number, 
 and case, of government and agreement, which make up so 
 great a portion of the grammatical exercises in our schools, 
 and which the pupils are often required to repeat until they 
 really lose all sense of the original meaning of the terms they 
 use. Of what service is it for children to re-iterate and re-assert, 
 fifty times in a single recitation, the gender and number of 
 nouns, about which they never made a mistake even before a 
 grammar book was put into their hands? If the object of 
 grammar is to teach children to speak and write their native 
 language with propriety, then they should be practised upon 
 expressing their own ideas with elegance, distinctness, and 
 force. For this purpose, their common every-day phraseology 
 is first to be attended to. As their speech becomes more copi- 
 ous, they should be led to recognize those slight shades of dis- 
 tinction which exist between words almost synonymous ; to 
 discriminate between the literal and the figurative ; and to 
 frame sentences in which the main idea shall be brought out 
 conspicuously and prominently, while all subordinate ones 
 mere matters of circumstance or qualification shall occupy 
 humbler or more retired positions. The sentences of some 
 public speakers are so arranged, that what is collateral or inci- 
 dental stands out boldly in the foreground, while the principal 
 thought is almost lost in the shade, an arrangement as pre- 
 posterous as if in the senate-chamber, the forum, or the parade- 
 ground, the president, the judge, or the commanding officer, 
 were thrust into the rear, while a nameless throng of non-offi- 
 cials and incognitos should occupy the places of dignity and
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 325 
 
 authority. Grammar should be taught in snch a way as to 
 lead out into rhetoric as it regards the form of the expression, 
 and iuto logic as it regards the sequence and coherency of the 
 thoughts. If this is so, then no person is competent to teach 
 grammar who is not familiar, at least, with all the leading prin- 
 ciples of rhetoric and logic. 
 
 The Prussian teachers, by their constant habit of conversing 
 with the pupils ; by requiring a complete answer to be given to 
 every question ; by never allowing a mistake in termination or 
 in the collocation of words or clauses to pass uncorrected, nor 
 the sentence, as corrected, to pass uurepeated ; by requiring the 
 poetry of the reading-lessons to be changed into oral or writ- 
 ten prose, and the prose to be paraphrased, or expressed in dif- 
 ferent words ; and by exacting a general account or summary 
 of the reading-lessons, are, as we may almost literally say, 
 constantly teaching grammar, or, as they more comprehen- 
 sively call it, the German language. It is easy to see that 
 composition is included under this head; the writing of regu- 
 lar " essays" or " themes" being only a later exercise. 
 
 Professor Stowe gives the following account of the manner 
 of teaching and explaining the different parts of speech : 
 
 " Grammar is taught directly and scientifically, yet by no 
 means in a dry and technical manner. On the contrary, tech- 
 nical terms are carefully avoided, till the child has become 
 familiar with the nature and use of the things designated by 
 them, and he is able to use them as the names of ideas which 
 have a definite existence in his mind, and not as awful sounds 
 dimly shado \viug forth some mysteries of science into which 
 he has no power to penetrate. 
 
 " The first object is to illustrate the different parts of speech, 
 such as the noun, verb, adjective, adverb ; and this is done by 
 engaging the pupil in conversation, and leading him to form 
 sentences in which the particular part of speech to be learned 
 shall be the most important word, and directing his attention 
 to the nature and use of the word in the place where he uses 
 it. For example, let us suppose the nature and use of the ad-
 
 326 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 verb is to be taught : the teacher writes upon the blackboard 
 the words here, there, near, &c. He then says, ' Children, we 
 are all together in this room. By which of the words on the 
 blackboard can you express this ? ' 
 
 " Children. k We are all here.' 
 
 " Teacher. ' Xow look out of the window, and see the church. 
 What can you say of the church with the second word on the 
 blackboard ? ' 
 
 " Children. ' The church is there.' 
 
 " Teacher. ' The distance between us and the church is not 
 great : how will you express this by a word on the black- 
 board ? ' 
 
 " Children. ' The church is near.' The fact that these dif- 
 ferent words express the same sort of relations is then explained, 
 and, accordingly, that they belong to the same class, or are the 
 same part of speech. The variations of these words are next 
 explained. 
 
 " Teacher. ' Children, you say the church is near ; but there is 
 a shop between us and the church : what will you say of the 
 shop?' 
 
 " Children. ' The shop is nearer.' 
 
 " Teacher. ' But there's a fence between us and the shop. 
 Now, when you think of the distance between us, the shop, and 
 the fence, what will you say of the fence ? ' 
 
 " Children. ' The fence is nearest.' So of other adverbs. 
 The lark sings well. Compare the singing of the lark with 
 that of the canary-bird. Compare the singing of the nightin- 
 gale with that of the canary-bird." 
 
 I heard excellent lessons on the different meanings which 
 roots, or primitive words, assume, when used with different 
 affixes or suffixes. An analogous lesson in our language would 
 consist in giving the meanings of the different words which 
 come from one root in the Latin ; as, convene, intervene, pre- 
 vent, event, advent, &c. ; or accede, recede; succeed, exceed, pro- 
 ceed, secede, precede, intercede, &c.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 327 
 
 WRITING AND DRAWING. 
 
 Such excellent hand- writing as I saw in the Prussian schools 
 I never saw before. I can hardly express myself too strongly 
 on this point. In Great Britain, France, or in our own coun- 
 try, I have never seen any schools worthy to be compared with 
 theirs in this respect. I have before said that I found all 
 children provided with a slate arid pencil, and writing or print- 
 ing letters, and beginning with the elements of drawing, either 
 immediately or very soon after they entered school. This fur- 
 nishes the greater part of the explanation of their excellent 
 hand-writing. A part of it, I think, should be referred to the 
 peculiarity of the German script, which seems to me to be 
 easier than our own. But, after all due allowance is made for 
 this advantage, a high degree of superiority over the schools of 
 other countries remains to be accounted for. This superiority 
 cannot be attributed in any degree to a better manner of hold- 
 ing the pen ; for I never saw so great a proportion of cases in 
 any schools where the pen was so awkwardly held. This ex- 
 cellence must be referred, in a great degree, to the universal 
 practice of learning to draw contemporaneously with learning 
 to write. I believe a child will learn both to draw and to write 
 sooner and with more ease than he will learn writing alone ; 
 and for this reason, the figures or objects contemplated and 
 copied in learning to draw are larger, more marked, more dis- 
 tinctive one from another, and more sharply defined with pro- 
 jection, angle, or curve, than the letters copied in writing. In 
 drawing, there is more variety ; in writing, more sameness. Now, 
 the objects contemplated in drawing, from, their nature, attract 
 attention more readily, impress the mind more deeply, and, of 
 course, will be more accurately copied, than those in writing. 
 And when the eye has been trained to observe, to distinguish, 
 and to imitate, in the first exercise, it applies its habits with 
 great advantage to the second. 
 
 Another reason is, that the child is taught to draw things 
 with which he is familiar, which have some significance, and
 
 328 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 give him pleasing ideas. But a child who is made to fill page 
 after page with rows of straight marks, that look so blank 
 and cheerless, though done ever so well, has and can have no 
 pleasing associations with his work. The practice of beginning 
 with making inexpressive marks, or with writing unintelligible 
 words, bears some resemblance, in its lifelessness, to that of 
 learning the alphabet. Each exhales torpor and stupidity to 
 deaden the vivacity of the worker. 
 
 Again : I have found it an almost universal opinion with 
 teachers of the art of writing, that children should commence 
 with large hand rather than with fine. The reason for this I 
 suppose to be, that, where the letters themselves are larger, their 
 differences and peculiarities are proportionally larger ; hence 
 they can be more easily discriminated, and discrimination must 
 necessarily precede exact copying. So to speak, the child be- 
 comes acquainted "with the physiognomy of the large letters 
 more easily than with that of the small. Besides, the forma- 
 tion of the larger gives more freedom of motion to the hand. 
 Now, in these respects, there is more difference between the 
 objects used in drawing and the letters of a large hand than 
 between the latter and fine hand ; and therefore the argument 
 in favor of a large hand applies with still more force in favor 
 of drawing. 
 
 In the course of my tour, I passed from countries where 
 almost every pupil in every school could draw with ease, and 
 most of them with no inconsiderable degree of beauty and ex- 
 pression, to those where less and less attention was paid to the 
 subject ; and, at last, to schools where drawing was not prac- 
 tised at all : and, after many trials, I came to the conclusion 
 that, with no other guide than a mere inspection of the copy- 
 books of the pupils, I could tell whether drawing were taught 
 in the school or not ; so uniformly superior was the hand-writ- 
 ing in those schools where drawing was taught in connection 
 with it. On seeing this, I was reminded of that saying of 
 Pestalozzi, somewhat too strong, that, "without drawing, 
 there can be no writing."
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 329 
 
 But suppose it were otherwise, and that learning to draw re- 
 tarded the acquisition of good penmanship, how richly would 
 the learner be compensated for the sacrifice ! Drawing, of itself, 
 is an expressive and beautiful language. A few strokes of the 
 pen or pencil will often represent to the eye what no amount 
 of words, however well chosen, can communicate. For the 
 master-architect, for the engraver, the engineer, the pattern- 
 designer, the draughtsman, moulder, machine-builder, or head 
 mechanic of any kind, all acknowledge that this art is essen- 
 tial and indispensable. But there is no department of business 
 or condition in life where the accomplishment would not be 
 of utility. Every man should be able to plot a field, to sketch 
 a road or a river, to draw the outlines of a simple machine, 
 a piece of household furniture or a farming utensil, and 
 to delineate the internal arrangement or construction of a 
 . house. 
 
 But to be able to represent by lines and shadows what no 
 words can depict is only a minor part of the benefit of learning 
 to draw. The study of this art develops the talent of observ- 
 ing even more than that of delineating. Although a man may 
 have but comparatively few occasions to picture forth what he 
 has observed, yet the power of observation should be cultivated 
 by every rational being. The skilful delineator is not only 
 able to describe far better what he has seen, but he sees twice 
 as many things in the world as he would otherwise do. To 
 one whose eye has never been accustomed to mark the form, 
 color, or peculiarities of objects, all external Nature is enveloped 
 in a haze, which no sunshine, however bright, will ever dissi- 
 pate. The light which dispels this obscurity must come from 
 within. Teaching a child to draw, then, is the development in 
 him of a new talent, the conferring upon him, as it were, of - 
 a new sense, by means of which he is not only better enabled 
 to attend to the common duties of life, and be more serviceable 
 to his fellow-men, but he is more likely to appreciate the beau- 
 ties and magnificence of Nature which everywhere reflect the 
 glories of the Creator into his soul. When accompanied by
 
 330 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 appropriate instruction of a moral and religious character, this 
 accomplishment becomes a quickener to devotion. 
 
 With the inventive genius of our people, the art of drawing 
 would be eminently useful. They would turn it to better ac- 
 count than any other people iu the world. We now perform 
 far the greater part of our labor by machinery. With the high 
 wages prevalent amongst us, if such were not the case, our 
 whole community would be impoverished. Whatever ad- 
 vances the mechanic and manufacturing arts, therefore, is 
 especially important here ; and whatever is important for 
 men to know, as men, should be learned by children in the 
 schools. 
 
 But whatever may be said of the importance of this art, as it 
 regards the community at large, its value to a school-teacher 
 can hardly be estimated. 
 
 If the first exercises in reading were taught as they should 
 be ; if the squares of the multiplication-table were first to be 
 drawn on the blackboard, and then to be filled up by the pupils 
 as they should see on what reason the progressive increase of 
 the numbers is founded ; if geography were taught from the 
 beginning, as it should be, by constant delineations upon the 
 blackboard, then every teacher, even of the humblest school, 
 ought to be acquainted with the art of linear drawing, and be 
 able to form all the necessary figures and diagrams not only 
 with correctness, but with rapidity. And in teaching naviga- 
 tion, surveying, trigonometry, geometry, &c. ; in describing the 
 mechanical powers ; in optics, in astronomy, iu the various 
 branches of natural philosophy, and especially in physiology, 
 the teacher who has a command of this art will teach incom- 
 parably better and incomparably faster than if he were igno- 
 rant of it. I never saw a teacher iu a German school make 
 use of a ruler, or any other mechanical aid, in drawing the 
 nicest or most complicated figures. I recollect no instance in 
 which he was obliged to efface a part of a line because it was 
 too long, or to extend it because it was too short. If squares 
 or triangles were to be formed, they came out squares or tri-
 
 EEPORT FOR 1843. 331 
 
 angles without any overlapping or deficiency. Here was not 
 only much time gained or saved, but the pupils had constantly 
 before their eyes these examples of celerity and perfectness as 
 models for imitation. No one can doubt how much more cor- 
 rectly, as well as more rapidly, a child's mind will grow in view 
 of such models of ease and accuracy, than if only slow, awk- 
 ward, and clumsy movements are the patterns constantly held 
 before it. 
 
 I saw hand-writing taught in various ways. The most com- 
 mon mode for young children was that of writing on the black- 
 board for their imitation. In such cases, the copy was always 
 beautifully written, and the lesson preceded by instructions and 
 followed by corrections. 
 
 Another method which has had some currency in Germany 
 is this : If the mark to be copied is a simple straight line, thus, 
 / /, the teacher says, one, one, as words of command ; and, at 
 each enunciation of the word, the pupils make a mark simulta- 
 neously. The teacher accelerates or retards his utterance 
 according to the degree of facility the class has acquired. If 
 the figure to be copied consists of an upward and downward 
 stroke, thus, /, 7, the teacher says, one, two; one, two (one 
 for the upward, the other for the downward motion of the 
 hand) ; at first slowly, afterwards more rapidly. When the 
 figure consists of three strokes, thus, I, he pronounces one, two, 
 three, as before. Letters are formed in the same way. 
 
 A supposed advantage of this method consists in its retard- 
 ing the motions of those who would otherwise write too fast, 
 and hastening those who would write too slow. But, for these 
 purposes, the teacher must see that all keep time, otherwise the 
 advantage is lost. And, on the whole, there is so much differ- 
 ence between the natural quickness of perception and of motion 
 in different pupils, that there can be no such thing as a univer- 
 sal standard. Some scholars, whose thoughts and muscles are 
 of electric speed, would be embarrassed by being obliged to 
 write slowly ; and others could not keep step, though the music 
 played only common time. Neither in their physical nor in
 
 332 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 their spiritual natures does the speed of children seem to have 
 been graduated by any one clock. 
 
 The best method which I have ever seen of teaching penman- 
 ship to large scholars was that practised by Professor New- 
 man, at the Normal School in Barre.* 
 
 In the schools I saw, orthography, punctuation, and the use 
 of capitals, were early connected with the exercise of writing. 
 
 GEOGRAPHY. 
 
 In describing the manner in which geography was taught, I 
 must use discrimination ; for, in some respects, it was taught 
 imperfectly, in others pre-eminently well. 
 
 The practice seemed to be uniform, however, of beginning 
 with objects perfectly familiar to the child, the schoolhouse 
 with the grounds around it, the home with its yards or gardens, 
 and the street leading from the one to the other. First of all, 
 the children were initiated into the ideas of space, without 
 which we can know no more of geography than we can of his- 
 tory without ideas of time. Mr. Carl Ritter of Berlin proba- 
 bly the greatest geographer now living expressed a decided 
 opinion to me, that this was the true mode of beginning. 
 
 Children, too, commence this study very early, soon after 
 entering school, but no notions are given them which they 
 are not perfectly able to comprehend, reproduce, and express. 
 
 I found geography taught almost wholly from large maps 
 suspended against the walls, and by delineations on the black- 
 board. And here the skill of teachers and pupils in drawing 
 did admirable service. The teacher traced the outlines of a 
 country on the suspended map, or drew one upon the black- 
 board, accompanying the exhibition by an oral lecture ; and, at 
 the next recitation, the pupils were expected to repeat what 
 they had seen and heard. And in regard to the natural divis- 
 ions of the earth, or the political boundaries of countries, a 
 pupil was not considered as having given any proof that he 
 * See Common-school Journal, 2d vol., p. 345.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 333 
 
 had a correct image in his mind, until he could go to the black- 
 board, and reproduce it from the ends of his fingers. I wit- 
 nessed no lesson unaccompanied by these tests. 
 
 I will describe, as exactly as I am able, a lesson which I 
 heard given to a class a little advanced beyond the elements ; 
 remarking, that, though I heard many lessons given on the 
 same plan, none of them were signalized by the rapidity and 
 effect of the one I am about to describe. 
 
 The teacher stood by the blackboard, with the chalk in his 
 hand. After casting his eye over the class to see that all were 
 ready, he struck at the middle of the board. With a rapidity 
 of hand which my eye could hardly follow, he made a series 
 of those short, divergent lines, or shadings, employed by map- 
 engravers to represent a chain of mountains. He had scarcely 
 turned an angle, or shot off a spur, when the scholars began 
 to cry out, "Carpathian Mountains, Hungary; Black-forest 
 Mountains. Wurtemberg ; Giant's Mountains (Rieseu-Gebirge), 
 Silesia; Metallic Mountains (Erz-Gebirge), Pine Mountains 
 (Fichtel-Gebirge), Central Mountains (Mittel-Gebirge), Bo- 
 hemia," &c. 
 
 In less than half a minute, the ridge of that grand central 
 elevation which separates the waters that flow north-west into 
 the German Ocean from those that flow north into the Baltic, 
 and south-east into the Black Sea, was presented to view, 
 executed almost as beautifully as an engraving. A dozen 
 crinkling strokes, made in the twinkling of an eye, represented 
 the head-waters of the great rivers which flow in different 
 directions from that mountainous range ; while the children, 
 almost as eager and excited as though they had actually seen 
 the torrents dashing down the mountain-sides, cried out, " Dan- 
 ube, Elbe, Vistula, Oder," &c. The next moment I heard a 
 succession of small strokes, or taps, so rapid as to be almost in- 
 distinguishable ; and hardly had my eye time to disc iru a large 
 number of dots made along the margins of the rivers, when 
 the shout of " Lintz, Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Berlin," &c., 
 struck my ear. At this point in the exercise, the spot which
 
 334 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDDCATION. 
 
 had been occupied on the blackboard was nearly a circle, of 
 which the starting-point, or place where the teacher first began, 
 was the centre ; but now a few additional strokes around the 
 circumference of the incipient continent extended the moun- 
 tain ranges outwards towards the plains, the children re- 
 sponding the names of the countries in which they respectively 
 laid. With a few more flourishes, the rivers flowed onwards 
 towards their several terminations ; and, by another succession 
 of dots, new cities sprang up along their banks. By this time, 
 the children had become as much excited as though they had 
 be"en present at a world-making. They rose in their seats, they 
 flung out both hands, their eyes kindled, and their voices became 
 almost vociferous as they cried out the names of the different 
 places, which, under the magic of the teacher's crayon, rose iuto 
 view. Within ten minutes from the commencement of the 
 lesson, there stood upon the blackboard a beautiful map of 
 Germany, with its mountains, principal rivers and cities, the 
 coast of the German Oceau, the Baltic and the Black Seas ; and 
 all so accurately proportioned, that I think only slight errors 
 would have been found, had it been subjected to the test of a 
 scale of miles. A part of this time was taken up in correcting 
 a few mistakes of the pupils ; for the teacher's mind seemed 
 to be in his ear as well as iu his hand ; and, notwithstanding the 
 astonishing celerity of his movements, he detected erroneous 
 answers, and turned round to correct them. The rest of the 
 recitation consisted in questions and answers respecting pro- 
 ductions, climate, soil, animals, &c. 
 
 Many of the cosmogonists suppose, that after the creation of 
 the world, and when its whole surface was as yet fluid, the 
 solid continents rose gradually from beneath the sea ; first the 
 loftiest peaks of the Andes, for instance, emerged from the deep, 
 and, as they reached a higher and a higher point of elevation, 
 the rivers began to flow down their sides, until, at last, the 
 lofty mountains having attained their height, the mighty rivers 
 their extent and volume, and the continent its amplitude, 
 cultivation began, and cities and towns were built. The lesson
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 335 
 
 I have described was a beautiful illustration of that idea, with 
 one advantage over the original scene itself, that the spectator 
 had no need of waiting through all the geological epochs to see 
 the work completed. 
 
 Compare the effect of such a lesson as this, both as to the 
 amount of the knowledge communicated, and the vividness, 
 and of course the permanence, of the ideas obtained, with a 
 lesson where the scholars look out a few names of places on 
 a lifeless atlas, but never send their imaginations abroad over 
 the earth ; and the teacher sits listlessly down before them to 
 interrogate them from a book, in which all the questions are 
 printed at full length, to supersede on his part all necessity of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Thoroughly and beautifully as I saw some departments of 
 geography taught in the common schools of Prussia, traced 
 out into their connections with commerce, manufactures, and 
 history, I found but few of this class of schools in which uni- 
 versal geography could, with any propriety, be considered as a 
 part of the course. The geography of their own country was 
 minutely investigated. That of the western hemisphere was 
 very little understood. But this should be said, that, as far as 
 they professed to teach, they taught thoroughly and well.* 
 
 * The Germans seem to me to be the best map engravers in the world. Their 
 maps are at once beautiful and cheap. To show to what an extraordinary length 
 they have gone in representing the results of science to the eye, I subjoin the titles 
 of several maps which have been prepared by that distinguished artist, Professor 
 Berghaus of Potsdam. 
 
 Map illustrating the diffusion of heat over the surface of Europe. 
 
 Map of the Atlantic Ocean, showing the currents, the great commercial thor- 
 oughfares, the diffusion of heat, banks, and portions of the bottom of the sea, &c. 
 
 Map of the Pacilic Ocean, its currents, thoroughfares, and temperature. 
 
 Map representing the Hues of equal intensity of magnetic power (isodynamic 
 lines), according to the observations made between 1790 and 1830. 
 
 Map of Humboldt's system of isothermal curves. 
 
 Map of tides. 
 
 Map of the German Ocean, with the neighboring parts of the Atlantic, its tides, 
 and the state of the bed of the sea. 
 
 Map of the volcanic bands, and the central groups of the Pacific. 
 
 Map. Sketch of the geographical distribution of plants. Spread of plants in a 
 perpendicular direction. Principal circumstances affecting the spread of vegeta- 
 tion. Relative curves of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants on the
 
 336 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 EXERCISES IN THINKING. KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE. T- KNOWL- 
 EDGE OF THE WORLD. KNOWLEDGE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 In the " Study-Plans " of all the schools in the north of 
 Prussia, I found most, and, in some of them, all, of the above 
 
 Swiss Alps. Graphic statistics of particular families of plants. Outlines of some 
 forms ol' plants. 
 
 Map of isothermal curves of the northern hemisphere. 
 
 Map. General view of mean barometrical heights near the seashore, and the 
 variation of the weight of the atmosphere. 
 
 Map of German rivers, the Khiue, Elbe, and Oder. 
 
 Map. View of thf distribution of the solid and fluid parts of the earth ; also 
 of tin; variety in the form of surface, &c. 
 
 Map of isodynamic lines in the horizontal projection, for the average point of 
 the meridian of Paris, and of the parallels 00 of north and south latitude. 
 
 Map of the mean of the temperature upon the whole earth, founded upon obser- 
 vations in three hundred and seven places. Graphic description of the course of 
 temperature, for daily and yearly periods, in all zones. 
 
 Map. Currents of air on the Xorth Atlantic Ocean to the western part of the 
 Old and to the eastern part of the New World. 
 
 Map. Hydro-historic survey of the state of the Oder in the half-century from 
 1781 to 1830. 
 
 Map. Survey of the spread of the most important cultivable trees and shrubs, 
 &c. 
 
 Map of the volcanic appearances of the Old World in and around the Atlantic 
 Ocean. 
 
 Map of the " specialia" of the volcanic band of the Atlantic Ocean. 
 
 Map. Circles of the spread of the most important cultivable growths, and also 
 a notice of the course of the isotheren and isochimeneu (or places which show the 
 same degree of heat in summer and of cold in icinter). 
 
 Map of the tabular representation of the statistics of the vegetable kingdom in 
 Europe. 
 
 Map. Botanic, geographic, statistic map of Europe. 
 
 Map of winds for all the earth. 
 
 Map, physical, of the Indian Ocean. 
 
 Map of the volcanic kingdom of Guatimala, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Nica- 
 ragua, and 1'anama, and the central volcano of the Southern Ocean. 
 
 Map of the variations of the magnetic meridians and parallels, &c. 
 
 Miip. Survey of the proportions of rain in Europe. 
 
 Map. Survey of the meteorological stations in Germany, Switzerland, the 
 Netherlands, &c. 
 
 Map of the ideal profile of a part of the earth's rind with the plants and animals 
 drawn by Joseph Fisher, according to the selection and arrangement of Dr. Buck- 
 land. 
 
 Map. Botanic map of Germany, containing statistics of the most distinguished 
 families of plants. 
 
 Map. Hyetographic (description of rain) map of the earth. 
 
 Map. Hy elomarisch (denoting the quantity of dampness in the atmosphere) ob- 
 servations.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 337 
 
 subjects of lessons. To each Avas assigned its separate hour 
 and place in the routine of exercises. For brevity's sake, how- 
 ever, and because the topics naturally run into each other, I 
 shall attempt to describe them together. 
 
 These lessons consisted of familiar conversations between 
 teacher and pupils, on subjects adapted to the age, capacities, 
 and proficiency of the latter. With the youngest classes, things 
 immediately around them, the schoolroom, and the materials 
 of which it had been built ; its different parts, as foundation, 
 floor, Avails, ceiling, roof, windows, doors, fire-place ; its furni- 
 ture and apparatus ; its books, slates, paper ; the clothes of the 
 pupils, and the materials from which they were made ; their 
 food and playthings ; the duties of children to animals, to each 
 other, to their parents, neighbors, to the old, to their Maker, 
 these are specimens of a vast variety of subjects embraced 
 under one or another of the above heads. As the children 
 advanced in age and attainments, and had acquired full and 
 definite notions of the visible and tangible existences around 
 them, and also of time and space, so that they could understand 
 descriptions of the unseen and the remote, the scope of these 
 lessons was enlarged, so as to take in the different kingdoms 
 of Nature, the arts, trades, and occupations of men, and the 
 more complicated affairs of society. 
 
 When visiting the schools in Leipsic, I remarked to the su- 
 perintendent, that most accomplished educationist, Dr. Vogel, 
 that I did not see on the " Study-Plan " of his schools the title 
 " Exercises in Thinking." His reply was, " No ; for I con- 
 Map. The warm currents of the Atlantic and the cold stream of the Pacific, in 
 parallels represented according to geographical situation and extent. 
 
 Map of Asia and Europe in reference to running- waters, and their distribution 
 into river-basins (Gebiete). 
 
 Map. Comparative survey of the state of the Rhine, the Weser, the Elbe, and 
 the Oder, from 1831 to 1810. 
 
 Map. Geographic extent of thunder-storms in Europe. 
 
 Map. River-basins of the Jsew World. 
 
 Map. Maelstrom, &c. 
 
 Map. Mountain-chains in Asia and Europe. 
 
 Map. Great mountain system of Europe. 
 
 Map. Mountain-chains in North America. 
 22
 
 338 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 sider it a sin in any teacher not to lead his pupils to think in 
 regard to all the subjects he teaches." He did not call it an 
 omission, or even a disqualification, in a teacher, if he did not 
 awaken thought in the minds of his pupils ; but he perempto- 
 rily denounced it as a "sin" "Alas!" thought I, "what 
 expiation will be sufficient for many of us who have had 
 charge of the young ! " 
 
 It is obvious, from the account I have given of these primary 
 lessons, that there is no restriction as to the choice of subjects, 
 and no limits to the extent of information that may be ingrafted 
 upon them. What more natural than that a kind teacher 
 should attempt to gain the attention and win the good-will of 
 an active, eager-minded boy just entering his school, by speak- 
 ing to him about the domestic animals which he plays with, or 
 tends at home? the dog, the cat, the sheep, the horse, the 
 cow. Yet, without any interruption or overleaping of natural 
 boundaries, this simple lesson may be expanded into a knowl- 
 edge of all quadrupeds, their characteristics and habits of life, 
 the uses of their flesh, skins, fur, bones, horns or ivory, the 
 parts of the world where they live, &c. So if a teacher 
 begins to converse with a boy about domestic fowls, there is no 
 limit, save in his own knowledge, until he has exhausted the 
 whole subject of ornithology, the varieties of birds, their 
 plumage, their uses, their migratory habits, &c. What 
 more natural than that a benevolent teacher should ask a 
 blushing little girl about the flowers in her vases or garden at 
 home? and yet, this having been done, the door is opened that 
 leads to all botanical knowledge, to the flowers of all the sea- 
 sons and all the zones, to the trees cultivated by the hand of 
 man, or the primeval forests that darken the face of continents. 
 Few children go to school who have not seen a fish, at least 
 a minnow in a pool. Begin with this, and Nature opposes no 
 barrier until the wonders of the deep are exhausted. Let the 
 schoolhouse, as I said, be the first lesson ; and, to a mind re- 
 plenished with knowledge, not only all the different kinds of 
 edifices the dwelling-house, the church, the court-house, the
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 339 
 
 palace, the temple are at once associated, but all the differ- 
 ent orders of architecture Corinthian, Ionic, Doric, Egyp- 
 tian, Gothic, &c. rise to the view. How many different mate- 
 rials have been brought together for the construction of the 
 schoolhouse ! stone, wood, nails, glass, bricks, mortar, paints, 
 materials used in glazing, &c. Each one of these belongs to 
 a different department of Nature ; and, when an accomplished 
 teacher has once set foot in any one of these provinces, he sees 
 a thousand interesting objects around him, as it were, soliciting 
 his attention. Then each one of these materials has its artifi- 
 cer ; and thus all the mechanical trades may be brought under 
 consideration, the house-builder's, the mason's, the plumber's, 
 the glazier's, the locksmith's, &c. A single article may be 
 viewed under different aspects, as, in speaking of a lock, one 
 may consider the nature and properties of iron, its cohesive- 
 ness, malleability, &c., its utility, or the variety of utensils into 
 which it may be wrought ; or the conversation may be turned 
 to the particular object and uses of the lock, and upon these a 
 lesson on the rights of property, the duty of honesty, the guilt 
 of theft and robbery, &c., be ingrafted. So, in speaking of the 
 beauties and riches and wondei's of Nature, of the revolution 
 of the seasons, the glory of spring, the exuberance of autumn, 
 the grandeur of the mountain, the magnificence of the firma- 
 ment, the child's mind may be turned to a contemplation of 
 the power and goodness of God. I found these religious aspects 
 of Nature to be most frequently adverted to, and was daily 
 delighted with the reverent and loving manner in which the 
 name of the Deity was always spoken: "Der Hebe Gott" 
 ki The dear God," was the universal form of expression; and 
 the name of the Creator of heaven and earth was hardly ever 
 spoken without this epithet of endearment. 
 
 It is easy also to see that a description of the grounds about 
 the schoolhouse or the paternal mansion, and of the road lead- 
 ing from one of these places to the other, is the true starting- 
 point of all geographical knowledge ; and, this once begun, 
 there is no terminus, until all modern and ancient geography,
 
 840 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 and all travels and explorations by sea and land, are exhausted. 
 So the boy's nest of marbles may be the nucleus of all mine- 
 ralogy ; his top, his kite, his little wind-wheel or water-wheel, 
 the salient point of all mechanics and technology ; and the 
 stories he has heard about the last king or the aged king, the 
 first chapter in universal history. 
 
 I know full well that the extent and variety of subjects said 
 to be taught to young children in the Prussian schools have 
 been often sneered at. 
 
 In a late speech, made on a public occasion, by one of the 
 distinguished politicians in our country, the idea of teaching 
 the natural sciences in our common schools was made a theme 
 for ridicule. Let it be understood in what manner an accom- 
 plished teacher may impart a great amount of useful knowledge 
 on these subjects, and perhaps awaken minds which may here- 
 after adorn the age, and benefit mankind by their discoveries, 
 and it will be easily seen to which party the ridicule most justly 
 attaches. "What," say the objectors, "teach children botany, 
 and the unintelligible and almost unspeakable names, monan- 
 dria, diandria, triandria, &c. ? or zoology, with such technical 
 terms as mollusca, Crustacea, vertebrata, mammalia, &c. ? the 
 thing is impossible ! " The Prussian children are not thus 
 taught. For years, their lessons are free from all the techni- 
 calities of science. The knowledge they already possess about 
 common things is made the nucleus around which to collect 
 more ; and the language with which they are already familiar 
 becomes the medium through which to communicate new ideas, 
 and by which, whenever necessary, to explain new terms. 
 There is no difficulty in explaining to a child seven years of 
 age the distinctive marks by which Nature intimates to us, at 
 first sight, whether a plant is healthful or poisonous ; or those 
 by which, on inspecting the skeleton of an animal that lived 
 thousands of years ago, we know whether it lived upon grass 
 or grain or flesh. It is in this way that the pupil's mind is car- 
 ried forward by an actual knowledge of things, until the time 
 arrives for giving him classifications aud nomenclatures.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 341 
 
 When a child knows a great many particular or individual 
 things, he begins to perceive resemblances between some of 
 them ; and they then naturally assort themselves, as it were, in 
 his mind, and arrange themselves into different groups. Then, 
 by the aid of a teacher, he perfects a scientific classification 
 among them ; bringing into each group all that belong to it. 
 But soon the number of individuals in each group becomes so 
 numerous, that he wants a cord to tie them together, or a ves- 
 sel in which to hold them. Then, from the nomenclature of 
 science, he receives a name which binds all the individuals of 
 that group into one ever afterwards. It is now that he per- 
 ceives the truth and the beauty of classification and nomencla- 
 ture. An infant that has more red and white beads than it 
 can hold in its hands, and, to prevent them from rolling about 
 the floor and being lost, collects them together, putting the 
 white in one cup and the red in another, and sits and smiles at 
 its work, has gone through with precisely the same description 
 of mental process that Cuvier and Linnaeus did when they sum- 
 moned the vast varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdoms 
 into their spiritual presence, and commanded the countless hosts 
 to arrange themselves into their respective genera, orders, and 
 species. 
 
 Oar notions respecting the expediency or propriety of intro- 
 ducing the higher branches, as they are called, into our com- 
 mon schools, are formed from a knowledge of our own school- 
 teachers, and of the habits that prevail in most of the schools 
 themselves. With us, it too often happens, that if a higher 
 branch geometry, natural philosophy, zoology, botany is 
 to be taught, both teacher and class must have text-books. At 
 the beginning of these text-books, all the technical names and 
 definitions belonging to the subject are set down. These, be- 
 fore the pupil has any practical idea of their meaning, must be 
 committed to memory. The book is then studied, chapter by 
 chapter. At the bottom of each page, or at the ends of the 
 sections, are questions printed at full length. At the recita- 
 tions, the teacher holds on by these leading-strings. He intro-
 
 342 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 (luces no collateral knowledge. He exhibits no relation be- 
 tween what is contained in the book and other kindred sub- 
 jects, or the actual business of men and the affairs of life. At 
 length, the day of examination comes. The pupils rehearse 
 from memory with a suspicious fluency ; or being asked for 
 some useful application of their knowledge, some practical 
 connection between that knowledge and the concerns of life, 
 they are silent, or give some ridiculous answer, which at once 
 disparages science, and gratifies the ill-humor of some ignorant 
 satirist. Of course, the teaching of the higher branches falls 
 into disrepute in the minds of all sensible men, as, under such 
 circumstances, it ought to do. But the Prussian teacher has 
 no book. He needs none. He teaches from a full mind. He 
 cumbers and darkens the subject with no technical phraseology. 
 He observes what proficiency the child has made, and then 
 adapts his instructions, both in quality and amount, to the ne- 
 cessity of the case. He answers all questions. He solves all 
 doubts. It is one of his objects at every recitation, so to pre- 
 sent ideas that they shall start doubts and provoke questions. 
 He connects the subject of each lesson with all kindred and 
 collateral ones, and shows its relations to the every-day duties 
 and business of life ; and should the most ignorant man or the 
 most destitute vagrant in society ask him " of what use such 
 knowledge can be," he will prove to him, in a word, that some 
 of his own pleasures or means of subsistence are dependent 
 upon it, or have been created or improved by it. 
 
 In the mean time, the children are delighted. Their per- 
 ceptive powers are exercised. Their reflecting faculties are 
 developed. Their moral sentiments are cultivated. All the 
 attributes of the mind within find answering qualities in the 
 world without. Instead of any longer regarding the earth as 
 a huge mass of dead matter, without variety and without 
 life, its beautiful and boundles.s diversities of substance, its 
 latent vitality and energies, gradually dawn forth, until, at 
 length, they illuminate the whole soul, challenging its admira- 
 tion for their utility, and its homage for the bounty of their 
 Creator.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 343 
 
 There are other points pertaining to the qualification of 
 teachers, which would, perhaps, strike a visitor or spectator more 
 strongly than the power of giving the kind of lessons I have de- 
 scribed ; but probably there is nothing, which, at the distance 
 of four thousand miles, would give to a reader or hearer s<^ 
 adequate an idea of intelligence and capacity as a full under- 
 standing of the scope and character of this class of exercises. 
 Suppose, on the one hand, a teacher to be introduced into a 
 school, who is competent to address children on this great 
 range and variety of subjects, and to address them in such a 
 manner as to arouse their curiosity, command their attention, 
 and supply them not only with knowledge, but with an inex- 
 tinguishable love for it ; suppose such a teacher to be able to 
 give one, and sometimes two such lessons a day, that is, from 
 two hundred to four hundred lessons in a year, to the same 
 class, and to carry his classes, in this way, through their eight 
 years' schooling. On the other hand, suppose a young man 
 coming fresh from the plough, the workshop, or the anvil, 
 or, what is no better, from Greek and Latin classics ; and 
 .suppose his knowledge on the above-enumerated subjects to be 
 divided into four hundred, or even into two hundred parts, and 
 that only one two-hundredth portion of that stock of knowl- 
 edge should be administered to the children in a day. Let us 
 .suppose all this, and we shall have some more adequate idea of 
 the different advantages of children, at the present time, in 
 different parts of the world. In Prussia, the theory, and the 
 practice under it, are, not that three years' study under the 
 best masters qualifies a talented and devoted man to become a 
 teacher, but that three years of such general preparation may 
 qualify one for that particular and daily preparation which is 
 to be made before meeting a class in school. And a good 
 Prussian teacher no more thinks of meeting his classes without 
 this daily preparation than a distinguished lawyer or clergyman 
 amongst ourselves would think of managing a cause before 
 court and jury, or preaching a sermon, without special reading 
 and forethought.
 
 344 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 It is easy to see, from the above account, how such a variety 
 of subjects can be taught simultaneously in school, without any 
 interference with each other ; nay, that the " common bond," 
 which, as Cicero said, binds all sciences together, should only 
 increase their unity as it enlarges their number. 
 
 BIBLE HISTORY AND BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Nothing receives more attention in the Prussian schools than 
 the Bible. It is taken up early, and studied systematically. 
 The great events recorded in the Scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testament ; the character and lives of those wonderful 
 men, who, from age to age, were brought upon the stage of 
 action, and through whose agency the future history and des- 
 tiny of the race were to be so much modified ; and especially 
 those sublime views of duty and of morality whicli are brought 
 to light in the gospel, these are topics of daily and earnest 
 inculcation in every school. To these, in some schools, is 
 added the history of the Christian religion, in connection with 
 contemporary civil history. So far as the Bible lessons are 
 concerned, I can ratify the strong statements made by Pro- 
 fessor Stowe in regard to the absence of sectarian instruction, 
 or endeavors at proselytism. The teacher, being amply pos- 
 sessed of a knowledge of the whole chain of events, and of 
 all biographical incidents, and bringing to the exercise a heart 
 glowing with love to man, and with devotion to his duty as a 
 former of the character of children, has no necessity or occa- 
 sion to fall back upon the formulas of a creed. It is when a 
 teacher has no knowledge of the wonderful works of God, 
 and of the benevolence of the design in which they were 
 created ; when he has no power of explaining and applying the 
 beautiful incidents in the lives of prophets and apostles, and, 
 especially, the perfect example which is given to men in the 
 life of Jesus Christ : it is then, that, in attempting to give reli- 
 gious instruction, he is, as it were, constrained to recur again 
 and again to the few words or sentences of his form of faith,
 
 EEPORT FOR 1843. 345 
 
 whatever that faith may be ; and, therefore, when giving the 
 second lesson, it will be little more than a repetition of the 
 first ; and the two-hundredth lesson, at the end of the year, will 
 differ from that at the beginning, only in accumulated weari- 
 someness and monotony. 
 
 There are one or two facts, however, which Professor Stowe 
 has omitted to mention, and without a knowledge of which, one 
 would form very erroneous ideas respecting the character of 
 some of the religious instruction in the Prussian schools. In 
 all the Protestant schools, Luther's Catechism is regularly 
 taught ; and, in all the Roman-Catholic schools, the catechism 
 of that communion. When the schools are mixed, they have 
 combined literary with separate religious instruction ; and here 
 all the doctrines of the respective denominations are taught 
 early and most assiduously. I well remember hearing a Ro- 
 man-Catholic priest inculcating upon a class of very young 
 children the doctrine of transubstantiation. He illustrated it 
 by the miracle of the Avater changed to wine at the marriage- 
 feast in Cana, and said that He who could turn water into 
 wine could turn his own blood into the same element, and also 
 his body into bread to be eaten with it. Contrary, then, to the 
 principles of our own law, sectarianism is taught in all Prussian 
 schools ; but it is nevertheless true, as Professor Stowe says, 
 that the Bible can be taught, and is taught, without it. 
 
 MUSIC. 
 
 All Prussian teachers are masters not only of vocal, but of 
 instrumental music. One is as certain to see a violin as a 
 blackboard in every schoolroom. Generally speaking, the 
 teachers whom I saw, played upon the organ also, and some 
 of them upon the piano and other instruments. Music was not 
 only taught in school as an accomplishment, but used as a 
 recreation. It is a moral means of great efficacy. Its practice 
 promotes health ; it disarms anger, softens rough and turbulent 
 natures, socializes, and brings the whole mind, as it were, into
 
 346 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 a state of fusion, from which condition the teacher can mould 
 it into what forms he will, as it cools and hardens. 
 
 Were it not that this Report is extending to so great a length, 
 I should say much more on the advantages of teaching music 
 in all our schools. 
 
 All the subjects I have enumerated were taught in all the 
 schools I visited, whether in city or country, for the rich or for 
 the poor. In the lowest school in the smallest and obscurest 
 village, or for the poorest class in over-crowded cities ; in the 
 schools connected with pauper establishments, with houses of 
 correction, or with prisons, in all these, there was a teacher 
 of mature, age, of simple, unaffected, and decorous manners, 
 benevolent in his expression, kind and genial in his intercourse 
 with the young, and of such attainments and resources as 
 qualified him not only to lay down the abstract principles of 
 the above range of studies, but, by familiar illustration and 
 apposite example, to commend them to the attention of the 
 children. 
 
 I speak of the teachers whom I saw, and with whom I had 
 moi-e or less of personal intercourse ; and, after some oppor- 
 tunity for the observation of public assemblies or bodies of men, 
 I do not hesitate to say, that, if those teachers were brought 
 together in one body, I believe they Avould form as dignified, 
 intelligent, benevolent-looking a company of men as could be 
 collected from the same amount of population in any country. 
 They were alike free from arrogant pretension and from the 
 affectation of humility. It has been often remarked, both in 
 England and in this country, that the nature of a school- 
 teacher's occupation exposes him, in some degree, to overbearing 
 manners, and to dogmatism in the statement of his opinions. 
 Accustomed to the exercise of supreme authority, moving 
 among those who are so much his inferiors in point of attain- 
 ment, perhaps it is proof of a very well-balanced mind if he 
 keeps himself free from assumption in opinion, and haughtiness 
 of demeanor. Especially are such faults or vices apt to spring
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 3-17 
 
 up in weak or ill-furnished minds. A teacher who cannot rule 
 by love must do so by fear. A teacher who cannot supply 
 material for the activity of his pupils' minds by his talent must 
 put down that activity by force. A teacher who cannot answer 
 all the questions, and solve all the doubts, of a scholar, as they 
 arise, must assume an awful and mysterious air, and must 
 expound in oracles which themselves need more explanation 
 than the original difficulty. When a teacher knows much and 
 is master of his whole subject, he can afford to be modest and 
 unpretending. But when the head is the only text-book, and the 
 teacher has not been previously prepared, he must, of course, 
 have a small library. Among all the Prussian and Saxon 
 teachers whom I saw, there were not half a dozen instances to 
 remind one of those unpleasant characteristics what Lord 
 Bacon would call the " idol of the tribe," or profession which 
 sometimes degrade the name and disparage the sacred calling of 
 a teacher. Generally speaking, there seemed to be a strong love 
 for the employment, always a devotion to duty, and a profound 
 conviction of the importance and sacredness of the office they 
 filled. The only striking instance of disingenuousness or 
 attempt at deception which I saw was that of a teacher who 
 looked over the manuscript books of a large class of his schol- 
 ars, selected the best, and, bringing it to me, said, " In seeing 
 one, you see all." 
 
 Whence came this beneficent order of men, scattered over 
 the whole country, moulding the character of its people, and 
 carrying them forward in a career of civilization more rapidly 
 than any other people in the world are now advancing? This 
 is a question which can be answered only by giving an account 
 of the 
 
 SEMINARIES FOR TEACHERS. 
 
 From the year 1820 to 1830 or 1835, it was customary, in all 
 accounts of Prussian education, to mention the number of these
 
 348 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 seminaries for teachers. This item of information has now 
 become unimportant, as there are seminaries sufficient to 
 supply the wants of the whole country. The stated term of 
 residence at these seminaries is three years. Lately, and in a 
 few places, a class of pi-eliminary institutions has sprung up, 
 institutions where pupils are received in order to determine 
 whether they are fit to become candidates to be candidates. 
 As a pupil of the seminary is liable to be set aside for incom- 
 petency, even after a three-years' course of study ; so the pupils 
 of these preliminary institutions, after having gone through 
 with a shorter course, are liable to be set aside for incom- 
 petency to become competent. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the guards and securities, which, 
 in that country, environ this sacred calling. In the first place, 
 the teacher's profession holds such a high rank in public esti- 
 mation, that none who have failed in other employments or 
 departments of business are encouraged to look upon school- 
 keeping as an ultimate resource. Those, too, who, from any 
 cause, despair of success in other departments of business or 
 walks of life, have very slender prospects in looking forward 
 to this. These considerations exclude at once all that inferior 
 order of men, who, in some countries, constitute the main body 
 of the teachers. Then come though only in some parts of 
 Prussia these preliminary schools, where those who wish 
 eventually to become teachers go, in order to have their 
 natural qualities and adaptation for school-keeping tested ; 
 for it must be borne in mind that a man may have the most 
 unexceptionable character, may be capable of mastering all the 
 branches of study, may even be able to make most brilliant 
 recitations from day to day, and yet, from some coldness or 
 repulsiveness of manner, from harshness of voice, from some 
 natural defect in his person or in one of his senses, he may be 
 adjudged an unsuitable model or archetype for children to be 
 conformed to, or to grow by ; and hence he may be dismissed 
 at the end of his probationary term of six months. At one 
 of these preparatory schools which I visited, the list of sub-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843- 349 
 
 jects at the examination a part of which I saw was 
 divided into two classes, as follows : 1. Readiness in Think- 
 ing, German Language, including Orthography and Composi- 
 tion, History, Description of the Earth, Knowledge of Nature, 
 Thorough Bass, Calligraphy, Drawing. 2. Religion, Knowl- 
 edge of the Bible, Knowledge of Nature, Mental Arithmetic, 
 Singing, Violin-playing, and Readiness or Facility in Speak- 
 ing.* The examination in all the branches of the first class 
 was conducted in writing. To test a pupil's Readiness in 
 Thinking, for instance, several topics for composition are given 
 out, and, after the lapse of a certain number of minutes, what- 
 ever has been written must be handed in to the examiners. So 
 questions in arithmetic are given ; and the time occupied by the 
 pupils iu solving them is a test of their quickness of thought, 
 or power of commanding their own resources. This facility, 
 or faculty, is considered of great importance in a teacher.f 
 In the second class of subjects, the pupils were examined orally. 
 Two entire days were occupied in examining a class of thirty 
 pupils, and only twenty-one were admitted to the seminary 
 school ; that is, only about two-thirds were considered to be 
 eligible to become eligible as teachers, after three years' further 
 study. Thus, in this first process, the chaff is winnowed out, 
 and not a few of the lighter grains of the wheat. 
 
 It is to be understood that those who enter the seminary 
 directly, and without this preliminary trial, have already 
 studied, under able masters in the common schools, at least all 
 the branches I have above described. The first two of the 
 three years they expend mainly in reviewing and expanding 
 their elementary knowledge. The German language is studied 
 
 * It was a matter of great surprise to me, that, among the variety of branches 
 taught in the People's Schools, I nowhere found astronomy in the number. I 
 know not how to account for the omission of a subject at once so enlarging to the 
 intellect, and so stimulating to devotional feelings. 
 
 t The above-described is a very common method of examining in the gymnasia 
 and higher seminaries of Prussia. Certain sealed subjects for an exercise are 
 given to the students : the;, are then locked up in a room, each by himself, and, at 
 the expiration of a given time, they are called out, and it is seen what each one 
 has been able to maku out of his faculties.
 
 350 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 ill its relations to rhetoric and logic, and as aesthetic litera- 
 ture ; arithmetic is carried out into algebra and mixed math- 
 ematics ; geography, into commerce and manufactures, and 
 into a knowledge of the various botanical and zoological 
 productions of the different quarters of the globe ; linear 
 drawing, into perspective and machine drawing, aud the draw- 
 ing from models of all kinds, aud from objects in Nature, 
 &c. The theory and practice, not only of vocal but of instru- 
 mental music, occupy much time. Every pupil must play on the 
 violin ; most of them play on the organ, and some on other 
 instruments. I recollect seeing a normal class engaged in 
 learning the principles of harmony. The teacher first explained 
 the principles on which they were to proceed. He then wrote 
 a bar of music upon the blackboard, and called upon a pupil to 
 write such notes for another part or accompaniment as would 
 make harmony with the first. So he would write a bar with 
 certain intervals, and then require a pupil to write another, 
 with such intervals, as, according to the principles of musical 
 science, would correspond with the first. A thorough course 
 of reading on the subject of education is undertaken, as well as 
 a more general course. Bible history is almost committed to 
 memory. Connected with all the seminaries for teachers are 
 large model or experimental schools. During the last part of 
 the course, much of the students' time is spent in these schools. 
 At first they go in and look on in silence while an accom- 
 plished teacher is instructing a class. Then they themselves 
 commence teaching under the eye of such a teacher. At last 
 they teach a class alone, being responsible for its proficiency, 
 and for its condition as to order, &c., at the end of a week or 
 other period. During the whole course, there are lectures, 
 discussions, compositions, &c., on the theory and practice of 
 teaching. The essential qualifications of a candidate for the 
 office ; his attainments, aud the spirit of devotion and of religious 
 fidelity in which he should enter upon his work ; the modes of 
 teaching the different branches ; the motive-powers to be 
 applied to the minds of children ; dissertations upon the differ-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 351 
 
 ent natural dispositions of children, and consequently the differ- 
 ent ways of addressing them, of securing their confidence and 
 affection, and of winning them to a love of learning and a sense 
 of duty ; and especially the sacredness of the teacher's profes- 
 sion ; the idea that he stands, for the time being, in the place 
 of a parent, and therefore that a parent's responsibilities rest 
 upon him, that the most precious hopes of society are com- 
 mitted to his charge, and that on him depends, to a great extent, 
 the temporal and perhaps the future well-being of hundreds of 
 his fellow-creatures, these are the conversations, the ideas, 
 the feelings, amidst which the candidate for teaching spends 
 his probationary years. This is the daily atmosphere he 
 breathes. These are the sacred, elevating, invigorating influ- 
 ences constantly pouring in upon his soul. Hence, at the 
 expiration of his course, he leaves the seminary to enter upon 
 his profession, glowing with enthusiasm for the noble cause he 
 has espoused, and strong in his resolves to perform its manifold 
 and momentous duties. 
 
 Here, then, is the cause of the worth and standing of the 
 teachers whom I had the pleasure and the honor to see. As 
 a body of men, their character is more enviable than that 
 of either of the three so-called " professions." They have 
 more benevolence and self-sacrifice than the legal or medical, 
 while they have less of sanctimoniousness and austerity, less 
 of indisposition to enter into all the innocent amusements and 
 joyous feelings of childhood, than the clerical. They are not 
 unmindful of what belongs to men while they are serving 
 .God, nor of the duties they owe to this world while prepar- 
 ing for another. 
 
 On reviewing a period of six weeks, the greater part of 
 which I spent in visiting schools in the north and middle of 
 Prussia and in Saxony (excepting, of course, the time occupied 
 in going from place to place), entering the schools to hear the 
 first recitation in the morning, and remaining until the last was 
 completed at night, I call to mind three things about which I
 
 352 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 cannot be mistaken. In some of my opinions and inferences, 
 I may have erred ; but, of the following facts, there can be no 
 doubt : 
 
 1. During all this time, I never saw a teacher hearing a 
 lesson of any kind (excepting a reading or spelling lesson) 
 with a book in his hand. 
 
 2. I never saw a teacher sitting while hearing a recitation. 
 
 3. Though I saw hundreds of schools, and thousands I 
 think I may say, within bounds, tens of thousands of pupils, 
 I never saw one child undergoing punishment, or arraigned for 
 misconduct. I never saw one child in tears from having been 
 punished, or from fear of being punished. 
 
 During the above period, I witnessed exercises in geography, 
 ancient and modern ; in the German language, from the ex- 
 planation of the simplest words up to belles-lettres disquisitions, 
 with rules for speaking and writing; in arithmetic, algebra, 
 geometry, surveying, and trigonometry ; in book-keeping ; in 
 civil history, ancient and modern ; in natural philosophy ; in 
 botany and zoology ; in mineralogy, where there were hundreds 
 of specimens ; in the endless variety of the exercises in think- 
 ing ; knowledge of Nature, of the world, and of society ; in 
 Bible history and in Bible knowledge : and, as I before said, 
 in no one of these cases did I see a teacher with a book in his 
 hand. His book his books his library, was in his head. 
 Promptly, without pause, without hesitation, from the rich re- 
 sources of his own mind, he brought forth whatever the occa- 
 sion demanded. I remember calling one morning at a country 
 school in Saxony, where every thing about the premises, and 
 the appearance both of teacher and children, indicated very 
 narrow pecuniary circumstances. As I entered, the teacher 
 was just ready to commence a lesson or lecture on French his- 
 tory. He gave not only the events of a particular period in 
 the history of France, but mentioned, as he proceeded, all the 
 contemporary sovereigns of neighboring nations. The ordinary 
 time for a lesson, here as elsewhere, was an hour. This was 
 somewhat longer ; for, towards the close, the teacher entered
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 353 
 
 upon a train of thought from which it was difficult to break 
 off, and rose to a strain of eloquence which it was delightful 
 to hear. The scholars were all absorbed in attention. They 
 had paper, pen, and ink before them, and took brief notes of 
 what was said. When the lesson touched upon contemporary 
 events in other nations, which, as I suppose, had been the 
 subject of previous lessons, the pupils were .questioned con- 
 cerning them. A small text-book of history was used by the 
 pupils, which they studied at home. 
 
 I ought to say, further, that I generally visited schools with- 
 out guide, or letter of introduction ; presenting myself at the 
 door, and asking the favor of admission. Though I had a gen- 
 eral order from the minister of Public Instruction, commanding 
 all schools, gymnasia, and universities in the kingdom to be 
 opened for my inspection, yet I seldom exhibited it, or spoke 
 of it, at least not until I was about departing. I preferred 
 to enter as a private individual and uncommended visitor. 
 
 I have said that I saw no teacher sitting in his school : aged 
 or young, all stood. Nor did they stand apart and aloof in 
 sullen dignity. They mingled with their pupils, passing rap- 
 idly from one side of the class to the other, animating, encour- 
 aging, sympathizing, breathing life into less active natures, 
 assuring the timid, distributing encouragement and endearment 
 to all. The looks of the Prussian teacher often have the expres- 
 sion and vivacity of an actor in a play. He gesticulates like 
 an orator. His body assumes all the attitudes, and his face 
 puts on all the variety of expression, which a public speaker 
 would do if haranguing a lai'ge assembly on a topic vital to 
 their interests. 
 
 It may seem singular, and perhaps to some almost ludicrous, 
 that a teacher, in expounding the first rudiments of hand-writ- 
 ing, in teaching the difference between a hair-stroke and a 
 ground-stroke, or how an I may be turned into a 5, or a u into 
 a iv, should be able to work himself up into an oratorical 
 fervor ; should attitudinize, and gesticulate, and stride from one 
 end of the class to the other, and appear in every way to be 
 23
 
 354 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 as intensely engaged as an advocate when arguing an impor- 
 tant cause to a jury. But, strange as it may seem, it is never- 
 theless true ; and, before five minutes of such a lesson had 
 elapsed, I have seen the children wrought up to an excitement 
 proportionally intense, hanging upon the teacher's lips, catching 
 every word he says, and evincing great elation or depression 
 of spirits as they had or had not succeeded in following his 
 instructions. So I have seen the same rhetorical vehemence 
 on the part of the teacher, and the same interest and animation 
 on the part of the pupils, during a lesson on the original sounds 
 of the letters ; that is, the difference between the long and 
 the short sound of a vowel, or the different ways of opening 
 the mouth in sounding the consonants & and p. This zeal of the 
 teacher enkindles the scholars. He charges them with his own 
 electricity to the point of explosion. Such a teacher has no 
 idle, mischievous, whispering children around him, nor any 
 occasion for the rod. He does not make desolation of all the 
 active and playful impulses of childhood, and call it peace ; nor, 
 to secure stillness among his scholars, does he find it necessary 
 to ride them with the nightmare of fear. I rarely saw a 
 teacher put questions with his lips alone. He seems so much 
 interested in his subject (though he might have been teaching 
 the same lesson for the hundredth or five hundredth time), that 
 his whole body is in motion, eyes, arms, limbs, all contribut- 
 ing to the impression he desires to make ; and, at the end of 
 an hour, both he and his pupils come from the work all glow- 
 ing with excitement. 
 
 Suppose a lawyer in one of our courts were to plead an im- 
 portant cause before a jury, but instead of standing and extem- 
 porizing, and showing by his gestures, and by the energy and 
 ardor of his whole manner, that he felt an interest in his theme, 
 instead of rising with his subject, and corruscating with flashes 
 of genius and wit, he should plant himself lazily down in a 
 chair, read from some old book which scarcely a member of the 
 panel could fully understand, and, after droning away for an 
 hour, should leave them, without having distinctly impressed
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 355 
 
 their minds with one fact, or led them to form one logical con- 
 clusion ; would it be any wonder if he left half of them joking 
 with each other, or asleep? would it be any wonder pro- 
 vided he were followed on the other side by an advocate of 
 brilliant parts, of elegant diction, and attractive manner, by one 
 who should pour sunshine into the darkest recesses of the case 
 if he lost not only his own reputation, but the cause of his 
 client also? 
 
 These incitements and endearments of the teacher, this per- 
 sonal ubiquity, as it were, among all the pupils in the class, 
 prevailed much more as the pupils were younger. Before the 
 older classes, the teacher's manner became calm and didactic. 
 The habit of attention being once formed, nothing was left for 
 subsequent years or teachers but the easy task of maintaining 
 it. Was there ever such a comment as this on the practice of 
 hiring cheap teachers because the school is young, or incompe- 
 tent ones because it is backward? 
 
 In Prussia and in Saxony, as well as in Scotland, the power 
 of commanding and retaining the attention of a class is held 
 to be a sine qua non in a teacher's qualifications. If he has not 
 talent, skill,- vivacity, or resources of anecdote and wit, suffi- 
 cient to arouse and retain the attention of his pupils during the 
 accustomed period of recitation, he is deemed to have mistaken 
 his calling, and receives a significant hint to change his voca- 
 tion. 
 
 Take a group of little children to a toy-shop, and witness 
 their outburstiug eagerness and delight. They need no stim- 
 ulus of badges or prizes to arrest or sustain their attention ; 
 they need no quickening of their faculties by rod or ferule. 
 To the exclusion of food and sleep, they will push their inqui- 
 ries, imtil shape, color, quality, use, substance, both external 
 and internal, of the objects, are exhausted ; and each child will 
 want the show-man wholly to himself. But in all the bound- 
 less variety and beauty of Nature's work ; in that profusion and 
 prodigality of charms with which the Creator has adorned and 
 enriched every part of his creation ; in the delights of affection ;
 
 356 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 in the ecstatic joys of benevolence ; in the absorbing interest 
 which an unsophisticated conscience instinctively takes in all 
 questions of right and wrong, in all these, is there not as 
 much to challenge and command the attention of a little child 
 as in the curiosities of a toy-shop ? When as much of human 
 art and ingenuity has been expended upon teaching as upon 
 toys, there will be less difference between the cases. 
 
 The third circumstance I mentioned above was the beautiful 
 relation of harmony and affection which subsisted between 
 teacher and pupils. I cannot say that the extraordinary fact I 
 have mentioned was not the result of chance or accident. Of 
 the probability of that, others must judge. I can only say, that, 
 during all the time mentioned, I never saw a blow struck, I 
 never heard a sharp rebuke given, I never saw a child in tears, 
 nor arraigned at the teacher's bar for any alleged misconduct. 
 On the contrary, the relation seemed to be one of duty first, 
 and then affection, on the part of the teacher ; of affection first, 
 and then duty, on the part of the scholar. The teacher's man- 
 ner was better than parental ; for it had a parent's tenderness 
 and vigilance without the foolish dotings or indulgences to 
 which parental affection is prone. I heard no child ridiculed, 
 sneered at, or scolded, for making a mistake. On the contrary, 
 whenever a mistake was made, or there was a want of prompt- 
 ness in giving a reply, the expression of the teacher was that 
 of grief and disappointment, as though there had been a fail- 
 ure, not merely to answer the question of a master, but to 
 comply with the expectations of a friend. No child was dis- 
 concerted, disabled, or bereft of his senses, through fear. Nay, 
 generally, at the ends of the answers, the teacher's practice is 
 to encourage him with the exclamation, " good," " right," 
 " wholly right," &c., or to check him with his slowly and 
 painfully articulated " no ; " and this is done with a tone of 
 voice that marks every degree of phis and minus in the scale of 
 approbation or regret. When a difficult question has been put 
 to a young child which tasks all his energies, the teacher 
 approaches him with a mingled look of concern and encour-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 357 
 
 agement ; he stands before him, the light and shade of hope 
 and fear alternately crossing his countenance ; he lifts his 
 arms and turns his body, as a bowler who has given a wrong 
 direction to his bowl will writhe his person to bring the ball 
 back upon its track ; and finally, if the little wrestler with 
 difficulty triumphs, the teacher felicitates him upon his success, 
 perhaps seizes and shakes him by the hand in token of con- 
 gratulation ; and when the difficulty has been really formida- 
 ble, and the effort triumphant, I have seen the teacher catch up 
 the child in his arms and embrace him, as though he were not 
 able to contain his joy. At another time, I have seen a 
 teacher actually clap his hands with delight at a bright reply ; 
 and all this has been done so naturally and so unaffectedly as 
 to excite no other feeling in the residue of the children than a 
 desire, by the same means, to win the same caresses. What 
 person worthy of being called by the name, or of sustaining the 
 sacred relation of a parent, would not give any thing, bear any 
 thing, sacrifice any thing, to have his children, during eight or 
 ten years of the period of their childhood, surrounded by cir- 
 cumstances, and breathed upon by sweet and humanizing influ- 
 ences, like these? 
 
 I mean no disparagement of our own teachers by the remark 
 I am about to make. As a general fact, these teachers are as 
 good as public opinion has demanded ; as good as the public 
 sentiment has been disposed to appreciate ; as good as public 
 liberality has been ready to reward ; as good as the preliminary 
 measures taken to qualify them would authorize us to expect. 
 But it was impossible to put down the questionings of my own 
 mind, whether a visitor could spend six weeks in our own 
 schools without ever hearing an angry word spoken, or seeing 
 a blow struck, or witnessing the flow of tears? 
 
 In the Prussian schools, I observed the fair operation and 
 full result of two practices which I have dwelt upon with great 
 repetition and urgency at home. One is, when hearing a class 
 recite, always to u>k the question before naming the scholar 
 who is to give the answer. The question being first asked, all
 
 358 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the children are alert ; for each one knows that he is liable to 
 be called upon for the reply. On the contrary, if the scholar 
 who is expected to answer is first named, and especially if the 
 scholars are taken in succession, according to local position, 
 that is, in the order of their seats or stations, then the atten- 
 tion of all the rest has a reprieve until their turns shall come. 
 In practice, this designation of the answerer before the question 
 is propounded operates as a temporary leave of absence or fur- 
 lough to all the other members of the class. 
 
 The other point referred to is that of adjusting the ease or 
 difficulty of the questions to the capacity of the pupil. A child 
 should never have any excuse or occasion for making a mistake ; 
 nay, at first he should be most carefully guarded from the fact, 
 and especially from the consciousness, of making a mistake. 
 The questions should be ever so childishly simple, rather than 
 that the answers should be erroneous. No expense of time 
 can be too great, if it secures the habit and the desire of ac- 
 curacy. Hence a false answer should be an event of the rarest 
 occurrence, one to be deprecated, to be looked upon with 
 surprise and regret, and almost as an offence. Few things can 
 have a worse effect upon a child's character than to set down 
 a row of black marks against him at the end of every lesson. 
 
 The value of this practice of adjusting questions to the 
 capacities and previous attainments of the pupils cannot be 
 over-estimated. The opposite course necessitates mistakes, 
 habituates and hardens the pupils to blundering and uncertain- 
 ty, disparages the value of correctness in their eyes, and what 
 is a consequence as much to be lamented as any gives plausi- 
 bility to the argument iu favor of emulation as a means of 
 bringing children back to the habit of accuracy from which 
 they have been driven. Would the trainer of horses deserve 
 any compensation, or have any custom, if the first draughts 
 which he should impose upon the youug animals were beyond 
 their ability to move? 
 
 The first of the above-uamed practices can be adopted by 
 every teacher immediately, and whatever his degree of com-
 
 REPORT FOB 1843. 359 
 
 petency in other respects may be. The last improvement can 
 only be fully effected when the teacher can dispense with all 
 text-books, and can teach and question from a full mind only. 
 The case is hopeless where a conspiracy against the spread of 
 knowledge has been entered into between an author who com- 
 piles, and a teacher who uses, a text-book in which the ques- 
 tions to be put are all prepared and printed. 
 
 In former reports, I have dwelt at length upon the expediency 
 of employing female teachers to a greater extent in our schools. 
 Some of the arguments iu favor of this change have been, the 
 greater intensity of the parental instinct in the female sex, 
 their natural love of the society of children, and the superior 
 gentleness and forbearance of their dispositions, all of which 
 lead them to mildness rather than severity, to the use of hope 
 rather than of fear as a motive of action, and to the various 
 arts of encouragement, rather than to annoyances and compul- 
 sion, in their management of the young. These views have been 
 responded to and approved by almost all the school-committee 
 men in the State ; and, within the last few years, the practice 
 of the different districts has been rapidly conforming to this 
 theory. I must now say that those views are calculated only 
 lor particular meridians. In those parts of Germany which I 
 have seen, they would not be understood. No necessity for 
 them could be perceived. There, almost all teachers, for the 
 youngest children as well as for the oldest, are men. Two or 
 three times, I saw a female teacher in a private school ; but 
 none in a public, unless for teaching knitting, needle-work, &c. 
 Yet, in these male teachers, there was a union of gentleness 
 and firmness that left little to be desired. 
 
 Still, into almost every German school into which I entered, 
 I inquired whether corporal punishment were allowed or used, 
 and I was uniformly answered in the affirmative. But it was 
 further said, that although all teachers had liberty to use it, yet 
 cases of its occurrence were very rare, and these cases were 
 confined almost wholly to young scholars. Until the teacher 
 had time to establish the relation of affection between himself
 
 360 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 and the new-comer into his school ; until he had time to create 
 that attachment which children always feel towards any one 
 who, day after day, supplies them with novel and pleasing 
 ideas, it was occasionally necessary to restrain and punish 
 them. But, after a short time, a love of the teacher and a love 
 of knowledge become a substitute how admirable a one ! for 
 punishment. When I asked my common question of Dr. Vogel 
 of Leipsic, he answered, that it was still used in the schools of 
 which he had the superintendence. " But," added he, u thank 
 God, it is used less and less ; and, when we teachers become 
 fully competent to our work, it will cease altogether." 
 
 To the above I may add, that I found all the teachers, whom 
 I visited, alive to the subject of improvement. They had 
 libraries of the standard works on education, works of which 
 there are such great numbers in the German language. Every 
 new book of any promise was eagerly sought after ; and I 
 uniformly found the educational periodicals of the day upon 
 the tables of the teachers. From the editor of one of these 
 periodicals, I learned that more than thirty of this description 
 are printed in Germany, and that the obscurest teacher in the 
 obscurest village is usually a subscriber to one or more. 
 
 A feeling of deep humiliation overcame me as I contrasted 
 this state of things with that in my own country, where, of all 
 the numerous educational periodicals which have been under- 
 taken within the last twenty years, only two, of any length of 
 standing, still survive. All the others have failed through the 
 indifference of teachers and the apathy of the public. One of 
 the remaining two that conducted by F. Dwight, Esq., of 
 Albany, X.Y. would probably have failed ere this, had not 
 the legislature of the State generously come to its rescue, by 
 subscribing for twelve thousand copies, one to be sent to each 
 district school in that great State. The other paper, as it is 
 well known, has never re-imbursed to its editor his actual ex- 
 penses in conducting it. 
 
 The extensive range and high grade of instruction which so 
 many of the German youth are enjoying, and these noble
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 301 
 
 qualifications on the part of their instructors, are the natural 
 and legitimate result of their seminaries for teachers. Without 
 the latter, the former never could have been, any more than 
 any effect without its cause. Although " the first regular sem- 
 inai-y for teachers " (see Dr. Bache's report, page 222) " was 
 established at Stettin in Pomerania in 1735," yet it was not 
 until within the last quarter of a century, and especially since 
 the general pacification of Europe, that the system has made 
 such rapid advances towards perfection. And so powerfully 
 has this system commended itself to all enlightened men, that 
 not only have these seminaries for teachers been constantly in- 
 creasing in Prussia, in Saxony, and in the States of the west 
 and south-west of Germany, but most of the enlightened gov- 
 ernments of Europe have followed the example. Out of Prus- 
 sia, the plan was first adopted in Holland. The celebrated 
 normal school of Mr. Prinsen was established at Haarlem, in 
 1816 ; and it is now acknowledged by all, that common-school 
 education has been reformed and immeasurably advanced 
 throughout the whole of that enlightened country by the 
 influence of this school. 
 
 When that great governmental measure for the establishment 
 of common schools throughout France was adopted in 1833, 
 one of its main features was the creation of normal schools. 
 At these institutions, young men are not only educated, but 
 gratuitously maintained ; they enjoy certain civil privileges, 
 are exempted from military service, and, if they acquit them- 
 selves worthily, they are certain of an appointment as a school- 
 teacher at the end of their course. 
 
 It is a fact most interesting in itself, and worthy to be cited 
 as one of the proofs of the advancement (however slow) of 
 the race, that the normal school now in successful operation at 
 Versailles occupies the very site some of its buildings are 
 the very buildings, and its beautiful grounds the very grounds- 
 which were the dog-kennels of Louis XIV. and his royal suc- 
 cessors.* 
 
 * A fact kindred to the one mentioned in the text is, that, at Florence, an edi- 
 fice once used by the Inquisition is now occupied by an infant school. How dif-
 
 362 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Scotland, so long and so justly celebrated among the coun- 
 tries of Europe for the superior education of its people, was 
 not slow to discover the advantages of schools for the prepara- 
 tion of teachers. It has now one such school at Edinburgh, 
 and one at Glasgow, besides the Madras College at St. An- 
 drew's, which exercises the double function of giving a classi- 
 cal education, and of preparing teachers for schools. 
 
 Under the enlightened administration of the National Board 
 of Education for Ireland, a normal school has been established 
 at Dublin, and placed upon the most liberal basis.* Excellent 
 buildings with large and beautiful yards and play-grounds are 
 provided for it in the very heart of the city. Here hundreds of 
 the poor children are in constant attendance, to whom instruc- 
 tion is given, in part by professional teachers, and in part by 
 the pupils of the normal school. The normal pupils reside at a 
 place called Glasnevin, a little way out of the city. Here they 
 have a farm, which is conducted by a scientific agriculturist. 
 When not engaged at the school in the city, the pupils are oc- 
 cupied on the farm. At this normal school, none but actual 
 teachers are received. They leave their own schools, and come 
 from all parts of Ireland to receive instruction here. Their 
 whole maintenance tuition, board, lodging is gratuitous; 
 and a certain sum is secured to them annually on their return 
 to their schools. More than a thousand teachers have already 
 availed themselves of the benefits of this noble charity. 
 
 Though the government of England has declined to follow 
 the example of all the enlightened nations of Europe, yet pri- 
 vate individuals and societies are striving to remedy, to some 
 extent, the consequences of this neglect. A normal school 
 established under the auspices of that enlightened educationist, 
 Mr. Kay Shuttleworth, is now in successful operation at Bat- 
 tersea ; and the Church party have recently purchased and fitted 
 up, at an expense of a hundred thousand dollars, a normal 
 school at Chelsea, near London. 
 
 ferent those uses I A dog-kennel and a normal school I a pandemonium and an 
 infant school I 
 
 * Lord Morpeth gave 1,000 towards establi>Iiin<? this school.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 363 
 
 After the revolution of 1830 which separated Belgium from 
 Holland, the former country neglected its schools ; and, since 
 that period, it seems to be acknowledged on all hands that the 
 education of the Belgian people has been rapidly retrograding. 
 But, by virtue of a recent law (Sept. 23, 1842), an entire 
 school system is now organizing for that country. Under the 
 new order of things, there are to be two normal schools, one 
 at Lierre in the Province of Antwerp, the other at Nivelles in 
 the Province of Brabant. 
 
 Even at St. Petersburg, in Russia, says Professor Stowe, 
 " a model school for the education of teachers of every grade, 
 and for all parts of the empire," has been established. Thus 
 it appears that almost every member of the great European 
 family of nations, which possesses any claims to be called en- 
 lightened or civilized, has looked with favor upon what may be 
 considered one of the greatest of all modern instrumentalities 
 for the improvement of the race ; and has either founded this 
 class of institutions by the direct authority and endowment of 
 the government itself, or has allowed and encouraged the same 
 thing to be done by the liberal and philanthropic portion of its 
 people. One empire alone has signalized its name by an oppo- 
 site course. That empire is Austria. Although the Austrian 
 government maintains what it calls a system of schools, yet 
 they are schools which set metes and bounds, on all sides, to 
 the development of the human faculties ; although it prepares a 
 few teachers, yet it is the office of these teachers to lop and 
 prune the common mind, and not to develop it ; and when, dur- 
 ing the very year previous to my visit, in a part of that empire 
 bordering upon the kingdom of Saxony, across whose fron- 
 tier a little of the light and genial warmth of education had 
 been reflected, a few of the more enlightened subjects of that 
 arbitrary power applied to it for liberty to establish a normal 
 school within their own province, and offered to supply, gratu- 
 itously, the money requisite for the purpose, both the applica- 
 tion and the offer were rejected with indignity. Austria, im- 
 penetrable Austria, over which the black horizon of despotism
 
 364 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 shuts down like a cover, excluding, as far as possible, all 
 light, intelligence, and knowledge, Austria, true to the base 
 and cowardly instincts of ignorance and bigotry, disallows the 
 establishment of a free normal school for the improvement of 
 its people, and spurns the proffered munificence of the noble 
 benefactors who would endow it ! 
 
 SCHOOL-INSPECTORS. 
 
 The extraordinary system of measures by which the Prussian 
 schools have been elevated, and are now sustained, would not 
 be understood without taking into view the office and character 
 of the school-inspectors. The kingdom is divided into circles, 
 or districts ; and, for each one of these, there is one or more 
 school commissioners or inspectors. These officers have some 
 duties like those of our town school-committees ; but their 
 functions more nearly resemble those of the deputy superin- 
 tendents appointed for each county in the State of New York, 
 the latter being required by law to visit and examine all the 
 schools in their respective counties, summer and winter, and 
 make report of their condition to the State superintendent. 
 
 By visiting schools, attending examinations, and by personal 
 introduction, I saw many of this class of magistrates. They 
 had evidently been selected from among the most talented and 
 educated men in the community. They were such men as 
 would here be appointed as presidents or professors of colleges, 
 judges of the higher courts, or called to other civil stations 
 for which talent, attainment, and character are deemed essen- 
 tial prerequisites. The office is one both of honor and emolu- 
 ment. 
 
 It is easy to see how efficient such a class of officers must 
 have been in bringing up teachers to a high standard of quali- 
 fications at the beginning ; and in creating, at last, a self- 
 inspired, self-improving spirit, among them. If examiners, 
 inspectors, school-committees, or by whatever other name 
 they may be called, know little of geography, grammar,
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 365 
 
 arithmetic, or the art of reading, the candidate who presents 
 himself before them for examination will feel no need of 
 knowing more than they do ; and a succession of ignorant and 
 incompetent candidates will be sure to apply for schools in 
 towns which have ignorant examiners. The whole Prussian 
 system impressed me with a deep sense of the vast difference in 
 the amount of general attainment and talent devoted to the 
 cause of popular education in that country as compared with 
 any other country or state I had ever seen. I must refer to 
 other sources of information in regard to the municipal or 
 parochial supervision of the schools ; and can only observe, that 
 over all these intermediate functionaries is the Minister of 
 Public Instruction. This officer is a member of the king's 
 council. He takes rank with the highest officers in the govern- 
 ment, sits at the council-board of the nation with the minister 
 of state, of war, of finance, &c. ; and his honors and emolu- 
 ments are equal to theirs. He has no merely clerical duties to 
 perform ; and, being relieved from all official drudgery, he can 
 devote his time and his talents to the higher duties of his 
 department. Such also has been the case in France since the 
 late organization of their system of public instruction. 
 
 In justice to Prussia also, and as one of the explanations of 
 the remarkable phenomena presented by her schools, the fact 
 should not be omitted, that, before establishing her own school- 
 system, she commissioned agents to visit other countries to 
 examine into theirs, in order that her own path might be illu- 
 minated by all the light that could be reflected upon it from 
 other parts of the world. 
 
 SCHOOL-ATTENDANCE. 
 
 One of the most signal features of the school-system of 
 Prussia and of many of the neighboring States is the univer- 
 sality of the children's attendance. After a child has arrived 
 at the legal age for attending school, whether he be the child 
 of noble or of peasant, the only two absolute grounds of
 
 366 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 exemption from attendance are sickness and death. The 
 German language has a word for which we have no equivalent 
 either in language or in idea. The word is used in reference 
 to children, and signifies due to the school ; that is, when the 
 legal age for going to school arrives, the right of the school to 
 the child's attendance attaches, just as, with us, the right of a 
 creditor to the payment of a note or bond attaches on the day 
 of its maturity. If a child, after having been once enrolled as 
 a member of the school, absents himself from it, or if, after 
 arriving at the legal age, he is not sent there by his parents, a 
 notice in due form is sent to apprise them of the delinquency. 
 If the child is not then forthcoming, a summons follows. 
 The parent is cited before the court ; and if he has no excuse, 
 and refuses compliance, the child is taken from him, and sent to 
 school, the father to prison. 
 
 From a pamphlet published by a director of the schools in 
 Halle, I translate the following forms of notices and sum- 
 monses, in order to give a more vivid idea of the manner in 
 which this business is conducted : 
 
 (Notice from the Teacher to the Parent.) 
 
 We miss from the class since , without having received any inti- 
 mation of the reasons of absence. We request you, therefore, to indorse 
 the cause of absence on the back of this ticket, and to send your child (or 
 ward) to school again. 
 HALLE, 
 
 If the offence of absence without excuse is continued or is 
 repeated, the register of the school is exhibited to the school- 
 director, who sends the following summons to the parent : 
 
 To , 
 
 We now present to you the list of school-absences through the police. 
 
 Your is found upon it. If you do not wish to be informed against, 
 
 present yourself, at the latest, between the hours of and to the 
 
 undersigned, with your excuses. 
 HALLE, 
 
 If a valid excuse is not now forthcoming, the school-director 
 gives information of the case to the school-inspector, who cites
 
 REPORT FOB 1843. 367 
 
 the delinquent parent before a magistrate by the following 
 warrant, which is put into the hands of a police-officer to 
 be served : 
 
 arc hereby called upon to appear on at to be tried for the 
 
 neglected school-attendance of your child. 
 
 HALLE, (Signed) , Sdwol-Inspcctor. 
 
 I had frequent conversations with school-teachers and school- 
 officers respecting this compulsory attendance of the children. 
 From these sources, I gathere d the information, that, with one 
 exception, there was very little complaint about it, or opposi- 
 tion to it. Were it not that some of the children are compelled 
 to receive instruction in a religious creed from which their 
 parents dissent, there would rarely be a murmur of complaint 
 in the community. The children are so fond of the school, 
 the benefits of public instruction are now so universally ac- 
 knowledged, and the whole public sentiment has become so 
 conformed to the practice, that I believe there is quite as little 
 complaint (excepting on account of the invasion of religious 
 freedom before referred to) under the rigorous system of 
 Prussia as under our lax one. One school-officer, of whom I 
 inquired whether this enforced school-attendance were accept- 
 able and popular, replied, that the people did not know any 
 other way, and that all the children were born with an innate 
 idea of going to school. 
 
 It should be added, however, that parents are not obliged to 
 send their children to a public school ; if they prefer it, the 
 children may be sent to a private school : but they must be 
 sent to some one. All teachers, however, of private as well as 
 of public schools, must submit to an examination, and have a 
 certificate of qualification from the government officer. 
 
 A very erroneous idea prevails with us, that this enforce- 
 ment of school-attendance is the prerogative of despotism alone. 
 I believe it is generally supposed here that such compulsion is 
 not merely incompatible with, but impossible in, a free or elec- 
 tive government. This is a great error. With the exception
 
 368 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of Austria (including Bohemia) and Prussia, almost all the 
 other States of Germany have now constitutional governments. 
 Many of them have an upper and lower house of assembly, 
 like our Senate and House of Representatives. Whoever will 
 attend the Parliament of Saxony, for instance, will witness as 
 great freedom of debate as in any country in the world ; and 
 no law can be passed but by a majority of the representatives, 
 chosen by the people themselves. In the first school I visited, 
 in Saxony, I heard a lesson " On Government," in which all 
 the great privileges secured to the Saxon people by their con- 
 stitution were enumerated ; and both teacher and pupils con- 
 trasted their present free condition with that of some other 
 countries, as well as with that of their own ancestors, in a 
 spirit of congratulation and triumph. The elective franchise 
 in this and in several of the other States of Germany is more 
 generally enjoyed, that is, the restrictions upon it are less, than 
 in some of the States of our own Union. And yet in Saxony, 
 years after the existence of this constitution, and when no law 
 could be passed without the assent of the people's representa- 
 tives in Parliament assembled, a general code of school laws 
 was enacted, from the 143d section of which I translate the 
 following. The title is, 
 
 UPON NEGLECT OF SCHOOL-ATTENDANCE. "1st. In every parish 
 where there is a school-union, there shall be a school-messenger. In large 
 parishes which are divided into many school-districts, every school shall 
 have a particular messenger, besides one for every school-district. 
 
 " 2d. Excepting on the common vacations, and on those weeks and days 
 when there is no school, the school-messenger must ask the teacher, on 
 every school-day, after the school-hours, what children have been absent 
 without an adequate excuse. 
 
 " 3d. In places where there is but one school, the school-messenger must 
 ask this question at least twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and 
 require an account of the last three days. 
 
 "4th. The next morning, not later than an hour before, the beginning 
 of the morning school, the school-messenger of every place must go to the 
 parents of the absent and unexcused child, and demand him for the school, 
 or else the reason for his absence. For every such visit, the parent must give 
 the messenger six pfennings.
 
 EEPORT FOR 1843. 369 
 
 " 5th. If a child does not come after this demand, but remains away 
 unexcused for two days, the school-messenger must take him on the third 
 day, and conduct him to the school. The fee from the parents shall be one 
 groschen. 
 
 " 6th. A child of a place where there is but one school, who does not 
 come on the Monday or Thursday after the visit of the school-messenger, 
 and remains unexcused, also if he stays away six days without adequate 
 excuse, must be taken by the messenger and carried to the school ; and the 
 fee from the parents shall be two groschen. 
 
 " 7th. If the child stays from the school, with the knowledge of its 
 parents, after being thus carried to it by the messenger, measures for pun- 
 ishment must be taken. 
 
 " 8th. If the messenger cannot collect his fees, he must apply to the 
 magistrates, whose duty it is to coerce the payment. 
 
 " 9th. If the parents are actually too poor to pay the same, the magis- 
 trates must demand payment quarterly from the school-chest. 
 
 " 10th. The magistracy must lend their assistance to the messenger, if, 
 without good reason, he is prevented from taking the child to school, or if 
 he is improperly treated while executing the duties of his office." 
 
 In many of the German States, the anniversaries of the date 
 of their constitution are celebrated by fetes and shows, by din- 
 ners and speeches, as we celebrate our great national festival, 
 the Fourth of July ; and yet, in these States, by virtue of laws 
 which the free representatives of a free people have enacted, 
 every child is compelled to attend school 1 
 
 HIGHER SCHOOLS. 
 
 This account of the people's schools would be very imperfect 
 did I omit to mention one or two other classes among them, 
 corresponding in grade with our town-schools, or public high- 
 schools. These are the real and burgher schools, which hold 
 the same relation to the elementary schools that our town- 
 schools hold to those of the districts. 
 
 The Royal Real School of Berlin the first in point of date 
 was formed as early as 1747 by Counsellor Hecker. The 
 epithet "real" is used in contradistinction from "learned." 
 At the time when this school was established, Latin and Greek 
 were the exclusive objects of study in the learned schools ; and 
 
 24
 
 370 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the avowed purpose in founding this was, that " not mere 
 words should be taught to the pupils, but realities, explana- 
 tions being made to them from models and plans, and of sub- 
 jects calculated to be useful in after-life." The establishment 
 of this class of schools was the commencement of a great educa- 
 tional reform. Even now, the Germans could afford to barter 
 any quantity of classical annotations, or of home-made Latin 
 and Greek prose or verse, for enough of mechanical skill to 
 make a good household utensil, a good farming-tool, or a good 
 machine. Doubtless, too, their best students would excogitate 
 more philosophically by day if they knew enough to sleep more 
 physiologically at night ; but this knowledge Latin and Greek 
 do not give. 
 
 The special design of the Burgher school is to prepare young 
 men to become citizens, that is, to qualify them for the trans- 
 action of such municipal or other public affairs as they may be 
 called upon to perform. The man whose duty it may be to 
 build bridges, to construct drains, to lay out streets or roads, to 
 erect public buildings, to pass ordinances for the establishment 
 or regulation of the police, and for the general administration 
 of city or county affairs, should have some special preparation 
 for duties so various and responsible ; and the city which fails 
 to educate those young men who are afterwards to perform 
 such duties in her behalf will find, in the end, that their mis- 
 takes, mismanagement, and want of economy, will cost a hun- 
 dred times more than the original outlay which would have 
 qualified them for such offices. In a country like ours, where 
 all the citizens not only elect to office, but are themselves eligi- 
 ble, if education does not fit the great body of the people for 
 the performance of these duties, it is clear that we must be con- 
 stantly putting valuable trusts into the hands of incompetent 
 trustees. 
 
 The above classes of schools are also schools for the useful 
 arts, manufactures, and commerce. In some of them, architect- 
 ure, engineering, mining, &c., are taught ; and the course of 
 studies is susceptible of being enlarged to any extent, until they 
 become complete polytechnic institutions.
 
 REPOET FOR 1843. 371 
 
 I was so fortunate as to arrive at Cologne pending an exami- 
 nation of its Burgher school. One day had already been spent ; 
 but I was present on the morning of the second, before the ex- 
 ercises commenced. A programme of the order of perform- 
 ances, accompanied by remarks and explanations on the course 
 of studies and the methods of instruction, had been prepared 
 for the use of examiners and visitors. It consisted of twenty- 
 four printed folio pages, a fact which shows the degree of atten- 
 tion devoted to the subject. The number and apparent stand- 
 ing and character of the visitors ratified the inference which 
 one would naturally draw from such a fact. From this pro- 
 gramme, it appeared that the subjects of examination were 
 religion ; the German (their native) language ; the French, 
 Latin, English, and Italian languages ; history, geography, 
 knowledge of Nature, arithmetic, and geometry ; drawing, 
 calligraphy, and singing, in all, thirteen branches. 
 
 I shall speak only of that part of the examination which I 
 heard. 
 
 In arithmetic, after a little time had been spent in expound- 
 ing the mere relations of numbers, the pupils gave an account 
 of the different weights and measures of the neighboring States ; 
 of the standard value of gold and silver as determined by the 
 laws of different nations ; of the current coins of all the nations 
 of Europe and of the United States of North America. They 
 were then required to change coins of one denomination and 
 country into those of another. After this they were examined 
 in electro-magnetism, having apparatus on which to try experi- 
 ments. A class of boys from thirteen to seventeen years of 
 age was then examined in the French and English languages. 
 During the exercise in French, both teacher and pupils spoke 
 >n French; and, during the exercise in English, both teacher and 
 pupils spoke in English. These exercises consisted in transla- 
 tion, parsing, and general remarks. The teacher's remarks on 
 the construction and genius of the English language would have 
 done credit to a professor in one of our colleges. A want of 
 time excluded examinations in Latin and Italian ; but all that
 
 372 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 I saw and heard was performed so well as to create an assur- 
 ance of ability to sustain an examination in any other branch 
 set down in the programme. After this came declamation in 
 three languages. In this exercise, I observed there was not a 
 single gesticulation, nor any symptom of an internal impulse 
 towards one. The lads took their station behind a table, which 
 they seized with both hands, and held steadfastly until the 
 close. 
 
 After the examination was completed, the head teacher occu- 
 pied half an hour in delivering an address, a part of which was 
 directed to the young meu who were about to leave the school, 
 and a part to parents and visitors on their duties to it.* 
 
 In many parts of the Continent, evening schools are kept, 
 which are attended by apprentices and others. In these schools, 
 all branches of useful knowledge are taught. In Paris, I have 
 seen men forty or fifty years of age in attendance, and diligently 
 studying the branches appropriate to their respective occupa- 
 tions. Such schools occupy the place, to some extent, of our 
 debating-clubs and lycenms. The school communicates knowl- 
 edge ; the debating-club and the lyceum suppose the actual 
 possession of knowledge. Where this knowledge does not 
 actually exist, is not the school preferable ? 
 
 In some of the German States, the law requires apprentices 
 to attend school a certain number of evenings in every week. 
 In one of these States, I was informed that complaint had been 
 made by the apprentices because they were deprived of the dis- 
 posal of their own time, and were obliged to defray the expense 
 of tuition at school out of their pocket-money. To obviate this 
 complaiut, the law was changed. All apprentices were still 
 
 * la a private school in Utrecht, composed of both masters and misses, I heard 
 a lesson in English history, conducted principally in the French language. During 
 the lesson, a boy was called to the blackboard, who traced down in a diagram 
 form, in a manner similar to the great historical charts to be found in Lavoisne's 
 Atlas, a regular succession of the English sovereigns, from the time of Edward 
 III. to the present Queen. How valuable and permanent must history be when 
 learned in this way ! 
 
 In this school, four languages, the German, Dutch, French, and English, were 
 spoken promiscuously by both teachers and pupils ; and each one of these languages 
 seemed to be struggling to obtain its share of attention.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 373 
 
 obliged to pay a tuition-fee ; but the government remitted the 
 payment in favor of those who attended, exacting it only of the 
 absentees. 
 
 In most, if not in all, the German cities which I visited, I 
 found Sunday schools in active operation. These are estab- 
 lished, not, as with us, for the purpose of giving moral or reli- 
 gious, but secular instruction. Their exercises consist mainly 
 in reading, writing, composition, arithmetic, geography, draw- 
 ing, and so forth. They are attended principally by appren- 
 tices, laborers, and others, whose age for attending the element- 
 ary schools has passed, and who are engaged, during the week- 
 days, in their respective industrial employments. 
 
 From what has been said, it will be observed that there is a 
 remarkable difference between the lads, or youth, of Prussia and 
 our own, in regard to the nature and character of the literary 
 exercises to which they betake themselves after leaving the 
 elementary schools. With us they attend the lyceum, the de- 
 bating-society, the political reading-room or news-room. There, 
 notwithstanding the excellent instruction they have already 
 received iu the school, they seek to enlarge and carry forward 
 their elementaiy knowledge by attending the evening school 
 and the Sunday school. Their course springs from the idea, 
 that further preliminary knowledge is to be acquired ; ours 
 from the idea, that sufficient preliminary knowledge has already 
 been obtained, sufficient to qualify them to enter upon the 
 business of life, sufficient for the decision of all social and 
 political questions. Before we give a decided preference to our 
 own course, would it not be well to inquire whether the suppo- 
 sition on which it proceeds is true ? 
 
 In Prussia, Saxony, and some other of the German States, 
 schools for further cultivation, as they are called (Fortbildung- 
 Schulen), are rapidly increasing. 
 
 Having brought to a close what I propose to say respecting 
 the spirit and the methods of instruction prevalent in the Ger- 
 man schools, perhaps it may not be wholly useless to others, 
 who may make a similar tour of exploration, if I add, that, after
 
 374 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 leaving the north of Prussia and the kingdom of Saxony, I 
 observed a slight falling-off, a declension, in the tone and con- 
 duct of the schools. This, however, was slight, until I ap- 
 proached the Rhine. But here, in the Grand Duchy of Nas- 
 sau, of Hesse Darmstadt, of Baden, and in the cities of Cob- 
 lentz, Cologne, and Dusseldorf, although the same general 
 system was everywhere iu operation, yet its body was not ani- 
 mated and informed by so active and zealous a soul. 
 
 The above view of the condition of the Prussian schools, and 
 of the degree of influence they exert upon the national charac- 
 ter, would be incomplete without a few general remarks. 
 
 The question is sometimes asked, why. with such a wide- 
 extended and energetic machinery for public instruction, the 
 Prussians, as a people, do not rise more rapidly in the scale of 
 civilization ; why the mechanical and useful arts remain among 
 them in such a half-barbarous condition ; why the people are 
 so sluggish and unenterprising in their character ; and, finally, 
 why certain national vices are not yet extirpated. 
 
 These questions may be readily answered. First. It is a 
 great defect in the People's schools of Prussia, that the children 
 leave them at so early an age. At fourteen, when the mind, 
 by blending its own reflections with the instructions of an ac- 
 complished teacher, is perhaps in the very best state for making 
 rapid advances, the child is withdrawn from school, and his 
 progress suddenly arrested. The subsequent instruction of the 
 evening school and the Sunday school reaches but a small part 
 of the rural population. 
 
 Secondly. There is a great dearth of suitable books for the 
 reading of the older children or younger men. Notwithstand- 
 ing the multitude of publications sent forth annually from the 
 prolific German brain, but very few of them are adapted to the 
 youthful mind ; and that great instrumentality for operating in 
 every place, however secluded or remote, and for elevating 
 every individual, however indigent or obscure, THE DISTRICT 
 SCHOOL LIBRARY, has hardly yet been heard of in the king- 
 dom. Hence there is a failure of mental nutriment on which
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 375 
 
 the common people can thrive. Whenever I mentioned our 
 own plan of school-libraries, it struck all, whether teachers, 
 school-officers, or friends of free and progressive institutions, 
 as one of the grand desiderata for carrying forward the public 
 mind in its career of improvement. I have the happiness to 
 believe that our course on this subject will not only diffuse 
 blessings by its direct agency at home, but will enlarge into a 
 wide circle of beneficence by the effect of its example abroad. 
 
 The Prussians have political newspapers ; but these are under 
 a rigorous censorship. There are but few of them, and their 
 size is very small. One of our mammoth sheets would nearly 
 supply a Prussian editor for a year. 
 
 Thirdly. But the most potent reason for Prussian backward- 
 ness and incompetency is this, Avhen the children come out 
 from the school, they have little use either for the faculties that 
 have been developed, or for the knowledge that has been ac- 
 quired. Their resources are not brought into demand ; their 
 powers are not roused and strengthened by exercise. Our 
 common phrases, " the active duties of life ; " " the responsi- 
 bilities of citizenship ; " " the stage, the career, of action ; " 
 " the obligations to posterity," would be strange-sounding 
 words in a Prussian ear. There, government steps in to take 
 care of the subject almost as much as the subject takes care of 
 his cattle. The subject has no officers to choose, no inquiry 
 into the character or eligibleness of candidates to make, no vote 
 to give. He has no laws to enact or abolish. He has no ques- 
 tions about peace or war, finance, taxes, tariffs, post-office, or 
 internal improvement, to decide or discuss. He is not asked 
 where a road shall be laid, or how a bridge shall be built, 
 although, in the one case, he has to perform the labor, and, in 
 the other, to supply the materials. His sovereign is born to 
 him. The laws are made for him. In war, his part is not to 
 declare it or to end it, but to fight, and be shot in it, and to pay 
 for it. The tax-gatherer tells him how much he is to pay. 
 The ecclesiastical authority plans a church which he must 
 build ; and his spiritual guide, who has been set over him by
 
 376 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 another, prepares a creed and a confession of faith all ready 
 for his signature. He is directed alike how he must obey his 
 king, and worship his God. Now, although there is a sleeping 
 ocean in the bosom of every child that is born into the world, 
 yet if no freshening, life-giving breeze ever sweeps across its 
 surface, why should it not repose in dark stagnation forever? 
 
 Many of our expensively-educated citizens will understand 
 too well what I mean, in saying, that when they came from the 
 schools, and entered upon the stage of life, they had a practical 
 education to begin. Though possessed of more lore than they 
 could recite, yet it was of a kind unavailable in mart or count- 
 ing-room ; and they still had the a, b, c of a business-educa- 
 tion to commence. What, then, must be the condition of a 
 people, to the great body of whom not even this late necessity 
 ever comes? 
 
 Besides, it was not until the beginning of the present century 
 that the Prussian peasantry were emancipated from a condition 
 of absolute vassalage. Who could expect that the spirit of a 
 nation, which centuries of despotism had benumbed and stupe- 
 fied, could at once resume its pristine vigor and elasticity? 
 
 Fourthly. As it respects the vices of the Prussians, the same 
 remark applies to them as to those of all the continental nations 
 of Europe, they are the vices of the sovereign, and of the 
 higher classes of society, copied by the lower without the dec- 
 orations which gilded them in their upper sphere. Mr. Laing 
 (the same author before referred to) says, 
 
 " Of all the virtues, that which the domestic family educa- 
 tion of both sexes most obviously influences that which 
 marks more clearly than any other the moral condition of a 
 society, the home state of moral and religious principles, the 
 efficiency of those principles in it, and the amount of that moral 
 restraint upon passion and impulses which it is the object of 
 education and knowledge to attain is undoubtedly female 
 chastity. 
 
 " Will any traveller, will any Prussian, say that this index- 
 virtue of the moral condition of a people is not lower in Prus- 
 sia than in almost any part of Europe ? "
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 377 
 
 " This," says Mr. Laing, " is a fact not to be denied, when 
 the fruits of this educational system may be appreciated in the 
 generation of the adults." Allowing the accusation to be true, 
 which, however, so far as it gives to Prussia a criminal pre- 
 eminence over many other Continental nations, may well be 
 questioned, and can any thing surpass the absurdity of ex- 
 pecting that a deep-seated vice of this description can be extir- 
 pated in a single age by the influence of any education, how- 
 ever perfect, or by any other human means of reform whatever? 
 It would be a revolution such as was never yet wrought in so 
 short a period, even by miracles ; no, not even under the Jew- 
 ish theocracy, when men looked to the Omnipotent himself for 
 the execution and the avengement of the laws. Could so fatal 
 a canker in the social body be so easily eradicated from it, the 
 criminality of sovereigns and of the high-born, of princes and 
 of nobles, would be infinitely less than it now is for spreading 
 so virulent a vice among the lower orders by the contagion of 
 their own example, or for allowing its existence by their neglect. 
 The vicious indulgences of the elevated descend through all 
 the grades of society beneath them ; and the bitterest drop in 
 the cup of their abominations is that which flows forward, and 
 pollutes the blood of generations yet unborn. Besides, what 
 man of conscientiousness, of an awakened moral sense, can 
 sympathize with denunciations levelled at the poor and igno- 
 rant, while those who dwell in high places and give the law to 
 society escape unrebuked? Before the pure spirit of justice, 
 the worst debaucheries and licentiousness that ever reeked in 
 the stews of Athens are less criminal than the amours and 
 obscenities of the gods on Olympus. Throughout the whole 
 history of mankind, the vices of the low have been only 
 vulgarized copies and editions of the profligacies of their social 
 superiors, the coarse penny prints of the illuminated and 
 voluptuous originals of kingly and courtly sensualism. 
 
 A proverb has now obtained currency in Prussia, which 
 explains the whole mystery of the relation between their schools 
 and their life. " THE SCHOOL is GOOD, THE WORLD is BAD."
 
 378 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The quiescence or torpidity of social life stifles the activity ex- 
 cited in the schoolroom. Whatever pernicious habits and cus- 
 toms exist in the community act as antagonistic forces against 
 the moral training of the teacher. The power of the govern- 
 ment presses upon the partially-developed faculties of the 
 youth as with a mountain's weight. Still, in knowledge and 
 in morality, in the intellect and in the conscience, there is an 
 expansive force which no earthly power can overcome. Though 
 rocks and mountains were piled upon it, its imprisoned might 
 will rend them asunder, and heave them from their bases, and 
 achieve for itself a sure deliverance. No one who witnesses 
 that quiet, noiseless development of mind which is now going 
 forward in Prussia, through the agency of its educational 
 institutions, can hesitate to predict that the time is not far dis- 
 tant when the people will assert their right to a participation in 
 their own government. The late king made a vow to his sub- 
 jects that he would give them a constitution. He survived a 
 quarter of a century to falsify his word, and at last went 
 down to his grave with the promise unredeemed. This was a 
 severer shock to his power than if he had lost half the wealth 
 of his realm. Thousands of his subjects do not hesitate now 
 to declare, that fidelity on his part was the only equivalent for 
 loyalty on theirs ; and standing in his mausoleum, amid the 
 costliest splendors of architecure and statuary, the marble 
 walls around covered with gilded inscriptions in honor of the 
 royal name, they interpolate a black line upon his golden 
 epitaph, and say, " He promised his people a constitution, but 
 violated his royal faith, and died forsworn." 
 
 Some suspicions are entertained that the present sovereign is 
 adverse to that mighty intellectual movement which is now so 
 honorably distinguishing Prussia from most of the nations in 
 Europe. Alike for the fame of the king, and the welfare of 
 humanity, it is to be hoped that these suspicions are groundless. 
 He has the power of gaining as enviable and lasting a renown 
 as any sovereign who ever sat upon an earthly throne. The 
 opportunity is before him, the materials are in his hands.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 379 
 
 Through a peaceful revolution by knowledge, he can save a 
 fiery revolution by blood. He can liberalize the institutions of 
 his people, elevate their condition, and continue to enlighten 
 their minds, until they shall become a luminary in the heart of 
 Europe, shedding its benignant beams upon surrounding na- 
 tions. One of his ancestors has been surnamed " the Great," 
 because he aggrandized his country in war, because he rav- 
 ished the population and seized the territory of other nations, 
 and added them to his own ; but this monarch may win a purer 
 and a nobler fame, not by the captives or the domain which 
 he shall take, by conquest or spoliation, from the nations around 
 him, but by the example and the enlightenment which he shall 
 be instrumental in giving both to contemporaries and to pos- 
 terity. 
 
 CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. 
 
 I have uniformly made inquiries respecting the use of cor- 
 poral punishment as a means of order and an incitement to 
 progress in schools. 
 
 I need not repeat what was said above (ante, pp. 35960) in 
 regard to corporal punishment in Germany. 
 
 In Holland, corporal punishment is obsolete. Several teach- 
 ers and school-officers told me there was a law prohibiting it 
 in all cases. Others thought it was only a universal practice 
 founded on a universal public opinion. The absence of the 
 Minister of Public Instruction, when I was at the Hague, pre- 
 vented my obtaining exact information on this interesting point. 
 But, whatever was the cause, corporal punishment was not used. 
 In cases of incorrigibleness, expulsion from school was the 
 remedy. 
 
 One of the school-magistrates in Amsterdam told me, that, 
 last year, about five thousand children were taught in the free 
 schools of that city. Of this number, from forty to fifty were 
 expelled for bad conduct. This would be about one per cent. 
 
 At Haarlem, Mr. De Vries told me he had kept the same 
 school for about twenty years, that its average number had
 
 380 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 been six hundred scholars, that not an instance of the infliction 
 of corporal punishment had occurred during the whole time, 
 and that two only (boys) had been expelled from it as hope- 
 lessly incorrigible. He added, that both those boys had been 
 afterwards imprisoned for crime. On seeing the manner of 
 Mr. De Vries, his modes of instruction, and the combined dig- 
 nity and affection with which he treated his pupils, I could 
 readily believe the statement. 
 
 The schools of Holland were remarkable for good order, 
 among the very best, certainly, which I have anywhere seen. 
 Nor does this arise from any predominance of phlegm in the 
 constitution, or any tameness of soul ; for the Dutch are cer- 
 tainly as high-toned and free-spirited a people as any in Eu- 
 rope. This fact may be read in their organization and natural 
 language, as well as learned from their history. 
 
 In Hamburg, I visited an institution of a novel character. 
 It was a punishment-school, or school-prison, a place of in- 
 struction and restraint for those children belonging to the 
 poor-schools of the city who commit any aggravated offence. 
 In Hamburg, many poor people receive assistance from the 
 city. One of the conditions of the succor is, that those who 
 receive it shall send their children to the schools provided for 
 them. If a child in these schools commits any trivial or ordi- 
 nary offence, he is punished in the school in the usual way. 
 But, if the transgression is gross, or if he persists in a course 
 of misconduct, he is sentenced by the competent authorities to 
 a prison, or punishment-school (Strafschule). Here he must go 
 at eight in the morning, and remain until eight in the evening. 
 A part of the day is spent in study, a part in work. I saw the 
 children picking wool. There were twenty-one boys in one 
 room, and eleven girls in another. The school was in the third 
 story of a building ; and near the schoolrooms were small and 
 wretched bed-rooms, where those whose sentence covered the 
 night, as it sometimes did, were compelled to sleep. 
 
 The children were usually sentenced to so many stripes, as 
 well as to so many days' confinement ; and the teacher kept a
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 381 
 
 book, as a jailer keeps a record of his prisoners, in which the 
 case of each child was recorded. At the expiration of the sen- 
 tence, the children return to the school whence they came. In- 
 stances of a second, and even of a third commitment sometimes 
 occur. 
 
 While I was stopping at the punishment-school, the hour of 
 dinner arrived. All the boys left their schoolroom for one of 
 the adjacent rooms, and all the girls for another. They ar- 
 ranged themselves in groups of four each, on the opposite sides 
 of a long table. A bowl of bean-porridge was set in the centre 
 of each group, and to each child was given a large, round, 
 coarse wooden spoon. The teacher entered a sort of pulpit, 
 and said grace, after which the children ate their homely meal. 
 There was very little of indecorous behavior, such as winking 
 or laughing in a clandestine manner ; but the sobriety appeared 
 to me to come more from fear than from repentance. One of 
 the rules was, that, during the twelve hours of daily confine- 
 ment, the children should have no communication with each 
 other ; but it happened here, as it has in many other cases 
 where all communication is interdicted, that it is carried on 
 clandestinely, or by stealth, an evil much greater than any 
 which can result from allowed intercourse. 
 
 The highest tension of authority which I anywhere wit- 
 nessed was in the Scotch schools. There, as a general rule, 
 the criminal code seemed to include mistakes in recitation as 
 well as delinquencies in conduct ; and, where these were com- 
 mitted, nothing of the " law's delay " intervened between 
 offence and punishment. If a spectator were not vigilant, there 
 might be an erroneous answer by a pupil, and a retributive 
 blow on his head by the teacher's fist, so instantaneous and 
 so nearly simultaneous as to elude observation. Still the bond 
 of attachment between teacher and pupils seemed very strong. 
 It was, however, a bond founded quite as much on awe as on 
 simple affection. The general character of the nation was 
 distinctly visible in the schools. Could the Scotch teacher add 
 something more of gentleness to his prodigious energy and
 
 382 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 vivacity, and were the general influences which he imparts to 
 his pupils modified in one or two particulars, he would become 
 a model teacher for the world. 
 
 In England, as there is no national system, nor any authori- 
 tative or prevalent public opinion towards which individual 
 practice naturally gravitates, a great diversity prevails on this 
 head. In some schools, talent and accomplishment have wholly 
 superseded corporal punishment ; iu others, it is the all-in-all 
 of the teacher's power, whether for order or for study. I was 
 standing one day, in conversation with an assistant teacher, in 
 a school consisting of many hundred children, when, observing 
 that he held in his hand a lash or cord of Indian rubber, 
 knotted towards the end, I asked him its use. Instead of 
 answering my question in words, he turned round to a little 
 girl sitting near by, perfectly quiet, with her arms, which were 
 bare, folded before her and lying upon her desk, and struck 
 such a blow upon one of them as raised a great red wale, or 
 stripe, almost from elbow to wrist. 
 
 In some of the proprietary and endowed schools of England, 
 the practice of solitary confinement still prevails. In large 
 establishments at Birmingham, Liverpool, &c., I saw cells, or 
 solitary chambers, four or five feet square, for the imprison- 
 ment of offenders. These were not for mere children, but for 
 young men. I have seen a lad fifteen or sixteen years of age. 
 dressed in a cap and gown, the scholastic uniform of Eng- 
 land, a prisoner in one of these apartments. 
 
 In some of the private establishments at Paris, an extent of 
 surveillance over the conduct of students prevails of which we 
 have no idea. This is intended to supersede the necessity of 
 punishment by taking away all opportunity for transgression. 
 Some of the private schools are subsidiary to the colleges, 
 that is, the master of the private school has the general charge 
 and superintendence of the students, maintains them at his 
 own house, instructs them himself, or by his assistants, at home, 
 but takes them daily to the college, where their lessons are 
 finally heard by professors. I attended, one morning, the
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 383 
 
 opening of the College Bourbon, in Paris. At eight o'clock, 
 the private teachers came, followed by their pupils marching in 
 procession. All entered a large square, or court, enclosed on 
 all sides, except the gateway, by the college-buildings. Soon 
 after, the roll of a drum was heard, at which all the students 
 arranged themselves in classes. At a second drum-beat, they 
 marched to their recitation-rooms. The teachers then returned 
 home ; but, at the end of the college-exercises, they were to be in 
 attendance again, to take back their charge in the same way as 
 they had conducted them thither. To us this would seem sin- 
 gular, because many of the students had already passed the age 
 which we call the age of discretion. By the invitation of one 
 of the teachers, I accompanied him home. The collegians 
 were only the older pupils in his school, and I wished to see 
 the rest of his establishment. It was laid out on a most liberal 
 scale as to play-grounds, schoolrooms, dormitories, kitchen, 
 &c., and was in an excellent condition of order and neatness. 
 The arrangement was such, that he could inspect all the play- 
 grounds while sitting in his study ; in this particular resem- 
 bling those prisons where all the wards can be inspected from 
 a central point. But this was not all. As I passed round to 
 see the several schoolrooms, I observed that a single pane 
 of glass had been set into the wall of each room, so that the 
 principal, or any one deputed by him, could inspect both the 
 class and its teacher withoi>t a moment's warning. This was 
 pointed out as one of the distinguishing excellences in the con- 
 struction of the rooms. It was stated also, that, in order to 
 save the younger from contamination by associating with the 
 older, there was not only an entire separation of them in the 
 schoolrooms, but also in the play-grounds and sleeping apart- 
 ments ; and it was added further, that if two brothers of differ- 
 ent ages, and belonging to different classes, should attend the 
 school at the same time, they \vould not be allo\ved to see each 
 other. I afterwards saw the same contrivances for inspection, 
 not only in other schools, but in the Royal College of Ver- 
 sailles, a very distinguished institution.
 
 384 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 I feel unable to decide whether, in such a state of society 
 and with such children, this piercing surveillance is not the 
 wisest thing that can be done ; but with us the question cer- 
 tainly arises, whether the cause of school morals would gain 
 more in the end by a closeness of inspection designed to pre- 
 vent the outflow of all natural action, or by allowing more 
 freedom of will, with a careful training of the conscience 
 beforehand, and a strict accountability for conduct after- 
 wards. 
 
 At all times and in all countries, the rule is the same, the 
 punishment of scholars is the complement of the proper treat- 
 ment of children by parents at home, and the competency of 
 the teacher in school. Where there is less on one side of the 
 equation, there must be more on the other. 
 
 EMULATION. 
 
 In the Prussian and Saxon schools, emulation is still used as 
 one of the motive-powers to study ; but I nowhere saw the 
 passion inflamed to an insupportable temperature. I was uni- 
 formly told that its employment was becoming less and less, 
 and that the best authorities throughout the country were now 
 discountenancing rather than encouraging it. Just in propor- 
 tion as the qualifications of teachers had improved, it had been 
 found less necessary to enlist this passion in their service ; and 
 as the great idea of education that of the formation of Chris- 
 tian character and habits had been more and more devel- 
 oped, emulation had been found an adverse, and not a favoring 
 influence. 
 
 France and Scotland are the two countries in Europe where 
 emulation between pupils, as one of the motive-powers to 
 study, is most vigorously plied. In France, the love of 
 approbation, of couspicuousness, of eclat, of whatever minis- 
 ters to the national passion of vanity, holds pre-eminence. In 
 Scotland, rivalry is more frequently stimulated by the hope of 
 reward.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 385 
 
 In one of the pensions, or boarding-schools, of Paris, I was 
 struck by the sight of a large number of portraits of young 
 men. These were hung around the walls of the principal's 
 room, which was a large apartment, three of whose sides were 
 nearly covered by them. They were the portraits of those 
 pupils of the school who had afterwards won prizes at a college- 
 examination. The name of the pupil, the year, and the sub- 
 ject-matter on which he had surpassed his competitors, were 
 inscribed respectively beneath the portraits. In the room of 
 the head of the Royal College at Versailles, I also saw the 
 portraits of those students of the college who had won prizes 
 at the university. This display, and the facts connected with 
 it, speak volumes in regard to the French character, and the 
 motive-powers under which not only the scholars, but the 
 nation works. A brief account of a single phasis of this sys- 
 tem, for it is reduced to a system, if not particularly inter- 
 esting, may be instructive. 
 
 The pensions, or boarding-schools, are equivalent to our 
 select or private schools. Their patronage depends upon their 
 reputation ; and that reputation is mainly graduated by the 
 number of distinguished scholars they send out. Hence to send 
 pupils to the college who gain prizes for scholarship brings 
 celebrity to the school, and emolument to the master. To 
 obtain talented boys, therefore, becomes a grand object with the 
 masters of the pensions. For this purpose, careful inquiries 
 are made, and sometimes agents are employed to search out 
 lads of promise, and bring them to the school. In some 
 instances, not only tuition, but the whole expense of board, 
 lodging, &c., is gratuitously furnished ; and, in extraordinary 
 cases, a pecuniary bounty beyond the whole expenses of the 
 pupil has been given. It may be said that this has a good 
 effect, because it searches out the latent talent of the country, 
 and suffers no genius to be lost through neglect. But here, as 
 everywhere else, the great question is, whether the principle 
 is right ; for no craft of man can circumvent the laws of Nature, 
 or make a bad motive supply the place or produce the results 
 25
 
 386 ANNUAL REPOETS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of a good one. The teachers do not supply these facilities, or 
 encourage this talent, from benevolence. It is speculation. It 
 is pecuniary speculation ; and, if they did not anticipate a richer 
 return for their outlay when invested in this manner than 
 when used in a legitimate way, they would not incur such 
 extraordinary trouble and risk. Hence they devote themselves 
 in an especial manner to the training of these prize-fighters, 
 while other pupils suffer a proportional neglect. The very 
 children, therefore, who are attracted to the school in conse- 
 quence of its celebrity, are defrauded of their share of attention, 
 in order that the reputation of the school, for which they have 
 been made victims, may induce others to join it, to be made 
 victims in their turn. Thus the system prospers by the evil it 
 works. There is the same ambition among the colleges to win 
 the prizes of the university. The day of examination, when 
 these prizes are awarded, is one of great pomp and ceremony. 
 The Minister of Public Instruction and other high official dig- 
 nitaries usually attend ; the king himself has sometimes been 
 present in person ; and it is a standing rule that the successful 
 competitors are invited to dine at the royal table. 
 
 Who that is conversant with the history of France does not 
 see how much of her poverty, her degradation, and her suffer- 
 ing, even in the proudest periods of her annals, is directly 
 attributable to this inordinate love of praise? and especially 
 how much of the humiliation of later times when the charm 
 of her invincibility was broken, and she was obliged to ransom 
 herself from the grasp of her conquerors by gold wrung from 
 her toiling millions is directly traceable to the predominance 
 in her character of this love of applause? It was this blind 
 passion for glory which created Bonaparte, and which sustained 
 him not less faithfully in all his vast schemes of wickedness 
 than in his plans for improvement. " Had the Romans not 
 been sheep, Caesar had not been a wolf." 
 
 Among all the nations of Christendom, our own is, perhaps, 
 second only to France in the love of approbation as a prompter 
 and guide to action. Ought we, then, to cultivate this passion,
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 387 
 
 already of inordinate growth, by the use of emulation in our 
 schools? 
 
 On a former page (ante, p. 281), when speaking of the 
 modes of instruction in the Scotch schools, I have incidentally 
 described the skill and power with which their teachers wield 
 the lash of emulation. I recur to the subject again, only to 
 observe, that this motive is not confined in Scotland to the 
 lower grades of schools, but bears equal sway in colleges and 
 universities ; that it is not employed in imparting secular 
 knowledge only, but is an instrument equally welcome and 
 made equally efficient in giving religious instruction. 
 
 Whatever one may think of employing such a motive in 
 matters purely intellectual, I cannot believe that a religious 
 lesson like the following of which I give an exact account 
 as I heard it will fail of shocking its hardiest defender : 
 
 Teacher. What sort of death was denounced against our first 
 parents for disobedience? 
 
 1st Pupil. Temporal death. 
 
 T. No (and pointing instantaneously to the second). 
 
 2d P. To die. 
 
 The teacher points to the third, crying, " Come away ! " 
 and then to the fourth. A dozen pupils leap to the floor, a 
 dozen hands are thrust out, all quivering with eagerness. 
 
 4lh P. Spiritual death. 
 
 T. Go up, Dux (that is, take the head of the class). 
 
 And so of the following, from the Westminster Catechism, 
 which, with all the proofs, is committed to memory : 
 
 Teacher. What is the misery of that estate whereinto man 
 fell? 
 
 Pupil. All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with 
 God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all 
 the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell 
 forever (giving the proofs). 
 
 T. What sort of a place is hell? 
 
 P. A place of devils. 
 
 T. How does the Bible describe it?
 
 388 ANNUAL EEPORT3 ON EDUCATION. 
 
 1st P. (Hesitates.) 
 
 T. Next, Next. Next. 
 
 5th P. A lake of fire and brimstone. 
 
 T. Take 'em down four. 
 
 And thus, on these awful themes, a belief and contemplation 
 of which should turn the eyes into a fountain of tears, and 
 make the heart intermit its beatings, there is the same ambition 
 for intellectual superiority as on a question in the multiplication- 
 table. There is no more apparent solemnity in the former case 
 than in the latter. 
 
 Nor is this mode of treating sacred themes confined to the 
 schools. In the universities, money is employed to stimulate 
 theological effort ; and a sordid, financial aspect is given to the 
 holiest subjects. For instance, in looking over the published 
 list of prize questions in the Glasgow University for the last 
 two or three years, I find the following offers : 
 
 " The University Silver Medal, for the best Essay on the 
 Analogy of the Mosaic and Christian Dispensations." 
 
 Other prizes, of various values, are offered for the best essay 
 on such subjects as the following : 
 
 " For the best Lecture on 1 John iii. 1-6. All students 
 of divinity in this university, during the session 1843-44, may 
 be competitors." 
 
 " For the best Essay on the Goodness of God, by students 
 of the third and fourth year." 
 
 " For the best Discourse on John xiv. 27." 
 
 " For an Essay on the Character of Christ." 
 
 " For the best specimen of reading the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 " For the best Lecture on the 35th chap, of Isaiah." 
 
 " Prize for Essay from students of the second year ; subject, 
 ' The Personality of the Holy Ghost,' " 
 
 Thus the sordidness of worldly motives is forever mingled 
 with the purity of sacred themes. Men are addressed as though 
 piety dwelt in the purse, and not in the heart ; and the holiness 
 of God's nature and the sanctity of the divine commands are 
 flung wantonly into the ring, to be fought for, with dialectic
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 389 
 
 weapons, by hired wrestlers and prize-fighters. What value 
 would the New Testament retain in our eyes, had the Gospels 
 and the Epistles been prize-essays, penned by money-loving 
 disciples and apostles for so many Jewish shekels or talents ! 
 Under the influences which God and Nature are shedding 
 around us, the heart may be trained to a moral intrepidity that 
 will bear martyrdom in the cause of truth, or to an avarice that 
 will sell its Redeemer for thirty pieces of silver. Which class 
 of these motives ought the great literary institutions of a coun- 
 try, in all ways, to foster? 
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. 
 
 It has been an object of paramount interest with me, through- 
 out my whole tour, to learn in what manner and to what ex- 
 tent moral and religious instruction are given in schools. In 
 addition to the inherent interest which belongs to the subject 
 itself, the great variety of practice existing abroad promises to 
 throw much light upon our course of proceedings at home. 
 The statutes of Massachusetts relative to public instruction, 
 while they prohibit the inculcation upon school-children of any 
 such religious views as " favor the tenets of any particular sect 
 of Christians," provide guaranties for the moral character of 
 teachers, and prescribe their duties in the following compre- 
 hensive and noble language : 
 
 " It shall be the duty of the president, professors, and tutors 
 of the University at Cambridge, and of the several colleges, and 
 of all preceptors and teachers of academies, and all other in- 
 structors of youth, to exert their best endeavors to impress on 
 the minds of children and youth committed to their care and 
 instruction the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard 
 to truth, love to their country, humanity and universal benevo- 
 lence, sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity, moderation 
 and temperance, ami those other virtues which are the orna- 
 ment of human society, and the basis upon which a republican 
 constitution is founded ; and it shall be the duty of such in-
 
 390 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 structors to endeavor to lead their pupils, as their ages and ca- 
 pacities will admit, into a clear understanding of the tendency 
 of the above-mentioned virtues to preserve and perfect a re- 
 publican constitution, and secure the blessings of liberty, as 
 well as to promote their future happiness ; and also to point out 
 to them the evil tendency of the opposite vices." 
 
 The aim of our law obviously is, to secure as much of reli- 
 gious instruction as is compatible witli religious freedom. Let 
 us see how our policy in this respect compares with that of 
 other countries. 
 
 In Ireland, a National Board of Education has existed for 
 twelve years, having been constituted in 1831. It is founded 
 on the principle of religious tolerance and conciliation, as be- 
 tweeu the two great sects into which that country is divided. 
 Some of the most distinguished men, lay and clerical, of both 
 the Protestant and Catholic communions, compose it. In the 
 letter of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, which is the charter 
 and constitution of the Board, its object is expressed in the fol- 
 lowing words : " To superintend a system of education, from 
 which should be banished even the suspicion of proselytism, 
 and which, admitting children of all religious persuasions, 
 should not interfere with the peculiar tenets of any." To ex- 
 clude all possible occasion for jealousy, the Board require " that 
 no use shall be made of the schoolrooms for any purpose tend- 
 ing to contention, such as the holding of political meetings in 
 them, or bringing into them political petitions or documents of 
 any kind for signature ; and that they shall not be converted 
 into places of public worship. The commissioners require the 
 schoolrooms to be used exclusively for purposes of education." 
 
 Another of the standing regulations is as follows : 
 
 " The commissioners regard the attendance of any of their 
 teachers at meetings held for political purposes, or their taking 
 part in elections for members of parliament, except by voting, 
 as incompatible with the performance of their duties, and as a 
 violation of rule which will render them liable to dismissal." 
 
 All religious instruction is expressly prohibited in the schools ;
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 391 
 
 and this prohibition includes " the reading of the Scriptures," 
 " the teaching of catechisms," " public prayer," and " all other 
 religious exercises : " but separate hours are set apart, in which 
 all the children receive religious instruction from the clergy- 
 men of their respective denominations ; the principle being to 
 give combined literary and moral with separate religious in- 
 struct iou. 
 
 In every schoolroom, a copy of the following " General 
 Lesson," prepared by that distinguished and excellent prelate, 
 Dr. AVhately, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, is to be 
 conspicuously hung up ; and all teachers are required to incul- 
 cate its principles upon the children under their charge. 
 
 " Christians should endeavor, as the Apostle Paul commands them, to 
 ' live peaceably with all men ' (Rom. xii. 18), even with those of a different 
 religious persuasion. 
 
 "Our Saviour, Christ, commanded his disciples to 'love one another.' 
 He taught them to love even their enemies, to bless those that cursed them, 
 and to pray for those who persecuted them. He himself prayed for his 
 murderers. 
 
 " Many men hold erroneous doctrines ; but we ought not to hate or perse- 
 cute them. We ought to seek for the truth, and to hold fast what we are 
 convinced is the truth ; but not to treat harshly those who are in error. 
 Jc.sus Christ did not intend his religion to be forced on men by violent 
 moans. He would not allow his disciples to fight for him. 
 
 " If any persons treat us unkindly, we must not do the same to them ; 
 tor Christ and his apostles have taught us not to return evil for evil. If we 
 would obey Christ, we must do to others, not as they do to us, but as we 
 would wish them to do to us. 
 
 Quarrelling with our neighbors and abusing them is not the way to 
 convince them that we are in the right, and they in the wrong. It is more 
 likely to convince them that we have not a Christian spirit. 
 
 " We ought to show ourselves followers of Christ, who, 'when he was 
 reviled, reviled not again' (1 Pet. ii. 23), by behaving gently and kindly 
 to every one." 
 
 Under the auspices of this Board, more has been done within 
 the last twelve years for the education of the Irish nation than 
 had been effected for a century before under a system whose 
 instruments were coercion, imprisonment, banishment, and
 
 392 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 death. On the 21st of March, 1843, when the Board issued 
 its last report, 2,721 schools hud been established, in which 
 319,792 scholars were in a course of education ; and this num- 
 ber was rapidly increasing. At this date, the Board had estab- 
 lished a Normal School, at which a thousand teachers had been 
 educated ; had prepared a complete series of school-books ; had 
 digested a code of regulations for the whole system ; and not- 
 withstanding the novelty of the subjects, and the number and 
 delicacy of the questions to be settled, as between opposing 
 parties in religion and politics, not a single protest had been 
 entered upon its recoids, nor had any schism disturbed the har- 
 mony of its members. 
 
 In Holland, all doctrinal religious instruction is excluded 
 from the schools. The Bible is not read in them. Children 
 are permitted to withdraw 7 at a certain hour, to receive a lesson 
 in religion from their pastors ; but this is not required. It is 
 optional to go or remain. 
 
 In England, as there is neither law nor system on the sub- 
 ject of education, each teacher with the exception noticed 
 below does as he pleases. In the schools sustained by the 
 Church, the views of the Church, both as to religious doctrine 
 and Church government, are taught ; and sometimes, though 
 not always, in the schools of the Dissenters, their distinctive 
 opinions are inculcated. There are, however, a few other 
 schools, which are established upon a ue'utral basis, as between 
 opposing sects. In these, the common principles and require- 
 ments of morality, and all the preceptive parts of the gospel, 
 as contradistinguished from its doctrinal, are carefully incul- 
 cated. The Harp Alley School, in London, is a good specimen 
 of this class. This school contains children of Churchmen 
 and Dissenters, of Catholics and Jews. The teacher told me, 
 that though himself a Churchman, yet, being placed there to 
 educate children of all denominations, he did so with entire 
 impartiality, and without their knowing what his own views 
 might be. 
 
 There is one large class of schools, technically called
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 393 
 
 Grammar Schools, because they were established to give in- 
 struction in the Greek and Latin languages, whose annual 
 income amounts to about 100,000 (nearly 8500,000), which, 
 by construction of law, are held to be so far under the juris- 
 diction of the Church, that the masters must be licensed by an 
 archbishop or bishop, and must take the oath and make the 
 subscriptions and declarations which are recited in the license. 
 
 The form of the ordinary's license is as follows : " We give 
 and grant to you, A. B., in whose fidelity, learning, good con- 
 science, moral probity, sincerity, and diligence in religion, we 
 do fully confide, our license or faculty to perform the office of 
 
 master of the Grammar School at , in the county, &c., to 
 
 which you have been duly elected, to instruct, teach, and in- 
 form boys in grammar and other useful and honest learning 
 and knowledge in the said school, allowed of and established 
 by the laws and statutes of this realm ; you having first sworn 
 in our presence, on the Holy Evangelists, to renounce, oppose, 
 and reject all and all manner of foreign jurisdiction, power, au- 
 thority, and superiority, and to bear faith and true allegiance 
 to her Majesty Queen Victoria, &c. ; and subscribed to the thir- 
 ty-nine articles of religion of the United Church of England 
 and Ireland, and to the three articles of the thirty-sixth canon 
 of 1603, and to all things contained in them ; and having also, 
 before us, subscribed a declaration of your conformity to the 
 Liturgy of the United Church of England and Ireland as is 
 now by law established. In testimony," &c. 
 
 In Scotland, although there is no law prescribing the quality 
 of religious instruction to be given, yet there is a public opin- 
 ion not less authoritative than law, a public opinion, indeed, 
 whose peremptory demands are more sure to be obeyed without 
 the sanctions of law than a law would be without the exactions 
 of this public opinion. 
 
 After the particular attention which I gave to this subject, 
 both in England and Scotland, I can say, without any excep- 
 tion, that in those schools where religious creeds, and forms of 
 faith, and modes of worship, were directly taught, I found the
 
 394 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 common doctrines and injunctions of morality, and the mean- 
 ing of the preceptive parts of the gospel, to be much less 
 taught, and much less understood by the pupils, than in the 
 same grade of schools, and by the same classes of pupils, 
 with us. 
 
 Probably, however, I can give a better notion of this subject 
 by relating a few instances from my own observation, just as 
 they occurred. But, for this purpose, I shall quote only from 
 schools of a high, or, at least, of a very respectable character ; 
 as it would be uninstructive on such a subject to take specimens 
 from those of a low grade. 
 
 In a school of high standing, a few miles from London, after 
 the teacher had gone through with his exercises in the common 
 branches, I requested him to give me a specimen of his manner 
 of teaching the social virtues, such as regard to truth, an ob- 
 servance of the rights cf property, &c. Upon this, he turned 
 to the older class of scholars, and said, " What instances of 
 lying are given in the Bible ? " 
 
 A. The case of Ananias and Sapphira. 
 
 Q. Against whom was that crime committed? 
 
 A. Against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Q. What doctrine of the Bible does this prove? 
 
 A. The doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 Here he stopped, as though the subject of lying were ex- 
 hausted. He then took up another subject, and proceeded as 
 follows : 
 
 Q. Do you recollect any case in the Scriptures in which 
 stealing is condemned? 
 
 A. The case of Achan. 
 
 Q. Any case of Sabbath-breaking? 
 
 A. The man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath, and was 
 stoned to death. 
 
 Here again he stopped. " But." said I, " how do you inculcate 
 an observance of the Sabbath at the present day? Your boys 
 know very well that Sabbath-breakers are not stoned to death, 
 in our time, anywhere ; and, if the observance of that day is to
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 395 
 
 rest upon the fear of being stoned to death, it will not be ob- 
 served." He replied, that he taught from such examples as were 
 to be found in the Bible, and knew no other way. He said the 
 same about the vice of lying. In this school, I heard a lesson 
 of an hour's length, in which the teacher read passage after 
 passage from the liturgy, called upon the pupils to give an expo- 
 sition of the meaning of each, and to quote those texts of Scrip- 
 ture which were supposed to prove it. The answers were given 
 with great promptness, and showed a familiar acquaintance 
 with the language of the Bible. 
 
 In a school in Edinburgh, in which the intellectual exercises 
 were conducted in a most efficient manner, the teacher put the 
 New Testament into my hands, and requested me to select any 
 passage I might choose, from either of the four Gospels, or 
 from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and then to read the passage 
 selected to a class of about eighty boys and girls, who were, as 
 I should judge, from eleven to thirteen years of age. At the 
 same time, a Testament was given to each of the class. 
 Accordingly, I opened the book at random, and read the first 
 verse upon which my eye fell. Before I had finished the verse, 
 a large number of the class had turned to it in their own Testa- 
 ments, and announced the book, the chapter, and the number of 
 the verse, which I was reading. Astonished at this, I repeated 
 the experiment, turned backwards and forwai'ds promiscuously, 
 again and again ; but in no case were they at fault. In every 
 instance, before, or at least as soon as, I had finished the read- 
 ing of a verse, a considerable number of the class, often a 
 majority of them, held up their Testaments, and showed or 
 mentioned book, chapter, and verse. It took them no longer 
 to find the verse than it did me to read it. I then tried them by 
 beginning in the middle of a verse, selecting verses whose 
 division was such that each clause presented a substantive idea. 
 This made no difference, so completely had they committed 
 to memory not only every verse, but the order of all, and the 
 place where each one was to be found. 
 
 Amazed at this command of the Bible by children so young,
 
 396 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 I said to myself, " How happy if their ideas and sentiments of 
 duty correspond with their verbal knowledge of the great source 
 whence they derive its maxims ! " Accordingly, I requested the 
 teacher to examine them on points of common morals, or social, 
 every-day duties and obligations. He did not seem fully to 
 comprehend my meaning, and therefore requested me to explaiu 
 what I meant by a practical example. I then asked the class 
 what they understood by the word u honesty," or " what it is 
 to be honest." After a little delay, one of the class replied, 
 " To give money to the poor ; " and to this definition all as- 
 sented. I then inquired what they understood by the word 
 " conscience." Several replied, " It is the thinking principle." 
 I asked if all agreed to that, and all but one gave token of as- 
 sent. This one, a remarkably intelligent-looking boy, ob- 
 serving that I was not satisfied with the reply, said, "Conscience 
 tells us what to do ; " and, when I rejoined, " Does it not tell 
 us also what not to do ? " he assented. I requested the class to 
 give me an instance of what was meant by " lying." All 
 exclaimed, as with one voice, " Ananias and Sapphira ; " but 
 beyond this, though I pressed them for some time, they could 
 present ne combination of circumstances which would answer 
 the description of lying. 
 
 When, however, I stated cases circumstantially, as whether, 
 if a traveller were to call to me in a noisy street, or when I 
 was in a field, at some distance from the way-side, to ask me 
 the direction to a place, and, without speaking, I should point 
 in a direction opposite to the true one ; whether, if I were 
 standing by, heard such a question put, and saw such a sign 
 made, without interfering ; whether, if I were a witness in a 
 court of law, and should tell the truth literally and exactly, 
 without any equivocation or reservation, and should subse- 
 quently perceive, by what the advocate or judge might say, 
 that I had been misunderstood, but should not correct the mis- 
 take because it was in favor of the party whom I wished to 
 prevail in the cause, when I asked them whether these would 
 not be cases of lying, they appeared perfectly able to compre-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 397 
 
 bend the point on which the falsity would turn. So in the 
 case of Judas kissing Jesus, they understood that this act was 
 a lie, but did not know that it was perfidy also, nor understand 
 the injury which such an act must inflict upon the cause of 
 truth generally, by casting suspicion upon one of its liveliest 
 tokens. The children had been admirably trained in most 
 respects ; but their minds seemed not to have been turned in 
 this direction. 
 
 In another school where the same general conversation was 
 held, and where the case of Ananias and Sapphira seemed to 
 exhaust the pupils' knowledge respecting falsehood, I said to 
 the teacher, "But your children know that liars, nowadays, 
 arc not struck down dead as a punishment for lying. What 
 further explanations do you give to show them the deformity 
 and mischievousness of lying, and the beauty and utility of 
 truth ? " " You remind me," said he, " of a case that actually 
 occurred in my school a few days ago. I detected a boy in a 
 falsehood, and publicly punished him for it. The next morning, 
 a schoolmate of his, who had known the whole transaction and 
 its results, came to me and said, ' I have been thinking.' I 
 asked what he had been thinking. He said, ' You once 
 told us that God was the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever. 
 Now, if this is true, why did not God kill this boy for lying, 
 as well as Ananias and Sapphira?' I was not able," said the 
 teacher, " to answer him." 
 
 In the Prussian (Christian) schools, only two systems of reli- 
 gion prevail. the Protestant-Evangelical and the Catholic. The 
 parents have an option between these ; but one or the other must 
 be taught to their children. If the parents are all of one religious 
 denomination, the teacher generally gives the religious instruc- 
 tion. Where a diversity of creeds exists, and the teacher is 
 Protestant, he usually gives religious instruction to the Protes- 
 tant part of the children ; and a Catholic priest attends at cer- 
 tain hours, to give insti-uction, in a separate apartment, to the 
 Catholic children. A similar arrangement prevails in regard to 
 the Protestant children, where the teacher of a mixed school
 
 398 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 is Catholic. At fourteen, the common termination of the 
 school-going age, the Protestant children usually have suffi- 
 cient knowledge of the Bible to be confirmed, that is, to 
 become members of the church, and, of course, communicants 
 at the Eucharist. This confirmation and membership of the 
 church depend on the amount of their Bible knowledge, not on 
 the state of their religious affections. The priest examines 
 and approves ; or, if he finds the pupils deficient in Bible knowl- 
 edge, they are remanded to their former school, or sent to a 
 Bible school. In a Prussian city, I was taken to a school of 
 about twenty boys and girls, from fourteen to sixteen or seven- 
 teen years of age, who were doing nothing but reading the 
 Bible. They were vagrants from other places, and were as 
 vicious and perverse a looking company of children as I ever 
 saw. All over their countenances, in characters too legible to 
 be mistaken, were inscribed the records of malignity and evil 
 passions. They had not obtained the amount of Bible knowl- 
 edge requisite for confirmation, and admission into the church, 
 and were therefore sent here to acquire it. The day for a new 
 examination was near by, at which time the greater part of 
 them would probably be received into the church. Such re- 
 ception is indispensable, because, without a certificate of confir- 
 mation from the priest, it would be nearly or quite impossible 
 for any one to obtain a place as a servant, apprentice, or clerk, 
 or even to get married. 
 
 The consequence of all this is, that the whole community are 
 members of the church. The gamester, in a country where 
 gaming is a national vice ; the drunkard, the thief, the liber- 
 tine, the murderer ; alike the malefactors who are in prison 
 under the sentence of the law, and the crafty and powerful who 
 by force or fraud have eluded its judgments, all are members 
 of the church of Christ ! such ascendency has faith over prac- 
 tice in the eye of the law, so much more important is the 
 legal name by which the tree is called than the fruits which it 
 bears ! 
 
 No inconsiderable number of the teachers in the Prussian
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 399 
 
 schools, gymnasia, and universities, are inwardly hostile to the 
 doctrines they are required to teach. I asked one of these how 
 he could teach what he disbelieved, and whether it did not in- 
 volve the essence of falsehood. His reply was, " It is a lie of 
 necessity. The government compels us to do this, or it takes 
 away our bread." While human nature remains as it is, is not 
 such the natural consequence of a compulsory religion ? Though 
 every one must condemn as flagrantly wrong what is here done 
 under the plea of necessity, yet is it not clear that the govern- 
 ment which creates this supposed necessity is a hundred times 
 more guilty than the victim who yields to the temptation? 
 When the mass of a people are ignorant, they easily become 
 the passive subjects and recipients of a compulsory religion, 
 however false ; but, when the people become enlightened, their 
 tendency is to recoil from a compulsory religion, even though 
 it be true. 
 
 The enforcement of a speculative faith, or, at least, of an 
 acknowledgment of one, upon minds that discard it, is doubt- 
 less one of the principal reasons of the rapid spread of infidelity 
 in that country. This setting a snare to the conscience by 
 tempting any man to practise what he condemns, or to affirm 
 what he disbelieves, is also one of the greatest corrupters of 
 public morals ; and by allowing and enforcing two different 
 religious, the government proclaims its own absurdity, for both 
 cannot be right. Two opposites may both be wrong ; but, 
 while truth remains one and the same, it must be obvious to 
 the simplest understanding that both cannot be right. What 
 faith or trust can children put in what is taught to them 
 as positively and certainly true, when they know that views 
 diametrically opposite are taught with equal positiveness and 
 dogmatism, and by the same authority, to their play-fellows ; 
 when they know, that, if one part of the instruction is loyal to 
 the majesty of truth, the other is treasonable to the same ma- 
 jesty? Would not this be the case if a parent were to teach 
 one faith to a part of his children, and an opposite faith to the 
 rest? and must not the same consequences follow where a gov-
 
 400 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 crnment, claiming to be paternal, does the same thing? In 
 the same schoolhouse, under the same roof, I have passed from 
 one room to another, separated only by a partition-wall, where 
 different religious, different and irreconcilable ideas of God 
 and of his government and providence, of our own nature and 
 duties, and of the means of salvation, were taught to the 
 children by authority of law ; and where a Avhole system of 
 rites, books, teachers, officers, had been provided by the gov- 
 ernment, to enforce upon the children, as equally worthy of 
 their acceptance, these hostile views. Everlasting, immutable 
 truth not merely the image, but the essence of God ; not 
 merely unchanging, but, in its nature, unchangeable and im- 
 mortal was made to be one thing on one side of a door, and 
 another thing on the other side ; was made, after crossing a 
 threshold, to affirm what it had denied, and to deny what it had 
 affirmed. The first practical notion which any child can ob- 
 tain from such an exhibition and the brightest minds will 
 obtain it earliest is of the falsity of truth itself, or that there 
 is no such thing as truth ; and that morals and religion are only 
 convenient instruments, in the hands of rulers, for controlling 
 the populace. Such a conclusion must be an extinction of the 
 central idea of all moral and religious obligation. 
 
 I shall never forget the impression made upon my mind by 
 a conversation with a school-officer of great intelligence and 
 high authority, the inspector of the schools of a large circle 
 of territory, to whom I explained the neutrality of our school- 
 system as between different religious sects. He expressed the 
 greatest astonishment at the fact, and thought it to be impossi- 
 ble that any government could stand which did not select some 
 form of religion, and enforce its adoption, through the schools 
 and the pulpit, upon the whole community. On further con- 
 versation, I found him to be a thorough Pantheist, and a dis- 
 believer in the divine authority of the book, whose use, and 
 the inculcation of whose doctrines as held by the State, he was 
 enjoining upon all the schools under his charge. 
 
 Wherein does the teaching of two hostile religions, by au-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 401 
 
 thority of law, differ from teaching contradictory theories in 
 science, only as the former subject should be approached with 
 more caution and reverence than the latter? Suppose some 
 weak but proud mortal, having, by means of birth or any other 
 accident, obtained a control over the destinies of men, should 
 decree that half the children in his kingdom should be taught 
 the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, according to which the 
 sun revolves round the earth, and the other half, the Coperui- 
 caii system, according to which the earth revolves round the 
 sun, could he retain the respect of any intelligent subject, 
 either for his systems or for himself? Upon portions of the 
 vegetable kingdom, the Creator has inscribed certain visible 
 marks or tokens, by means of which the plants that bear them 
 may at once be recognized as belonging to a poisonous family. 
 To the scientific eye, these marks are equivalent to the words, 
 " Beware of poison," written on the plant itself. Suppose a 
 law were promulgated, that half the children of a realm should 
 be taught that all plants having five stamens and one petal, 
 and whose leaves are rough in texture, and of a livid green in 
 color, should be accounted sanative, and be adopted into the 
 pharmacopoeia of the physician ; and, in certain prescribed cases, 
 should be administered to all patients by their medical advis- 
 ers. Aside from the actual and immediate havoc of health and 
 life which would be caused by a public teaching and common 
 practice founded upon such laws, would not the clearest, most 
 powerful, and most independent minds in the community be 
 tempted to treat the whole subject with contempt and derision? 
 Are not the laws of the Creator as certain, as infallible, in one 
 of his kingdoms as in another? The only difference is, we 
 know the laws of one kingdom better than we do those of an- 
 other. It is a difference, not in the certainty of the Creator's 
 laws, but in the amount of the creature's knowledge. Where 
 these laws are already known, no humau authority, no sanction 
 of pains and penalties, can uphold or commend them like their 
 own inherent and indestructible truth. Where they are not 
 yet known, especially when great and good men still entertain 
 
 26
 
 402 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 conflicting views respecting them, is it not the wisest part 
 of wisdom to concentrate whatever of talent, of virtue, of re- 
 ligious motive, there may be in the community, to ascertain 
 with more certainty what they really are ? And is not a higher 
 education of the intellect and conscience of the rising genera- 
 tion one of the most promising of these means? 
 
 To a ,vast extent, abroad, I found religion to be used for 
 political purposes, not to enthrone a Deity in the heavens, 
 but a king over a state, not to secure the spontaneous per- 
 formance of good works to men, but the blind submission of 
 person and property to the ruler. It will, therefore, be readily 
 understood, that I have returned from this survey of foreign 
 systems with a more exalted appreciation and a more heart- 
 felt attachment for our own. The letter and spirit of our law 
 respect the right of conscience in each individual. Our school- 
 system is designed to promote the development and growth of 
 the understanding, to cultivate upright and exemplary habits 
 and manners, to quicken the vision of conscience in its dis- 
 criminations between right and wrong, and to inculcate the 
 perfect morality of the gospel ; while it reverently forbears 
 to prescribe, by law, the belief which men shall profess respect- 
 ing their Maker. This belief it Jeaves to the right of private 
 judgment, and the sense of private responsibility. Least of all 
 does it scandalize truth by setting up diiferent images of its 
 one and indivisible Being and Essence, and then commanding 
 either old or young to bow down and do homage to its discord- 
 ant representations. The time has probably gone by, in all 
 parts of Christendom, when the dungeon, the rack, and the 
 fagot will be resorted to as instruments for the propagation 
 of supposed truth, or the suppression of supposed heresy ; but, 
 though the mode may be different, is not the spirit the same, 
 and the intrinsic wrong as great, when any one man, or class 
 of men, attempts to enforce its own religious views upon the 
 children of another man, or class of men, by penal enactments, 
 or civil disabilities, or social privations of any kind? The 
 form of the oppression may be changed, in accordance with
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 403 
 
 the milder spirit of the age ; but the innate and ineradicable 
 injustice remains the same. 
 
 Whatever may be the especial object of the American citizen 
 iii going abroad, still, if his mind is imbued with the true spirit 
 of the institutions of his own country, he cannot fail, in travel- 
 ling through the different nations of Europe, to find material 
 for the most profound and solemn reflection. There is no 
 earthly subject, in its own nature, of higher intrinsic dignity 
 and interest than a contemplation of the different forms into 
 which humanity has been shaped by different institutions. 
 This interest deepens when we compare our own condition 
 with the contemporaneous condition of other great families of 
 mankind. Tracing back, by the light of history and philosophy, 
 these respective conditions to their causes in some period of 
 antiquity more or less remote, we behold the head-springs of 
 those influences which have given such diversity to the char- 
 acter and fortunes of different portions of the race. We are 
 enabled not only to see the grand results which have been 
 wrought out by certain agencies, acting through long periods 
 of time, but we are brought into immediate contact, and we 
 commune, as it were, face to face, with those great principles 
 which bear thje future destinies of mankind in their bosom. 
 Whatever now is, whether of weal or of woe, is the effect of 
 causes that have pre-existed ; in like manner, what is to be, 
 whether of glory or of debasement, will result from the causes 
 put in operation by ourselves or others. The past is a unit, 
 tixed, irrevocable, about which there is no longer either option 
 or alternative ; but the future presents itself to us as an infinite 
 of possibilities. For the great purposes of duty and happiness, 
 to-morrow is in the control of the weakest of men ; but yester- 
 day is beyond the dominion of the mightest prince or potentate, 
 it is no longer changeable by human or divine power. 
 The future, then, is our field of action ; the past is only valua- 
 ble as furnishing lights by which that field can be more suc- 
 cessfully entered and cultivated. For this purpose, we study
 
 404 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the history of particular parts of the globe, of particular por- 
 tions of our race, of Europe, for instance, for the last thou- 
 sand or two thousand years ; we learn what manner of men 
 have borne sway ; we discern the motives by which they have 
 been actuated ; we study the laws they have made, and the in- 
 stitutions they have established, for shaping and moulding their 
 unformed future. We go to Europe, or, by other means, we 
 examine and investigate the present social, intellectual, and 
 moral condition of its people ; and here we have the product, 
 the grand result, of men, motives, laws, institutions, all gath- 
 ered and concentrated into one point, which we can now see, 
 just as we see the fabric which comes from a piece of compli- 
 cated machinery, when the last revolution of the last wheel 
 rolls it into our hands for inspection. 
 
 And what is this result ? In a world which God has created 
 on such principles of wisdom and benevolence, that nothing 
 is wanting, save a knowledge of his commands and an obe- 
 dience to them, to make every human being supremely happy, 
 what amount of that knowledge is possessed, what degree of 
 that happiness is enjoyed? It is no adequate representation 
 of the fact, to say that not any thing like one-half of the adult 
 population of Europe can read and write in any intelligible 
 manner, and hence are shut out from a knowledge of all his- 
 tory, sacred and profane, and of all contemporary events ; 
 that not one-third are comfortably housed or fed or clothed, 
 according to the very lowest standard of comfort amongst the 
 laboring classes in this country ; that not one individual in 
 five hundred has any voice in the enactment of the laws that 
 bind him, or in the choice of the rulers who dispose of his 
 property, liberty, and life ; and that, excepting in a few narrow 
 and inconsiderable spots, the inalienable right of freedom in 
 religion, and liberty to worship God according to the dictates 
 of conscience, is not recognized or known ; nay, that the 
 claim of any such liberty is denounced and spurned at, and its 
 advocates punished, not only by a denial of the right itself, but 
 by the deprivation of all human rights whatever : all these
 
 EEPORT FOB 1343. 405 
 
 facts, deeply as they affect human happiness, greatly as they 
 derogate from human dignity, present no living picture of 
 Europe as it now exists. AH this is negation only : it leaves 
 wholly untouched the side of positive, boundless suffering and 
 wrong. In the Europe of the nineteenth century, the incom- 
 putable wealth that flows from the bounty of Heaven during 
 the revolving seasons of the year, and is elaborated from the 
 earth by the ceaseless toil of millions of men ; that wealth 
 which is wrought out by human labor and ingenuity, in con- 
 junction with the great agencies of Nature, fire, Avater, 
 wind, and steam, and whose aggregates are amply sufficient 
 to give comfort and competence to every human being, and the 
 joys of home and the sacred influences of the domestic circle 
 to every family, that wealth, by force of unjust laws and 
 institutions, is filched from the producer, and gathered into 
 vast masses, to give power and luxury and aggrandizement 
 to a few. Of production, there is no end; of distribution, 
 there is no beginning. Nine hundred and ninety-nine children 
 of the same common Father suffer from destitution, that the 
 thousandth may revel in superfluities. A thousand cottages 
 shrink into meanness and want to swell the dimensions of a 
 single palace. The tables of a thousand families of the in- 
 dustrious poor waste away into drought and barrenness, that 
 one board may be laden with surfeits. As yet, the great truth 
 has scarcely dawned upon the mind of theorist or speculator, 
 that the political application of doing as we would be done by 
 is to give every man entire equality before the law, and then 
 to leave his fortunes and his success to depend upon his own 
 exertions. 
 
 That there must be governors, or rulers, where there are 
 communities of men, is so self-evident a truth, that it is de- 
 nied only by the insane. Yet, under this pretext, a few indi- 
 viduals or families have usurped and maintain dominion over 
 almost two hundred millions of men. That a nation must 
 possess the means of defending itself against aggressors, or 
 submit to be vanquished, despoiled, and enslaved, has been
 
 406 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 equally obvious. Yet, under pretence of doing this, naval and 
 military armaments are kept up, at incalculable expense ; and 
 men are converted into the soulless machinery of war, far 
 more to uphold thrones, and to subjugate all independence of 
 thought and action at home, than to repel assaults from abroad. 
 Religion is the first necessity of the soul ; but because every 
 human being, though he were heir to all the glories and pro- 
 fusions of the universe, must still be a wanderer and an out- 
 cast until he can find a Supreme Father and God in whom 
 to confide ; because of this instinctive outreaching of the 
 soul towards some Almighty Power, crafty and cruel men 
 have come in, and have set up idols and false gods for its 
 worship ; and then, claiming to be the favorites and ministers 
 of Omnipotence, have dispensed the awful retributions of 
 eternity against all questioners of their authority, and bran- 
 dished every weapon in the armory of Heaven, not merely for 
 the slightest offences against themselves, but for the noblest 
 deeds of duty towards God, and of benevolence towards men. 
 Hence, throughout wide regions of country, man is no longer 
 man. Formed in the image of his Maker, the last vestiges of 
 that image are nearly obliterated. He no longer breathes that 
 breath of independent and conscious life that first animated his 
 frame and made him a living soul. The heavenly spark of 
 intelligence is trodden out from his bosom. In some countries 
 which I have visited, there are whole classes of men and 
 women whose organization is changing, whose whole form, 
 features, countenance, expression, are so debased and bruti- 
 fied by want and fear and ignorance and superstition, that the 
 naturalist would almost doubt where, among living races of 
 animals, to class them. Under governments where supersti- 
 tion and ignorance have borne most sway, the altered aspect 
 of humanity is assimilating to that of the brute ; but, where 
 resistless power has been trampling for centuries upon a 
 sterner nature and a stronger will, the likeness of the once 
 human face is approximating to that of a fiend. In certain 
 districts of large cities, those of London, Manchester, Glas-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 407 
 
 gow, for instance, such are the influences that surround chil- 
 dren from the day they are brought into the world, and such 
 the fatal education of circumstances and example to which 
 they are subjected, that we may say they are born in order to 
 be imprisoned, transported, or hung, with as exact and literal 
 truth as we can say that corn is grown to be eaten. 
 
 Not in a single generation could either the cruelties of the 
 oppressor, or the sufferings of his victim, have effected these 
 physical and mental transformations. It has taken ages and 
 centuries of wrongs to bend the body into abjectness, to dwarf 
 the stature, to extinguish the light of the eye, and to incorpo- 
 rate into body and soul the air and movements of a slave. 
 And the weight and fulness of the curse is this, that it will 
 require other ages and centuries to efface these brands of deg- 
 radation, to re-edify the frame, to rekindle in the eye the 
 quenched beam of intelligence, to restore height and amplitude 
 to the shrunken brow, and to reduce the overgrown propensi- 
 ties of the animal nature within a manageable compass. Not 
 ouly is a new spirit to be created, but a new physical apparatus 
 through which it can work. This is the worst, the scorpion 
 sting in the lash of despotism. There is a moral and a physi- 
 cal entailment as well as a civil. Posterity is cursed in the 
 debasement inflicted upon its ancestors. In many parts of 
 Europe, the laws both of the material and of the moral 
 nature have been so long outraged, that neither the third nor 
 the fourth generation will outlive the iniquities done to their 
 fathers. 
 
 Again : the population of a country may be so divided into 
 the extremes of high and low, and each of these extremes may 
 have diverged so widely from a medium or standard of nature, 
 that there are none, or but a very small intermediate body, or 
 middle class of men, left in the nation. The high, from luxury 
 and its enervations, will have but small families, and will be 
 able to rear but few of the children that are born to them. 
 The intermediate class, whom affluence has not corrupted, nor 
 ignorance blinded to the perception of consequences, will be
 
 408 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 too few in number, and too cautious about contracting those 
 matrimonial alliances which they cannot reputably and com- 
 fortably sustain, to contribute largely to the continuation of 
 the species. But the low, the abandoned, the heedless, those 
 whom no foresight, or apprehension of consequences, can re- 
 strain, these, obedient to appetite and passion, will be the 
 fathers and the mothers of the next generation. And no truth 
 can be more certain than this : that after the poor, the igno- 
 rant, the vicious, have fallen below a certain point of degrada- 
 tion, they become an increasing fund of pauperism and vice, 
 a pauper-engendering hive, a vital, self-enlarging, reproductive 
 mass of ignorance and crime. And thus, from parent to child, 
 the race may go on degenerating iu body and soul, and cast- 
 ing off, one after another, the lineaments and properties of 
 humanity, until the human fades away, and is lost in the brutal 
 or demoniac nature. While the vicious have pecuniary means, 
 they have a choice of vices in which they can indulge ; but, 
 though stripped of means to the last farthing, their ability to 
 be vicious, and all the fatal consequences to society of that 
 viciousness, still remain. Nay, it is then that their vices be- 
 come most virulent and fatal. However houseless or homeless, 
 however diseased or beggarly, a wretch who is governed only 
 by his instincts may be, marriage is still open to him ; or, so 
 far as the condition and character of the next generation are 
 concerned, the same consequences may happen without mar- 
 riage. This, also, the statesman and the moralist should heed, 
 that however adverse to the welfare of human society may be 
 the circumstances under which a fore-doomed class of children 
 are born, yet the doctrine of the sanctity of human life pro- 
 tects their existence. Public hospitals, private charities, step 
 in and rescue them from the hand of death. Hence they 
 swarm into life by myriads^ and crowd upwards into the ranks 
 of society. But in society there are no vacant places to re- 
 ceive them, nor unclaimed bread for their sustenance. Though 
 uninstructed in the arts of industry, though wholly untaught 
 in the restraints and the obligations of duty, still the great pri-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 400 
 
 mal law of self-preservation works in their blood as vigorously 
 as in the blood of kings. It urges them on to procure the 
 means of gratification ; but, having no resources in labor or in 
 frugality, they betake themselves to fraud, violence, incen- 
 diarism, and the destruction of human life, as naturally as an 
 honest man engages in an honest employment. Such, literally, 
 is the present condition of large portions of the human race in 
 some countries of Europe. In wide, rural districts, iu moral 
 jungles, hidden from public view within the recesses of great 
 cities, those who are next to be born, and to come upon the 
 stage of action, will come, fifty to one, from the lowest orders 
 of the people, lowest in intellect and morals, and in the 
 qualities of prudence, foresight, judgment, temperance, low- 
 est in health and vigor, and in all the elements of a good men- 
 tal and physical organization, strong only in the fierce 
 strength of the animal nature, and in the absence of all rea- 
 son and conscience to restrain its ferocity. Of such stock and 
 lineage must the next generation be. In the mean time, while 
 these calamities are developing and maturing, a few individu- 
 als some of whom have a deep stake in society, others 
 moved by nobler considerations of benevolence and religion 
 are striving to discover or devise the means for warding off 
 these impending dangers. Some look for relief in a change 
 of administration, and in the change of policy it will insure. 
 With others, compulsory emigration is a remedy, a remedy 
 by which a portion of the household is to be expelled from the 
 paternal mansion by the terrors of starvation. There are 
 still others who think that the redundant population should be 
 reduced to the existing means of subsistence ; and they hint 
 darkly at pestilence and famine as agents for sweeping awa}- 
 the surplus poor, as famishing sailors upon a wreck hint 
 darkly at the casting of lots. Smaller in numbers than any 
 of the preceding is that class who see and know, that, while 
 the prolific causes of these evils are suffered to exist, all the 
 above schemes, though executed to their fullest extent, can 
 only be palliatives of the pain, and not remedies for the
 
 410 AXNTJAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 disease ; who see and know how fallacious and nugatory all 
 such measures must be towards the re-creation of national 
 character, towards the laying anew of the social foundations 
 of strength and purity. They see and know that no external 
 appliances can restore soundness to a fabric where the dry- 
 rot of corruption has penetrated to the innermost fibres of 
 its structure. The only remedy, this side of miracles, 
 which presents itself to the clear vision of this class, is in a 
 laborious process of renovation, in a thorough physical, men- 
 tal, spiritual culture of the rising generation, reaching to its 
 depths, extending to its circumference, sustained by the power 
 and resources of the government, and carried forward irrespec- 
 tive of party and of denomination. But a combination of 
 vested interests has hitherto cut off this resource, and hence 
 they stand, appalled and aghast, like one who finds too late 
 that he is in the path of the descending avalanche. Under 
 circumstances so adverse to the well-being of large portions 
 of the race, the best that eveu hope dares to whisper is, that, 
 in the course of long periods yet to come, the degraded pro- 
 geny of a degraded parentage may at length be reclaimed, 
 may be uplifted to the level whence their fearful descent be- 
 gan. But, if this restoration is ever effected, it can only be by 
 such almost superhuman exertions as will overcome the mo- 
 mentum they have acquired in the fall, and by vast expendi- 
 tures and sacrifices corresponding to the derelictions of former 
 times. 
 
 It was from a condition of society like this, or from one 
 where principles and agencies were at work tending to produce 
 a condition of society like this, that our ancestors fled. They 
 came here as to a newly-formed world. In many respects, the 
 colonization of New England was like a new creation of the 
 race. History cannot deny that the founders of that colony 
 had faults. Indeed, the almost incredible fact, that, as soon as 
 they escaped from persecution, they became persecutors them- 
 selves ; that, while the wounds were still unhealed which the 
 irop fetters of oppression had made in their souls, they began
 
 REPOET FOR 1843. 411 
 
 to forge fetters for the souls of others, this fact would seem 
 mysterious and inexplicable, did we not see in it so vivid an 
 illustration of the established order of Nature and Providence, 
 signalizing to the world the power of a vicious education over 
 virtuous men ; exemplifying the effect of tyrannical institutions 
 upon human character, by an instance so conspicuous and 
 flagrant that it should be remembered to the end of time, and 
 should forever supersede the necessity of another warning. 
 But, on the other hand, history must concede to the founders 
 of this colony the possession of exalted, far-shining, immortal 
 virtues. Not the least among the blessings which they brought 
 were health and a robustness of constitution that no luxury 
 had ever enervated, or vicious indulgences ever corrupted. In 
 all that company, there was not a drop of blood which had 
 been tainted by vice, nor an act of life that had been stained 
 by crime. Arriving here at a period when winter had con- 
 verted the land into one broad desert, the inclemency of the 
 season and the extremity of their toils swept away all the less 
 healthful and vigorous, and left not man or woman, save those 
 whose hardy and powerful frames the perils of the ocean, and 
 the wintry rigors of the clime, and the privations of a house- 
 less and provisionless coast, had assailed in vain. In physical 
 energy and hardihood, such were the progenitors of New Eng- 
 land. It was said above, that this settlement of our country 
 resembled, in some respects, the creation anew of the race ; 
 but, had Adam and Eve been created under circumstances so 
 adverse to life, we cannot suppose they would have survived 
 the day on which they were animated. Yet these men and 
 women were the first parents, the Adam and Eve, of our 
 republic. Mighty as were their bodies, their spirits were 
 mightier still. Some of the former did yield to privation and 
 peril and disease ; but, in that whole company, not a heart ever 
 relented. Stanch, undaunted, invincible, they held fast to 
 what they believed to be the dictates of conscience and the 
 oracles of God ; and, in the great moral epic which celebrates 
 the story of their trials and their triumphs, the word " apos- 
 tate " is nowhere written.
 
 412 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 This transferreuce of the fortunes of our race from the Old to 
 the New World was a gain to humanity of at least a thousand 
 years. I mean, if all the great and good men of Europe, from 
 the 22d of December, 1620, had united their energies to 
 ameliorate the condition of the human family, and had encoun- 
 tered no hostility, either from civil or religious despotism, it 
 would have taken ten centuries to bring the institutions and 
 the population of Europe to a point where the great experiment 
 of improving the condition of the race by means of intellectual, 
 moral, and religious culture, could be as favorably commenced 
 as it was commenced on the day when the Pilgrims first set 
 foot upon the Rock of Plymouth. What mighty obstructions 
 and hinderances to human progress did they leave behind them ! 
 what dynasties of powerful men, and the more firmly-seated 
 dynasties of false opinions ! But, in the world to which they 
 came, there were no classes upheld by law in feudal privilege 
 and prerogative. There were no laws of hereditary descent 
 upholding one class in opulence and power, irrespective of 
 merit or vigor, and degrading other classes to perpetual indi- 
 gence and servility, without demerit or imbecility. Here was 
 no cramped territory whose resources were insufficient to fur- 
 nish a healthful competence to all ; nor any crowded popula- 
 tion, struggling so earnestly to supply their cravings for daily 
 necessities that all the nobler wants of the soul were silenced 
 by the clamor of the appetites. No predatory barons had con- 
 quered the whole land, and monopolized it, and, by a course of 
 legislation as iniquitous as the original robbery itself, had pre- 
 destined its descent in the line of particular families, through 
 all coining time, so that not one in hundreds of all who should 
 be born into the State could own a rood of ground which he 
 might till for subsistence while living, or beneath which he 
 could have a right of burial wheu dead.* 
 
 Our Pilgrim Fathers also possessed intelligence, not merely 
 
 * The population of England is 16,000,000. The number of land-holders in fee 
 is estimated by the Kadicals at 30,000, and by the Tories at 3(5,000. A mean of 
 33,000 would give one land-owner to 4S4 non-land-owners.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 413 
 
 common learning and information on common affairs, but 
 most of them were men of accomplished education, conversant 
 with the world's history, profoundly thoughtful, and as well 
 qualified as any equally numerous community that had ever 
 existed to discuss the deepest questions of State or Church, of 
 time or eternity. Hence we are not the descendants of an 
 ignorant horde, or pauper colony, driven out from the parent 
 country in quest of food, and leaving all metropolitan art, intel- 
 ligence, and refinement behind them. Besides, almost coeval 
 witli the settlement of the colony, they founded a college, and 
 established common schools. In the first clearings of the 
 forest, by the side of the first dwellings which they erected for 
 a shelter, they built the schoolhouse ; and of the produce of 
 the first crops planted for their precarious subsistence, they 
 apportioned a share for the maintenance of teachers and pro- 
 fessors. This they did, that the altar-lights of knowledge and 
 piety which they had here kindled might never go out. This 
 they did, hoping that each generation would feed the flame to 
 illumine the path of its successors, a flame which should not 
 be suffered to expire, but should shine on forever to enlighten 
 and gladden every soul that should here be called into exist- 
 ence. 
 
 I repeat that the transference of the fortunes of the race to 
 the New World, under such auspices, was a gain to humanity 
 of at least a thousand years. By that removal, we were at 
 once placed at a distance of three thousand miles from any spot 
 where the Inquisition had ever tortured, or the fagot of perse- 
 cution had ever blazed. By that removal, the chains of feu- 
 dalism were shaken off. The false principle of artificial orders 
 and castes in society was annulled. The monopolies of char- 
 tered companies and guilds were abolished. Proscriptions by 
 men, who knew but one thing, of all knowledge they did not 
 themselves possess, no longer bound the free soul ia its quest 
 of truth. Rapacious hordes of vicious and impoverished classes 
 no longer prowled through society, plundering its wealth and 
 jeoparding the life of its members. There were no besotted
 
 414 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 races, occupying the vanishing point of humanity, to be re- 
 claimed. A free, unbounded career for the development of the 
 faculties, and the pursuit of knowledge and happiness, was 
 opened for all. Ample aud open as was the territory around 
 them, their spiritual domain was more ample and open still. 
 On the earth, there was no arbitrary power to forbid the estab- 
 lishment of righteous and humane institutions and laws ; and, 
 as they looked upward, the air was not filled with demon- 
 shapes of superstition and fear, interdicting their access to 
 heaven. Opportunity was given to discard whatever old errors 
 should remain, aud to adopt whatever new truths either the 
 course of Nature or the providence of God might reveal. 
 Whatever of degeneracy was to come upon themselves or upon 
 their descendants in later times, was to come, not from 
 hereditary transmission, not from nature or necessity, but 
 from the culpable dereliction or allowance of themselves or 
 their posterity. 
 
 Surely never were the circumstances of a nation's birth so 
 propitious to all that is pure in motive, and great in achieve- 
 ment, arid redundant in the means of universal happiness. 
 Never before was a land so consecrated to knowledge aud vir- 
 tue. Never were children and children's children so dedicated 
 to God and to humanity as when in those forest-solitudes 
 that temple of the wide earth and the o'erarching heavens, girt 
 round with the terrors of ocean and wilderness, afar from the 
 pomp of cathedral and court, in the presence only of the con- 
 scious spirits of the creatures who made, and of the Creator 
 who accepted their vows we, their descendants, were devoted 
 to the cause of human freedom, to duty, to justice, to charity 
 to intelligence, to religion, by those holy men. 
 
 It is in no boastful or vain-glorious spirit that I refer to this 
 heroic period of our country's history. It is in no invidious 
 mood that I contrast the leading features of our civil polity 
 and our social condition with those of the transatlantic nations 
 of Christendom. Rather must I confess that the contemplation 
 of these historic events brings more humiliation than pride.
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 415 
 
 It demands of us whether we have retained our vantage-ground 
 of a thousand years. It forces upon the conscience the solemn 
 question, whether we have been faithful to duly. Stewards of 
 a more precious treasure than was ever before committed to 
 mortal hands, are AVC prepared to exhibit our lives and our 
 history as the record of our stewardship? Ou the contrary, do 
 we not rather cling to the trust, and vaunt the confidence 
 wherewith we have been honored, without inquiring whether 
 the value of the deposit is not daily diminishing in our hands? 
 Subtract the superiority which, under our more propitious cir- 
 cumstances, we ought to possess, and how much will remain as 
 the aliment of pride? It is not enough for us to say, that we 
 are exempt from the wretchedness of the masses, and from the 
 corruptions of the courts, of other lands. With our institutions 
 and resources, these should have been incommunicable evils, 
 evils which it would have been alike unmeritorious to avoid 
 and unpardonable to permit. It is no justification for us to 
 adduce the vast, the unexampled increase of our population. 
 The question is not, how many millions we have, but what are 
 their character, conduct, and attributes? We can claim neither 
 reward nor approval for the exuberance of our natural re- 
 sources, or the magnificence of our civil power. The true 
 inquiry is, in what manner that power has been used : how 
 have those resources been expended? They were convertible 
 into universal elevation and happiness : have they been so 
 converted ? Neither a righteous posterity nor a righteous 
 Heaven will adjudicate upon our innocence or guilt on the 
 same principles or according to the same standards as those by 
 which other nations shall be judged. A necessity for defence 
 convicts us of delinquency ; for had our deeds corresponded 
 with our privileges, had duty equalled opportunity, we should 
 have stood as a shining mark and exemplar before the world, 
 visible as an inscription written in stars upon the blue arch 
 of the firmament. The question is not, whether we have ruled 
 others, but whether we have ruled ourselves. The accusations 
 which we must answer before the impartial tribunals of earth 
 and heaven are such as these : Have we, by self-denial, by
 
 416 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 abstinence from pernicious luxuries, by beneficent labor, by 
 obedience to the physical and organic laws of OUT nature, 
 retained that measure of health and longevity to which, but for 
 our o\vu acts of disiaherisou, we had been rightful heirs? 
 Where temptations are few, vice should be so rare as to become 
 moustrous ; where Art and Nature lavish wealth, a pauper 
 should be a prodigy : but have we prevented the growth 
 of vice and pauperism amongst us, by seeking out every aban- 
 doned child within our borders, as the good shepherd seeks 
 after the lambs lost from his flock, and by training all to habits 
 of industry, frugality, temperance, and an exemplary life? 
 Have we remembered, that, if every citizen has a right to vote 
 when he becomes a man, then the right of every child to that 
 degree of knowledge which shall qualify him to vote is a 
 thousand times as strong? Have the more fortunate classes 
 amongst us, the men of greater wealth, of superior knowl- 
 edge, of more commanding influence, have they periodically 
 arrested their own onward march of improvement, and sounded 
 the trumpet, and sent back guides and succors to briny up the 
 rear of society f Have we insulated ourselves, as by a wall 
 of fire, from the corruptions and follies engendered in European 
 courts, and practised only by those who abhor the name of 
 republic? Have we caused the light of our institutions so to 
 shine before the world that the advocates of liberty in all parts 
 of the earth can boldly point to our frame of government as the 
 model of those which are ydt to bless mankind? Can we 
 answer these questions as the myriad sufferers under oppres- 
 sion in other lands would have us answer them? If not, then 
 we have uot done to others as we would that others, were cir- 
 cumstances reversed, should do unto us. 
 
 In the mines of Siberia, at Olmutz, at Spielberg, in all the 
 dungeons of the Old World where the strong champions of 
 freedom are now pining in captivity beneath the remorseless 
 power of the tyrant, the morning sun does not send a glim- 
 mering ray into their cells, nor does night draw a thicker veil 
 of darkness between them and the world, but the lone prisoner 
 lifts his iron-laden arms to heaven in prayer, that we, the de-
 
 REPORT FOR 1843. 417 
 
 positaries of freedom and of human hopes, may be faithful to 
 our sacred trust ; while, on the other hand, the pensioned ad- 
 vocates of despotism stand, with listening ear, to catch the first 
 sound of lawless violence that is wafted from our shores, to 
 note the first breach of faith or act of perfidy amongst us, and 
 to convert them into arguments against liberty and the rights 
 of in an. There is not a shout sent up by an insane mob ou 
 this side of the Atlantic, but it is echoed by a thousand presses 
 and by ten thousand tongues along every mountain and valley 
 on the other. There is not a conflagration kindled here by 
 the ruthless hand of violence, but its flame glares over all 
 Europe, from horizon to zenith. On each occurrence of a flagi- 
 tious scene, whether it be an act of turbulence and devastation 
 or a deed of perfidy or breach of faith, monarchs point them 
 out as fruits of the growth, and omens of the fate, of repub- 
 lics, and claim for themselves and their heirs a further exten- 
 sion of the lease of despotism. 
 
 The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the 
 ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal to 
 us : they implore us to think more of the character of our 
 people than of its numbers ; to look upon our vast natural 
 resources, not as tempters to ostentation and pride, but as means 
 to be converted, by the refining alchemy of education, into men- 
 tal and spiritual treasures ; they supplicate us to seek for what- 
 ever complacency or self-satisfaction we are disposed to indulge, 
 not in the extent of our territory or in the products of our soil, 
 but in the expansion and perpetuation of the means of human 
 happiness ; they beseech us to exchange the luxuries of sense 
 for the joys of charity, and thus give to the world the example 
 of a nation whose wisdom increases with its prosperity, and 
 whose virtues are equal to its power. For these ends, they 
 enjoin upon us a more earnest, a more universal, a more reli- 
 gious devotion of our exertions and resources to the culture of 
 the youthful mind and heart of the nation. Their gathered 
 voices assert the eternal truth, that, Ix A REPUBLIC, IGNORANCE 
 is A CRIME ; AND THAT PRIVATE IMMORALITY is NOT LESS AN 
 
 27
 
 418 ANNUAL REPOETS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 OPPROBRIUM TO THE STATE THAN IT IS GUILT IN THE PERPE- 
 TRATOR. 
 
 In conclusion, the Board will allow me to express my grati- 
 tude for the opportunity they have afforded me of investigating 
 that class of institutions in other countries to whose prosperity 
 in our own I feel so deep an attachment. I need not ask a 
 body of gentlemen from whom I have uniformly experienced 
 such candor and kindness, to distinguish, in this report, be- 
 tween those sentiments and views which I have advanced as 
 my own, and those of other persons, which I have recorded as 
 subjects of interesting or useful information. I am aware that 
 it may be said, that six months are too short a period to author- 
 ize any one to visit countries so numerous and so remote, and 
 to speak of institutions so difficult to be understood ; but to 
 this it may be answered, that I was not wholly unprepared for 
 the investigation beforehand ; and that the time, though short 
 at best, was prolonged by diligence. The better to accomplish 
 my purpose, many of the great thoroughfares, and most of the 
 attractive objects, which the throng of travellers in pursuit of 
 mere personal gratification commonly selects, were left. Al- 
 ways heedful of my mission, I kept my mind in perpetual con- 
 tact with the great interests of mankind ; and after seeing 
 those institutions in other countries out of which human char- 
 acter arises, as vegetation rises out of the soil, I have 
 come back to my native State more ardently attached to her 
 institutions than ever before, and animated with a more fer- 
 vent, an undying desire to see her noble capabilities of use- 
 fulness and of happiness developed and cultivated. To be able 
 to return to my post of labor at the appointed time, I have 
 permitted no pain or peril to retard my progress ; and, if the 
 observations which I have made and recorded shall produce 
 those impressions of obligation to our country and our kind 
 upon other minds which they have made upon my own, the 
 remembrance alike of the pain and the peril will be sweet.
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 .... THE extraordinary facts exhibited in my last Report, 
 respecting the manner of apportioning school-money among the 
 districts, have turned public attention to that important sub- 
 ject.* Those facts have already induced some towns to make 
 very material modifications in the manner of distributing their 
 money ; and they promise to do the same thing in many more. 
 The great doctrine which it is desirable to maintain, and to 
 carry out, in reference to this subject, is, equality of school-priv- 
 ileges for all the children of the town, whether they belong to a 
 poor district or a rich on,e, a small district or a large one. 
 
 A general interest has been awakened iu some towns upon 
 which a deep sleep had fallen before. During no year, since 
 my original appointment, have my advice and assistance been 
 so frequently requested respecting the best methods of arran- 
 ging and improving our school-system. 
 
 Nor is the movement confined to our own Commonwealth. 
 Several States in the south and west seem to be awaking from 
 their lethargy, and inquiring into the detail of means necessary 
 to be adopted for the general education of their people. Within 
 the space of a single month, during the last autumn, I received 
 inquiries from a dozen distinguished men, belonging to a single 
 State, respecting the organic structure of our system, its general 
 
 * The details of this unequal distribution have not been republished, as they are 
 not of present interest. 
 
 419
 
 420 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 administration, and its internal arrangements and management. 
 In the mean time, the great State of New York, by means of 
 her county superintendents, her State Normal School, and oth- 
 erwise, is carrying forward the work of popular education 
 more rapidly than any other State in the Union, or any country 
 in the woild. Within the last year, the State of Rhode Island 
 has entirely renovated her school-system. Under the auspices 
 of that distinguished and able friend of common schools, 
 Henry Barnard, Esq., she is preparing to take her place among 
 the foremost of the States. Within the last few weeks also, the 
 State of Vermont has re-organized her school-system, by passing 
 a law which provides for the appointment of town, county, and 
 State superintendents, prescribing the course of duty of each 
 class of officers in regard to the examination of teachers, the visi- 
 tation of schools, and the general administration of the system. 
 
 These indubitable evidences of progress are not only a re- 
 ward for past exertions, but an incentive to future efforts. But 
 let not complacency in successes already obtained tempt to the 
 relaxation of a single fibre in our endeavors for future advance- 
 ment. What has been gained must be converted into means 
 for further acquisition. The faithful steward, being intrusted 
 with five talents, therewith gets other five talents. 
 
 Our common schools are a system of unsurpassable grandeur 
 and efficiency. Their influences reach, with more or less direct- 
 ness and intensity, all the children belonging to the State, 
 children who are soon to be the State. They act upon these 
 children at the most impressible period of their existence, 
 imparting qualities of mind and heart which will be magnified 
 by diffusion, and deepened by time, until they will be evolved 
 into national character, into weal or woe, into renown or ig- 
 nominy, and, at last, will stamp their ineffaceable seal upon 
 our history. The natural philosopher looks at the silky envel- 
 opment which an insect has woven for itself; he marks its 
 structure ; he recognizes the laws of life which arc silently at 
 work within it ; and he knows that, in a few days or weeks, 
 that covering will burst, and from it will be evolved a thing
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 421 
 
 of beauty and vivacity, lovely in the eyes of all, or an agent 
 of destruction, fit to be a minister in executing God's vengeance 
 against an offending people. With a profounder insight into 
 the laws of development and growth, and with an eye that 
 embraces an ampler field of time in its vision, the philosopher 
 of humanity looks at the institutions which are moulding the 
 youthful capacities of a nation ; he calculates their energy and 
 direction ; and he is then able to foresee and to foretell, that, if 
 its course be not changed, the coming generation will be blessed 
 with the rewards of parental forecast, or afflicted with the retri- 
 butions of parental neglect. Happy are they, who, knowing 
 on what conditions God has made the welfare of nations to 
 depend, observe and perform them with fidelity. 
 
 Improvement in schoolhouse architecture including in the 
 phrase all comfortable and ample accommodations for the 
 schools is only an improvement in the perishing body iu 
 which they dwell. A more perfect organization of the schools 
 themselves, by a wisely-graduated classification of schools aud 
 scholars, and by the assignment of such territorial limits as will 
 best combine individual convenience with associated strength, 
 is only an endowment of that perishing body with a superior 
 mechanism of organs and limbs. The more bounteous pecu- 
 niary liberality with which our schools, from year to year, are 
 maintained, is only an addition to the nutriment by which the 
 same body is fed, giving enlargement and energy to its capa- 
 bilities, whether of good or of evil, and empowering it to move 
 onward more swiftly in its course, whether that course is lead- 
 ing to prosperity or to ruin. 
 
 The great, the all-important, the only important question 
 still remains : By what spirit are our schools animated ? Do 
 they cultivate the higher faculties in the nature of childhood, 
 its conscience, its benevolence, a reverence for whatever is true 
 and sacred? or are they only developing, upon a grander scale, 
 the lower instincts aud selfish tendencies of the race, the 
 desires which prompt men to seek, and the powers which enable 
 them to secure, sensual ends, wealth, luxury, preferment,
 
 422 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 irrespective of the well-being of others? Knowing, as we do, 
 that the foundations of national greatness can be laid only in 
 the industry, the integrity, and the spiritual elevation of the 
 people, are we equally sure that our schools are forming the 
 character of the rising generation upon the everlasting princi- 
 ples of duty and humanity? or. on the other hand, are they 
 only stimulating the powers which lead to a base pride of in- 
 tellect, which prompt to the ostentation instead of the reality 
 of virtue, and which give augury that life is to be spent only 
 in selfish competitions between those who should be brethren? 
 Above all others, must the children of a republic be fitted for 
 society as well as for themselves. As each citizen is to par- 
 ticipate in the power of governing others, it is an essential pre- 
 liminary that he should be imbued with a feeling for the wants, 
 and a sense of the rights, of those whom he is to govern ; be- 
 cause the power of governing others, if guided by no higher 
 motive than our own gratification, is the distinctive attribute of 
 oppression ; an attribute whose nature and whose wickedness 
 are the same, whether exercised by one who calls himself a 
 republican, or by one born an irresponsible despot. In a gov- 
 ernment like ours, each individual must think of the welfare 
 of the State, as well as of the welfare of his own family, and, 
 therefore, of the children of others as well as his own. It 
 becomes, then, a momentous question, whether the children in 
 our schools are educated in reference to themselves and their 
 private interests only, or Avith a regard to the great social duties 
 and prerogatives that await them in after-life. Are they so 
 educated, that, when they grow up, they will make better phi- 
 lanthropists and Christians, or only grander savages? For, 
 however loftily the intellect of man may have been gifted, 
 however skilfully it may have been trained, if it be not guided 
 by a sense of justice, a love of mankind, and a devotion to 
 duty, its possessor is only a more splendid, as he is a more 
 dangerous, barbarian. 
 
 We have had admirable essays and lectures on the subject 
 of morality in our schools. In perusing the reports of school-
 
 EEPORT FOR 1845. 423 
 
 committees from year to year, nothing has given me so much 
 pleasure as the prominence which they have assigned to the 
 subject of moral education, and the sincerity, the earnestness, 
 and the persistence with which they have vindicated its claims 
 to be regarded as an indispensable part of all common-school 
 instruction. Considered as general speculation, nothing could 
 be better ; and yet no one will deny that the want of a corre- 
 sponding action on this subject still beclouds the prospects of 
 the schools, and ofttimes causes us to tremble for the fate of 
 those who are passing through them. Practically, the duty 
 of cultivating the moral nature of childhood has been neglected, 
 and is still neglected. Profound ethical treatises are written 
 for the guidance of men. after the habits and passions of ninety- 
 nine in every hundred of those men have become too deep- 
 rooted and inveterate to be removed by secondary causes. 
 Volumes are published on the nicest questions of casuistry, 
 questions which probably will never arise in the experience of 
 more than one in a thousand of the community, while specific 
 directions and practical aids in regard to the training of chil- 
 dren in those every-day domestic and social duties on which 
 their own welfare and the happiness of society depend are 
 comparatively unknown. How shall this great desideratum be 
 supplied? How shall the rising generation be brought under 
 purer moral influences, by way of guaranty and suretyship, 
 that, when they become men, they will surpass their predeces- 
 sors, both in the soundness of their speculations and in the 
 rectitude of their practice? Were children born with perfect 
 natures, we might expect that they would gradually purify 
 themselves from the vices and corruptions which are now al- 
 most enforced upon them by the examples of the world. But 
 the same nature by whicli the parents sunk into error and sin 
 pre-adapts the children to follow in the course of ancestral de- 
 generacy. Still, are there not moral means for the renovation 
 of mankind which have never yet been applied? Are there 
 not resources whose vastness and richness have not yet been 
 explored? Of all neglected and forgotten duties, in all ages of
 
 424 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the world, the spiritual culture of children has been most neg- 
 lected and forgotten. In all things else, art and science have 
 triumphed. In all things else, principles have been investi- 
 gated, and instruments devised and constructed, to apply those 
 principles in practice. The tree has been taken in the germ, 
 and its growth fashioned to the wants or the tastes of man. 
 By the skill of the cultivator, the wild grain and the wild fruit 
 have been taken in their seed, and have had their dwarfishuess 
 expanded into luxuriance, and their bitter and sometimes poi- 
 sonous qualities ameliorated into richness of flavor and nutri- 
 tion. The wild animal, and even the beast of prey, if domesti- 
 cated when young, and from the lair, have been tamed and 
 trained to the service of man, the wild horse and the buffalo 
 changed into the most valuable of domestic animals, and the 
 prowling wolf into the faithful dog. But man has not yet ap- 
 plied his highest wisdom and care to the young of his own 
 species. They have been comparatively neglected until their 
 passions had taken deep root, and their ductile feelings had 
 hardened into the iron inflexibility of habit ; and then how 
 often have the mightiest agencies of human power and terror 
 been expended upon them in vain ! Governments do not see the 
 future criminal or pauper in the neglected child, and therefore 
 they sit calmly by, until roused from their stupor by the cry of 
 hunger or the spectacle of crime. Then they erect the alms- 
 house, the prison, and the gibbet, to arrest or mitigate the 
 evils which timely caution might have prevented. The courts 
 and the ministers of justice sit by until the petty delinquencies 
 of youth glare out in the enormities of adult crime ; and then 
 they doom to the prison or the gallows those enemies to society, 
 who, under wise and well-applied influences, might have been 
 supports and ornaments of the social fabric. For sixteen cen- 
 turies, the anointed ministers of the gospel of Christ were gen- 
 erally regardless of the condition of youth. And the same 
 remark holds true in regard to the last two centuries, with the 
 exception of three or four only of all the Christian nations ; and 
 by far the greater part, even of these, must be excepted from the
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 425 
 
 exception. The messengers of Him who took little children in 
 his arms and blessed them have suffered juvenile waywardness 
 or perversity to mature into adult incorrigibleness and impeni- 
 tency ; and then they have invoked the aid of Heaven to subdue 
 that ferociousness of the passions which even a worldly foresight 
 would have checked. How often has Heaven turued a deaf ear 
 to their prayers, as if to rebuke the neglect and the blindness 
 which had given occasion for them ! Who will deny, that, if 
 one tithe of the talent and culture which have been expended 
 in legislative halls, in defining offences, and in devising and de- 
 nouncing punishments for them ; or of the study and knowledge 
 which have been spent in judicial courts, in trying and in sen- 
 tencing criminals ; or of the eloquence and the piety which 
 have preached repentance and the remission of sins to adult 
 men and women, had been consecrated to the instruction and 
 training of the young, the civilization of mankind would have 
 been adorned by virtues and charities and Christian graces to 
 which it is now a stranger ? 
 
 What an appalling fact it is to every contemplative mind, 
 that even wars and famines and pestilences terrible calami- 
 ties as they are acknowledged to be have been welcomed as 
 blessings and mercies, because they swept away, by thousands 
 and tens of thousands, the pests which ignorance and guilt had 
 accumulated ! But the efficiency or sufficiency of these com- 
 prehensive remedies is daily diminishing. A large class of men 
 seem to have lost that moral sense by which the liberty and 
 life of innocent men are regarded as of more value than the 
 liberty and life of criminals. There is not a government in 
 Christendom which is not growing weaker every day, so far as 
 its strength lies in an appeal to physical force. The criminal 
 code of most nations is daily shorn of some of its terrors. 
 Where, as with us, the concurrence of so many minds is a pre- 
 requisite, the conviction of the guilty is often a matter of diffi- 
 culty ; and every guilty man who escapes is a missionary, 
 going through society, and preaching the immunity of guilt 
 wherever he goes. War will never a^ain be waged to dis-
 
 426 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 burden the crowded prisons, or to relieve the Aveary executioner. 
 The arts of civilization have so multiplied the harvests of the 
 earth, that a general famine will not again lend its aid to free 
 the community of its surplus members. Society at large has 
 emerged from that barbarian and semi-barbarian state where 
 pestilence formerly had its birth, and committed its ravages. 
 These great outlets and sluice-ways, which, in former times, 
 relieved nations of the dregs and refuse of their population, 
 being now closed, whatever want or crime we engender, or 
 suffer to exist, we must live with. If improvidence begets 
 hunger, that hunger will break into our garners. If animal 
 instincts are suffered to grow into licentious passions, those 
 passions will find their way to our most secret chambers. We 
 have no armed guard which can save our warehouses, our 
 market-places, and our depositories of silver and gold, from 
 spoliation by the hands of a mob. When the perjured witness 
 or the forsworn juryman invades the temple of justice, the evil 
 becomes too subtle for the police to seize. It is beyond legis- 
 lative or judicial or executive power to redeem the sanctu- 
 aries of religion from hypocrisy and uncharitableness. In a 
 word, the freedom of our institutions gives full play to all the 
 passions of the human heart. The objects which excite and 
 inflame those passions abound ; and, as a fact, nearly or quite 
 universal, there is intelligence sufficient to point out some sure 
 way, lawful or unlawful, by which those passions can be grati- 
 fied. Whatever children, then, we suffer to grow up amongst 
 us, we must live with as men ; and our children must be their 
 contemporaries. They are to be our copartners in the relations 
 of life, our equals at the polls, our rulers in legislative halls ; 
 the awarders of justice in our courts. However intolerable at 
 home, they cannot be banished to any foreign laud ; however 
 worthless, they will not be sent to die in camps, or to be slain 
 in battle ; however flagitious, but few of them will be seques- 
 tered from society by imprisonment, or doomed to expiate 
 their offences with their lives. 
 
 In the history of the world, that period which opened with
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 427 
 
 the war of the American Revolution, and with the adoption of 
 the Constitution of the United States, forms a new era. Those 
 events, it is true, did not change human nature ; but they 
 placed that nature in circumstances so different from any it had 
 ever before occupied, that we must expect a new series of de- 
 velopments in human character and conduct. Theoretically, 
 and, to a great extent, practically, the nation passed at once, 
 from being governed by others, to self-government. Hereditary 
 misrule was abolished ; but power and opportunity for personal 
 misrule were given in its stead. In the hour of exultation at 
 the achievement of liberty, it was not considered that the evils 
 of license maybe more formidable than the evils of oppression, 
 because a man may sink himself to a profounder depth of 
 degradation than it is in the power of any other mortal to sink 
 him, and because the slave of the vilest tyrant is less debased 
 than the thrall of his own passions. Restraints of physical 
 force were cast off; but no adequate measures were taken to 
 supply their place with the restraints of moral force. In the 
 absence of the latter, the former, degrading as they are, are 
 still desirable, as a strait-jacket for the maniac is better than 
 the liberty by which he would inflict wounds or death upon 
 himself. The question now arises, and it is a question on 
 whose decision the worth or worthlessuess of our free institu- 
 tions is suspended, whether some more powerful agency can- 
 not be put in requisition to impart a higher moral tone to the 
 public mind ; to enthrone the great ideas of justice, truth, be- 
 nevolence, and reverence, in the breasts of the people, and give 
 them a more authoritative sway over conduct than they have 
 ever yet possessed. Of course, so great an object can be 
 reached only by gradual approaches. Revolutions which 
 change only the surface of society can be effected in a day ; 
 but revolutions working down among the primordial elements 
 of human character, taking away ascendency from faculties 
 which have long had control over the conduct of men, and 
 transferring it to faculties which have long been in subjection, 
 such revolutions cannot be accomplished by one convulsive
 
 428 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 effort, though every fibre in the nation should be strained to the 
 endeavor. Time is an essential element in their consumma- 
 tion ; nor can they be effected without an extensive apparatus 
 of means, efficiently worked. Yet such revolutions have taken 
 place, as when nations emerged from the barbarian into the 
 classic and chivalrous or romautic ages, or when they passed 
 from these into the commercial and philosophic periods. By 
 a brief retrospect of the condition of the more civilized nations 
 of ancient and of modern times, it can be easily shown that 
 such a chauge has already taken place on the subject of educa- 
 tion itself. It is the mission of our age to carry this cause one 
 step farther onward in its progress of development. 
 
 Among the ancients, physical education was deemed of 
 paramount importauce. A preparation of the masses for war 
 was the grand, the almost exclusive, object of national concern. 
 War being carried on, and battles decided, mainly by muscular 
 strength and agility ; by the distance and accuracy with which 
 the javelin could be hurled, or the vigor and dexterity with 
 which the falchion could be wielded, the desire of physical 
 celerity and force predominated among men. It was not the 
 cultivation of the great heart of the nation, it was not even 
 the development of the intellect of the masses, but it was the 
 iuvigoration of the frame, the growth and the strengthening of 
 the limbs, that constituted the object of national policy and am- 
 bition. Bodily hardihood, the power of physical endurance, 
 the ability to make long marches uufatigued, and to tight hand- 
 to-haud, for the longest period, uuterrified, were the qualities 
 which won the spoils and the plaudits of victory, and kindled 
 to enthusiasm the aspii'ations of the emulous youth. Who can 
 /ail to see that the tendency of all this was, not only to weaken 
 the intellectual nature, and to narrow its range of action, but to 
 degrade and demoralize the spiritual affections? The man was 
 sacrificed to the animal ; his soul was deemed of less value 
 than his sinews. As the nobler qualities of his nature sunk to 
 the level of brute force, it happened, naturally, that the horse 
 became as valuable as his rider ; and the elephant that went
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 429 
 
 out to battle was of more consequence than the dozen warriors 
 whom he bore in the tower upon his back. During the middle 
 ages, and until the introduction of fire-arms, which, to a very 
 great extent, neutralized the inequalities of physical strength, 
 the great barbarian idea, that the body of man is the only part 
 of him worth cultivating, retained unquestioned ascendency in 
 regard to the masses of the people. The soul was not con- 
 sciously excluded from culture ; for it was not sufficiently 
 thought of, as the object of culture, to raise the question. Even 
 down to the present century, the rulers and aristocracy of Eng- 
 land have always encouraged athletic sports among the people 
 wrestling, running, leaping, boxing as a part of the na- 
 tional policy, because, as it was said, these exercises tended 
 to invigorate the breed, and thus to make better soldiers and 
 sailors ; the verv language which was used betraying the sen- 
 timent, that it was the animal, and not the spiritual, part of man 
 which was the object of national coucei-u. Nor even in our 
 own times, nor in our own country, have philosophy and Chris- 
 tianity dispelled this fatal idea, an idea which is proper to 
 the savage and the heathen only, and which we have inherited 
 from them. In all the nations of Europe, the regulations of 
 military schools in regard to training the body for vigor and 
 robustness, and the capability of endurance, are entirely differ- 
 ent from those of the classical, medical, legal, or theological 
 schools ; and in the military academy of our own government, 
 at West Point, the cadets are inured to exposure, and their 
 bodies hardened by camp-duty ; while in our colleges and 
 higher schools there are no regulations which have the health 
 of the student for their object. On the contrary, so far as the 
 body is concerned, the latter classes of institutions provide for 
 all the natural tendencies to ease and inactivity as carefully as 
 though paleness and languor, muscular enervation and debility, 
 were held to be constituents in national beauty. 
 
 The introduction of the Baconian philosophy wrought a great 
 revolution in the education of mankind. Since that epoch, the 
 cultivation of the intellect has received more general attention
 
 430 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION*. 
 
 than ever before ; and, just in proportion as the intellect has 
 been developed, it has seen more cleai'ly and appreciated 
 more fully the advantages of its own development. In Prussia 
 and a few of the smaller States of Continental Europe, the 
 action of the intellect, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, 
 has taken more of a speculative turn. In Great Britain, it has 
 been turned more towards practical or utilitarian objects ; and, 
 in the United States, it has been pre-eminently so turned. The 
 immense natural resources of our country would have stimu- 
 lated to activity a less enterprising and a less energetic race 
 than the Anglo-Saxon. But such glittering prizes, placed 
 within reach of such fervid natures and such capacious desires, 
 turned every man into a competitor and an aspirant. The exu- 
 berance that overspread the almost interminable valleys of the 
 West drew forth hosts of colonists to gather their varied har- 
 vests. The tide of emigration rolled on, and it still continues 
 to roll, with a volume and a celerity never before known in 
 any part of the world, or in any period of history. Unlike all 
 other nations, we have had no fixed, but a rapidly-advancing 
 frontier. The geographical information of yesterday has be- 
 come obsolete to-day. The outposts of civilization have moved 
 forward with such gigantic strides, that their marches are 
 reckoned, not by leagues, but by degrees of longitude ; and 
 cities containing thirty or fifty thousand souls have sprung up 
 before the relics of the primeval forests had decayed on the 
 soil they had so lately shaded. In the space of half a century, 
 vast wildernesses have been organized into Territories, aud 
 these Territories erected into States, to take their place hi the 
 great family of the confederacy, aud to be heard by their rep- 
 resentatives in the council-halls of the nation. But scarcely 
 had the immigrant and the adventurer surveyed the richness 
 of vegetation which covered the surface of the earth, before 
 they discovered au equal vastness of mineral wealth beneath 
 it, wealth which had been laid up, of old, in subterranean 
 chambers, no man yet knows how capacious. Thus every 
 man, however poor his parentage, became the heir-apparent
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 431 
 
 of a rich inheritance. And while millions were thus appropri- 
 ating fortunes to themselves out of the great treasure-house of 
 the West, other millions on the Atlantic seaboard, with equal 
 enterprise and equal avidity, were amassing the means of re- 
 finement and luxury. In one section, where Nature had adapted 
 the soil to the production of new and valuable staples, the 
 planter seized the opportunity, literally a golden one, aad 
 soon filled the markets of the world with some of the cheapest 
 and the most indispensable necessaries of life. la another sec- 
 tion, foreign commerce invited attention ; and the hardy and 
 fearless inhabitants went forth to the uttermost parts of the 
 earth in quest of gain. They drew wealth from the bosom of 
 every ocean that spans the globe ; they visited every country, 
 and searched out every port on its circumference, where wind 
 and water could carry them, and brought home, for sustenance 
 or for superfluity, the natural and artificial productions of every 
 people and of every zoue. Meantime, science and invention 
 applied themselves to the mechanic arts. They found that Na- 
 ture, in all her recesses, had hidden stores of power, surpassing 
 the accumulated strength of the whole human race, though all 
 its vigor could be concentrated in a single arm. They found 
 that whoever would rightly apply to Nature, by a performance 
 of the true scientific and mechanical conditions, for the privi- 
 lege of using her agencies, should forthwith be invested with 
 a power such as no Babylonian or Egyptian king, with all his 
 myriads of slaves, could ever command. With the aid of a 
 little hand-machinery, at the beginning, water and steam have 
 been taught to construct machines ; and out of their matchless 
 perfection, when guided by a few intelligent minds, have come 
 the endless variety, the prodigality and the cheapness, of mod- 
 ern manufactures. In the Northern States, too, one universal 
 habit of personal industry, not confined to the middle-aged and 
 the vigorous alone, but enlisting the services of all, the old, 
 the young, the decrepit, the bed-ridden, each according to his 
 strength, has never ceased to coin labor into gold ; and from 
 the confluence of these numberless streams, though individually
 
 432 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 small, the great ocean of common comfort and competence has 
 been unfailingly replenished. 
 
 Gathered together from these numerous and prolific sources, 
 individual opulence has increased ; and the sum total or valua- 
 tion of the nation's capital has doubled and redoubled with a 
 rapidity to which the history of every other nation that has 
 ever existed must acknowledge itself to be a stranger. This 
 easy accumulation of wealth has inflamed the laudable desire 
 of competence into a culpable ambition for superfluous riches. 
 To convert natural resources into the means of voluptuous 
 enjoyments, to turn mineral wealth into metallic currency, to 
 invent more productive machinery, to open new channels of 
 intercommunication between the States, and to lengthen the 
 prodigious inventory of capital invested in commerce, has spurred 
 the energies and quickened the talent of a people, every one 
 of whom is at liberty to choose his own employment, and to 
 change it, when chosen, for any other that promises to be more 
 lucrative. 
 
 Nor is this the only side on which hope has been stimulated 
 and ambition aroused. Others of the most craving instincts of 
 human nature have been called into fervid activity. Political 
 ambition, the love of power, whether it consists in the base 
 passion of exercising authority over the will of others, or in 
 the more expansive and generous desire of occupying a con- 
 spicuous place among our fellows by their consent, these mo- 
 tives have acted upon a strong natural instinct in the hearts of 
 all. The chief magistrate and the legislators of the nation, the 
 chief magistrate and the legislators of the States, the numerous 
 county, town, parochial, and district officers, are. with but few 
 exceptions, elective ; and therefore the possession of all such 
 offices implies the confidence and the regard, of a majority at 
 least, of their respective constituencies. So, too, of a great pro- 
 portion of the militia offices. In addition to all these, there ai*e 
 voluntary, civil, social, philanthropic, and corporate organiza- 
 tions, each presided over, and its affairs administered, by officers 
 of its own election. Probably there are, at the present hour, in
 
 REPOET FOR 1845. 433 
 
 the United States, as many persons holding offices, bestowed 
 upon them by the votes of others, and therefore indicative of 
 some degree of respect and estimation, as existed through all 
 the centuries of the Roman Republic when its dominion was 
 co-extensive with the known world. Doubtless there are more 
 such elective offices at this time, among the twenty millions of 
 this country, than among the two hundred millions of Europe, 
 and far more than in all the world besides. Many of these 
 offices are sources of emolument as well as of power, and hence 
 they present to competitors the double motive of a desire of 
 gain and a love of approbation. If most of these innumerable 
 fountains of honor are too small to slake the thirst of aspirants, 
 they are sufficient to excite it. They create desires that are 
 often unappeasable, desires that embroil towns, states, and the 
 nation itself, in the fiercest contentions of party. 
 
 Now, it is too obvious to need remark, that the main ten- 
 dency of institutions and of a state of society like those here 
 depicted is to cultivate the intellect and to inflame the pas- 
 sions, rather than to teach humility and lowliness to the heart. 
 Our civil and social condition holds out splendid rewards for 
 the competitions of talent, rather than motives for the practice 
 of virtue. It sharpens the perceptive faculties in comparing 
 different objects of desire, it exercises the judgment in arran- 
 ging means for the production of ends, it gives a grasp of 
 thought and a power of combination which nothing else could 
 so effectively impart ; but, on the other hand, it tends not 
 merely to the neglect of the moral nature, but to an invasion 
 of its rights, to a disregard of its laws, and, in cases of conflict, 
 to the silencing of its remonstrances and the denial of its sov- 
 ereignty. 
 
 And has not experience proved what reason might have pre- 
 dicted? Within the last half-century, has not speculation, to 
 a fearful extent, taken the place of honest industry? Has not 
 the glare of wealth so dazzled the public eye as often to blind 
 it to the fraudulent means by which the wealth itself had been 
 procured? Have not men been honored for the offices of dig- 
 28
 
 434 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 nity and patronage they have held, rather than for the ever- 
 during qualities of probity, fidelity, and intelligence, which 
 alone are meritorious considerations for places of honor and 
 power? In the moral price-current of the nation, has not 
 intellect been rising, while virtue has been sinking, in value? 
 Though the nation as a nation, and a very great majority of 
 the States composing it, have performed all their pecuniary 
 obligations, and preserved their reputation unsullied ; yet have 
 there not been great communities, acting through legislators 
 whom they themselves had chosen, that have been guilty of 
 such enormous breaches of plighted faith as would cause the 
 expulsion of a robber from his brotherhood of bandits? 
 
 And who will say, even of the most favored portions of our 
 country, that their advancement in moral excellence, in probity, 
 in purity, and in the practical exemplification of the virtues of 
 a Christian life, has kept pace with their progress in outward 
 conveniences and embellishments ? Can virtue recount as 
 many triumphs in the moral world as intellect has won in the 
 material? Can our advances towards perfection in the culti- 
 vation of private and domestic virtues, and in the feeling of 
 brotherhood and kindness towards all the members of our 
 households, bear comparison with the improvements in our 
 dwellings, our furniture, or our equipages? Have our charities 
 for the poor, the debased, the ignorant, been multiplied in 
 proportion to our revenues? Have we subdued low vices, low 
 indulgences, and selfish feelings? and have we fertilized the 
 waste places in the human heart as extensively as we have 
 converted the wilderness into plenteous harvest-fields, or en- 
 listed the running waters in our service? In fine, have the 
 mightier and swifter agencies which we have created or ap- 
 plied in the material world any parallel, in new spiritual 
 instrumentalities, by which truth can be more rapidly diffused, 
 by which the high places of iniquity can be brought low, or its 
 crooked ways made straight? 
 
 Must it not be acknowledged, that, morally speaking, we 
 stand in arrears to the age in which we live? and must not
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 435 
 
 i 
 
 some new measures be adopted, by which, as philanthropists 
 and Christians, we can redeem our forfeited obligations ? 
 
 While, then, the legislator continues to denounce his penal- 
 ties against such wicked desires as break out iuto actual trans- 
 gression, and while the judge continues to puuish the small 
 portion of offences that can be proved in court, the friends of 
 education must do whatever can be done to diminish the 
 terrible necessity of the penal law and the judicial condem- 
 nation. 
 
 In view of these considerations, I propose to speak, in the 
 residue of this Report, of School-motives, and of some means 
 for avoiding and extirpating School-vices. 
 
 SCHOOL-MOTIVES AND SCHOOL-VICES. 
 
 In the order of events, the first thing which demands atten- 
 tion is the choice of school-committee-men. We need school- 
 committee-men who will scrutinize as diligently the moral 
 character of the proposed teacher, and his ability to impart 
 moral instruction, as they do his literary attainments and his 
 ability to impart knowledge. This official prerequisite in 
 every member of our school-committees is not only necessary 
 on account of the general influence which his character will 
 exert upon children, but on account of the particular duties the 
 law requires him to perform. How would consisteucy be out- 
 raged, what a brand would be affixed by the genei'al verdict of 
 the community upon the character of a town which should 
 elect as school-committee-men, to decide upon the literary 
 qualifications of the instructors of their children, those who 
 could neither read nor write ! And yet is it not obvious that 
 an immoral man is as little qualified to pronounce upon moral 
 character as an illiterate man is to decide upon the sufficiency 
 of literary qualifications? 
 
 The general exemption of the teachers of Massachusetts from 
 immoral habits is a fact to which the committees cheerfully 
 and confidently testify ; and it is one which my acquaintance
 
 436 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 with them enables me to confirm. But freedom from actual 
 vice is not sufficient. In the character of one who is to train 
 up children, a positive determination towards good, evinced 
 by his life as well as by his language, is an essential attribute. 
 No talent can atone for want of principle, no brilliancy of 
 genius compensate for one stain upon the character. The 
 perceptions of a teacher between right and wrong should be as 
 unclouded by interest or passion as the lot of humanity will 
 allow ; and his conscience should be trained to an affinity for 
 truth, and an abhorrence of falsehood, as quick and as sure as 
 the elective attractions and repulsions of chemistry. Knowl- 
 edge is power, talent is power ; but they are powers which 
 may be enlisted on the side of evil as well as of good. Nature 
 bestows talent, living among men confers some knowledge, 
 and mere instinct is sufficient to make known to the appetites 
 and passions their related objects ; and, therefore, unless a moral 
 sovereign and lawgiver be enthroned in the breast, whose eye 
 can watch and whose arm can defend, these appetites and pas- 
 sions will be to all the sanctuaries of liberty, of reputation, of 
 life, and of chastity, what wolves are to the sheepfold. If tal- 
 ent were sufficient, why are not the greatest men the best men 
 also? If knowledge were sufficient, why does it not always 
 become the handmaid of virtue? or why does much learning 
 ever make men mad? Not nearer to the day of its destruc- 
 tion is a community without knowledge than a community 
 which relies upon knowledge alone as sufficient to preserve it. 
 According to the present constitution of the human mind, and 
 of the world in which we are placed, knowledge is a necessity 
 in the pursuit of happiness ; but morality is a preliminary 
 necessity, elder-born and eternal. We can conceive of a state 
 of existence where we could be happy without knowledge ; 
 but it is not in the power of any human imagination to pic- 
 ture to itself a form of life where we could be happy without 
 virtue. 
 
 Generally speaking, I believe there is a commendable desire, 
 on the part of teachers, to impart moral instruction ; but there
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 437 
 
 are obstacles in the way of doing it ; and, for various causes, 
 the ability or the opportunity does not equal the exigencies of 
 the case. Some of these causes I proceed to notice. 
 
 The manner in which school-examinations have heretofore 
 been conducted has tended to make the moral progress of the 
 children secondary to their literary attainments. 
 
 Perhaps there is something in the nature of the case con- 
 ducing to a result so lamentable ; if so, it should be sedu- 
 lously guarded against by a preventive foresight. The scholars 
 are ambitious to win the approval of the committee ; but in 
 what way are they to satisfy the committee that they deserve 
 this approval? Let us glance, for a moment, at the course of 
 proceedings as it usually takes place in some of the best of our 
 schools. The committee visit the school soon after its com- 
 mencement, as they are required to do by law. Their object 
 is to ascertain the condition of the school, as it stands at the 
 time, in regard to the studies pursued. For this purpose, the 
 classes are called upon to spell, and the percentage of misspelled 
 words is noted ; to read, and the facility and intelligence with 
 which they read are attended to ; to exhibit their writing-books, 
 and the neatness and legibility of their hand-writing are ob- 
 served ; to answer questions in geography and grammar ; to 
 work sums or draw maps upon the black-board : and their pro- 
 ficiency and accuracy in these several studies are noted down, 
 at least in the memory, if not in a book. Occasionally, during 
 the term, a committee-man may call in to watch the progress 
 of the school ; but, at its close, a more formal and thorough 
 examination is made necessary, both by the law of the land 
 and by public expectation. The committee appear ; the classes 
 again spell ; and the diminution in the percentage of errors, 
 as compared with what it was at the opening of the school, is 
 recorded. They read, and define words ; and the more living 
 and natural expression of the voice, the greater ease and ele- 
 gance in the elocutionary part of the exercise, together with 
 their enlarged understanding of the scope and drift of the piece 
 selected, and their ability to explain its historical, biographical,
 
 438 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 or scientific allusions, all these arc susceptible, to some ex- 
 tent, of a numerical notation, and can be reported to persons 
 not present at the exercise. The classes are called to the 
 black-board, and, by a swift process, the answers to difficult 
 arithmetical questions are evolved ; or, on requiring a map of 
 a particular country to be drawn, a miniature representation of 
 it, with its boundaries, its mountains, its rivers, and its cities, 
 starts into being before their eyes. Indeed, if the class be large, 
 and has been competently trained, then, by assigning a differ- 
 ent part of the globe to each member of it, in ten minutes 
 a very respectable atlas of the world will be depicted upon 
 the walls of the schoolroom, to the honor of the pupils and 
 the delight of all spectators. The committee and the parents 
 participate in the general joy, and both teachers and scholars 
 receive the meed of praise. The teacher wins or confirms an 
 enviable reputation ; the district solicits his acceptance of the 
 school for another term ; other districts hear of his success, and 
 become competitors for his services ; and, as a natural con- 
 sequence of the competition, he obtains both increased honor 
 and emolument. 
 
 But suppose, at the time when the school began, low, per- 
 verse, and ungentlemanly habits and manners prevailed among 
 the pupils, which the teacher, by the dignity and impressive- 
 ness of his own example, and by the energy and kindness of 
 his expostulations, has extirpated, and has substituted decency 
 and propriety and manliness for them. Suppose profaneness 
 polluted the lips of the children, and he has made them see the 
 beauty and the truth of the saying, that a Christian should 
 be afraid to swear, and a gentleman should be ashamed to. 
 Suppose falsehood overt, or falsehood in some of its thousand 
 forms of equivocation, deception, or suppression, had cankered 
 the vitals of the school, and threatened to consume all the 
 honesty and ingenuousness of the young heart, but the teacher 
 has made it a loathing and an abomination, and has inspired 
 his school with some adequate conception of the moral beauty 
 and the moral necessity of truth. Suppose a love of parents,
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 439 
 
 of brothers and sisters, and a compassion for the poor and the 
 unfortunate, have been warmed into being, and nourished into 
 strength, in bosoms where they did not exist before. Suppose 
 a reciprocation of kind offices among schoolmates has been 
 substituted for alienation or hostility, or that some ancient 
 and long-descended feud has been harmonized by his pacific 
 counsels. Every school of children, as much as every commu- 
 nity of men, has a public opinion, which, though an unwritten, 
 is a self-executing law among the pupils, and descends from 
 one school-generation to another : suppose this public opinion 
 of the school has been brought over from the side of insubordi- 
 nation to voluntary acquiescence, and from trickery to open 
 dealing ; suppose all or any of these blessed results to have 
 been effected by the teacher : how are they to be brought for- 
 ward for exhibition at the closing examination of the school? 
 No general answers to general questions, no volubility in the 
 rehearsal of moral precepts, can display them. They cannot 
 be exhibited on the black-board, but they are graven upon the 
 heart. They cannot be recorded in the school-register, but 
 they are Avritten in the Book of Life. All attempts at display, 
 indeed, will refute and corrupt the whole : for there is no more 
 offensive vice than the ostentation of virtue ; and the most 
 disgusting of all hypocrisies is a humility ambitious of display. 
 True virtue is lowly and retiring, and finds its highest grati- 
 fications in its inward and silent delights ; but the moment 
 that a sentiment of pride, on account of its supposed possession, 
 is consciously allowed, or an impulse to boastfulness indulged, 
 then virtue falls from its high and pure estate, and can no 
 longer be numbered with the angels of light. 
 
 And yet is not such a change, or any thing approximating to 
 such a change, in the moral character and conduct of scholars, 
 as I have here attempted to describe, worth infinitely more 
 than if the teacher, by a miracle of art, could transfer into 
 their minds all the knowledge of all the philosophers who have 
 ever lived? 
 
 Now, an unhappy consequence of the prevalent course of
 
 440 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 things is, that the teacher who withdraws some part of his 
 time and attention from the intellectual training of his pupils, 
 and devotes it to their moral culture, may be unable to exhibit 
 so great a degree of proficiency in the studies pursued at the 
 end of a short term, or even of a single year, as one who for- 
 gets the existence of a moral nature in his charge, and devotes 
 himself exclusively to their intellectual progress. Whatever 
 time the faithful moral teacher spends in cherishing sentiment? 
 of honor, truth, generosity, and magnanimity, the unfaithful 
 one will spend in polishing and perfecting the recitations in 
 grammar, geography, or some other study. The former will 
 use no motive, however efficacious, if its ultimate tendencies 
 are injurious ; the latter will make all motives equally welcome, 
 provided they conduce to his immediate end. The object of 
 the one teacher is remote, consisting in the welfare of the 
 children in after-life ; that of the other is immediate, consisting 
 in the reputation, and the pecuniary value of the reputation, 
 that will redound to himself at the end of his engagement. 
 And hence it clearly follows, that if the committee attend only, 
 or attend mainly, to the proficiency made by the children in 
 their accustomed studies, then a direct and palpable temptation 
 is held out to the teacher to attend only, or to attend mainly, 
 to this inferior part of his duty ; because, by so doing, he will 
 win a higher degree of success and a higher reputation for 
 skill, his future services will be in greater demand, and he will 
 not only enjoy his fame as fame, but be able also to coin it 
 into money. Here, then, there seems to be a disastrous alli- 
 ance of worldly motives ; and they unite to weigh down the 
 teacher who aspires to lofty and noble views in the discharge 
 of his duty. 
 
 Is not a change in this part of our school-system imperatively 
 demanded? Is not here a point where positive improvement 
 may forthwith begin ? Ought it not to become an axiom and 
 a proverb, that no amount of mere knowledge in a school shall 
 ever be accepted as an equivalent for an uninstructed con- 
 science ; but, on the other hand, that the formation of good
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 441 
 
 habits shall be an acceptable apology for inferiority in attain- 
 ments? Let committees, then, look vigilantly ; let them inquire 
 anxiously, day by day, into the effect produced by the teacher 
 upon the conduct, the manners, the disposition of his pupils ; 
 and let censure rather than commendation be awarded to the 
 teacher who has carried forward his pupils ever so rapidly in 
 mere knowledge, if he has neglected the culture of the affec- 
 tions, or purchased proficiency in school-studies by means 
 which put the moral nature in jeopardy. How unworthy the 
 sacred office of a teacher, if he incites his pupils to effort, only 
 by displaying before them a brilliant prospect of worldly honors 
 and distinctions, or the power and the pride of wealth, while he 
 neglects to cherish the love of man iu their bosoms, or to dis- 
 play before them daily the evidences of the goodness and the 
 wisdom of God ! I care not how promptly the classes may re- 
 spond in the schoolroom, if I hear profaneness or obscenity in 
 the play-ground. I care not how many text-books they have 
 mastered, if they have not mastered the passions of jealousy 
 and strife and uucharitableness. It is not indispensable to the 
 happiness of children that they should know the length of all 
 the great rivers, or the height of all the great mountains, upon 
 the globe ; but it is indispensable to their happiness that they 
 should love one another, and do as they would be done unto. 
 A life spent in obscurity and supported by daily toil may be 
 full of blessings ; but no worldly honors however high, or 
 wealth however boundless, can atone for one dereliction from 
 duty in acquiring them.- 
 
 But the great agent in carrying the benign work of reform 
 into our schools must be the teacher himself. No fulness in 
 the qualifications of others can be the supplement of any mate- 
 rial deficiency in him. 
 
 Essential requisites in a teacher's character are a love of 
 children and a love of his work. He must not be a hireling. 
 It is right that he should have a regard for his compensation ; 
 but, his compensation being provided for, it should be forgot- 
 ten. To exclude the feeling of monotony and irksomeness, he
 
 442 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 must look upon his work as ever a new one ; for such it really 
 is. The school-teacher is not, as it sometimes seems to be sup- 
 posed, placed upon a perpetually-revolving wheel, and carried 
 through a daily or yearly round of the same labors and duties. 
 Such a view of his office is essentially a low and false one. 
 What if he does turn over the leaves of the same book from 
 day to day, and hear the same lessons recited from year to 
 year? What if he is required to explain the same principles, 
 and to reiterate the same illustrations, until his path in the 
 accustomed exercises of the school-room is as worn and beaten 
 as the one by which, morning and night, he travels to and from 
 it? Still, in the truest and highest sense, his labor is always a 
 new one ; because the subject upon which he operates is con- 
 stantly changing. Every day he is developing new faculties, 
 or carrying forward the old through new stages of their course. 
 Though the books which he uses, and the instructions which 
 he imparts, may be the same, yet his real work consists in 
 his taking up class after class, and conducting them onward 
 through new portions of their progress. The charge committed 
 to his care is weak, ignorant, immature, and constitutionally 
 subject to error. He imparts vigor ; he supplies knowledge ; 
 he ripens judgment ; he establishes principle ; and he then 
 sends them on their way to fulfil the great duties of earth, and 
 to be more and more prepared for another life. But, so soon 
 as he has fulfilled his duty to one company of the ever onward- 
 moving procession of young life, another company steps in to 
 occupy the place of the former. Their .need of guidance, their 
 capacities of improvement, are as great as those which have 
 gone before them. They, too, are bound on the same perilous 
 journey of life, and for the same goal of an immortal existence. 
 He is to guide their steps aright : he is to see, that, before they 
 pass from under his hands, they have some adequate concep- 
 tion of the great objects at which they are to aim, of the glori- 
 ous destiny at which they may arrive ; and that they are 
 endued with the energy and the perseverance which will make 
 their triumph certain. As soon as this labor is done to one
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 443 
 
 company, he bids them a hasty farewell, that he may turn 
 with glad welcome to hail another, more lately arrived upon 
 the confines of existence, who ask his guidance as they are 
 crossing the narrow isthmus of time, on their way to eternity. 
 Such is the teacher's duty, to welcome each new group, to 
 prepare them for the journey of life, and to speed them on their 
 way ; and again to welcome, to prepare, and to speed : and, 
 I repeat it, it is, and forever must be, a new work, Avhile new 
 beings emerge into existence, to receive benefit and blessing 
 from him, to be rescued from what is wrong, to be conse- 
 crated to what is right. No teacher, therefore, who regards 
 his duties in the light of reason and religion, can look upon 
 them as repulsive or monotonous or irksome. The angel 
 that unlocks the gate of heaven might as well become weary 
 of the service, though, with every opening of the door, a new 
 spirit is ushered into the mansions of bliss. 
 
 Let the teacher, then, who cannot draw exhaustless energies 
 from a contemplation of the nature of his calling ; let the 
 teacher whose heart is not exhilarated as he looks round upon 
 the groups of children committed to his care ; let the teacher 
 who can ever consciously speak of the " tedium of school- 
 keeping," or the " irksome task of instruction," either renovate 
 his spirit, or abandon his occupation. The repining teacher 
 may be useful in some other sphere : he may be fit to work 
 upon the perishable materials of wood or iron or stone ; but he 
 is unfit to work upon the imperishable mind. 
 
 The teacher should enter the schoolroom as the friend and 
 benefactor of his scholars. He is supposed to possess more 
 knowledge than they, by the utmost diligence and stretch of 
 faculty, can receive from him ; but yet no fact is more certain, 
 or law more universal, than that they will make no valuable 
 and abiding acquisition without their own consent and co-oper- 
 ation. The teacher can neither transfuse knowledge by any 
 process of decanting, nor inject it by any force, into the mind 
 of a child ; but the law of the relation subsisting between them 
 is, that he must have the child's conscious assent and concur-
 
 444 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 rence before he can impart it. He cannot impart, unless the 
 child consents to receive. What, then, is the state of mind most 
 receptive of knowledge, and most co-operative in acquiring it? 
 Surely, it is a state of confidence, of trustfulness, of respect, of 
 affection. Hence it follows that the first great duty of a teacher 
 is to awaken these sentiments in the breasts of his pupils. 
 For this end, he can do more the first half-day he enters the 
 schoolroom than in any week afterwards. But if a teacher 
 presents himself before his pupils with a haughty or a con- 
 temptuous air, if he introduces himself by beginning to speak 
 of his power and his authority, he will soon create the occasion 
 for using them. The pupils themselves are first to be pre- 
 pared, to be put into an apt condition for the work that is 
 to follow. If we take a survey of any department of nature or 
 of art, illustrations and analogies will crowd upon the mind in 
 confirmation of the universal truth, that, if we would exert an 
 influence upon any object, we must first bring it into a con- 
 dition receptive of that influence. Does not the farmer break 
 up the soil, and open it to the sun, before he commits the seed 
 to its bosom in expectation of a harvest? Have not celebrated 
 artists owed their fame as much to the careful preparation of 
 their materials as to the skill with which they afterwards com- 
 bined them? By the softening agencies of fire or steam, the me- 
 chanic overcomes the rigidity or iuflexiblcuess of his materials, 
 before he attempts to mould or bend them to his purpose ; 
 yet the chemical changes effected by heat, through the inner- 
 most particles of the bar of iron which the smith wishes to 
 fashion anew upon his anvil, are not deeper or more transmut- 
 ing than the spiritual changes wrought upon the inmost emo- 
 tions of a child's soul by a demeanor of dignity, and by looks 
 and tones of affection, on the part of the teacher. When the 
 all-bountiful Giver of the seasons wills to overspread our hem- 
 isphere with vegetable beauty and luxuriance, he does not 
 scatter abroad his treasures of snow and of hail, nor bind the 
 rivers in the death-like embraces of frost ; but he causes the 
 sun to draw near, and the genial rain to descend ; he scatters
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 445 
 
 the infinite drops of dew over the earth, and summons the 
 warming winds from the chambers of the south. Whatever is 
 to be done, whether in the works of Nature or of Art, the mate- 
 rial which is to be wrought upon mast first be adapted to the 
 work. 
 
 All teachers look upon books and apparatus as indispensa- 
 ble to the highest progress of a school ; and hence the sending 
 of a child to school with a demand that he should be taught, 
 but without the common instrumentalities for teaching him, 
 they justly regard as a Pharaoh-like requisition. Yet how 
 much more indispensable are a desire and a purpose to learn, 
 in the breast of a child, than a book in his hand ! A spelling- 
 book, a geography, and so forth, are very desirable ; but a dis- 
 position to use them is indispensable. Parents must supply the 
 books ; but teachers with the help of the parents where they 
 can have it, and, as far as possible, without that help where 
 they cannot have it must supply the disposition. Let this 
 be done, and we may safely affirm that the laws of Nature are 
 not more certain, than that the child will learn ; for it is a law 
 of Nature that he will.* 
 
 * In the number of " The Bibliotheca Sacra " for February, 1846, pp. 110-11, we 
 find the following observations from the pen of the Rev. Xoah Porter, Jr., of Spring- 
 field, Mass. They are so valuable in themselves, and tend so strongly tofortify the 
 views we have expressed, that we cannot forbear to copy them. 
 
 " You cannot drive a boy to study. Least of all can you drive study into him. 
 The attention must it .-elf awake and pant with eagerness for knowledge. The affec- 
 tions must lay hold of it with a grasp that nothing can unlock; and the man must 
 appropriate it, turning it into the very substance of the mind. You cannot force 
 open the attention as you must the jaw that is locked, nor bind on enthusiasm, nor 
 infuse the results that come, if they come at all, from the personal activity of the 
 scholar. The appliances of masters and text-books and illustrations and rules and 
 supervision, and tlie most perfect system of gradations, one and all of them, are in 
 vain, unless you can find or make a generous enthusiasm and a wakeful spirit. Still 
 less at college will the scholar carry forward the work, however well begun at. 
 school, unless, with his growing capacity to labor and to learn, there grow likewise 
 the desire to labor and 'o loam. Still less, af'er he leaves the university, will there 
 be the overmastering desire to be the thorough and finished man, unless there be 
 an iron energy and a burning enthusiasm. To success in acquiring, then, there is 
 needed a strong and active spirit. Indeed, without it, study becomes a mechanical 
 process, books overmaster the mind that should master them, the love of learning 
 is a morbid habit, an unnatural craving, and the highest attainments of scholarship 
 are as useless and as unnatural as a monstrous lion, or a heart that palpitates when 
 it should beat."
 
 446 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 If securing the good will of scholars is preliminary to their 
 attainment of knowledge, far more important is it to the culti- 
 vation of their moral sentiments and to the growth of good 
 habits. It is an invariable law of Nature in regard to the 
 young mind, that the affections are developed before the judg- 
 ment. How woful and desolate would be the condition of a 
 child, if it could never love its mother until it had arrived at 
 an age capable of mastering such a process of reasoning as 
 should convince it that she was deserving of its love ! Happily, 
 this law of instinctive love prevails until an age when the rea- 
 soning powers can be developed, and the conscience enlight- 
 ened. Then, and not till then, can a child make his affections 
 intelligently obedient to his duties. All the circumstances and 
 conditions, therefore, which attend the first introduction of a 
 teacher to his pupils, should conciliate regard, and predispose 
 to a mutual good understanding. 
 
 Is it not too obvious to need exposition, that the principles 
 of duty can be superinduced upon a state of affection and sym- 
 pathy more easily than upon one of antipathy and distrust? Is 
 it not so self-evident as to make the idea of confirmation ab- 
 surd, that a teacher who possesses the love and confidence of 
 his pupils will reclaim them from error, or establish them in 
 good principles, more readily than if he were obliged to break 
 through a rampart of hostile feelings, and carry the citadel of 
 the judgment and conscience by assault, and thus to found his 
 ultimate authority upon the right of conquest, instead of hav- 
 ing the gates thrown open to him with welcome and gratulation, 
 and being received and hailed as a friend and deliverer? Every 
 pupil who loves his teacher will feel that love soliciting him to 
 obedience, just as certainly as every true disciple finds the love 
 of Christ " constraining" him to good works. Every teacher 
 animated by the spirit which is alone worthy of a teacher will 
 enter into possession of his school, "not by constraint, but 
 willingly ; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind ; " not as 
 being a " lord" over his pupils, but as being an " ensample" 
 to them.
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 447 
 
 The idea that there are two antagonist powers in the school- 
 room, each struggling for mastery over the other, like the 
 rival houses of York and Lancaster, contending for the Eng- 
 lish throne, will be as fatal to the prosperity of a school as 
 is a civil war to the prosperity of a country. But primary and 
 essential is the idea, that there is one sacred, all-pervading law, 
 to which teacher and pupil are alike subject, the law of duty 
 and affection. All the rules of the schoolroom are but corolla- 
 ries or consequences from this paramount law. If the authority 
 and power of a teacher are not offensively set forth, they will 
 rarely be questioned. If instead of flattering a despicable 
 pride by a proclamation of his own supremacy, if instead of 
 arrogating sovereignty to his own personal will, all his words 
 and actions proceed upon the supposition that there is one 
 serene and majestic power to which all are alike bound to ren- 
 der allegiance and to pay homage, a law by which the judge 
 is to be judged, and the ruler ruled, and, above all, if the 
 teacher shows himself to be a living and shining example of the 
 doctrine he inculcates, the number of pupils will be few indeed 
 who will ever bring the question of authority to a practical 
 issue. When have soldiers ever undergone such privation of 
 the necessaries of life as when their commander was known to 
 stint himself to the same meagre allowance? When have they 
 ever performed such forced marches as when they saw their 
 leader moving in the van of the column ? or made so valorous 
 an assault as when they saw his plume waving at the head of 
 the charge? Or, to draw examples from the highest source, 
 does not the apostle say that the goodness of God leadeth us 
 to repentance? and the Saviour's emblem was that of a true 
 shepherd, who does not drive, but leads forth his flock. How- 
 ever it may be with sheep, we know, that, with children as with 
 men, the difference is unimaginably great between leading 
 and driving. 
 
 It was intimated above, that, if the proper influences con- 
 stantly radiate from the teacher and pervade the schoolroom, 
 the cases of insurgency again.st him will be rare. Such cases,
 
 448 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 however, may occur ; and, when they do occur, they suggest 
 their owu remedy. If the taleut and skill of the teacher are 
 not sufficient to arouse the indolence or restrain the wayward- 
 ness of the pupil ; if his commanding dignity and benevolence 
 cannot change perverseness into docility, or melt down obsti- 
 nacy into submission ; in fine, if the teacher's mind cannot 
 overmaster the pupil's mind in its then present condition, and 
 if the teacher's heart be not of such superior moral power as to 
 overcome, and assimilate to itself, the heart of the pupil, there 
 is still one resource left : the teacher's physical power is supe- 
 rior to the pupil's physical power (for the teacher has a legal 
 right to summon all necessary assistance to his aid) ; and, with 
 this superiority, he must begin the work of reform. Order 
 must be maintained : this is the primal law. The superiority 
 of the heart ; the superiority of the head ; the superiority of 
 the arm, this is the order of the means to secure an observ- 
 ance of the law. As soon as possible, however, the teacher 
 must- ascend from the low superiority of muscular force to the 
 higher and spiritual ones ; and he must forever cultivate the 
 higher, that they may the sooner supersede the lower. 
 
 I think one cannot have been long accustomed to visiting 
 schools, without being able to determine almost at a glance, on 
 entering a schoolroom, what the relation is which exists be- 
 tween the teacher and his scholars. If as soon as the teacher 
 turns his back upon the scholars, in order to approach and to 
 salute his guests, the whole muscular system of the school 
 seems to snap the fetters in which it had been bound, and to 
 break out into mischievous activity, but as soon as the teacher 
 reverts his face all is again subdued and hushed into deathlike 
 stillness ; if, as the teacher moves about among his scholars 
 and gives his directions, they exhibit a deference that almost 
 runs into timidity, but, as soon as he has passed by, they 
 make grimaces behind him, or fillip spit-balls at his back ; if, 
 as he turns from time to time towards different parts of the 
 room, that portion of the school which is under his eye is con- 
 strainedly quiet and submissive, while that portion which he
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 449 
 
 does not see starts out into a hundred disorders, as wild 
 beasts rush forth when the light of day is withdrawn, if such 
 be the general aspect of the school, then an intelligent spectator 
 becomes as certain at the end of five minutes as he would be 
 at the end of a week that the teacher holds his place only by 
 the law of force. But, on the other hand, if the scholars seem 
 almost unconscious of the teacher's presence ; if they are unob- 
 servant in what part of the room he stands, or in which direc- 
 tion he may be looking ; if he can step out at the door to speak 
 to a visitor, or into a recitation-room to inspect a class, and i - e- 
 main absent for five or ten minutes without there being any 
 buzz or whirring in the schoolroom, then one may feel the 
 delightful assurance that such a school is under the sway of a 
 serene and majestic authority, the authority of the great 
 law of duty and love. I have seen many schools of each class 
 iii Massachusetts ; and I feel warranted in saying, that, in 
 point of numbers, the latter class is rapidly gaining upon the 
 former. 
 
 There is a small class of schools intermediate between the 
 two above described, where the teacher, through a false ambi- 
 tion of having it said that he can govern by moral suasion, 
 or through fear of losing his place, or from some equally un- 
 worthy motive, seeks to govern without resort to corporal pun- 
 ishment, but still has not the skill that can interest children in 
 their studies, nor the spiritual ascendency that can control their 
 waywardness. But no low motive can ever perform the office 
 of a high one. The laws of Nature will not be circumvented. 
 High influences without can only come from high principles 
 within. If a teacher would govern by intellectual and moral 
 power, he must possess intellectual and moral power ; and no 
 spurious or counterfeit similitudes of them can borrow or steal 
 their efficacy. There is great beauty iu the Romish supersti- 
 tion, that the moment consecrated water is sold it is desecrated. 
 It loses its quality of holiness by the unhallowed motive that 
 transfers it. The spirit of the sentiment applies to the preseut 
 case. The teacher who would govern by the law of love must 
 
 29
 
 450 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 have faith in the law of love. In the absence of this, he will 
 be compelled to resort to coaxing or wheedling or hiring chil- 
 dren to be good, which is like the sin of laying a false offering 
 upon the altar of the Lord. 
 
 Immediately on opening a school, an important question 
 arises as to the expediency or inexpediency of promulgating a 
 code of laws for its government. It is the practice of some 
 teachers to announce orally, during the first day or half-day of 
 the school, the rules whose observance they shall require, and 
 whose infraction they shall punish. Others prepare Avritten 
 statutes, sanctioned by specific penalties, which they post up in 
 some conspicuous place in the schoolroom, so as to give a warn- 
 ing to transgressors, and to provide themselves with a ready 
 answer should the plea of ignorance be urged by any offender. 
 Other teachers anticipate the commission of no offence, but wait 
 until one occurs before they expound its demerits or prescribe 
 its consequences. 
 
 It seems to me that very serious objections lie against the 
 promulgation of a code of laws, either oral or written, in ad- 
 vance or at the commencement of the school. If this be done, 
 the scholars instantly adopt the well-known principle of legal 
 construction, that what is not included is excluded ; and hence 
 that every thing is permitted which is not prohibited. But as 
 he is a bad citizen who has no higher rule of action than the 
 law of the land, so is he a bad scholar who has no other 
 restraint against wrong-doing than the prohibitions of the 
 teacher. No code ever framed by the ingenuity of man, how- 
 ever voluminous or detailed it may have been, ever enumerated 
 a tithe of the acts which an enlightened conscience will con- 
 demn ; and no language was ever so exact and perspicuous as 
 to be proof against sophistry and tergiversation. The jurisdic- 
 tion of the conscience is infinitely more comprehensive than 
 that of the statute-book. 7s it right f and not, Is it ^vritten ? is 
 the question to be propounded in the forum of conscience. 
 Each scholar brings a conscience to school. If it has not been 
 previously enlightened on any given point of duty, then there
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 451 
 
 is no punishable blame in the breach of that duty ; if it has 
 been previously enlightened, then the tribunal is already open 
 before which the culprit should be arraigned. 
 
 Besides, as most of our schools consist of scholars differing 
 very much from each other in regard to age and intelligence, 
 the rules applicable to one portion of them may be very unsuit- 
 able to another ; and yet, if relaxed or suspended in one case, 
 the idea of their permanency and immutability will be destroyed, 
 and with that all their moral efficacy ceases. So there may be 
 cases where peculiar circumstances will take an action out of 
 the spirit of a rule, while they leave it within the letter. Sup- 
 pose, for instance, in consideration of the many mischiefs 
 which follow in the train of whispering and other modes of 
 communication between scholars, they are peremptorily and 
 altogether forbidden ; and suppose that, the next day, a child 
 exhibits symptoms of extreme distress, or of fainting, or is 
 exposed to some danger which requires instant warning, shall 
 the general rule be observed at the expense of any conse- 
 quences? or, if violated, shall it be punished? 
 
 Doubtless, too, it has happened, and not very unfrequently, 
 that the idea of the offence was originally suggested by the 
 prohibition ; and thus the law has led to its own infraction, as, 
 with ignorant and superstitious persons, predictions often pro- 
 cure their own fulfilment.* 
 
 But there is a great variety of duties to be performed in a 
 schoolroom, as well as of offences to be avoided. Would it not 
 be more appropriate to go into a detail of these duties, and 
 expound their reasons and their rewards, rather than to set 
 forth an array of offences with their penalties ? And are there 
 no methods by which the teacher can commend the duties 
 beforehand to the good-will of the scholars ; ingratiate them, as 
 
 * The story of the Catholic priest and the hostler is not inapposite. When a 
 hostler had finished making confession of his sins, the priest inquired of him if he 
 had ever greased the teeth of his customers' horses to prevent them from eating 
 their oats. The hostler not only replied in the negative, but said he had never 
 heard of such a thing. The next time he went to the confessional, the first 
 offence which he had to acknowledge was, that he had been greasing the teeth of 
 his customers' horses.
 
 452 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 it were, into the mind of the school, and thus exclude much 
 that is bad by a pre-occupancy of the ground with what is 
 good ? I would commend a course by which not only have 
 some excellent schools sustained their character for excellence, 
 but by which some indifferent schools have been made excel- 
 lent. It is that of employing the first 'hour, or perhaps more, 
 of the first day of a term, in a familiar and colloquial exposi- 
 tion of the objects of the school, and the means which it is 
 indispensable to observe for the accomplishment of those ob- 
 jects. Certainly all the older children, in all schools above the 
 rank of the primary, are capable of understanding something, 
 both of the advantages and the pleasures of knowledge ; of the 
 connection between present conduct and future respectability ; 
 of the different emotions which arise in the mind after the per- 
 formance of a good and of an evil action, and of the inherent 
 tendencies both of virtuous and of vicious habits to accelerate 
 their course towards happiness or misery. Excepting the 
 comparatively few cases of implicit faith, a child will not be 
 deterred from wrong, unless he sees it to be wrong, any more 
 than he will shrink back from a precipice from whose brink 
 he is about to step, if ignorant of its existence. If the moral 
 precipice were made as visible as the natural can be, might we 
 not hope that fewer victims would be precipitated into the 
 abyss of ruin? 
 
 A vast deal of the success of a school depends upon the first 
 impression made by the teacher upon it. And by a well-con- 
 ducted conversation with the scholars at its commencement, 
 and before any prejudices against its requirements have sprung 
 up, or any temptations to disobedience have been presented, the 
 good-will of many, to say the least, may be propitiated. There 
 are some points, indeed, absolutely essential to the prosperity of 
 a school, respecting which the teacher is in the hands of the 
 scholars, wholly dependent upon their co-operation, such 
 as the punctuality and regularity of their attendance, and, not 
 unfrequently, their beiug provided with text-books and other 
 instruments of learning. And, in regard to other points falling
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 453 
 
 more directly within the teacher's control, his only hope of 
 reaching the highest success depends upon securing their assist- 
 ance. A few hours, therefore, at the beginning of a school, 
 and an occasional one afterwards, as the age and capacities of 
 the scholars may require, may be most beneficially spent in a 
 familiar exposition of the great purposes for which the school 
 has been opened, and of the means and observances by which 
 alone its highest prosperity can be secured. A teacher can 
 hardly enter a school of children, collected from various fami- 
 lies, and subjected to various home-influences, without finding 
 some, at least, who have an essentially false view of the object 
 for which they have attended. He must throw light forward 
 to show them the true nature of that object. Among the topics 
 introduced by him, in his first friendly discourse to the youthful 
 group collected around him, may be the duty of cultivating 
 the spirit of honor, and of kindness to each other ; a desire for 
 each other's improvement as well as for their own ; and a de- 
 termination generously to assist their companions in improving 
 the advantages of the school. Let him deprecate the meanness 
 that would try to put off blame upon another for the sake of 
 shielding one's self; that would even risk the concealment 
 of a fault for which another might be unjustly blamed or sus- 
 pected ; that would triumph in any success which would give 
 pain to the innocent ; and let him fill their bosoms with a noble 
 scorn of deception and falsehood. Let him make his company 
 of hearers perceive that knowledge should only be trusted to 
 those who will use it conscientiously ; and this he can do by 
 a graphical description of some immoral great man, who has 
 used power and knowledge for selfish and wicked purposes. 
 Let him convince them that he intends to bring into the school- 
 room none but the highest motives, and that it is alike their 
 duty and interest to bring into the schoolroom none but the 
 highest motives. Let more or less of these topics be introduced 
 again, particularly on the accession of new members to the 
 school, and before time has been allowed them for practising or 
 inventing any adroit measures of defiance or deception. If new
 
 454 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 children, when they come into a school, find its tone a high 
 one, and its habits generous and manly, they will, almost 
 invariably, be assimilated to the prevalent sentiment. Extraor- 
 dinary cases of perversity may, indeed, occur ; but if the new 
 pupils see that the denizens of the school make it a matter of 
 honor to govern themselves, instead of being governed by a set 
 of arbitrary rules ; if they see such confidence existing between 
 teacher and pupils, that each is ready to trust the other, and 
 that the interests of both sides are the same, instead of clashing 
 like those of enemies, they will be ashamed to stand out as 
 exceptions, as ugly, misshapen creatures, in a company where 
 all others are beautiful. 
 
 One of the highest and most valuable objects to which the 
 influences of a school can be made conducive consists in train- 
 ing our children to self-government. The doctrine of no-gov- 
 ernment, even if all forms of violence did not meet the first 
 day to celebrate its introduction by a jubilee, would forfeit all 
 the power that originates in concert and union. So tremen- 
 dous, too, are the evils of anarchy and lawlessness, that a 
 government by mere force, however arbitrary and cruel, has 
 been held preferable to no-government. But self-government, 
 self-control, a voluntary compliance with the laws of reason 
 and duty, have been justly considered as the highest point of 
 excellence attainable by a human being. No one, however, 
 can consciously obey the laws of reason and duty until he 
 understands them : hence the preliminary necessity of their 
 being clearly explained, of their being made to stand out, broad, 
 lofty, and as conspicuous as a mountain against a clear sky. 
 There may be blind obedience without a knowledge of the 
 law, but only of the will of the lawgiver; but the first step 
 towards rational obedience is a knowledge of the rule to be 
 obeyed, and of the reasons on which it is founded. 
 
 The above doctrine acquires extraordinary force in view of 
 our political institutions, founded, as they are, upon the great 
 idea of the capacity of man for self-government, an idea so 
 long denounced by the State as treasonable, and by the Church
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 455 
 
 as heretical. In order that men may be prepared for self-gov- 
 ernment, their apprenticeship must commence in childhood. 
 The great moral attribute of self-government cannot be born 
 and matured in a day ; and, if school-children are not trained 
 to it, we only prepare ourselves for disappointment if we 
 expect it from grown men. Everybody acknowledges the 
 justness of the declaration, that a foreign people, born and 
 bred and dwarfed under the despotisms of the Old World, can- 
 not be transformed into the full stature of American citizens 
 merely by a voyage across the Atlantic, or by subscribing the 
 oath of naturalization. If they retain the servility in which 
 they have been trained, some self-appointed lord or priest on 
 this side of the water will succeed to the authority of the 
 master whom they have left behind them. If, on the other 
 hand, they identify liberty with an absence from restraint and 
 an immunity from punishment, then they are liable to become 
 intoxicated and delirious with the highly-stimulating properties 
 of the air of freedom ; and thus, in either case, they remain 
 unfitted, until they have become morally acclimated to our 
 institutions, to exercise the rights of a freeman. But can it 
 make any substantial difference whether a man is suddenly 
 translated into all the independence and prerogatives of an 
 American citizen, from the bondage of an Irish lord or an 
 English manufacturer, or from the equally rigorous bondage 
 of a parent, guardian, or school-teacher? He who has been a 
 serf until the day before he is twenty-one years of age cannot 
 be an independent citizen the day after ; and it makes no differ- 
 ence whether he has been a serf in Austria or in America. As 
 the fitting apprenticeship for despotism consists in being trained 
 to despotism, so the fitting apprenticeship for self-government 
 consists in being trained to self-government ; and the law of 
 force and authority is as appropriate a preparation for the sub- 
 jects of an arbitrary power as liberty and self-imposed law are 
 for developing and maturing those sentiments of self-respect, 
 of honor, and of dignity, which belong to a truly republican 
 citizen. Were we hereafter to govern irresponsibly, then our
 
 456 ANNUAL REPOKT3 ON EDUCATION. 
 
 being forced to yield implicit obedience to an irresponsible 
 governor would prepare us to play the tyrant in our turn ; but 
 if we are to govern by virtue of a law which embraces all, 
 which overlays all, which includes the governor as well as the 
 governed, then lessons of obedience should be inculcated upon 
 childhood in reference to that sacred law. If there are no two 
 things wider asunder than freedom and slavery, then must the 
 course of training which fits children for these two opposite 
 conditions of life be as diverse as the points to which they 
 lead. Now, for the high purpose of training an American 
 child to become an American citizen, a constituent part of a 
 self-governing people, is it not obvious that, in all cases, the 
 law by which he is to be bound should be made intelligible to 
 him? and, as soon as his capacity will permit, that the reasons 
 on which it is founded should be made as intelligible as the 
 law itself? 
 
 This view of the subject does not trench one hair's-breadth 
 upon the great doctrine of order and subordination. It only 
 contests the claim to arbitrary power on the one side, and its 
 correlative, blind submission, on the other : it discards these 
 as substitutes for moral power and voluntary obedience, and 
 there it stops. The great question is, to whom or to what 
 the obedience or subordination is due. It is primarily due to 
 the law, to the law written upon the heart, to the law of 
 God. The teacher is the representative and the interpreter of 
 that law. He is clothed with power to punish its violations ; 
 but this comprehends only the smallest part of his duty. As 
 far as possible, he is .to prevent violations of it by rectifying 
 that state of mind out of which violations come. Nor is it 
 enough that the law be obeyed. As far as possible, he is to 
 see that it is obeyed from right motives. As a moral act, blind 
 obedience is without value. As a moral act, also, obedience 
 through fear is without value ; and not only so, but, as soon 
 as the fear is removed, the restrained impulses will break out, 
 and demand the arrears of indulgence as a long-delayed debt. 
 To prevent misunderstanding, however, I wish to define the
 
 EEPORT FOR 1845. 457 
 
 term " fear," as here used. It is here used to signify a dread of 
 bodily pain or injury, or of personal loss. In reference to the 
 Divine Being, the term is used in a widely different sense. 
 That fear of the Lord which "is the beginning of wisdom" 
 includes the emotion of awe and reverence. It is not a servile, 
 but a filial fear. It is a sentiment which an enlightened con- 
 science can never experience towards an unworthy object ; and 
 which, therefore, an unworthy object can never inspire. But 
 the mere dread of personal harm, as the consequence of wrong- 
 doing, is not curative : it is not restorative. It may warn, it 
 may arrest, it may check, the outward commission of wrong ; 
 and its use for these purposes, to any extent which circum- 
 stances may require, is legitimate. But, with the prevention 
 of wrong, its functions end. Though it may make an offender 
 cease to do ill, it can never, by its own efficacy, make him 
 love to do well ; as poison may arrest a disease, though it 
 cannot restore a patient to health. By suppressing outbreaks, 
 by restraining waywardness, fear may prepare the way for the 
 introduction of higher motives of action ; but, if the aid of these 
 higher motives be not then invoked, the ground of justification 
 for using the fear is taken away. A reform in character may 
 be begun by fear ; but, if it ends in fear, it will prove to be no 
 reform. When the spendthrift finds he is approaching the last 
 dollar of his patrimony, and gaunt hunger and want begin to 
 stare him in the face, he is admonished to desist ; and, under 
 the terror of these impending evils, he arrests his course of riot 
 and dissipation. But this terror does not inspire him with the 
 least love of temperance and industry. A habit of diligence 
 and sobriety must come, if it comes at all, from the working of 
 other motives within him. Without the restraint of higher 
 motives, should another inheritance unexpectedly descend to 
 him, he would return to his " wallowing in the mire." The 
 bond-servants of fear always do as little as they can ; because 
 they do nothing for the love of the thing done, but only to 
 avoid some painful consequences if it be not done. Work, 
 whether of the hand or of the mind, which is not performed
 
 458 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 from a love of it, is never performed with that zest or alacrity 
 which the love of it inspires. An external act of duty miiv be 
 done ; but it is done, not from a willing, but from a repugnant, 
 not from a dutiful, but from a rebellious heart. The mind 
 will disown what the hand performs ; while each movement 
 and each moment will deepen disgust towards it. This is so 
 clear, even to the intellect, that some of the more sagacious 
 slave-drivers at the South are substituting motives of personal 
 profit, of appetite, and the love of tawdriuess, for the scourge. 
 They have been led to this, not from compassion, but from cu- 
 pidity. They find the sum total of profits at the end of the 
 year to be greater under the use of pleasurable motives than 
 under the use of painful ones. Formerly (and, to a great 
 extent, even at present) they used the motive of bodily fear 
 and smart, the motive by which the tyrant maintains his 
 power, by which the savage enforces obedience to his will, 
 by which the brute secures its prey. But the eyes of some of 
 them have been opened to see the neighboring motives, as they 
 lie arranged along the great scale, from the brutish to the an- 
 gelic ; and they now avail themselves of the love of appetite, 
 the love of approbation, the desire of being bedizened with 
 gaudy colors, and so forth, as more efficient agencies than pain. 
 Doubtless the quantity of their work will be increased, and its 
 quality improved, as their masters ascend higher and higher 
 in the scale of motive-powers. Teachers should be children 
 of light, and they should not permit the children of Mam- 
 mon to be wiser in their generation than they. It should 
 never be forgotten that the highest duty of a teacher is to pro- 
 duce the greatest quantity and the purest quality of moral 
 action. 
 
 Fear, then, is no more to be proscribed from the teacher's 
 list of motives than arseuic and henbane from the inateria 
 medico, of the physician ; but the teacher or parent who uses 
 nothing but fear commits a far greater error than the physician 
 who uses nothing but poison. Let all wise and good men unite 
 their efforts so to improve both the moral and the physical
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 459 
 
 health of the community, as gradually and regularly to dimin- 
 ish, and finally to supersede, the necessity of either. 
 
 The maxim embodied in the law of the land, and sustained 
 by the good sense of all communities, that the teacher stands 
 in loco parentis, that is, in the parent's place or stead, has been 
 a thousand times repeated. By virtue of this relation, he is 
 authorized to do, for all the purposes within his jurisdiction, 
 what the parent might rightfully do under like circumstances. 
 But he stands in the parent's place, for love as well as for power, 
 for duty as well as for authority. If a father has any right to 
 punish a child whose reason he has never attempted to enlight- 
 en, whose conscience he has never sought to develop, it is a 
 right founded upon the previous commission, on his part, of 
 the highest wrong. If preventives and milder remedies have 
 not been used to avert the ultimate necessity of violent applica- 
 tions, then the parent, in regard to every offence which demands 
 the application of violence, is an accessory before the fact, a 
 suborner to the crime, and justly incurs the largest share of its 
 guilt. If the rights of the teacher as to the exercise of power 
 are commensurate with the rights of the parent, so are the 
 teacher's duties also, in regard to the motives from which he 
 acts, commensurate with parental duties. 
 
 A question connected with this subject has been often dis- 
 cussed ; and the practice is different in different parts of the 
 State. It is, whether refractory and disobedient scholars should 
 be dismissed from the school, or retained in it and subdued. 
 If a teacher stands in the place of the parent, why should he 
 dismiss any scholar from his school (unless temporarily), any 
 more than a parent should expel a child from his household? 
 There is no Botany Bay to which such a child can be banished. 
 Instead of crossing the ocean to another hemisphere, he remains 
 at home. For all purposes of evil, he continues in the midst 
 of the very children from among whom he was cast out ; and, 
 when he associates with them out of school, there is no one 
 present to abate or neutralize his pernicious influences. If the 
 expelled pupil be driven from the district where he belongs into
 
 460 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 another, in order to prevent his contaminations at home, what 
 better can be expected from the people of the place to which he 
 is sent than a reciprocation of the deed, by their sending one 
 of their outcasts to supply his place, and thus opening a com- 
 merce of evil upon free-trade principles? Nothing is gained 
 while the evil purpose remains in the heart. Reformation is 
 the great desideratum ; and can any lover of his country hesi- 
 tate between the alternatives of forcible subjugation and victo- 
 rious contumacy? In extreme cases, however, the school- 
 committee have an undoubted legal right to expel a scholar 
 from school. 
 
 But, in those cases where the clangerousness of the symptoms 
 will no longer permit delay, there is an immense difference in 
 the modes of treating a malady. We know that a mere pre- 
 tender to medical or surgical knowledge will aggravate the 
 puncture of a pin into a mortification, fatal to life ; while, by 
 anodyne and restorative, the skilful practitioner will cure the 
 gangrene itself. So, in the case of a distempered will, it may 
 be inflamed and exasperated, by fiery and passionate appliances, 
 into incorrigibleness and misanthropy ; or, on the other hand, 
 it may be restored to soundness and docility by reproofs or 
 chastisements administered in wisdom and love. 
 
 But after the school has commenced, when classes have been 
 formed, and the routine of exercises begun, it is then that 
 opportunities, without number and without end, will present 
 themselves for inspiring sentiments and cultivating habits of 
 order, of decorum, of honor, of justice, and of truth ; or, on the 
 other hand, of engendering a brood of base and dissocial feel- 
 ings, unkindness, evasion, hypocrisy, dishonesty, and false- 
 hood. Nay, the teacher may be entirely honest and sincere 
 himself; and yet, from having his mind too intently and exclu- 
 sively fixed upon the intellectual progress of his pupils, he may 
 be regardless of the moral impulses which secure that progress, 
 and of the emotions which attend it. Every true teacher will 
 consider the train of feeling, not less than the train of thought, 
 which is evolved by the exercises of the schoolroom.
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 461 
 
 Here opens a most important and difficult subject. So far as 
 I know, it has never been comprehensively or minutely treated 
 by any writer. It is impossible for me to do it justice. I enter 
 upon it with undissembled diffidence ; yet such is its intrinsic 
 importance, and so often, when visiting schools, have I seen 
 exemplifications of wrong where I was sure the teacher in- 
 tended only what was right, that I can no longer forbear to 
 attempt an elucidation of its merits. May others be led to 
 investigate and expound it, until it assumes a prominence and 
 commands an attention corresponding to its magnitude ! 
 
 After the provisional classification of a school, the first busi- 
 ness ordinarily consists in setting lessons and hearing recita- 
 tions. In all schools having any claim to respectability, im- 
 perfect recitations incur some unpleasant consequences. In 
 some, it is only a forfeiture of the teacher's approval ; in some, 
 it is a record of failure ; in some, after a fixed number of fail- 
 ures, it is corporal punishment, the infliction of which cancels 
 the old score, aud opens the books for a new account. In all 
 decent schools, an imperfect recitation is a thing which the 
 pupils deprecate ; but the means of preventing it, or of avoiding 
 the appearance of it, arc various. 
 
 In the first place, the teacher can insure any number of im- 
 perfect recitations by giving too long or too difficult lessons, 
 lessons beyond the ability of the scholars to learn ; and thus 
 a mere mistake in judgment, on the part of the teacher, may 
 lead to discouragement or fraud on the part of the pupils. Les- 
 sons should be such that they can be competently mastered by 
 all the scholars in the class, unless in cases of remarkable dul- 
 ness. Some of the less forward or less bright may require a 
 little extra assistance, which should be freely rendered to 
 them ; but, if there be any members of the class who cannot 
 make themselves tolerably well acquainted with the lessons, 
 they should be removed to a lower class. Habitually to break 
 down at a recitation has a most disastrous influence on the 
 character of a child. It depresses the spirits, takes away all 
 the animation and strength derived from hope, and utterly
 
 462 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 destroys the ideal of intellectual accuracy, which is next iu 
 importance to moral accuracy, on which, indeed, moral ac- 
 curacy often depends. It is still worse when the whole class 
 fails. Shame never belongs to multitudes. It is a feeling 
 which arises when we contrast our own deficiency or miscon- 
 duct with the opposite qualities in others ; but where all are 
 equally deficient, or equally wrong, there is no opportunity for 
 such a contrast. Common deficiency at the recitation begets 
 a mingled feeling of contempt for the study, and recklessness 
 of reputation, which is fatal to all advancement. It may begin 
 by merely disheartening the pupil ; but it will soon become dis- 
 gust towards the study, and aversion from the teacher. Few 
 things are of more baneful tendency than to have a scholar or a 
 class leave the recitation-stand, after a half-hour of blundering 
 and darkness, with no sense of shame or regret at the dishonor. 
 Few things are of more evil augury than for children to be- 
 come so inured, by frequency, to having marks of discredit 
 entered against their names, that they grow indifferent and cal- 
 lous to a recorded censure. Such children lose all that delicacy 
 of feeling, that fine sensitiveness to honor, which are strong 
 outposts of virtuous principle. Day after day, to have a dis- 
 honorable mark set upon the body, or the hand, or on the name, 
 without any feeling of regret, or effort at amendment, is as de- 
 plorable for a boy or a girl as it would be for a man or a 
 woman to receive, without shame and without compunction, a 
 tenth or a twentieth sentence to the house of correction or jail. 
 The former, indeed, foretokens the latter. 
 
 But suppose the character of the lesson to be rightly adjusted 
 to the capacity of the learner, still a brood of temptations lurk 
 around. In the first place, there is the device of getting one 
 part of the lesson better than the rest, under the expectation 
 of being questioned on that part. How often has this beeu 
 done ! In some of the studies, it is to be forestalled and ex- 
 cluded by the method, before described, of putting each ques- 
 tion to the whole class, waiting a sufficient time for each pupil 
 to think out the answer in his own rniud, and then calling upon
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 463 
 
 some one by name to answer it. The naming of the scholar 
 to give the answer should be in no set order, but promiscuous. 
 This method especially applies to grammar, to oral spelling, 
 to oral recitations in geography, and to mental arithmetic. In 
 written arithmetic, a question for solution may be propounded, 
 and one pupil required to state the first step in the process, and 
 then another pupil in another part of the class the second step, 
 and so on, until the explanation is completed. Where there is, 
 as there should be in every schoolroom, a sufficient extent of 
 blackboard to allow the whole class to stand before it at once, 
 a separate question may be given to each member of the class, 
 to be wrought upon it. Occasionally, when the solution is 
 half completed, the pupils may be transposed, and each one 
 required to examine and complete his neighbor's work. 
 
 Such are some of the methods to be constantly varied and 
 interchanged by which Ihe temptation to deal treacherously 
 with the lesson may be met and defeated. And yet the teacher 
 should make no avowal that he entertains suspicious against 
 any individual, and designs to baffle his plans for deception. 
 He uses these means only for banishing temptation where it 
 exists, and for shutting the door against it where its invasion 
 is threatened. Temptation may be analyzed into two elements, 
 desire and opportunity. Take away the desu*e, and the 
 opportunity can work no harm ; take away the opportunity, 
 and the desire is baffled. The former course is the better, 
 when it can be taken ; but here the latter is recommended as 
 one of the means of accomplishing the former. 
 
 It sometimes happens that scholars experiment upon the 
 numbers, or terms, of an arithmetical question. In proportion, 
 for instance, if they have no knowledge of the principle which 
 should guide them, they may try the effect of multiplying two 
 of the numbers together, and dividing the product by the third ; 
 but, if that does not yield the right answer, they may transpose 
 the order, and try again ; and in the end, having exhausted all 
 the errors, they will obtain the truth. But it is only by a com- 
 parison of their result with the answer in the book that they
 
 464 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 will know tliat they have arrived at the truth. They will not 
 know on what principle the true answer was obtained ; and, 
 on attempting a solution of the next question, they will be as 
 ignorant as ever, and be again obliged to go through with the 
 same experimental process. In order to prevent this appeal to 
 chance, instead of an appeal to principle, the class may be 
 occasionally required to lay aside their slates, and to work out 
 all the questions contained in a lesson on paper. Here they 
 will not be able to obliterate what they have done, as they can 
 do on the slate ; and, therefore, the teacher, by a single glance 
 of the eye, can see the track which the mind has made, whether 
 straight or circuitous, in its search after the answer. He will 
 also see the mechanical correctness with which each step may 
 have been performed. 
 
 Frequent reviews, by carrying the pupils a second time over 
 the ground they have traversed, will be another means of de- 
 termining whether they have left any part of it unexplored. 
 
 Devices or excuses to escape the lesson altogether, when the 
 pupil is conscious of not having faithfully learned it, are an ag- 
 gravated form of the evil above mentioned ; and it should be 
 guarded against by an examination of the absentee upon the 
 omitted lesson at another time. 
 
 I fear that this slurring or shirking of the lesson is some- 
 times regarded in no other light than as a clog upon the prog- 
 ress of the pupil, or as an abatement from the success of the 
 coming examination. The substance of the argument often 
 used as a warning against this species of misconduct is, that 
 whoever leaves a lesson of his course uumastered, leaves an 
 enemy in ambush behind him, an enemy who will, at some 
 day, rise up to molest his peace, and perhaps to defeat his 
 most cherished hopes. But, though this is a legitimate con- 
 sideration, yet the subject has relations far more important. It 
 is not so much the lesson which is omitted, as the wrongful act 
 which is committed. The knowledge that is lost is an insig- 
 nificant matter compared with the trickish habit that is gained. 
 The avoidance of the lesson has deprived the intellect of so
 
 REPOET FOR 1845. 465 
 
 much exercise, and, therefore, has prevented whatever of 
 strength that exercise would have given ; but the means by 
 which the lesson was avoided have given exercise and strength 
 to motives of deception and fraud. Herein lies the lamentable 
 character of the deed. It is only a misfortune to be ignorant, 
 but it is an unspeakable calamity to be dishonest. However 
 vigilantly the teacher may look after the intelligence of his 
 charge, he should use a thousand times more vigilance in pre- 
 serving their integrity. Limited attainments are not incom- 
 patible with a high degree of happiness ; but every immoral 
 act diminishes the capacity for happiness for ever and ever. 
 
 Another means of avoiding study and, I am sorry to say, 
 I have found no little evidence of its existence is, after pro- 
 curing some fellow-pupil or other person to perform the woi'k 
 which the teacher has assigned, to present the work, thus per- 
 formed by another, as the product of one's own labor. The 
 intellectual loss and injury of such a course are great. It 
 leaves the mind unexercised, when it was one of the principal 
 objects of the lesson to exercise it. It also disqualifies the 
 pupil more and more for mastering subsequent lessons. A 
 scholar who did not get his lessons last week through indolence 
 may be unable to get them this week through incapacity, and 
 next week he may give them up in despair. But the most de- 
 plorable quality of such conduct is, that it is an acted falsehood ; 
 and, as subsequent lessons are mastered with so much more 
 difficulty after the omission of preceding ones, the power of 
 the temptation increases in a geometrical ratio at each suc- 
 ceeding step. 
 
 The cases above referred to are generally those where assist- 
 ance is obtained out of school ; but the prompting of a fellow- 
 pupil in school, and during the recitation, comes under the same 
 general head, and incurs the like mischievous consequences. 
 To guard against the latter species of misconduct, the teacher 
 should be all eye and all ear. He should be so familiar with 
 the lesson that he can devote his whole attention to the class, 
 
 instead of occupying the time in preparing himself, by looking 
 so
 
 466 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 at his book, to hear the successive answers. His eye should 
 be on them on their account, and not on his book on his own 
 account. To guard the pupil against taking fraudulent meas- 
 ures out of school, he should instruct as faithfully in regard to 
 the object of the lesson as in regard to the lesson itself. The 
 attention of the pupil should be forever turned towards the 
 state of his own mind. Have the lesson, the fact, the principle, 
 the scientific relation, been reproduced within himself? Are 
 they recorded on the tables of his intellect? Are they so 
 clearly and enduringly written there, that if the slate and black- 
 board were broken to fragments, if the book were to be con- 
 sumed, he would still possess them as his own, ineffaceably 
 inscribed on the mind? Is the lesson so luminously recorded 
 in his memory, that he can see it there in the darkness of 
 midnight, and revive it in the solitude of the desert ? Every 
 pupil should be made to see, that to transfer or to copy an 
 answer or a process from a text-book to his own slate or paper, 
 or to take it from another's dictation, is valueless in the way 
 of acquisition, of improvement ; that it is, in its nature, the 
 veriest task-work or tread-mill service ever performed. He 
 should be made to see that he might as well learn the art of 
 swimming by getting another boy to swim for him ; that he 
 might as well increase his stature and strength by employing 
 another to eat his meals ; or that he might as well expect to 
 gain wealth by forfeiting all his daily earnings to the more in- 
 dustrious. Perhaps the most appropriate punishment, in cases 
 where a punishment is deemed advisable, for stealing the solu- 
 tion of a sum from a book, or for transferring it from another's 
 slate, or for borrowing another's composition instead of writing 
 one, would be to make the offender copy off figures in logarithms, 
 or the letters of some algebraic process, about which he knows 
 nothing, or to transcribe passages in the French or Latin lan- 
 guage. This would be a parallel to his own " vain knowledge," 
 and would show him how pleasant it is to feed upon the east 
 wind. 
 
 But the forfeiture of privileges and of knowledge which the
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 467 
 
 pupil incurs by such a course as is above described is not the 
 principal evil. It is not a loss of utility merely, but it is a de- 
 parture from honor and honesty. Why should not the scholar 
 who now cheats his teacher in the recitation-room cheat his 
 master in his work when he becomes an apprentice or a clerk, 
 and his customers in their utensils or their goods when he 
 becomes a mechanic or a merchant? All great robbers began 
 by stealing small things ; and the foulest assassins and mur- 
 derers commenced their career by inflicting petty injuries. 
 
 I fear the little departures from rectitude and truth which 
 sometimes pervade a school, or are practised by particular mem- 
 bers of it, are not regarded in their true light, as seminal 
 principles or germs, which, if not eradicated, will grow up to 
 maturity, and bear the fatal fruit of falsehoods, perjuries, and 
 frauds. How narrow the range of a school-child's thoughts, 
 compared with the vast compass and combinations of an adult 
 mind ! how slow the mental operations of the former, compared 
 with the celerity with which the latter passes from premises to 
 conclusions, and from means to ends ! The child is obliged to 
 commence his calculations with visible and tangible units, and 
 for a long time he moves feebly and totteringly forward, con- 
 stantly seeking the support of another's hand ; yet what vast 
 and complicated schemes the same mind, in its maturity, will 
 project ! When we thus witness the capacity of growth and 
 expansion with which the intellect is endowed, why should 
 we doubt that the appetites and propensities have at least an 
 equal power of expansion and activity? Nay, is it not con- 
 ceded in every system of mental philosophy ever promulgated, 
 that the appetites and desii'es are endowed with an ardor and 
 a vehemence to which the intellect is a stranger ; and that the 
 passions, if unregulated and unchastened, rush to extremes in- 
 finitely more wide and more ruinous than the understanding 
 can ever reach? Why then, when we find the mind which 
 was once so feeble, now capable of concerting vast plans for 
 wealth, for ambition, or other forms of personal aggrandize- 
 ment, why should we doubt that the little tricks and prevari-
 
 468 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 cations of the schoolroom may grow up into fraudulent bank- 
 ruptcies, or stupendous peculations and embezzlements? States 
 and empires are no more to the man than the toys of the nur- 
 sery to the infant; why, then, should not corruption in politics, 
 and hypocrisy in religion, grow out of the artifices and pretexts 
 of the playground? If we would enjoy an immunity from the 
 latter, we must suppress the former. How much easier and 
 safer to crush the brittle egg than to kill the coiling serpent ! 
 
 The act of furnishing arithmetical solutions, or translations 
 in the classics, to a fellow-pupil before recitation, or of prompt- 
 ing him during it, is to be treated as a wrong in the giver as 
 well as in the receiver. Yet always, or nearly so, the subject 
 presents itself in a different light to children, and generally, I 
 believe, even to mature minds. It is commonly regarded as an 
 act of kindness as a social pleasure, if not a social duty to 
 give, to one who wants, what we, without any loss, can spare. 
 Shall a pupil who has neglected his lesson until the hour of 
 recitation approaches be subjected to punishment, when we 
 can supply his deficiencies in ten minutes, and save him from 
 harm? Shall a friend and classmate, who has suffered the 
 time of probation to pass by unimproved, shall he be sub- 
 jected to mortification, if not to rebuke or chastisement, when 
 we, merely by a whisper in his ear, can save his feelings, his 
 character, and perhaps his skin? Such is the aspect in which 
 the subject presents itself to most minds, especially to the minds 
 of school-children. So, to the natural eye, the earth appears 
 to be flat. But what do we do as soon as the child arrives at a 
 proper age for understanding its true shape ? Do we not spend 
 time, use apparatus, and give explanations, again and again, 
 until the natural error of the senses is corrected? And why 
 should not as much time be spent in correcting those moral 
 errors into which all children naturally if not necessarily fall? 
 No reason can be assigned, unless it be the infinitely false one, 
 that moral culture is less important than intellectual. The first 
 impressions of children ou this whole subject of prompting 
 answers, and of supplying solutions, can easily be shown to be
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 469 
 
 illusory and false. The true question goes far deeper than the 
 scholar's appearance at the recitation. The recitation is only 
 a means to an end. In itself, it is valueless. The only ques- 
 tion of any importance is, What is the state of the pupil's mind? 
 Does that which he writes down upon his slate, or speaks with 
 his tongue, come from his understanding? or does it only come 
 mechanically from his fingers, or from his lips, by the dictation 
 of another, and not from his own mind? The pupil who sub- 
 mits himself to the ordeal of a recitation, like a witness in 
 court, is under a moral obligation to make true answers, from 
 his own knowledge, to whatever questions may be propounded 
 to him ; and is that pupil an honest one, who, under such an 
 obligation, gives either the work or the answer of another as 
 his own? If the deficiencies of others are to be recorded, or 
 if there is a competition for places or medals or parts, and one 
 pupil escapes a mark, or gains a credit, by indirect means, is it 
 fair towards his fellows, or doing as he would be done by? If 
 two children collude together, and agree to help each other, by 
 private signs or otherwise, during the recitation, ought we to 
 be surprised if, afterwards, they agree to run up stocks in the 
 market, in order to cheat innocent purchasers? Besides, where 
 is the iniquity to stop? If one pupil may be assisted or 
 prompted once, why may not all go to the same extent? This, 
 however, would reduce the whole to their original equality ; 
 for, if all take the liberty to cheat once, they stand in the same 
 relative position as at first. He, therefore, who means to get 
 a dishonest advantage over his fellows must now cheat twice 
 in order to gain his end ; and so on indefinitely. If the grocer 
 adulterates his sugar and his flour to the amount of ten per 
 cent of its value, and the purchaser pays him ten per cent of 
 counterfeit coin or bills, neither is a gainer in money, while 
 both are sufferers in morals. So it is with children who cheat 
 each other and their teacher at the recitation. Now, is not the 
 moral spirit with which the lesson is studied and recited of as 
 much consequence as the knowledge it confers? And, if so, 
 ought not the teacher to spend a* much time on the former as
 
 470 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 on the latter? I exhort teachers and committee-men to ask 
 themselves the question, whether this is done. 
 
 The hour of recitation is the hour of reckoning ; the place 
 of recitation is the place for weighing and gauging the amount 
 of acquisition made by the pupils. Emphatically, therefore, it 
 is a place for fair-dealing, for truth, for uprightness towards the 
 teacher, and for equity between fellow-pupils. Any deception 
 there is like the use of false balances ; and the teacher should 
 no more wink or connive at it, however anxious he may be that 
 his school should appear well, than he should instruct his schol- 
 ars how they may use false weights or measures in their traffic 
 with men. 
 
 I think the nature of a recitation can be so unfolded and 
 explained to all, excepting, perhaps, the lowest class of minds, 
 and that the recitation itself can be so conducted, as to save it 
 from the frauds to which it now gives birth. Invested with the 
 associations of honor and good faith, it may be made to assume 
 something of a sacred character. I have known scholars who 
 would not give an answer with which a prompter had supplied 
 them, any more than they would receive stolen goods, or pass 
 counterfeit money. The inherent absurdity of one pupil's get- 
 ting a lesson for another may be made so obvious and glaring, 
 even by a moderate degree of ability to a moderate capacity 
 of understanding, as to excite contempt or abhorrence for it. 
 The objects of a child's studying are usefulness, respectability, 
 eminence, happiness. These objects are reached through the 
 acquisition of knowledge, and through an increase of mental 
 activity and energy. But each child's mind must grow for 
 itself as much as each child's body must grow for itself. I may 
 as well be warmed by another man's putting on my garments 
 as be improved by another man's getting my lessons. If a child 
 is idle, or squanders away his time, he, in his own proper per- 
 son, must suffer for it. No friend can bear the burden of his 
 future ignorance or imbecility. One person may as well bear 
 another's toothache, or transfer another's consumption to his 
 own lungs. Nor does the fraud bring any profit to the defraud-
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 471 
 
 er. Suppose the children, instead of gathering the richer treas- 
 ures of knowledge, were only gathering gold-dust, which, day 
 by day, should be brought to the scales, that the amount of 
 their gains might be ascertained. Would any sluggard become 
 richer by concealing a worthless pebble in his heap? Would 
 not the assayer detect the fraud, and expose both it and its 
 author? and would not every one who supplied, or who only 
 assisted in supplying, the spurious substance, be justly regarded 
 as an accomplice in the guilty act ? Time is the Great Assayer, 
 and will surely expose the folly and the ignorance of all those 
 who cheat at the recitation, and impose upon the teacher the 
 semblance of knowledge for its reality. 
 
 I fear that too much value is ordinarily attached to the 
 recitation. I fear it is often regarded as an object, and not as 
 an instrument ; as the goal, and not as the path that leads to it. 
 The daily routine of exercises, and the examinations of the 
 school-committee, may cause all the forces of the school to con- 
 verge to this point. When such is the case, the pupils, espe- 
 cially the ambitious ones, will devote themselves to the words 
 of their lesson rather than to its meaning ; they will aim at 
 readiness and volubility rather than at depth and discrimina- 
 tion ; they will confine themselves within the author's train of 
 thought, instead of taking discursive views, tracing analogies, 
 and sending the mind out to the right and left in quest of ma- 
 terials for confirmation or for questioning, from all collateral 
 and related topics. So. too, under such a mistaken view of the 
 object of a recitation, the pupils will be tempted, when it is 
 over, to discharge the subject from their minds, that they may 
 make room for the next exercise. All this is delusive. It 
 grasps at the shadow, but misses the substance. To exhibit to 
 the teacher the state of the pupil's mind is the true object of 
 the recitation, so that whatever is right may be fastened there 
 securely and forever ; so that deficiencies may be supplied ; and 
 so that whatever is erroneous may be rectified or obliterated 
 before the impression is deepened beyond effacing. If the 
 arrangements and the general spirit of the school are such as
 
 472 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 to make the pupils desire a brilliant recitation only, then they 
 are tempted to manage adroitly to conceal their ignorance in 
 order to escape degradation, and to gain a credit upon the 
 teacher's books. But such a course will redound to their own 
 discredit, and will entail enduring degradation upon the moral 
 sense. 
 
 Closely akin to the above subject is the use of keys in math- 
 ematical studies. To avoid cumbrous enumeration, I shall 
 refer to arithmetical keys only, although the remarks on this 
 topic will apply to algebra as well as to arithmetic. In our 
 old arithmetical text-books, the answers were regularly append- 
 ed to the questions, each to each. The complaint of the pupil 
 who studied the old arithmetics in the old way was, " I cannot 
 get the answer." He did not say he could not understand the 
 principle ; but the answer, as given in the book, was the thing 
 he sought for. By observing the denomination in which it was 
 expressed, and the number of places of figures which it con- 
 tained, he could conjecture the process by which it might be 
 reached. The pupil thus made an illicit use of the answer 
 itself as a means of obtaining it. This was obviously prepos- 
 terous. The answer Avas the unknown quantity which was to 
 be obtained from known data on known principles. But, as 
 soon as the answer was included among the known data, the 
 pupil might arrive at it by repeated experiments, although 
 each time he should proceed on unknown principles. The 
 knowledge of the answer beforehand, therefore, became, to 
 some extent, a substitute for such a knowledge of principles as 
 would command the true answer, not only in the given case, 
 but in all analogous cases. Had it been the only object to ar- 
 rive at the answer contained in the book, then any additions, 
 subtractions, multiplications, and divisions which would secure 
 that end, would be sufficient ; and the result would be equally 
 satisfactory, whether the answer contained in the book should 
 be correct or erroneous. Now, it is obvious that there is no 
 more legitimate exercise of the power of calculation in such 
 a procedure than there is of true piety in those contrivances of
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 473 
 
 the Japanese, where, by turning a crank, they wind off a long 
 scroll of written prayers from one cylinder on to another. The 
 arithmetical faculty is as little employed in the one case as the 
 heart is in the other. 
 
 To obviate this difficulty, arithmetics were prepared contain- 
 ing the questions only. But lest the teacher should not be able, 
 for want of time, or for some other reason, to determine the 
 correctness or incorrectness of the answers as they should be 
 fouud by the pupil, the author prepared a second book, a 
 book for the answers, as well as a book for the questions. This 
 second book is called a " Key." Both questions and answers 
 are numbered so as to correspond. According to the theory, 
 the key is to be used only by the teacher. It is a labor-saving 
 instrument, designed to supersede the necessity of the teacher's 
 lookiug over each sum. But it being known to the scholars 
 that there is a key, containing not only the answers, but solu- 
 tions or partial solutions of the most difficult questions, a griev- 
 ous temptation is presented to them to get it and use it. So 
 far as this is done, it defeats the very object of separating the 
 answers from the questions, and makes the increased cost of 
 two books over pne a gratuitous expense. But what is infi- 
 nitely more to be depi'ecated than any cost, or any diminution 
 in intellectual attainments, is the moral delinquency which is 
 involved in the act of using the key clandestinely. If the use 
 of keys be prohibited, they must be obtained surreptitiously, 
 and examined by stealth. The key itself must be kept in some 
 secret place,. where the teacher will not be likely to discover it. 
 Hence a system of frauds. The purchasing of a book ; the 
 selection of a covert place for its concealment ; the stealthy step 
 or look by which it is examined ; the transfer of the answers, 
 perhaps upon a piece of paper, to be carried privately about 
 the person ; the plans laid to satisfy or circumvent the teacher, 
 should he make any inquiry into the subject ; and, finally, the 
 presence of the pupil at the recitation, with the questions all 
 correctly solved, but with a lie visible to himself lying at the 
 bottom of every solution, all this planned and consummated
 
 474 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 deception it is indeed fearful to contemplate. It is a practical 
 training of the young heart to iniquity. Each .commendation 
 obtained under such circumstances is a reward for past decep- 
 tion, and a lure to its repetition in future. Why should not the 
 child who does this, and who, perhaps, is not reprehended for 
 doing it, if done when the committee or visitors are present, 
 why, when the opportunity comes, should he not overreach his 
 neighbor in making a bargain, or put two votes into the ballot- 
 box to secure the election of his favorite candidate, or defraud 
 the post-office and the custom-house? And how much is the 
 virulence of the temptation increased when prizes are offered 
 to the foremost pupils ! when, perhaps, badges of honor are 
 bestowed upon the successful competitors, and their names are 
 brought forward with eclat in reports, or proclaimed to the 
 world through newspapers, while a proportionate degradation 
 awaits the unsuccessful ! and all this is made to depend upon 
 the marks of credit or discredit received at the end of the reci- 
 tations. 
 
 What the world is seen to regard with honor, ambitious 
 children will, of course, strive to obtain ; and, when intellectual 
 attainments take precedence of moral qualities, hoAV cruelly 
 will they be tempted to sacrifice the latter to the former ! In- 
 foreign universities, where a subscription to creeds is a pre- 
 requisite to the honors and emoluments of professorships and 
 presidencies, do we not know that men, for the sake of a con- 
 spicuous and lucrative station, will subscribe to theological 
 dogmas, and articles of church government, which their souls 
 abhor? For such bold treason against God and man, they 
 were prepared in childhood, by slight and gradually-increasing 
 deviations from truth and duty, under temptations whose force 
 they could not be expected to resist. Is it not the worst form 
 of sacrilege to invade the unsophisticated consciences of chil- 
 dren with temptations to evil, before which it is almost certain 
 they will fall? 
 
 For years past, I have made particular inquiries of teachers 
 and others on this subject. I have endeavored to ascertain to
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 475 
 
 what extent keys are allowed or forbidden in our schools ; 
 and also whether they are used, although forbidden. I am 
 satisfied that a startling amount of deception is practised ; and 
 that not a few of our children are learning those arts in school, 
 which, we have reason to fear, will be matured in after-life 
 into flagrant immorality and turpitude. 
 
 In some cases, it has been discovered that a class owned a 
 single key in common, which was passed round privately 
 among them. In some, the sous of a family go to one school, 
 and the daughters to another ; and although, in one of the 
 schools, keys are strictly prohibited, yet in the other they are 
 openly allowed, or, at least, they are not forbidden ; so that all 
 the children have equal access to them. I believe it would be 
 far better than that things should continue in their present con- 
 dition, that all restriction in the use of keys should be removed 
 (in which case it would, of course, be better to return to the 
 old system of inserting the answer with the question in the 
 text-book) ; but the only effectual remedy, while such helps 
 are prepared and are accessible, is to cultivate the moral feel- 
 ings of the pupils to such a high tone as will make them dis- 
 dain and abhor those acts of deception by which one pupil 
 obtains an advantage over another, or by which the pupils suc- 
 ceed in deceiving the teacher. It is fervently to be hoped that 
 teachers will look more carefully into this subject than they 
 have been accustomed to do. Better that we should go back 
 to counting on the ten fingers, and remain there, than that the 
 learners of arithmetic should imbibe the spirit by which they 
 will hereafter make fraudulent invoices o'r false entries in the 
 books of banks, or of the government. 
 
 It might prove a preventive to the fraudulent use of keys, 
 and save children from some of the temptations which now 
 spring from the use of them, if teachers would make it a fre- 
 quent practice to dictate original questions from their own 
 minds. However great the pupil's proficiency may be, a com- 
 petent teacher could easily frame questions equivalent and 
 analogous to those contained in the book ; and the impossi-
 
 476 ANNUAL EEPORT8 ON EDUCATION. 
 
 bility, in such cases, of getting at the answer by the use of a 
 key, would preclude the thought and prevent the desire of doing 
 so. Is not this in consonance with the spirit of the prayer, 
 at once so religious and so philosophical, that we may not be 
 led into temptation? The only objection that can be made to 
 the preparation of questions by teachers is, that they may not 
 have time to examine the solutions, and decide upon their cor- 
 rectness ; and must, therefore, submit to the necessity of taking 
 questions where the answers are at hand. But surely, to an 
 accomplished teacher, it can be the work of but a few moments 
 to look over even a long demonstration, and to determine 
 whether the successive steps have been correctly taken. As to 
 what may be regarded as the mechanical part of the solution, 
 the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, he has 
 no need to trouble himself with that. He knows the nature of 
 the question he has given ; he perceives, in the twinkling of an 
 eye, what the necessary steps are to arrive at a correct result ; 
 and a single glance from point to point, even in an extended 
 process, is sufficient to show him whether the correct course, 
 or one of several correct courses, has been pursued. As to the 
 rudimeutal parts, he may, occasionally at least, set some of the 
 younger classes to examine them. They will be able to detect 
 errors, if any exist, in the work of the older pupils ; and the 
 older pupils, mortified at being exposed by the younger, will be 
 incited to greater care. 
 
 In advanced Prussian schools, where arithmetic was so re- 
 markably well taught and learned (though, if it were well 
 taught, it is almost -tautology to say it was well learned), 
 instead of an octavo volume, or a series of duodecimos, im- 
 posing burdensome expenses upon the parents, I generally 
 found arithmetical text-books which did not contain more than 
 fifty or sixty pages, mere skeletons, and yet amply suffi- 
 cient for the use of the schools. Probably niueteeu-twentieths, 
 if not forty-nine fiftieths, of the questions were supplied extem- 
 poraneously by the teacher from his own mind. Under such 
 a system, no temptations to idleness, and no provocations to
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 477 
 
 fraud, could enter iu, to weaken the intellect and to deprave 
 the morals. 
 
 Children should also be encouraged to frame questions for 
 themselves, for their own working ; and, within certain limits, 
 to frame questions for each other. In some parts of arithmetic, 
 such an exercise would be of great utility, as it would help 
 them to understand more thoroughly the nature, the number, 
 and the relation of the terms necessary to form a practical 
 question. Preparing questions would fasten more securely in 
 the mind the principles for their solution. 
 
 I leave this topic with the expression of an intense desire 
 that those who use, as well as those who prepare, mathematical 
 text-books, will take into consideration the moral tendencies as 
 well as the intellectual bearings of the methods they adopt, and 
 of the works they publish. If each day's addition to arith- 
 metical knowledge is to be a subtraction from the authority 
 of conscience, it would be better that such days should never 
 dawn. 
 
 I have sometimes found the preservation of good order in 
 schools, and especially the prevention of whispering, attempted 
 by means which seem to me to incur great moral and social 
 hazards. In some schools, a pupil caught in an act of delin- 
 quency is made to take a place upon the platform, or other 
 elevated site in the schoolroom, and there to watch for other 
 delinquents. When he detects any one of his schoolmates in 
 a violation of any of the rules of the school, he is expected to 
 announce the name of the offender and the offence. If not 
 contradicted, or although contradicted, yet if confirmed, he is 
 absolved, and returns to his seat ; and the new culprit succeeds 
 to the post and the office of sentinel. Here he is expected to 
 remain, until, iu his turn, he can obtain his discharge by suc- 
 cessfully inculpating another. Such a watchman is usually 
 called a monitor ; but his real office is that of a spy. If indo- 
 lent, he may prefer the post to one which obliges him to study. 
 He stands guard under no responsibility. If he sees one of his 
 friends about to commit an offence, he can overlook it, or even
 
 478 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 connive at it, by turning away, so as to afford an opportu- 
 nity for its commission. I have seen such an overseer vio- 
 lating, with those immediately around him, the very rules 
 which he was stationed there to enforce. If, however, he 
 entertains any grudge against a schoolmate, he may there find 
 an opportunity to indulge it. 
 
 I think the practice here described has an injurious influence, 
 both upon the school and upon the sentinel himself, whose only 
 qualification to watch others consists in his own offence. It 
 obviously tempts to concealment, which is unfaithfulness ; and 
 to partiality, which is injustice. The old proverb, " Set a 
 rogue to catch a rogue," needs, even for the public safety, some 
 additional direction by which the public may be guarded against 
 the collusion of the two rogues when they come to understand 
 each other. At best, the proverb is founded on a low principle ; 
 and it inculcates no lesson of wisdom or benevolence in regard 
 to the reformation of either party. 
 
 Some teachers adopt the above plan, but include another 
 element of danger in it. If the original culprit does not suc- 
 ceed in detecting a fellow-pupil in some offence, he receives a 
 punishment. If he discovers another, and that other a third, 
 and so on, until the session of the school is closed, the pun- 
 ishment falls upon the last. Now, to escape punishment by 
 subjecting another to punishment, brings into active exercise 
 the most unkind and dissocial propensities of human nature. 
 It makes our welfare or our immunity depend upon another's 
 wrong-doing. It connects our escape from suffering with 
 another's subjection to it. It makes it for our immediate 
 interest that an offence should be committed ; and thus tempts 
 us to rejoice at the error or the misconduct of our neighbor, 
 instead of obeying the commandment to love him as ourselves. 
 Is this a Christian relation in which to place children in regard 
 to each other? Suppose it had been so ordained by the Crea- 
 tor, that one man could escape from his wounds or diseases 
 only by touching the person of another, and thus transferring 
 them to him ; how few Samaritans would be found who would
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 479 
 
 suspend the journey or the business of life that they might heal 
 their neighbor ! and would not such a law turn the world into 
 Levites, who would pass by on the other side of the way ? In 
 the end, such a law would be ruinous even to those for whose 
 benefit it was devised ; since it would make it the interest of 
 all to inflict mutual harm. When one drowning man attempts 
 to save himself by grasping another, the consequence almost 
 invariably is, that both go to the bottom. I trust that all 
 teachers, who, either through example or inadvertence, have 
 been led to adopt the course whose evils are here exposed, will 
 adandon, and never resume it. 
 
 Whispering is very justly and almost universally considered 
 to be one of the greatest mischiefs that can infest a schoolroom. 
 In small schools, consisting either of very large or of very 
 young scholars, it occasions less inconvenience ; but in large 
 schools, especially if composed of scholars of all ages, it is a 
 very serious annoyance, and energetic teachers usually strive 
 to suppress it. In a room containing sixty scholars, if each 
 should whisper only one-sixtieth' part of the hour, not an 
 inordinate allowance, if whispering be permitted at all, it 
 would be sufficient to make the buzz perpetual. The mischief 
 of whispering, however, is by no means confined to the noise 
 it makes. If one be allowed to whisper, another must be 
 allowed to listen ; and it is too much to expect that the neigh- 
 bors of the parties will be indifferent hearers or spectators of 
 what is going on around them. Sometimes, too, a plan or a 
 joke started in one corner will be telegraphed round the room 
 almost with the rapidity of a lighted train of gunpowder. The 
 course of thought of the whole school will thus be interrupted ; 
 and, though the act of whispering may occupy but half a 
 minute, it may occasion the loss of several minutes to each 
 pupil. 
 
 But, objectionable as is the practice of whispering iu schools, 
 some means are used for avoiding it which seem to me to be far 
 more so. In some schools, all whispering is prohibited under 
 sanctions more or less severe ; while the teacher, conscious of
 
 480 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 his own inability to detect all offenders, and discarding the 
 practice by which the guilty are set to watch for the guilty, 
 establishes another rule, by which the offenders are required to 
 report their own offences. At the close of each day, or half- 
 day, the roll is called, and each pupil is required, when his 
 name is announced, to confess the number of breaches, if any, 
 which he has committed. 
 
 One of the objections to this mode of prevention is, that it 
 hazards the commission of a greater offence in order to avert 
 a less one. To prevent whispering, it tempts to falsehood. 
 Now, though whispering is mischievous, yet who, consider- 
 ately, would suppress a thousand cases of it at the expense 
 of one lie? Consider the force of the temptation. At the 
 appointed time, the teacher calls upon the pupils to declare 
 whether any violation of the rule has been committed by them. 
 He calls upon them to plead guilty or not guilty. To acknowl- 
 edge that they are guilty is a public avowal of wrong-doing ; 
 and, if the feelings are not blunted, must always incur some 
 mortification. A penalty or forfeiture of some kind such as 
 noting the case in a record-book, or reporting it to the parents, 
 or, ' at least, the teacher's disapproval must be attached to 
 the act, or the whole will soon degenerate into a farce. Under 
 these circumstances, the pupil is called upon to avow a breach 
 of duty. He is to do that publicly, which involves some degree 
 of shame ; he is to do that voluntarily, -which requires some 
 moral courage ; and he is to do that promptly, which demands 
 such a vigorous impulsion of conscientiousness as belongs to 
 comparatively few. On the other hand, by silence, or by a 
 moment's delay, during which he may perhaps be debating 
 within himself what course to take, the occasion will pass 
 by, and immunity from outward censure be secured. Is not 
 this a snare to conscience? Is not this leading children into 
 temptation, a grievous temptation? Does it not, in fact, lead 
 two persons perhaps even more than two into temptation? 
 for, if one pupil has whispered, he must have whispered to 
 another, generally to a friend sitting at the same desk. For
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 481 
 
 the friend to betray the offender may wear the aspect of un- 
 kinduess. Besides, to betray a fellow-pupil, is held, whether 
 justly or not, according to the moral code of the college and 
 the schoolroom, to deserve great odium. Perhaps both have 
 offended, and therefore stand in equal need of each other's 
 forbearance. 
 
 There is one aspect belonging to the course above described, 
 which it is peculiarly painful to contemplate, that of a child 
 debating with himself, either before the commission of an of- 
 fence, or when called upon to confess it, respecting the chances 
 of his escape ; and making the commission of the offence in 
 the first instance, or the denial of it in the second, depend upon 
 the balance of probabilities in favor of detection or of exemp- 
 tion. A falser condition of mind cannot be conceived. Prob- 
 ably the fiend who tempts to crime by the hope or promise of 
 concealment outnumbers all his fellow-fiends in the retinue 
 of his victims. A wrong consciously perpetrated by the heart 
 is neither made greater by exposure, nor less by impunity. 
 The question which Conscience puts respecting a guilty act is, 
 not whether it is known or unknown, but whether it has been 
 done ; and, before her awful tribunal, the judgment is the same, 
 whether it is concealed by darkness and silence from the eyes 
 and ears of all created beings, or whether all the stars of the 
 firmament have arranged themselves, for the revelation and the 
 condemnation of the deed, into a language of everlasting and 
 unquenchable light. 
 
 Xo\v, I can conceive of a school I think I have seen such 
 schools where the moral sense of the pupils has been so en- 
 lightened and trained, that it would be safe to put a question 
 of the kind above supposed, without jeoparding the integrity 
 of the pupils. But how much more frequently, in the present 
 state of our schools as to morals, would the solicitations to 
 wrong be an overmatch for fidelity to truth, and thus begin a 
 habit of falsehood, or confirm one already begun, which, before 
 the end of life, by the confluence of hundreds of little streams 
 into one deep current of corruption, would prove the ruin of 
 31
 
 482 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the tempted ! As a guardian of the morals of youth, and 
 especially of their veracity, that central point of morals, 
 no teacher should allow his own convenience, or his pride in 
 the appearance of the record of his school, or his fear of incur- 
 ring the displeasure of any pupil, or the parent of any pupil, for 
 one morneut to weigh down the scale against the perpetration, 
 or even the imminent danger of the perpetration, of an untruth. 
 The love of truth is a primal element in moral character. 
 Truth is the cement of society. Without it, all friendships, 
 partnerships, communities themselves, would be dissolved. 
 Without some degree of mutual confidence, no two men, wheth- 
 er virtuous or vicious, could look each other in the face for 
 a minute. Complete distrust at all points would segregate 
 each individual of the race from all the rest ; and, like an un- 
 balanced centrifugal force, would impel each to fly away, and 
 to seek some vacant part of the universe for his solitary abode. 
 
 There is a natural adaptation betweeu the love of intel- 
 lectual and the love of moral truth to confirm and strengthen 
 each other. One should never be set in opposition to the 
 other. Circumstances should never be so arranged, that the 
 pursuit of an intellectual good may conflict with that of a 
 moral one. Not antagonists, but co-laborers for the happiness 
 of man, the teacher should unite and marry them into an in- 
 separable union, and thus lay an imperishable foundation for 
 the virtues and duties of life. 
 
 In regard to the prevention of whispering in school, the fol- 
 lowing important questions arise ; and I do not see how they 
 can be answered in the negative : If it be practicable to train a 
 school to such a high point of principle and of honorable ibel- 
 ing, that its members will promptly acknowledge the trans- 
 gression of a rule, may not the same members be so trained as 
 not to be guilty of the transgression itself? Or, if children 
 cannot be deterred from whispering by the reasonableness of the 
 requisition, are they not likely to be guilty of falsehood under 
 the pressure of so violent a temptation? And, finally, does not 
 falsehood surpass whispering as an offence, too much to allow
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 483 
 
 us to secure our schools from the inconvenience of the latter 
 by incurring a serious hazard of the baseness of the former? 
 
 The chances of success in preventing whispering by an ex- 
 ercise of vigilance on the part of the teacher will be increased 
 or diminished by the number and ages of the scholars, and by 
 the good or ill construction of the seats in the schoolroom. 
 The smaller the school, other things being equal, the more easy 
 to banish this invader of its quiet, not easier in the ratio of 
 the diminished number merely ; but, to express it mathemati- 
 cally, the ease is as the square of the diminution. Any school, 
 however, may be considered as only of a moderate or medium 
 size, if the number of the teachers is fitly proportioned to the 
 number of the scholars. 
 
 The construction of the schoolroom bears directly upon this 
 subject. The old-fashioaed schoolhouses, with seats on three, 
 and sometimes on four sides of the schoolroom, leaving only 
 a space on one side, unoccupied by seats, sufficient for a door, 
 could not have been more ingeniously contrived to invite 
 disobedience and trickery had the Genius of Deception been 
 the architect. In such a room, one-half the children, at least, 
 were always without the range of the teacher's eye, and so 
 withiu the sphere of temptation. Where circumstances had 
 been so skilfully contrived to entice them into transgression, 
 who can wonder that they so often became its victims ? Even 
 schoolhouse architecture has a palpable connection with moral 
 culture. 
 
 Various remedies have been suggested for the prevention of 
 whispering in school, besides the extreme one of corporal 
 punishment in any of its forms. 
 
 Occupation is one of the most effectual. While each scholar 
 has employment on his own account, he has neither time nor 
 inducement to trespass upon his neighbor. This is the case 
 for two reasons. His own occupation precludes the desire of 
 communicating with his fellow ; and the occupation of his 
 fellow will repel approaches, should he be tempted to make 
 them.
 
 484 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The privation of some customary privilege such as being 
 kept within doors at recess is another expedient. If a single 
 act of communication in school, occupying but half a minute, 
 causes a forfeiture of a five-minutes' privilege of communica- 
 tion at recess, then the balance of advantage is so obviously 
 on the side of self-restraint as to become a powerful motive for 
 abstaining. Such a forfeiture for such an offence seems unob- 
 jectionable ; but, in all cases where it is inflicted, the offender 
 should have a recess by himself at another time : for the recess 
 is demanded by the laws of health ; and the teacher's punish- 
 ments should never endanger health. 
 
 Recognizing the strong natural desire of all children to com- 
 municate with each other, and the inherent difficulty of re- 
 pressing such an inborn and powerful impulse, some teachers 
 adopt the expedient of an intermediate recess ; or rather a 
 suspension of the exercises of the schoolroom, for a period 
 of five minutes, at prescribed times, in each half-day's session. 
 During this suspension, the pupils are allowed to rise, to walk 
 about, and to converse, and thus to give vent to their pent-up 
 desires for muscular action and for social communication. 
 This may be allowed twice during each half-day, once before 
 and once after the customary recess at the middle of the 
 session. Of course, it becomes less necessary as the scholars 
 are older. 
 
 But, from my own observation and experience, I am led to 
 believe that all methods for preventing communication between 
 scholars in school, however skilfully devised or energetically 
 executed they may be, will prove inadequate to the intended 
 purpose, unless they include another element, the assent and 
 co-operation of the scholars themselves. The natural propen- 
 sity to speak, the inborn social instinct to make known our 
 thoughts and feelings to our fellow-men, is so vigorous, that it 
 requires the most powerful motives of fear, of interest, or of 
 duty, to smother them. In infancy, it is as vain to command 
 a child to stifle the expression of its desires and emotions as to 
 command the gushing waters of a fountain to cease from their
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 485 
 
 uprising. Later in life, though the inward propulsion of feel- 
 ing, seeking some form of outward expression, may be regu- 
 lated, yet it cannot, even then, be wholly suppressed. Probably 
 no two animals of auy kind were ever together for two min- 
 utes, unless asleep, or profoundly absorbed in something 
 else, without some transmission, by looks or signs, of sympa- 
 thy or aversion. AVith the human species, if the lips are sealed, 
 the fingers will be made the medium of communication ; if the 
 hands are confined, the eye will become the subtle messenger 
 of thought. But the voice is the natural sign-maker, and there- 
 fore it is through the voice that the will acts most promptly 
 and energetically. In prisons, where the inmates work in com- 
 panies, but under a rigorous prohibition, sanctioned by terrible 
 penalties, against intercommunication, either by word or ges- 
 ture, cases have occurred where the tortured spirit within would 
 give vent to its natural instinct by a tremendous shriek or yell, 
 and then submit to a flagellation, with patience, as an expiation 
 of the offence. 
 
 In this, therefore, as in all other cases, whether pertaining to 
 the government or to the proficiency of a school, the teacher's 
 best resources the only allies he can enlist, who will, in all 
 cases, secure him the victory ai'e the pupils themselves. No 
 threats, no forfeitures, no fear, no pain, though the teacher 
 should summon these to his aid in formidable hosts, will ever 
 expel whispering from school, unless superadded thereto is the 
 scholars' consent. I have witnessed proofs of the truth of this 
 assertion too numerous to be contested. In schools where 
 authority and superior physical power were mainly relied on, I 
 have witnessed cases of transgression, even while the teacher 
 was assuring me of the sufficiency of his own sovereign com- 
 mand to prevent them. But, if the pupils have confidence in 
 their teacher, if they respect his talents and his attainments, 
 and are constantly drawn towards him by the attractions of a 
 filial affection, their co-operation can be obtained, and that 
 will prove all-sufficient. Indeed, if only every other scholar 
 that is, if no more than one-half of the school should unite
 
 486 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 in placing a ban upon the practice, it would be suppressed ; for, 
 as a scholar will rarely if ever be whispered to without his 
 own permission, it follows, that, if every other scholar should 
 join the league of abstinence, the other half would be debarred 
 from addressing them, and thus an interdict would be placed 
 even upon willing transgressors. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to observe, that, under the generic 
 term whispering, I here include all forms of illicit communica- 
 tion, whether carried on through the medium of the voice, the 
 finger-language, writing on paper or on a slate, marking words 
 or letters in a book so as to make a sentence, or by any other 
 of the ingenious devices which fear and fraud have contrived. 
 Their object is the same, and their mischief is the same. They 
 all train the mind to base and unmanly artifices, for which no 
 amount of knowledge is any equivalent, artifices which only 
 confer more formidable powers of mischief upon the highly- 
 developed intellect. 
 
 Perhaps no other combination of circumstances pertaining 
 to a school furnishes so favorable an opportunity as the one 
 under consideration for the inculcation of self-denial, and for 
 habituating the pupils to its practice. Self-denial is not so much 
 a pre-eminent virtue as it is the parent of all the virtues. To 
 be able to resist the present solicitations of passion or of appetite, 
 in consideration of a future good ; to be able to postpone or to 
 forego immediate gratification, in obedience to a principle of 
 duty ; to be able, in the solitude of a desert or in the darkness 
 of midnight, when no human eye cau see us, when no obstacle 
 or bar, save the eternal law of right, conies between the object 
 of our unlawful desire and our enjoyment of it ; to be able, 
 under such circumstances, not only to abstain, but to feel that 
 our resolution would be no ^iron^or though all the universe 
 were gathered around us in a circle, of which we were the 
 luminous centre, this may be justly regarded as the acme 
 of moral power and grandeur. How vast the distance between 
 this moral altitude and the low region of weakness, of tempta- 
 tion, and of peril, in which the child is born ! But just in pro-
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 487 
 
 portion to this distance are the reward and the glory of the 
 teacher who leads the young spirit onward in its sublime 
 ascension to the heights of virtue. 
 
 The very scheme and constitution of human nature demon- 
 strate that we have as deep an interest in any portion of futu- 
 rity hour for hour, and day for day as in the same portion 
 of time now passing ; for the simple but decisive and perfectly 
 intelligible reason, that future time is to be present time. 
 Indeed, our personal interest preponderates in favor of that por- 
 tion of time which lies beyond us, rather than in favor of that 
 now present ; because the current of our life widens and deepens 
 as it advances ; and because new capacities and sources of 
 happiness and of misery are perpetually pouring in their con- 
 fluent streams to increase the volume of our future existence, 
 and thus making that existence more desirable for enjoyment, 
 or more terrible for suffering. We know, too, that the present 
 not only has its concomitants of weal or woe, but that it will 
 modify and color till that is to come after it. To the eye of 
 reason and conscience, therefore, the stages of being through 
 which we are hereafter to pass have as close a relation to our- 
 selves, to our identity, as those through which we are now 
 passing. It is the eye of sense only which magnifies the near, 
 but sees the distant in the diminished proportions of perspec- 
 tive ; as has been strikingly illustrated in the saying, that a straw 
 placed near the eye seems as large as an oak of a hundred years 
 in the distance. But the difficulty is, that, with a spiritual 
 nature perpetually existent, we have appetites and desires that 
 demand immediate gratification ; and, to give plausibility to 
 their demands, it is also true that those appetites and desires 
 must, to a certain extent, be gratified, or our temporal existence 
 would cease. The teacher, then, should put the future visibly 
 into the scale, that it may counterbalance the present. For this 
 purpose, the connection between the present and the future 
 must be explained, the tendency of habits, whether good or 
 evil, to increase in velocity and momentum ; the tendency of 
 all indulged desires and thoiights to redouble their strength,
 
 488 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 and their control over the will ; the danger, therefore, of 
 uttering a profane word, of venturing upon the terrible experi- 
 ment of a falsehood, of dissimulation, of envy, of unkiudness, 
 of disobedience. The competent teacher adopts this method 
 in regard to all the studies pursued in his school. He shows 
 the relation between what is present and visible, and what is 
 distant and unseen. Physical geography can never be learned, 
 unless the child is first led to form adequate conceptions of 
 space, Avhere he can assign locality to objects, and give arrange- 
 ment to all the facts he learns. History can never be learned, 
 unless the learner has adequate conceptions of past time, of 
 successive centuries, along whose years and decades he can 
 distribute and arrange the events which history brings under 
 his notice. So the duty and the utility of self-denial can never 
 be adequately enforced or appreciated, unless the future be 
 opened, and the relations of passing events to the fortunes of 
 after-life be exhibited. Why, then, should so great a propor- 
 tion of the school-hours be spent upon studies, and so small 
 a proportion upon motives? Why should the reputation and 
 the patronage of schools depend more upon what the scholars 
 know than upon how they act f Why should the public inquire 
 more frequently respecting the school or the college where a 
 great man has been educated than respecting the influences 
 under which a good man has been trained? In the vast ma- 
 jority of our schools throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land, are not the laws of orthoepy more carefully taught than 
 the laws of justice and equity between man and man? Is the 
 duty of forgiveness as much insisted on as the rules of gram- 
 mar? Are the elementary ideas of right and wrong as labori- 
 ously explained as the elements of arithmetic ? or are the mighty 
 results of good or evil principles, as they are evolved in society, 
 in the affairs of government, and in the iutei'course of nations 
 with each other, as perseveringly expounded as are the higher 
 combinations of arithmetical numbers? Are not errors in text- 
 books, or even in the language of visitors, sometimes brought 
 forward with care and exposed with vanity, while obscene
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 489 
 
 carvings, or emblems of pollution, around the premises, or on 
 the walls of the schoolroom itself, are suffered to remain un- 
 molested? These frightful inconsistencies must be terminated. 
 Their continuance is suicide. Self-preservation as well as re- 
 ligion demands a change. Neglect moral and Christian culture 
 in the schoolroom, and if the exchange is shaken by stupen- 
 dous frauds, if perjuries invade the tribunals of justice, if 
 hypocrisy and intolerance are installed in the sanctuaries 
 of religion, if political profligacy reigns in the council-halls of 
 the nation, and sends its streams of corruption through all the 
 channels of government, AVC shall reap only as we have sown. 
 
 There are some schools in Massachusetts, and the number is 
 increasing, where, without invading the conscientious rights or 
 scruples of a single denomination, social and Christian princi- 
 ples have been so wisely acted on by the teacher, have been so 
 clearly and convincingly brought down and brought home to 
 the minds of the pupils, that not only whispering, but other 
 sources of disorder and misconduct, has been almost entirely 
 banished from the schoolroom. Cases have occurred where, 
 voluntarily, without solicitation, the older and more influential 
 scholars have signed a pledge, obligating themselves to abstain 
 from particular school-offences, and to use their influence to 
 induce others to practise the like abstinence. How high the 
 point of self-respect and of principle which the pupils have 
 reached, when such a measure emanates spontaneously from 
 tRem ! How greatly is the power of acquisition promoted when 
 the power of self-control is enthroned in the breast ! Aud how 
 far-reaching and decisive in its influences upon after-life is a 
 successful resolution in childhood to seek counsel of duty, and 
 to abide by its decisions ! Blessed is the fortune of those chil- 
 dren who are led by wise and benignant hands to some moral 
 eminence, where they can survey the path that will conduct 
 them to happiness, and are inspired with the motives which 
 will prompt them to pursue it ! * 
 
 * As a specimen of the utter oblivion into which a love of intellectual acute- 
 ness aud skill may throw the moral relations of a subject, I quote the following 
 question from a modern arithmetic :
 
 490 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The vice of truantship is to be regarded under the same 
 moral aspects. The truant, it is true, loses privileges which 
 can never be recovered ; because no revolution of the wheel or 
 time ever brings back an hour that has been wasted. By fore- 
 going his opportunity of acquiring knowledge, the truant for- 
 feits at least a portion of his chances for future usefulness and 
 success in life ; and he also forfeits those enduring satisfactions 
 which are the rewards of intellectual culture. Loitering by 
 the wayside but for a single day, or deviating into illicit paths 
 but for a single hour, he allows those who were behind him to 
 pass by, and to seize upon the advantages or the honors, which, 
 by the use of diligence, he might rightfully have made his own. 
 He enrolls himself with the most wasteful of all prodigals, 
 those who are prodigal of time. But the positive good which 
 is lost is trifling compared with the positive evil which is in- 
 curred. Every act of truantship is a twofold falsehood. It is 
 a falsehood committed against the parent who sends, and against 
 the teacher who expects. Worse than either of these, it is a 
 violation of the culprit's own sense of duty. To waste the 
 seed-time, and to consume the seed from which a rich harvest 
 might be reaped, does but condemn the fields of after-life to 
 barrenness ; but the pretence, the equivocation, the deceit, and 
 occasionally the downright lie, and, what is worst of all, the 
 perpetual holding of the mind in an active lying state, that 
 is, in a state ready to lie, these strew thickly those tares of 
 vice over the fields of youth whose harvest will be ruin. It is 
 
 " A sea-captain on a. voyage had a crew of thirty men, half of whom were blacks. 
 Being becalmed on the passage for a long time, their provisions began to fail; 
 and the captain became satisfied, that, unless the number of men was greatly 
 diminished, all would perish of hunger before they reached any friendly port. 
 He therefore proposed to the sailors that they should stand in a row on deck, and 
 that every ninth man should be thrown overboard until one-half of the crew were 
 thus destroyed. To this they all agreed. How should they stand to save the 
 whites ? 
 
 Doubtless this question was prepared by the author, and has been laboriously 
 studied by thousands of pupils, without any distinct contemplation of the fiend- 
 ish injustice and fraud which it involves, but only with admiration for the inge- 
 nuity which originated, and for the talent that can solve it ; and yet the idea which 
 the question has lodged in the mind may become the parent of a fraud as base if 
 iiot as appalling as its prototype.
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 491 
 
 not, then, the squandering of school-privileges which gives to 
 this offence its most malignant type ; it is not the loss of money 
 expended for books and for tuition ; it is not the indignity 
 offered to the teacher : but it is the positive wrong, self-inflicted 
 upon the pupil's own moral nature ; it is that struggle between 
 his own illicit desires and his sense of duty, in which the for- 
 mer are victorious ; it is the stratagem, and the putting of the 
 mind into a frame to invent stratagems, in order to secure im- 
 punity or to avoid suspicion, it is this inward training of the 
 soul to the contemplation and the devices of iniquity, which 
 gives to the evil its magnitude and frightfulness. But is it s6 
 regarded by those parents who never visit the school from the 
 beginning to the end of the term, in order to examine the 
 teacher's register, or to learn, by personal inquiry, whether their 
 children have been delinquent ? Is it so regarded by any teacher 
 who records absences, half-day after half-day, without ever 
 visiting the parents to know whether the absence is necessary 
 or fraudulent ? Is it so regarded either by parents or teachers, 
 who, when the offence is detected, inflict chastisement upon the 
 offender as the penalty of his misconduct, but take no other 
 measures to reach the secret workings of his mind, and there 
 to rectify the springs of action themselves? 
 
 In rural districts, where the population is sparse, cases of 
 truantship are of rare occurrence. In cities and large towns, 
 and especially in manufacturing villages, the offence is not 
 unfrequent. Various devices are resorted to for its successful 
 commission. In most schools, no written excuse for absence or 
 tardiness is required, and therefore a truant has only to fabri- 
 cate some excuse for being late or absent ; and the teacher too 
 often dismisses the subject without further inquiry. When 
 written excuses are required, parents often give one without 
 date, which the pupil will keep as long as he dares, perhaps 
 for several days, and then present it. Sometimes a child is 
 necessarily detained at home for half an hour after the com- 
 mencement of the school ; and, having obtained an excuse 
 from his parent without any specification as to time, he plays
 
 492 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 truant for the greater part of the session, and then goes in and 
 presents it. Or the parent sends written word that he wishes 
 his child to return home before the school is done, without 
 specifying how long before ; and an hour or two of playtime is 
 gained by obtaining dismission too early. Instances have oc- 
 curred where a child has had the wickedness to forge an excuse, 
 and present it as genuine. But if the child will forge his 
 father's name to an excuse, in order to get an hour of play, 
 ought we to be surprised if the same child, when grown to 
 manhood, should commit the crime of forgery to obtain the 
 means of criminal indulgence ? Is it a vain apprehension that 
 a child, thus false to his own interests and to the claims of duty, 
 will be false to all the interests and duties which may afterwards 
 be committed to his keeping? If we think we foresee, in the 
 remarkable answers of a school-boy, remarkable only because 
 so little is expected at so early an age, proofs of the power 
 and the splendor that shall aggrandize and adorn the future 
 man, why may not we foresee, in these juvenile offences which 
 are so lightly passed over, proofs of those enormous misdeeds 
 which afterwards shall bring distress upon a family, a com- 
 munity, or a country? With pleasure it is admitted, that there 
 are cases of reformation, cases where the evil that was be- 
 tokened by a youth of error is averted by repentance, and 
 followed by a life of uprightness. On the other hand, also, it- 
 must be conceded that there are instances where all the hopes 
 that were cherished by a childhood of innocence have been 
 blasted by a manhood of profligacy. But, on both sides, these 
 cases are exceptions to the general rule ; and they are no 
 further to be recognized as grounds of action, than as they 
 admonish us never to sink into the inaction of over-confidence 
 in regard to the good, nor into the hopelessness of despair iu 
 regard to the bad. A venerable clergyman belonging to the 
 State, always watchful of the condition of youth, and regarding 
 the conduct of the child as foretokening the character of the 
 man, has informed me that he taught school for many years 
 in the town where he was afterwards settled as a minister ; that
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 493 
 
 it was his practice, while in school, to keep a detailed record 
 of the diligence, proficiency, and moral deportment of his 
 pupils, which record he has preserved ; and now, on recurring 
 to this school-diary, he finds, with but few exceptions, that it 
 would answer very well as an index, or table of contents, for 
 the acted volume of their subsequent lives. There is one vice, 
 indeed, or rather a prolific parent of all vices, which disturbs 
 this great law of probabilities, and often falsifies the indica- 
 tions given by an exemplary youth of an honorable old age. It 
 is the vice of intemperance. This vice is a horrid alchemy, 
 which transmutes every thing good into evil ; and not merely 
 changing affinities, but, corrupting the very elements on which 
 it work?, renders it impossible ever afterwards to restore them 
 to their pristine strength and purity. It is the theological oppo- 
 site of regeneration ; for it depraves depravity itself. 
 
 In the new register-book which has been prepared by the 
 Board, and which will be in the schools the ensuing summer 
 term, provision is made for the entry of each pupil's name. If 
 the teacher performs his duty in keeping the register, as it is to 
 be presumed he will, then every parent, on visiting the school, 
 can learn by mere inspection whether his child is charged on 
 the book with more cases of tardiness or absence than have 
 been authorized ; and, by a vigilant use of this check, the vice 
 of truantship may be generally extirpated. 
 
 The question, By what motives shall children be incited to 
 study ? opens a vast and most interesting field of inquiry. That 
 the human mind was pre-adapted by its benevolent Creator for 
 the acquisition of knowledge and the exercise of reason, is not 
 merely an inference drawn from the wisdom and goodness of 
 God, but it is ocularly demonstrated by the constitution of our 
 nature. It is not merely what we should expect, but what we 
 actually see. Before the human lungs are brought into the 
 world, how admirably are they prepared for the air that is to 
 surround and to fill them ! Not only are the lungs tubular and 
 vesicular, in the highest degree, for the reception of the air, 
 but the air has a property which the blood must imbibe, or it
 
 494 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 would perish in five minutes ; and, further, the blood has a 
 property which it must cast out through the lungs into the air, 
 or again it would perish in five minutes from another cause. 
 What need has the unborn child of that exquisite mechanism, 
 the eye ; of the iris, invested with power to enlarge or diminish 
 itself by a spontaneous movement ; of its crystalline lens, and 
 of its different humors, to cause the rays of light to converge ; 
 of the finely- wrought net-work of the retina, spread at the true 
 focal distance over its interior surface ; of the wonderful nerve 
 that lies behind it, holding mysterious communication with the 
 secret chambers of the brain ; and of the solid masonry of 
 bones, which is built up as a wall of protection around it? 
 This marvellous contrivance is prepared in reference to the 
 sun, an object almost a hundred millions of miles distant 
 from it ; it is prepared in reference to sidereal systems, lying 
 at incomputable distances from our system ; and He who, in 
 the beginning, created the greater and lesser lights of the firma- 
 ment, and who now selects and arranges the subtlest particles 
 of matter for the formation of the human eye, established of 
 old the relations between them, and pre-adapted their powers 
 and their properties to each other. How curiously has the 
 Creator fashioned the mechanism of the ear ! He has planted 
 it so deeply and securely within the protecting walls of the 
 cranium, that it needs no bars or portals to defend it from ex- 
 ternal encroachments ; he has made it to stand forever open, 
 
 by night as well as by day, and whether sleeping or waking, 
 
 so that there is scarcely a natural agent of harm that can ap- 
 proach us, without warning us of its coming. With what a 
 delicate equilibrium is its tympanum balanced! vibrating at 
 the buzz of an insect's wing, or at the tread of an insect's foot, 
 yet able to bear uninjured the ocean's roar, or the thunder's 
 crash ; and it is made to delight in all the variety of sweet 
 sounds that lie between these far-distant extreme.-. And so of 
 all the other senses. > Is it not intuitively obvious that they 
 were designed to bring us into communication and relationship 
 with the infinitely-varied objects of the world around us ; with
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 495 
 
 the food and drinks which nourish and sustain us ; with the 
 solid substances that shelter, and the textile ones that clothe 
 us ; with the various races of animals over which a dominion " 
 has been given us ; with the dry land which abicleth in its 
 place, and with the waters which make their perpetual circuit 
 from the mountains and hills into the rivers, from the rivers 
 into the sea, from the sea into the clouds, and from the clouds 
 to the mountains and hills and rivers again ? 
 
 Nor is utility the only purpose of those beautiful relations 
 which exist between ourselves and the external world. The 
 goodness of God is as pervading as his power, and hence he 
 has everywhere intermingled pleasure with advantage. Golden 
 threads are thickly interspersed in every web which Nature has 
 woven. How conspicuous is this truth in regard to the prop- 
 erty of color ! Most of the other properties of matter seem 
 to have a primary reference to utility. The inflexibility of 
 stone, and the elasticity of steel ; the combustibility of wood, 
 and the relative incombustibility of the metals ; the hardness 
 of flint, and the softness of wool and silk, seem primarily de- 
 signed for use rather than for pleasure ; and so of innumerable 
 other objects. But what profit can the cold utilitarian extort 
 from all the variegation and changeful beauties of color? The 
 rainbow, the orient sun, the evening clouds, the plumage of 
 birds, the flower-strewn fields, the hues of the blossoming 
 spring, and of the foliage of autumn, joyful in its death, 
 these add no gold to his coffers, nor acres to his lauds, nor fruit 
 to his garners. Yet this beautiful property of matter is spread 
 upon the surface of all things, as if to attract our attention to 
 them, and to win our regards for them, not only before, but 
 after, the age of reflection ; and no other property is at once so 
 universal and so varied as this. In almost every instance, the 
 gracious Author of this property of matter, and of our capacity 
 to perceive it, has made it pleasurable ; and probably no child 
 ever consciously looked, even for the thousandth time, upon the 
 moon, or a sun-illumined cloud, or stream, or lake, without an 
 emotion of joy.
 
 496 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Such is the relation which our senses bear to the external 
 universe. 
 
 And, in the second place, the faculties by which we reason 
 stand in the same relation to the perceptive powers, and to the 
 images or notions of things which they collect, as the percep- 
 tive powers themselves do to the objects of the external world. 
 Through the senses we collect notions, more or less accurately 
 and extensively, of the boundless variety of things that consti- 
 tutes the world around us, of all that is great or small, high 
 or low, solid or fluid, cold or hot, moving or motionless, odorous 
 or inodorous, savory or vapid, hard or soft, loud or low, and so 
 forth ; but all this knowledge of properties would be of no 
 more service to us than to the beasts of the field or the fowls of 
 the air, did not the illuminating reason preside over them, dis- 
 cerning the relations between them, disentangling consequences 
 by referring each effect to its cause, and, out of new arrange- 
 ments and combinations, educing new uses to increase the 
 physical comforts and the spiritual elevation of mankind. It is 
 only by the safer light of reason, indeed, that we rectify the 
 mistakes into which the senses would inevitably and constantly 
 lead us. To the senses, the earth and sun are flat : reason 
 declares them to be spheres. If we ask the senses, they affirm 
 that the earth is thousands of times larger than the sun ; if we 
 consult the reason, we are assured that the sun would contain 
 within its circumference more than thirteen hundred thou.saud 
 globes, each as large as the earth. The senses declare that 
 the earth is stationary, and that the sun revolves around it 
 every day ; but reason gives stability to the sun, and a diurnal 
 revolution to the earth. So, from the beginning of life, reason 
 rectifies the errors of the senses; and, without its aid, we 
 should be iu a world of illusions, each one leading us .astray. 
 Reason also teaches us to discover those things which are too 
 remote and too minute for the senses ever to reach, the 
 magnificent bodies and distances of astronomy, and the imper- 
 ceptibly minute atoms and motions of chemistry. Who, then, 
 let me again ask, can doubt that the great Author of our reason
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 497 
 
 designed that it should be used, and that it should be developed 
 and cultivated in order to be used? As the senses were created 
 to receive images or perceptions of things belonging to the 
 external world ; so the reason was created to work upon those 
 images or perceptions when received, to correct and modify and 
 assort them, to discover the insensible qualities they possess, 
 and to penetrate to the laws they obey. Hence it is obvious, 
 from our very constitution, that the Deity meant that the 
 science of optics should be understood, as much as that the 
 sensation of light should be felt; that the atmosphere should 
 be analyzed into its different ingredients, and the properties of 
 each ingredient determined, as much as that the atmosphere 
 itself should be breathed ; and that the laws of life and health 
 should be discovered, as much as that we should desire to 
 live. 
 
 And in all these exercises of the reason upon the crude mate- 
 rials of knowledge, not less than in the acquisition of the 
 knowledge itself, there is pleasure. Nature has not constituted 
 this portion of the mind upon the principles of utility alone, 
 but upon the principles of utility and pleasure combined. How 
 intensely have all the great intellectual luminaries of the world 
 loved the sciences iu which they labored ! and who has ever 
 understandingly surveyed any part of the creation of God, 
 without being thrilled with delight? 
 
 Is not the course of Nature, then, which is a lesson given 
 by the Creator himself, full of instruction and wisdom in 
 regard to the school-motives which should be brought to bear 
 upon children? First, in order to win attention, the objects 
 of knowledge should be made attractive, as Nature, by bestow- 
 ing upon her objects the pleasing qualities of form and color, 
 of motion and sound, makes them attractive. As the powers 
 of perception precede the powers of reasoning, in the order of 
 development, the sensible qualities of things should first be 
 presented to the learner. Afterwards, and when the reasoning 
 powers are developed, the profounder relations that exist be- 
 tween things, and the laws by which they are governed, 
 
 32
 
 498 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 should be unfolded to the reason in the same manner in which 
 the sensible properties had been exhibited to the senses. In 
 this clear light of Nature, too, we see where language should 
 come in. Words are but the signs of things, not only use- 
 less, but burdensome and pernicious, without a knowledge of 
 the things themselves. For all mankind, the course of Nature 
 is, things, and then their names. For a year, and not unfre- 
 quently for two years, after a child's birth, the Deity forbids 
 to it, withholds from it, the use of language. At that period 
 of life, so cumbrous and uncertain an instrument as language 
 would confuse and bewilder the mind, and divert it from the 
 perception of qualities to signs. Yet, during that time, how 
 much does a child learn respecting the properties and distances 
 and relative positions of the objects about him ! What more 
 stupendous folly, then, can be conceived, than to teach children 
 to read, without seeing that they understand what they read ; 
 to teach them the pauses and emphases and cadences which 
 are designed to aid the intellect, and the modulation and tones 
 which are expressive of the passions, while they themselves 
 receive but little more conscious intelligence or emotion from 
 the lesson than do the benches on which they sit ! Still worse 
 is it if coarse and harsh appliances are used as substitutes for 
 those true and genuine sources of interest which are thus 
 withheld. 
 
 But, notwithstanding this original adaptation of the faculties 
 for acquiring and using knowledge, it must be conceded that 
 there are cases in actual life where the natural tendency of 
 the mind to become acquainted with the things around it has 
 been marred, and sometimes almost obliterated. As the 
 stomach, with its instinctive longings for healthful food, may 
 be so abused as to loathe the most appropriate nourishment ; so 
 the mind, with its inborn love of knowledge, which seems to 
 be not merely an attraction for knowledge, but a repulsion from 
 ignorance, may be so abused as to look with disgust at what 
 it should have longed for. And this is not unfrequently done, 
 by parental ignorance or perversity, before the child passes into
 
 EEPORT FOR 1845. 499 
 
 the hands of the professional teacher. In such a case, the 
 teacher may appear to do a vast deal more by stimulating the 
 verbal memory of the child, and by giving him the show 
 instead of the substance of knowledge, than if he should strive 
 to re-animate the apparently dead powers of acquisition and of 
 thought. Yet the latter should be done, at whatever seeming 
 delay ; and the faithful teacher will do it, irrespective of the 
 consequences to his own reputation. It is only the unfaithful 
 teacher who will adopt the course which will make the child 
 appear best at the end of the term, irrespective of his perma- 
 nent welfare. 
 
 It was the opinion of Pestalozzi, that wisest of school- 
 masters, that the children's want of interest in their studies, 
 in his day, was almost universally referable to a want of skill 
 in those who had charge of them. " There are scarcely any 
 circumstances," he says, " in which a want of application in 
 children does not proceed from a want of interest ; and there 
 are perhaps none under which a want of interest does not 
 originate in the mode of treatment adopted by the teacher. I 
 would go so far as to lay it down as a rule, that whenever 
 children are inattentive, and apparently take no interest in a 
 lesson, the teacher should always first look to himself for a 
 reason." Undoubtedly, in expressing this opinion, Pestalozzi 
 must have referred to permanent teachers only, and not to such 
 as keep the same school only for a few weeks, or for a single 
 term ; and in many cases, certainly, the parents as well as the 
 teacher should be included in the stricture. Yet, if any person 
 had a right to say this, it was Pestalozzi ; for, however stub- 
 born or stupid children had ever been found to be under other 
 masters, they became docile and improving under him. But 
 every teacher cannot become what Pestalozzi was, with his 
 extraordinary natural endowments, and with his life of experi- 
 ence, any more than every man can become what Lord Bacon 
 or Sir Isaac Newton or Dr. Franklin was. What, then, shall 
 be done by such teachers as we have, and are glad to employ? 
 Shall they not, as far as possible, imitate him, and, by pursu-
 
 500 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ing similar means, approximate to similar results ? Shall they 
 not, as he did, determine what they will not do, as well as 
 what they will do? " The motive of fear," says he, " should 
 not be made a stimulus to exertion. It will destroy interest, 
 and will speedily create disgust. The interest in study is the 
 first thing which a teacher should endeavor to excite and keep 
 alive." And again, speaking of that class of children who are 
 subjected to a mere " mechanical training," and who, therefore, 
 need some collateral stimulus to spur them on to study, he 
 says, " The common motive by which such a system acts on 
 those whose indolence it has conquered is fear. The very 
 highest to which it can aspire, in those whose sensibility is 
 excited, is ambition. 
 
 " It is obvious," he continues, " that such a system can cal- 
 culate only on the lower selfishness of man. To that least 
 amiable or estimable part of the human chai*acter, it is, and 
 always has been, indebted for its best success. Upon the bet- 
 ter feelings of man it turns a deaf ear. 
 
 " How is it, then, that motives leading to a course of action 
 which is looked upon as mean and despicable, or at best as 
 doubtful, when it occurs in life, how is it that motives of 
 that description are thought honorable in education? Why 
 should that bias be given to the mind in a school, which, to 
 gain the respect or the affection of others, an individual must 
 first of all strive to unlearn ? a bias to which every candid 
 mind is a stranger. 
 
 " I do not wish to speak harshly of ambition, or to reject it 
 altogether as a motive. There is, to be sure, a noble ambition, 
 dignified by its object, and distinguished by a deep and 
 transcendent interest in that object. But if we consider the 
 sort of ambition commonly proposed to the school-boy ; if we 
 analyze ' what stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,' we shall 
 find that it has nothing to do with the interest taken in the ob- 
 ject of study ; that such an interest frequently does not exist ; 
 and that, owing to its being blended with that vilest and mean- 
 est of motives, with /ear, it is by no means raised by the
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 501 
 
 wish to give pleasure to those who propose it ; for a teacher 
 who proceeds on a system in which fear and ambition are the 
 principal agents must give up his claim to the esteem or affec- 
 tion of his pupils. 
 
 " Motives, like fear or inordinate ambition, may stimulate to 
 exertion, intellectual or physical ; but they cannot warm the 
 heart. There is not in them that life which makes the heart 
 of youth heave with delight of knowledge, with the honest con- 
 sciousness of talent, with the honorable wish for distinction, 
 with the kindly glow of genuine feeling. Such motives are 
 inadequate in their source, and inefficient in their application ; 
 for they are nothing to the heart, and ' out of the heart are the 
 issues of life.' " 
 
 In remarking upon school-motives, the use of emulation as 
 an incentive to study cannot be overlooked ; and yet I mean 
 to abstain, on this occasion, from touching upon the debatable 
 ground which it covers. To discuss the subject fully would 
 require, not a paragraph merely, but a treatise. In regard to 
 the general question, the expediency of a system of means to 
 excite emulation between scholars. there are distinguished 
 advocates on both sides ; but it will be my endeavor, at the 
 present time, only to elucidate some points, respecting which 
 there is, ?o far as I know, an entire unanimity of abstract 
 opinion, though with no inconsiderable diversity in practice. 
 
 May we not expect the assent of all intelligent men to the 
 doctrine, that it is the teacher's duty to effect the greatest general 
 proficiency of his pupils ? It is not the remarkable progress of 
 a few scholars, while others remain in a stationary condition, 
 or are even retrograding, that is desirable or allowable. The 
 spirit of all our institutions coincides herein with the spirit of 
 humanity and religion ; all enforcing the duty of succoring 
 the destitute, of instructing the ignorant, of elevating the lowly. 
 As it would be a violation of the soundest principles of political 
 economy to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer ; so it 
 would transgress the plainest dictates of republican duty and 
 Christian ethics to jnve knowledge to the learned at the ex-
 
 502 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 pense of suffering the ignorant to remain in their ignorance. 
 To present this idea with arithmetical precision, let us suppose, 
 that, in a class of twenty children in one school, the improve- 
 ment often of them shall be equal to 5 each, or 50 in all ; and 
 that of the other ten shall be nothing : so that 50 shall repre- 
 sent the improvement of the whole class. In another school, 
 suppose a class of the same number, but an improvement of 2^ 
 for each of the whole. As in the former case, fifty will be the 
 product ; and who will not acknowledge that the greatest good 
 has been accomplished in the latter instance ? Who will deny 
 that the teacher in the latter case has accomplished a far nobler 
 object than in the former? 
 
 When schools are very large, and it is the custom of the 
 committee to examine only the first class, or, perhaps, only a part 
 of the first class, the temptation to carry forward those who are 
 to be examined, even at the expense of neglecting the residue, 
 is peculiarly strong ; and it needs all the guards of an active 
 conscience in the teacher, and a vigilant superintendence in the 
 committee, to prevent it. 
 
 As a spur to emulation, it is not an nnfrequent practice to 
 make a record, at the end of each recitation, of the number of 
 mistakes which each scholar may have made. In the great 
 majority of instances, so far as I have witnessed, this record is 
 made without any reference to the quality of the mistake com- 
 mitted. Yet can any thing be more unjust than to recognize 
 no difference between a mistake in fact and a mistake in prin- 
 ciple f lu arithmetic, for instance, one scholar, with his mind 
 intently fixed upon the principle according to which his prob- 
 lem is to be wrought, makes a mistake in subtracting or divid- 
 ing, and fails, therefore, of arriving at the true answer. Anoth- 
 er, regardless of principle, performs the mechanical part of his 
 work correctly, but proceeds upon such an erroneous hypothesis 
 as will insure error in every question, which comes under the 
 same head or rule. In geography, one makes a mistake of a 
 few hundreds in the census of a great city ; another does not 
 perceive that there is any connection between the great slopes
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 503 
 
 of a continent and the course of its rivers. In history, one 
 has forgotten the date of an unimportant event ; another 
 makes Gen. Washington a Frenchman. Yet in these cases, 
 or such as these, the mistakes are reckoned numerically ; no 
 difference being made between a mistake which a wise man 
 might have committed and one which stigmatizes its author 
 as a dunce. To estimate the demerit of mistakes by number, 
 instead of quality, is as rude a way as it would be, in the 
 transactions of the bank or the market-place, to receive and 
 pay all the various coins of our common currency by tale, 
 instead of weight and fineness. 
 
 Again : will it not be conceded by all that the degree of emu- 
 lation is excessive which induces scholars to study for recita- 
 tion rather than for knowledge f The difference between the 
 two modes is great, and it diffuses its consequences over all the 
 future life. To learn for the purpose of repeating or reciting 
 what is learned at the end of an hour, or of a few hours, sup- 
 poses a state of mind entirely different from that which is 
 necessary in order to learn the same thing with a view of 
 treasuring it up in the mind to be remembered forever. The 
 mind approaches, surveys, and grasps the subject, in these two 
 cases, by modes wholly unlike. If a thing is to be remembered 
 only for an hour, there are many auxiliary helps, which are 
 useless, and even pernicious, if the object be to insure its reten- 
 tion for life. The order in which the lesson stands upon the 
 pages of the text-book ; the sequence of paragraphs or sections ; 
 the accident of a principle's being stated at the top or the bot- 
 tom of a page, on its right hand or on its left ; the fact that a 
 place in the lesson has been rendered conspicuous to the eye 
 by a proper name or a date, all these and many other acci- 
 dental associations may be temporary helps, though they are 
 permanent obstructions. They are like the tricks and devices 
 of the professors of mnemonics, who, in ten lessons, will teach 
 their classes the greatest quantity of things, which, however, 
 are like records made upon the beach whence the tide has re- 
 ceded, to be washed away by its refluent wave. The pup.il
 
 504 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 who studies for recitation merely, is tempted, all the while, to 
 use the artificial memory : the pupil who studies for knowledge 
 will use the philosophic memory only. Knowledge acquired 
 by the artificial method remains only while the arbitrary as- 
 sociations on which it is founded remain ; but knowledge ac- 
 quired by a perception of philosophic relations, being inwrought 
 into the very structure and constitution of the mind, will be 
 perpetuated until the happening of such a catastrophe as shall 
 shatter to pieces the mind itself; and, even then, it will be 
 seen shining among the fragments. Who ever heard of a great 
 philosopher or jurist or mathematician, a Franklin, a Mar- 
 shall, or a Bowditch, whose vast sequences of thought were 
 linked together only by the brittle chain of an artificial mem- 
 ory? Among the graduates of those institutions of learning 
 where emulation is one of the main incentives to study, is it the 
 general rule that the scholars who obtain the highest honors of 
 the class achieve a corresponding rank in society? On the 
 other hand, is it not a fact that the exceptions to the con- 
 trary rule hardly amount to a respectable number? 
 
 Not only is the state of the mind different while studying 
 and while reciting, if the only or the main object be to make a 
 brilliant recitation, but there is a still greater difference after 
 the recitation than before it. If superior rank at recitation be 
 the object, then, as soon as that superiority is obtained, the 
 spring of desire and of effort for that occasion relaxes. The 
 pupil knows that the record, " perfect," set against his name, 
 will stand, whatever fading-out of the lesson there may be 
 from his mind. He dismisses, therefore, all thought of the last 
 lesson, and concentrates his energies upon the next ; and this 
 becomes his history from day to day. Instead of spending an 
 extra hour or half-hour in collateral reading, for the purpose of 
 fortifying and expanding the views contained in the text-book, 
 he spends it for increasing the volubility, or polishing the style, 
 of the recitation. But, to the pupil who studies for the sake of 
 understanding and retaining the subject-matter of the lesson, 
 the recitation is only one of the early stages in the progress of
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 505 
 
 his investigations. As he goes abroad, and views the works 
 of nature and of art, he revives and applies the principles he has 
 learned, until they become so familiar, that they rise spontane- 
 ously in the mind on every related occasion. If he reads any 
 thing in a book or a newspaper, or hears any thing in conversa- 
 tion, involving the same principles, or explicable by them, the 
 principles become consciously present to his reflection, until 
 frequent repetition, seconded by the ready welcome they always 
 receive, domiciliates them in the mind, and enfranchises them 
 as members of the household of thought. 
 
 The spirit of the above remarks applies to all cases of study- 
 ing for review as well as to studying for recitation. 
 
 Now, that I may avoid, on this occasion, all points of con- 
 troversy in regard to the use of emulation in schools, I desire 
 only to commend the following rule of practice to teachers : If 
 they perceive that the use of emulation as a motive-power 
 tends to increase the bulk and showiness of acquisition rather 
 than to improve its quality ; if it leads pupils to cultivate a 
 memory for words rather than an understanding of things ; 
 and if it be found that the knowledge acquired through its in- 
 strumentality is short-lived, because it has been acquired for 
 the temporary purpose of the recitation or examination rather 
 tnan for usefulness in after-life, if teachers find all or any of 
 these mischiefs resulting from the use of such a motive, they 
 should restrict it within such limits as will effectually avoid 
 them. 
 
 But the most serious objection which can be urged against 
 this agency is of a moral character. I suppose no one will 
 deny that emulation may be plied to such a degree of inten- 
 sity as to incur moral hazards and delinquencies. Addressing 
 each teacher on his own ground, whatever that may be, I 
 would, with deference, submit to him the following considera- 
 tions : If the object of a pupil be to learn ; if he compares 
 himself with himself, which may be called self-emulation, 
 and asks whether he knows more to-day than he did yesterday, 
 or has acquired more during the current term or year than he
 
 506 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 did during the corresponding part of the last term or year ; if 
 he has some elevated object before him, which he desires to 
 reach, and rejoices in his progress towards it, all this seems 
 not only lawful, but laudable. But if the pupil rejoices, not 
 because he has acquired so much knowledge, but because, in 
 acquiring so much, he has excelled another, and therefore) 
 would have grieved, even though he had made still greater' 
 acquisitions than he has, if another had surpassed him ; if he 
 indulges a feeling of exultation, not because he has shone, but 
 because he has outshone a rival ; if he yields to the temptation 
 of disparaging a competitor whom he would not have dispar- 
 aged but for the competition, and is not as prompt to defend 
 or justify him as though the rivalship did not exist between 
 them ; if he enjoys his own triumph with a keener zest because 
 of the mortification of a fellow-aspirant, in all and in each 
 of these cases, I suppose it will be admitted by every one, that 
 the law of Christian, and even of heathen, morality is violated. 
 Bishop Butler defines emulation to be " the desire and hope of 
 equality with or superiority over others with whom we com- 
 pare ourselves ; " and he then adds, " To desire the attainment 
 of this equality or superiority by the particular means of others 
 being brought down to our own level, or below it, is, I think, 
 the distinct notion of envy." Abstaining, then, from all discus* 
 sion of the general question, I would still say, that wherever 
 teachers perceive the above-described consequences, or any of 
 them, to be produced by emulation, they should be admonished 
 that it has gone too far. 
 
 It is obvious that the question respecting the propriety or the 
 impropriety, the justifiableuess or the unjustifiablencss, of using 
 emulation as an incentive to intellectual progress, will be de- 
 cided in different ways by different persons, according to the 
 relative rank which they respectively assign to mental as dis- 
 tinguished from moral qualities. Whether talent be admired 
 above virtue, or virtue above talent, the weaker affection will 
 be sacrificed to the stronger, just as certainly as a parent, whose 
 bark is in danger of sinking, will throw his treasures overboard
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 507 
 
 to save his first-born, if the first-born be nearer to his heart 
 than his treasures. So, if a teacher desires that his pupil should 
 be a great man rather than a good one ; or that he should ac- 
 quire wealth rather than esteem ; or that he should master the 
 Latin and Greek languages rather thau rule his own spirit ; or 
 attain to high official preferment rather than love the Lord his 
 God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself, then he 
 will goad him on by the deep-driven spur of emulation, or any 
 other motive, until he outstrips his fellows, at whatever peril to 
 his moral nature. But if, on the other hand, the teacher 
 esteems the greatness of humility above the greatness of 
 ambition ; if he prefers mediocrity, or even obscurity, with 
 uprightness and independence of soul, to princely fortune or 
 regal power without them ; if, in fine, he Avould see his pupil 
 dispensing blessings along the lowliest walks of life rather than 
 blazing athwart the sky with a useless splendor, then he will 
 forego the brilliant recitation, the talented essay, the annual 
 prize, the college honor, rather than win them by any incentive 
 which jeopards honor, veracity, or benevolence. But while 
 there is such a practical diversity of opinion in regard to what 
 constitutes the highest destination of our nature, even in a 
 worldly point of view, we cannot expect a genei-al concurrence 
 of opinion as to the influences under which the youthful char- 
 acter should be formed. Those who are intent upon ends 
 which are so different can hardly agree as to means. A dis- 
 cussion, however, of these unsettled questions, in a spirit of 
 kindness and candor, may lead to a convergence, if not to a 
 coincidence, of opinion. 
 
 Having spoken of the temptations that encompass our chil- 
 dren in regard both to the manner and the motive of their 
 studies and recitations, I wish to add a few remarks in regard 
 to the final examinations of the schools. 
 
 From the moment when the school is opened, it ought to be 
 understood that each day is equally a day of preparation for 
 the closing visit of the committee. It ought to be understood 
 that every absence and every tardiness, every instance of idle-
 
 508 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ness and of inattention, is so much of time or of effort with- 
 drawn from that preparation. At all times, by every means, 
 in every form, the expectation is to be extinguished, the idea is 
 to be annihilated, that especial preparation, as the school draws 
 towards its close, on a few pages or a few lessons, can atone 
 for or conceal any want of studiousness or of regularity as 
 the term advances. Every pupil should be made clearly to 
 see, and deeply to feel, that his fortune is in his own hands ; 
 that the responsibility of his future appearance rests upon him- 
 self ; that no arts or devices are to be made use of, either to 
 conceal his ignorance or to display his knowledge ; that his 
 mind will be submitted for inspection, not on its bright side 
 only, but on all sides ; and that it will be useless for him to 
 expect to shine on that occasion, with only a radiant beam of 
 light thrown across it here and there, while wide intervals of 
 darkness lie between. Above all, will the teacher who wishes 
 to keep the moral character of his scholars pure and stainless 
 beware of encouraging or of tolerating any imposition upon 
 the committee. He will not turn the last few days of the 
 school into seasons of rehearsal for the examination. He will 
 not indicate lessons or pages or questions that are to be spe- 
 cially conned for the occasion. To be guilty of any such 
 artifice, with a view to make the school appear better than it 
 is, is to corrupt the minds of his pupils. To the conscientious 
 teacher, the formation of such a conspiracy, whether tacit or 
 express, between himself and his pupils, will be the abominable 
 thing which his soul hateth. It is true, that strong temptations 
 may beset a teacher, and solicit him to deviate from the course 
 of rectitude by an unfair preparation of his school. All laud- 
 able and honorable motives unite with the dictates of self- 
 interest to make him desire the approval of the committee, and 
 of his employers generally ; and, what is more, such fraudulent 
 preparations have not been uncommon in former times, so that 
 precedent can be pleaded for them. It is well known, that, a 
 few years ago, some teachers used to cast the parts, among 
 their scholars, as much as they were ever cast in a play. The
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 509 
 
 scholars committed the portions assigned them to memory. 
 The committee and parents attended, and listened, with appar- 
 ent delight, to recitations which proceeded with such volubility, 
 that auswers were often given before the questions were put. 
 And, when the day was over, all parties teacher, committee, 
 parents, and children congratulated each other upon the 
 success and brilliancy of the farce. Were such a course so 
 common as to be understood to mean nothing, much of its mis- 
 chief would be taken away. But, at the present day, it is not 
 so. Universally, an examination is now understood to be au 
 assaying of the value of the school. All, therefore, who are 
 now guilty of any couutei'feiting of the image and superscrip- 
 tion of knowledge, like other counterfeiters, conceal it if they 
 can. Hence, any one who ventures upon such a course now is 
 a teacher of evil, and not of good. Standing before his charge 
 in the sacred character of a moral guide, he guides to immo- 
 rality. Considering the immaturity of the children, and the 
 deference with which they naturally look up to him, he is not 
 so much the accomplice in a fraud, as the originator and insti- 
 gator of it. By presenting the alluring side of wrong to 
 unsophisticated minds, he creates, rather than connives at, its 
 commission ; and, by one such practical example, he neutralizes 
 a volume of formal moralizing. Few things in a teacher's 
 conduct furnish a more fair or a more certain test of the 
 question, whether he has a lively and sensitive conscience, or 
 has no standard of duty higher than mere conventional rules 
 and observances. 
 
 It is in the power of the school-committee to uphold and to 
 perpetuate this loss to the minds and this demoralization of 
 the hearts of pupils, or at once and utterly to annul it. If, 
 when visiting the school for the first time, they announce that 
 they shall themselves conduct the closing examination ; that, 
 however much or however little ground the classes may 
 undertake to cultivate, they will be liable to be taken to any 
 part of that ground, to show in what condition they have left 
 it ; and that they will be examined on the subject rather than
 
 510 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 on the book, if this be done, the pupils will study throughout 
 the whole term with a very different object in their minds 
 from what they would otherwise do. They will perceive at 
 once, that if they devote special attention to a few lessons, or to 
 a few sections, to the neglect of the rest, the neglected portions 
 may be the very ones on which they will be questioned ; and 
 that the probability of their being taken up on a less prepared 
 part will be in the ratio of the extent of that part. Such a 
 course, too, will furnish a teacher with one of the most pal- 
 pable arguments in favor of the steady, persevering application 
 of his pupils. 
 
 At the examination, every thing, as far as possible, should 
 be rescued from the dominion of chance. No pupil should feel 
 that he can escape by what is called good luck, or suffer by 
 bad. Hence examinations by written or printed questions 
 are better than by oral ; for, in such case, the question can be 
 put to all ; and a comparison of the different answers will be 
 an impartial test of relative attainments. la arithmetic, the 
 identical questions contained in the text-book should not be 
 put, but equivalent ones. As grammar pertains to language, 
 there is a special propriety in requiring answers to be given in 
 writing, in order to determine whether a pupil who can parse 
 glibly, and cite all the rules, can write any better English thau 
 one who has never opened a grammatical text-book. When 
 proficiency in hand-writing is made one of the tests or titles 
 for deserving rank or rewards, it is alleged that some children 
 begin their copy-books by writing a few pages in a style in- 
 ferior to their ability, for the dishonest purpose of appearing to 
 have made more rapid improvement during the term than they 
 really have done. To prevent this, some committees have 
 adopted the expedient of providing themselves with one or 
 more specimen-books for each school, in which all the writers 
 are required to write at the end of the term. This specimen 
 is then compared with the specimens of the preceding year ; 
 and the real progress of the writer is determined by the com- 
 parison. In this case, no inferior specimen can be prepared as 
 a foil to set off its fellow.
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 511 
 
 In deprecating the devices and stratagems of the pupils against 
 their teacher, we should be no less earnest in deprecating all 
 devices and stratagems of the teacher against the pupils. There 
 should be no arts to entrap on his side, any more than arts to 
 evade on theirs. He should practise the utmost vigilance ; 
 but vigilance is as opposite to circumvention as a friendly visit 
 to ask for an explanation is to eaves-dropping. Let the teach- 
 er, then, never descend to sly watchings or insidious question- 
 ings ; but let his countenance, his manner, and his language 
 bespeak frankness in himself, and confidence in his pupils. 
 The atmosphere between him and them should be sunny and 
 genial, unclouded by suspicion, and unchilled by distrust. 
 Were it always sunlight, there Avould be no thievish owls nor 
 felon foxes. As like begets like, confidence or unworthy sus- 
 picion in the teacher will beget confidence or unworthy sus- 
 picion in the school. 
 
 It is sometimes tauntingly asked by the opponents of our 
 common-school system, why this boasted institution does not 
 yield more abundant harvests of virtue ; why the young men 
 and the young women who come from our public schools are 
 not nobler specimens of whatever is pure in feeling, and exem- 
 plary in conduct. I feel no disposition to retort upon such sin- 
 ister inquirers by asking the question, what they themselves 
 have ever done to elevate these schools to a condition from 
 which purer influences might be expected to flow. But another 
 inquiry will answer their inquiry, and dispel the ominous 
 doublings which it suggests. Let this startling question then 
 be first answered, What is the relative amount of time and 
 attention devoted to the moral culture of our children in 
 school as compared with that which is devoted to the intellect? 
 Follow the routine exercises of our schools for a single term ; 
 or, rather, take a broad survey of the whole course of instruc- 
 tion, from the day when the little child first crosses the thresh- 
 old of the schoolhouse, to the day when, on the verge of 
 manhood or womanhood, the young man and the young woman 
 bid it farewell to enter upon some of the varied duties of life.
 
 512 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 What innumerable lessons have been set ! how many recita- 
 tions have been performed ! what a graduated series of books 
 has been read, for the purpose of leading the young mind 
 upward, step by step, along the ascent of knowledge ! what 
 questionings, and repetitions of questionings, to the hundredth 
 time ! and what reviews, and reviewing of things reviewed ! 
 But, on the other hand, how comparatively sterile of instruc- 
 tion has all this course of years been in the duties of children 
 to each other ; in the mutual duties of brothers and sisters ; in 
 filial duties ; in the duties of the talented towards those less 
 highly endowed by Nature ; of those who are well-clad towards 
 those who are clad in the homely garb of poverty ; of the 
 well-formed towards the deformed, or the sufferers under any 
 physical privation ; and, indeed, in that vast range of civil and 
 social duties which awaits each one of them in after-life ; and 
 of the duty of love to their heavenly Father, and of obedience 
 to his laws ! What has been said against the passions of pride 
 and cupidity, and envy and revenge? What expositions have 
 been made of the inherent detestableness of profaneness and 
 obscenity and falsehood? or of the retinue of calamities that 
 come in the train of intemperance and gaming? Has arith- 
 metic been so taught as to show the folly of buying lottery- 
 tickets as a means of obtaining wealth ? In teaching grammar, 
 has a reference to the grammatical blunders and solecisms of 
 the ignorant been accompanied by such humane and benevo- 
 lent inculcations as will inspire all the learners with a desire 
 to seek out ignorance, and to enlighten it? or have the errors 
 of unavoidable ignorance been so ridiculed and contemned, 
 that all the class will be led to vie with each other in jeering 
 at the unfortunately and innocently ignorant wherever they 
 may meet them? In teaching history, have the criminality of 
 nine-tenths of all the wars ever waged, and the unspeakable 
 sufferings they have inflicted upon mankind, been portrayed? 
 or, on the other hand, have victorious armies and blood-stained 
 conquerors been held up as objects of admiration? Who can 
 rejoice at the proficiency of the children in their studies, if,
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 513 
 
 when the school is dismissed, the older ones gather themselves 
 hastily into some corner to draw a lottery, though it should 
 involve only the value of a knife or a pencil-case ? or if the 
 younger ones are seen to leap the fences, and to explore woods 
 and fields, that they may rob birds' nests? or if those of any 
 age trespass upon the neighboring orchards to purloin fruit? 
 Are our children taught in school the duty of restoring lost 
 articles which they may have found? or the infamousness of 
 cheating the post-office by sending concealed letters, or substi- 
 tutes for letters? or the iniquity of adulterating commodities 
 for sale, or of defrauding in weight or measure? or the cruelty 
 and sinfuluess of detraction and slander? Whei'e these things 
 are neglected, the children may be well trained in reading and 
 writing and arithmetic ; but they are not trained in the way 
 they should go. Such children may make powerful or crafty 
 or worldly-prosperous men ; but they will not become men 
 of unspotted and stainless lives ; they are not preparing them- 
 selves to do as they would be done by ; they are not learning 
 to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.* 
 
 There is another fact which deepens and aggravates, to an 
 alarming extent, the evil here spoken of. I refer to the mode 
 often used in imparting even the pittance of moral instruction 
 that is given. 
 
 Since the time of Pestalozzi, there has been scarcely any 
 difference of opinion among the leading educators of Europe 
 or America as to the true and philosophical method of instruc- 
 tion. With one consent, their decision is in favor of the 
 exhibitory, explanatory, and inductive method. This method is 
 the opposite of the dogmatic. The latter method consists in 
 
 * During the last year, while I was passing by a school, the children came out 
 to take their forenoon recess. They were boy.*, in appearance, between eight and 
 ten or eleven years of age. As they rushed into the street, one of the largest 
 boys turned, and cried out, " Xow let's play robber ! " AVhereupon he drew a pine 
 dagger from under IMS coat, seized one of his fellows, and exclaimed, " Your 
 money, or your life '. " This scene, thus enacted in sport, was doubtless drawn 
 from some of the novels of the day, whose guilty authors receive the patronage, if 
 not the homage, of society ; while the comparatively innocent felon, who only steals 
 ahorse or burns a house, is sentenced to the penitentiary. Was that school doing 
 its duty, or building up character after a Christian model? 
 33
 
 514 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 laying down abstract rules, formulas, or theorems, in a posi- 
 tive, authoritative manner, and requiring the forms of words in 
 which the abstractions are expressed to be committed to mem- 
 ory. Of course, the principle embodied in these forms of 
 words is to be received by the learner whether he understands 
 it or not, and without any inquiry on his part whether it be 
 true or false. But, on the Pestalozzian method, nothing which 
 lies beyond the reach of intuition is asserted without being 
 explained. If a complex idea is affirmed, it is analyzed into 
 its elements : if an abstruse one is introduced, it is illustrated, 
 if practicable, by some sensible object ; if not susceptible of 
 illustration by any sensible object, some anecdote or narrative 
 is related, or some combination of circumstances supposed, 
 which will make it intelligible. When the subject-matter will 
 admit, there is an actual exhibition of the thing spoken of. If 
 the thing spoken of cannot be exhibited, there is explanation, 
 founded on the exhibition of some analogous thing. Should 
 the lesson refer to any common or simple substance, a specimen 
 is exhibited, as in the case of minerals, metals, fruits, man- 
 ufactures, and so forth. To a child who has never seen a 
 mountain, a hill is made a unit of measure for explaining the 
 mountain's height and extent. So of a brook, to one who has 
 never seen a river ; and of a pond, to one who has never seen 
 a lake or an ocean. If a centaur or sphinx or mermaid be 
 referred to, the teacher draws the likeness of one upon the 
 blackboard, or exhibits an engraving. In case of a complex 
 object, as a machine, a ship, a fort, or an Indian pagoda, some 
 miniature model, or, at least, some pictorial representation, is 
 produced, and made the basis, or framework, of the conceptions 
 that are to be founded upon it, or collocated around it. When 
 the thing to be taught is not an object of the senses, but of the 
 mind only, and especially when the thing lies remote from 
 elements, or first principles, this method requires that the 
 learner's mind should be conducted through all the interme- 
 diate stages of progress, until it arrives at the point where the 
 complex or abstract idea can be understood ; and then, and not
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 515 
 
 till then, that it should be brought forward. In fine, this 
 method requires that individuals should be introduced before 
 species, species before genera, and so forth. But the dogmatic 
 method begins with the most comprehensive generalizations, 
 and rims the risk of the pupil's obtaining any knowledge 
 of particulars afterwards. In the one case, the learner is 
 expected to receive blindly what is dictated to him ; while the 
 other method exhibits, explains, illustrates, exemplifies, and 
 educes, and then submits the whole to the learner's intelligence, 
 to be received or discarded. 
 
 After this statement of the points of distinction between the 
 Pestalozzian and the dogmatic method, it would be only an 
 illustration of the former were an example of each to be given. 
 Suppose, then, a foreign gentleman should send his sou to Bos- 
 ton, under the care of a tutor, in order that he might become 
 acquainted with the city and its vicinity, and learn something 
 of its public works, its institutions, and its distinguished men. 
 According to the dogmatic method, when the strangers should 
 have arrived and taken their lodgings, the tutor would obtain 
 a guide-book for his pupil. In a series of lessons, he would see 
 that the peninsular shape, the territorial extent, the statistics 
 of population, commerce, education, and so forth, were well 
 studied and recited. The boundaries of the city Charles 
 River on the north, the ocean on the east, and the interior on 
 the south and west would be learned. The pupil would be 
 taught to name the principal streets, bridges, and railroads, 
 probably in an alphabetical order, until they could be volubly 
 repeated. A directory would be put into his hands, with a 
 mark against the names of the men whose distinction entitled 
 them to a place in his memory. He would be told, that, in the 
 city or its vicinity, there are an Asylum for the Insane, an In- 
 stitution for the Blind, a Navy Yard, Bunker-hill Monument, 
 Dorchester Heights, Lexington and Concord battle-grounds, 
 and so forth. These facts, and such as these, would be depos- 
 ited in the memory, reviewed and rehearsed, until they could 
 all be called up at will ; and then the parties would re-embark,
 
 516 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 congratulating themselves that the object of their mission 
 had been successfully accomplished. This is the dogmatic 
 method. 
 
 On the other hand, suppose the tutor to instruct his pupil 
 on the exhibitory, explanatory, and inductive plan. For the 
 first lesson, he takes him to the dome of the State House, the 
 highest point in the metropolis, and one which commands 
 the splendid panorama of the city and its suburbs. There, be- 
 fore a single object is pointed out, before a single glance at the 
 broad and varied scene is allowed, the points of the compass 
 are determined. If the sun be visible, this is done by an obser- 
 vation, consisting of but two elements, the position of the sun, 
 and the hour of the day. First a general survey is allowed, 
 in order to impress the mind with a general conception of out- 
 line and extent. This is in analogy to that summary descrip- 
 tion of the nature, the advantages, and the pleasures of a study, 
 which a teacher should always give to his class when a new 
 branch is introduced. Then a single class of objects is selected 
 for attention, suppose it to be the public buildings ; and, as 
 the one from whose observatory they are looking is the central 
 point from which the bearings and distances of all the rest are 
 to be estimated, it is first considered. Then the other great 
 public edifices or structures are taken in their order, the 
 Quincy Market, the public buildings at South Boston, the 
 Blind Institution, the Colleges, the Hospitals, Bunker-hill 
 Monument, the Navy Yard, the lighthouses arid forts in the 
 harbor. When the most interesting of this class of objects are 
 completed, after such reflections and explanations, and, per- 
 haps, pencillings, as may be deemed necessary, the eye is 
 withdrawn from the whole ; the parties retire ; and the pupil is 
 required to reproduce from his recollection, in the form of a 
 map, all the objects he has examined, with their apparent dis- 
 tances, positions, and so forth. In succeeding lessons, given 
 from the same elevated point, other objects and neighboring 
 towns are pointed out. Here the telescope is used. The 
 bridges, and the six lines of railroads radiating from the city,
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 517 
 
 towards the south, west, and north, are designated. After 
 every lesson, a map of objects or localities is prepared, both 
 for the purpose of determining the accuracy of the impression 
 carried away, and of deepening it in the mind. After such 
 minuteness of detail as circumstances will allow, the same 
 objects are visited and inspected ; and their history, administra- 
 tion, amount of success or causes of failure, and so forth, 
 learned. The streets are learned by passing through them ; 
 the schools, by visiting and questioning them ; the state of com- 
 merce and merchandise, from the wharves, the custom-house, 
 and the depositories ; the manufactories, by the amount and 
 the quality of their fabrics ; the distinguished men, by intro- 
 duction, conversation, and personal intimacy ; and historical 
 events, not merely by reading the narrative, but by visiting the 
 scenes where they occurred. Such is an inadequate represen- 
 tation of what may be called the Pestalozzian method of 
 instruction. Which of the two methods is most conducive to 
 an understanding of the subject, it is not difficult to decide. 
 
 Now, it is but a few years since the dogmatic method was 
 the one almost universally practised in our schools in regard 
 to intellectual instruction. Arithmetic was taught without oral 
 exercises cr the blackboard ; geography, without globes, maps, 
 or map-drawing ; grammar, by the endless repetitions of gov- 
 ernment and agreement, mood and tense, gender, number, and 
 case, the children asseverating ten thousand times the re- 
 markable facts that he is masculine, she feminine, and it neu- 
 ter ; that one is in the singular number, two, three, four, and all 
 the rest, in the plural, and so forth. But such a change has 
 taken place in this respect, that, at the present time, there is not 
 one of our first class of schools where the principles of arithmetic 
 are not explained ; where words are not, denned, and the mean- 
 ing of the author paraphrased ; poetry turned into prose ; maps 
 drawn ; orthographical and grammatical exercises written; and, 
 generally, the thiug itself sought for and understood, instead of 
 a mere babbling from memory of the words in which it is ex- 
 pressed. But, in regard to moral subjects, I fear the dogmatic
 
 518 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 method still remains, precepts, rules, abstruse principles, 
 mere formulas of speech, without specification, without ex- 
 pansion, without illustration, without the living, glowing, inspir- 
 ing spirit. Suppose, in arithmetical proportion, the teacher 
 should tell the pupil that, " as the first term is to the second, 
 so is the third to the answer," and should there stop. "Would 
 the pupil ever know how to work a sum in the rule of three? 
 But the moral lesson, " Do as you would be done unto." is pre- 
 cisely analogous to the arithmetical one, if it stops with the 
 general injunction. The latter needs exemplification, by in- 
 stances, as much as the former, and would profit as much by it. 
 Yet, under this head in the arithmetic, a hundred examples will 
 be given ; under the moral axiom, not one. I cannot see why 
 it is not as absurd to give a moral rule to a child, without exam- 
 ples under it, as it is to give an arithmetical rule, without ex- 
 amples under that ; and, if questions pertaining to business are 
 selected in the one case, why should not questions pertaining 
 to duty be selected in the other? Suppose the teacher of a 
 normal school should prescribe, as a rule to the future teachers, 
 " Train up a child in the way he should go," and should there 
 leave them, without giving them any specific instructions as to 
 what that way is, and by what means children can be trained 
 that is, accustomed to walk in it. How easy it would be 
 to make accomplished teachers, if such a precept, comprehen- 
 sive and perfect as the principle of it is, were all that is neces- 
 sary ! But such a rule requires years of exemplification and 
 practice : it requires years of reading, redectiou, and consulta- 
 tion with masters of the art. Under the rule, to do as we 
 would be done unto, a thousand instances, taken from the 
 play-ground, the schoolroom, the domestic fireside, the pleas- 
 ure-party, the shop, the counting-room, should be given. Under 
 the rule, to love our neighbors as ourselves, the illustrations 
 may be as numerous as all the interests and wants of life. 
 How varied are those rights of property which come within 
 the protection of the command, "Thou shalt not steal;" and 
 those rights of character and of reputation that are embraced
 
 REPORT FOR 1845. 519 
 
 within the spirit of the prohibition, " Thou shalt not bear false 
 witness against thy neighbor " ! Are these things of less con- 
 sequence than the frivolous discussions whether a and an and 
 the are articles or adjectives? Are these momentous subjects, 
 with all their finite and infinite bearings, to be postponed in 
 order that we may have time to teach children not to spell 
 labor and honor with the letter , or public and music with 
 the letter k ; or when to reduplicate the final consonants of 
 primitive words, and when not ? How can a child be led to 
 love the Lord his God with all his heart, unless, in the first 
 place, he has a heart which has been trained to love what is 
 good ; and, in the second place, unless some of those glorious 
 attributes of his Maker which are fitted to excite his love are 
 unfolded to his perceptions? How can a child love God while 
 he knows nothing of him but the name, and has perhaps heard 
 that name spoken more frequently in profaneness or blasphemy 
 than in reverence? Is it of more consequence for a child to 
 know the specks of islands in the Indian or Pacific Oceans than 
 it is to know the reason why he is taught to say that God is 
 good, and that his tender mercies are over all his works? Is 
 it more important that a child should be taught the anomalies 
 of our arbitrary language than that he should be instructed in 
 the beneficence of his heavenly Father, who has created the 
 sun for his warmth and light, and the earth for his dwelling- 
 place ; who robes Nature in beautiful colors for the gratifica- 
 tion of his eye, and surrounds him with an atmosphere which 
 is an undecaying medium of communication with his friends, 
 and, like a vast instrument of music, is forever ready to be 
 played upon for the delight of his ear ; whose skill and power 
 are made known in the formation of his body, and whose 
 bounty in the abundance that sustains it ; whose munificence 
 in the bestowment of his faculties, with their adaptations to 
 happiness ; and who has given him, in the words and life of 
 the Saviour, a perfect rule and a perfect example ? If there be 
 nothing in orthography or etymology or syntax of superior 
 value to an upright life, or better becoming an immortal being
 
 520 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 than devout feelings towards his Maker, why should the former 
 be allowed to dispossess the latter, and usurp their place ? 
 
 The natural conscience needs training in order to discern 
 the distinctions between right and wrong, in the same manner 
 that the intellect needs training in regard to addition and sub- 
 traction, or substantive and verb, or latitude and longitude, 
 or republics and monarchies. No man, then, has any right to 
 oppose our system of common schools because the children 
 who come from them are not as honest as they are intelligent, 
 and as benevolent as they are sagacious, until our teachers are 
 as competent and as faithful in teaching their pupils humanity 
 and morality, and in training them to the practice of the social 
 virtues, as they are in teaching them the common branches of 
 study, and in training them for the business of life. When 
 the voice of public opinion shall imperatively demand as high 
 a degree of culture for the moral as for the intellectual nature, 
 and teachers shall bestow it, all opposition to our schools will 
 be destroyed ; for the opponents themselves will be reformed 
 into advocates. 
 
 The unexpected length to which this Report has already ex- 
 tended admonishes me to bring it to a close ; although, in so 
 doing, I am obliged to omit other and kindred topics, to which 
 I would gladly advert. Instead of generalizing on the subject 
 of morals, or vainly attempting to embellish their inherent 
 beauty and loveliness, I have preferred to set forth in the pre- 
 ceding pages, with some minuteness and detail, the principal 
 dangers to which our children are exposed as they are passing 
 through our schools ; and I have endeavored to help the con- 
 scientious teacher in the discharge of his duties to those chil- 
 dren by setting up a few way-marks and beacons along their 
 perilous path. This, however, is a subject heretofore uniuves- 
 tigated, so far as I know, by any writer on education. Like 
 other pioneers, I must, doubtless, have made a very imperfect 
 survey of the extensive field I have entered, all the more im- 
 perfect because it is so extensive. But I devoutly hope that 
 what has now been said may prove sufficient to incite others
 
 REPOET FOR 1845. 521 
 
 to make more complete explorations, until every precipice and 
 pitfall that besets the pathway of the rising generation in their 
 common pursuit of knowledge may be not only discovered, 
 but surmounted with warning signals too conspicuous to be 
 unnoticed. 
 
 Directly and indirectly, the influences of the Board of Edu- 
 cation have been the means of increasing, to a great extent, the 
 amount of religious instruction given in our schools. Moral 
 training, or the application of religious principles to the duties 
 of life, should be its inseparable accompaniment. No commu- 
 nity can long subsist, unless it has religious principle as the 
 foundation of moral action, nor unless it has moral action as 
 the superstructure of religious principle. Not at present, any 
 more than in the days of the Jewish theocracy, does the 
 strength of a nation consist in the number of its horsemen, or 
 its chariots, or its mighty men of valor, but in those who fear 
 the Lord, and work righteousness. 
 
 Travellers inform us, that, in some of the vast deserts of 
 the Eastern continent, the course of the wayfarers across the 
 trackless waste is marked by the bleaching bones of mighty 
 caravans that had perished on their way in traversing the 
 desolate expanse. Spread out upon the arid sands, or heaped 
 in mounds, these relics of the dead give warning of the dangers 
 by which they had been overwhelmed. The pilgrim troop 
 or merchant company, as they pass along, and behold these 
 eloquent memorials of others' fate, are admonished to press on 
 with vigor, that they may reach the place of safety. Even 
 thus, along the track of time, for thousands of years, do historic 
 memorials like vast monumental piles upon the right hand 
 and upon the left make known to us the causes of the 
 decline and fall of ancient and of modern republics. They fell 
 through the ignorance and debasement of the people that com- 
 posed them. But for these, Greece, having revivified her spirit 
 by the genius of Christianity, and turned her Pantheon into a 
 temple of the living and true God, might, to this day, have 
 spread far more than her ancient happiness and splendor over
 
 522 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 those beautiful regions where now the Mahoramedan bears 
 sway ; and, but for these, Rome might have adopted the prin- 
 ciples of that purer faith which was preached to her by the 
 Apostle to the Gentiles, and saved the world from the thousand 
 years of unspeakable horrors which the dark ages inflicted 
 upon it. Happy will our young Republic be, if, forewarned by 
 the perdition of others, she avoids their fate by avoiding the 
 causes that incurred it.
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 To w^ite a history of popular education in Massachusetts 
 would be a work of great interest, and of little difficulty. Such 
 a history, however, seems not to have beeu contemplated, and, 
 therefore, would not be warranted, by those resolves of the 
 legislature under which the following pages are prepared. The 
 resolves provide only for " the republication of so much of his 
 (the late Secretary's) Tenth Annual Report, as, with the requi- 
 site additions and alterations, will exhibit a just and correct 
 view of the common-school system of Massachusetts, and the 
 provisions of law relating to it.* An adequate idea of this 
 " system," however, can hardly be obtained without a brief 
 reference to its origin, and to those great fundamental princi- 
 ples which its authors and supporters seem rather to have 
 tacitly assumed than to have fully expounded. 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers who colonized Massachusetts Bay made 
 a bolder innovation upon all pre-existing policy and usages 
 than the world had ever known since the commencement of the 
 Christian era. They adopted special and costly means to train 
 up the whole body of the people to industry, to intelligence, to 
 virtue, and to independent thought. The first entry in the 
 public record-book of the town of Boston bears date, " 1634, 
 7th month, day 1." The records of the public meetings for the 
 residue of that year pertain to those obvious necessities that 
 
 * The provisions of law are omitted in this volume. 
 
 523
 
 524 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 claimed the immediate attention of an infant settlement. But 
 in the transactions of a public meeting, held on the 13th day 
 of April, 1635, the following entry is found : " Likewise it was 
 then generally agreed upon, that our brother Philemon Pur- 
 mont [or Purment] shall be intreated to become scholemaster 
 for the teaching and nourtering of children with us." Mr. 
 Purmout was not expected to render his services gratuitously. 
 Doubtless he received fees from parents ; but the same records 
 show, that a tract of thirty acres of land, at Muddy River, 
 was assigned to him ; and this grant, two years afterwards, was 
 publicly confirmed. About the same time, an assignment 
 was made of a " garden plott to Mr. Daniel Maude, schoole- 
 master, upon the condition of building thereon, if neede be." 
 From this time forward, these golden threads are thickly in- 
 woven in the texture of all the public records of Boston. 
 
 It is not unworthy of remark, that a word of beautiful sig- 
 nificance, which is found in the first record on the subject of 
 schools ever made on this continent, has now fallen wholly out 
 of use. Mr. Purmont was entreated to become a i4 scholemas- 
 ter," not merely for the " teaching," but for the " XOURTERIXG " 
 of children. If, as is supposed, this word, now obsolete in this 
 connection, implied the disposition and the power on the part 
 of the teacher, as far as such an object can be accomplished by 
 human instrumentality, to warm into birth, to foster into strength, 
 and to advance into precedence and predominance, all kindly 
 sympathies towards men, all elevated thoughts respecting the 
 duties and the destiny of life, and a supreme reverence for the 
 character and attributes of the Creator, then how many teach- 
 ers have since been employed who have not NOURISHED the 
 children committed to their care ! 
 
 In 1642, the General Court of the colony, by a public act, 
 enjoined upon the municipal authorities the duty of seeing that 
 every child within their respective jurisdictions should be edu- 
 cated. Xor was the education which they contemplated either 
 narrow or superficial. By the terms of the act. the selectmen 
 of every town were required to " have a vigilant eye over their
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 525 
 
 brethren and neighbors, to see first that none of them shall 
 suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not to en- 
 deavor to teach, by themselves or others, their children and 
 apprentices, so much learning as may enable them perfectly to 
 read the English tongue, and [obtain a] knowledge of the capi- 
 tal laws ; upon penalty of twenty shillings for each neglect 
 therein." 
 
 Such was the idea of " barbarism " entertained by the colo- 
 nists of Massachusetts Bay more than two centuries ago. 
 Tried by this standard, even at the present day, the regions of 
 civilization become exceedingly narrow ; and many a man 
 who now blindly glories in the name and in the prerogatives of 
 a republican citizen would, according to the better ideas of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers, be known only as the " barbarian " father of 
 " barbarian " children. 
 
 The same act further required that religious instruction 
 should be given to all children ; and also " that all parents 
 and masters do breed and bring up their children and appren- 
 tices in some honest, lawful calling, labor, or employment, 
 either in husbandry or some other trade profitable for them- 
 selves and the Commonwealth, if they will not or can not train 
 them up in learning to fit them for higher employments." 
 
 Thus were recognized and embodied in a public statute the 
 highest principles of political economy and of social well-being, 
 the universal education of children, and the prevention of 
 drones or non-producers among men. 
 
 By the same statute, the selectmen and magistrates were em- 
 powered to take children and servants from the custody of those 
 parents and masters, who, " after admonition," " were still 
 negligent of their duty in the particulars above mentioned," 
 and to bind them out to such masters as they should deem 
 worthy to supply the place of the unnatural parent, boys 
 until the age of twenty-one, and girls until that of eighteen. 
 
 The law of 1642 enjoined universal education ; but it did not 
 make education free, nor did it impose any penalty upon mu- 
 nicipal corporations for neglecting to maintain a school. The
 
 526 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 spirit of the law, however, worked energetically in the hearts 
 of the people ; for in Gov. Winthrop's Journal (" History of 
 New England," vol. ii. p. 215, Savage's edition), under date 
 of 1645, we find the following: "Divers free schools were 
 erected, as at Roxbury (for maintenance whereof every inhabit- 
 ant bound some house or laud for a yearly allowance forever) 
 and at Boston, where they made an order to allow fifty pounds 
 to the master, and an house and thirty pounds to an usher, who 
 should also teach to read and write and cipher, and Indians' 
 children were to be taught freely, and the charge to be by 
 yearly contribution, either by voluntary allowance, or by rate 
 of such as refused, &c. ; and this order was confirmed by the 
 General Court. Other towns did the like, providing mainte- 
 nance by several means." 
 
 It is probable, however, that some towns, owing to ' the 
 sparseness of their population and the scantiness of their re- 
 sources, found all the moneys in their treasury too little to pay 
 the salary of a master ; and surrounded by dangers, as they 
 were, from the ferocity of the aborigines and the inclemency 
 of the climate, believed that not an eye could be spared from 
 watching nor a hand from labor, even for so sacred a purpose 
 as that of instruction ; and therefore failed to sustain a school 
 for the teaching and " uourtering " of their children. But, in 
 all these privations and disabilities, the government of the col- 
 ony saw no adequate excuse for neglecting the one thing need- 
 ful. They saw and felt, that " if learning were to be buried in 
 the graves of their forefathers, in Church and Commonwealth," 
 then they had escaped from the house of bondage, and swam an 
 ocean, and braved the terrors of the wilderness, in vain. In the 
 year 1647, therefore, a law was passed making the support of 
 .schools compulsory, and education both universal and free. 
 
 By this law, every town containing fifty householders was 
 required to appoint a teacher " to teach all such children as 
 shall resort to him to write and read ; " and every town con- 
 taining one hundred families or householders was required to 
 " set up a grammar school," whose master should be " able
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 527 
 
 to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the univer- 
 sity." 
 
 The penalty for non-compliance with the above requirements 
 was five pounds per annum. In 1671, the penalty was in- 
 creased to ten pounds per aunum ; in 1683, to twenty pounds ; 
 and in 1718, to thirty pounds for every town containing one 
 hundred and fifty families ; to forty pounds for every town 
 containing two hundred families ; and so on, pro rota, for towns 
 containing two hundred and fifty or three hundred families. 
 The penalty was increased from time to time, to correspond 
 with the increasing wealth of the towns. All forfeitures were 
 appropriated to the maintenance of public schools.* 
 
 It is common to say that the act of 1647 laid the foundation 
 of our present system of free schools ; but the truth is, it 
 not only laid the foundation of the present system, but, in some 
 particulars, it laid a far broader foundation than has since been 
 
 * It is well known, that, in the dearth of the precious metals which prevailed 
 among the early settlers of Massachusetts, the colonial and provincial governments 
 made various kinds of grain, wheat, rye, barley, Indian corn, &c., with sev- 
 eral other commodities, a legal tender in payment of debts, and received them for 
 taxes. In our early legislation and history, these were called " country pay." 
 From time to time, the law determined the value of the bushel, or unit, of each 
 kind of product. On an examination of twenty such determinations of value, 
 made from 1642 to 1094 inclusive, I find that Indian corn was rated at from one 
 8liilliug and two pence a bushel to three shillings and six pence; and that the 
 average for this whole period was, within a very slight fraction, two shillings and 
 ten pence a bushel. 
 
 Allowing six persons to a family, a town of three hundred families would con- 
 tain a population of eighteen hundred. 
 
 To pay a fine of sixty pounds, therefore, to which such a town would be liable by 
 one of the laws above referred to, if paid in Indian corn, at the average of the 
 prices which prevailed from 1642 to 1694, would require four hundred and twenty- 
 three bushels. 
 
 The rates of labor, as ordained by the colonial government, show, in a still more 
 striking manner, how heavily the towns were mulcted for neglecting to support 
 schools. 
 
 Under date of Sept. 30, 1630, " It is ordered, that laborers shall not take aboue 
 lid a day for their work and not aboue 6d and meate and drink under paine of 
 10s; noe master carpenter, mason, joyner or bricklayer, shall take aboue ICd a day 
 for their worke, if they have meate and drink, and the second sort not aboue 
 12d a day under payne of 10s both to giuer and receauer." 
 
 At these rates, it would take a laborer (having board) four hundred and eighty 
 days to pay a fine of one pound. The penalty imposed upon towns, by the law of 
 1647, for not maintaining a free school, was five oounds, equivalent, at the above
 
 528 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 built upon, and reared a far higher superstructure than has since 
 been sustained. Modern times have witnessed great improve- 
 ments in the methods of instruction, and in the motives of dis- 
 cipline ; but, in some respects, the ancient foundation has been 
 narrowed, and the ancient superstructure lowered. The term 
 " grammar school," in the old laws, always meant a school 
 where the ancient languages were taught, and where youth 
 could be " fitted for the university." Every town containing 
 one hundred families or householders was required to keep 
 such a school. Were such a law in force at the present time, 
 there are not more than twelve towns in the Commonwealth 
 which would be exempt from its requisitions. But the term 
 " grammar school " has wholly lost its original meaning ; and 
 the number of towns and cities which are now required by law 
 to maintain a school where the Greek and Latiu languages are 
 taught, and where youth can be fitted for college, does not 
 exceed thirty. The contrast between our ancestors and our- 
 selves in this respect is most humiliating. Their meanness 
 in wealth was more than compensated by their grandeur of 
 soul. 
 
 The institution of a free-school system on so broad a basis, 
 and of such ample proportions, appears still more remarkable 
 when we consider the period in the world's history at which 
 it was originated, and the fewness and poverty of the people by 
 whom it was maintained. In 1647, the entire population of 
 the colony of Massachusetts Bay is supposed to have amounted 
 
 rate, to the work of a common laborer (with board, but without clothing) for 
 twenty-four hundred days, or all the working days in almost eight years. 
 
 Under date of Sept. 3, 1G34, it was ordered that " noe person that keepes an 
 ordinary shall take above 6d a meale for a person, and not above Id for an ale 
 qu:irtc tor beare out of meale time vnder the penalty of 10s for eury offence, either 
 of dyet or beare." 
 
 In 1654, May 3, the following order was made : " As the countrje is in debt, no 
 stock in the treasury, no meanes at present to raise any, so that workmen cannot 
 be procured to finish the Cattle, which yett is necessary forthwith to be done," the 
 several military companies must do it; one division of them by having each of their 
 soldiers labor three days on this fortification, and another by being individually 
 assessed 4s. Od. Hence it would seem that 4s. Od. were held to be an equivalent for 
 three days' work on the Castle, and going to and returning from the work. See 
 An Historical Account of Mamachujctts Currency, by JOSEPH B. FELT.
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 529 
 
 only to twenty-one thousand souls. The scattered and feeble 
 settlements were almost buried in the depths of the forest. 
 The external resources of the people were small, their dwellings 
 humble, and their raiment and subsistence scanty and homely. 
 They had no enriching commerce ; and the wonderful forces of 
 Nature had not then, as now, become gratuitous producers of 
 every human comfort and luxury. The whole valuation of all 
 the colonial estates, both public and private, would hardly have 
 been equal to the inventory of many a private citizen of the 
 present day. The fierce eye of the savage was nightly seen 
 glaring from the edge of the surrounding wilderness ; and no 
 defence or succor, save in their own brave natures, was at 
 hand. Yet it was then, amid all these privations and dangers, 
 that the Pilgrim Fathers conceived the magnificent idea, not 
 only of a universal, but of a free education, for the whole peo- 
 ple. To find the time and the means to reduce this grand 
 conception to practice, they stinted themselves, amid all their 
 poverty, to a still scantier pittance ; amid all their toils, they 
 imposed upon themselves still more burdensome labors ; and, 
 amid all their perils, they braved still greater dangers. Two 
 divine ideas filled their great hearts, their duty to God and to 
 posterity. For the one, they built the church ; for the other, 
 they opened the school. Eeligion and knowledge, two 
 attributes of the same glorious and eternal truth, and that truth 
 the only one on which immortal or mortal happiness can be 
 securely founded ! 
 
 It is impossible for us adequately to conceive the boldness of 
 the measure which aimed at universal education through the 
 establishment of free schools. As a fact, it had no precedent 
 in the world's history ; and, as a theory, it could have been 
 refuted and silenced by a more formidable array of argument 
 and experience than was ever marshalled against any other in- 
 stitution of human origin. But time has ratified its soundness. 
 Two centuries of successful operation now proclaim it to be as 
 wise as it was courageous, and as beneficent as it was disinter- 
 ested. Every community in the civilized world awards it the 
 34
 
 530 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 meed of praise ; and states at home, and nations abroad, in the 
 order of their intelligence, are copying the bright example. 
 What we call the enlightened nations of Christendom are ap- 
 proaching, by slow degrees, to the moral elevation which our 
 ancestors reached at a single bound ; and the tardy convictions 
 of the one have been assimilating, through a period of two cen- 
 turies, to the intuitions of the other. 
 
 The establishment of free schools was one of those grand 
 mental and moral experiments whose effects could not be de- 
 veloped and made manifest in a single generation. But now, 
 according to the manner in which human life is computed, we 
 are the sixth generation from its founders ; and have we not 
 reason to be grateful both to God and man for its unnumbered 
 blessings? The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by 
 our efforts to perpetuate and to improve what they established. 
 The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering. 
 
 In surveying our vast country, the rich savannas of the 
 South, and the almost interminable prairies of the West, that 
 great valley, where, if all the nations of Europe were set down 
 together, they could find ample subsistence, the ejaculation 
 involuntarily bursts forth, " WHY WERE THEY NOT COLONIZED 
 BY MEN LIKE THE PILGRIM FATHERS ? " And as we reflect how 
 different would have been the fortunes of this nation, had those 
 States already so numerous, and still extending, circle beyond 
 circle been founded by men of high, heroic, Puritan mould ; 
 how different in the eye of a righteous Heaven, how different 
 in the estimation of the wise and good of all contemporary na- 
 tions, how different in the fortunes of that vast procession of 
 the generations which are yet to rise up over all those wide 
 expanses, and to follow each other to the end of time, as we 
 reflect upon these things, it seems almost pious to repine at the 
 ways of Providence ; resignation becomes laborious, and we 
 are forced to choke down our murmurings at the will of 
 Heaven. Is it the solution of this deep mystery, that our 
 ancestors did as much in their time as it is ever given to 
 one generation of men to accomplish, and have left to us and
 
 EEPORT FOR 1846. 531 
 
 to our descendants the completion of the glorious work they 
 began ? 
 
 The alleged ground upon which the founders of our free- 
 school system proceeded, when adopting it, did not embrace 
 the whole argument by which it may be defended and sus- 
 tained. Their insight was better than their reason. They 
 assumed a ground, indeed, satisfactory and convincing to Prot- 
 estants ; but, at that time, only a small portion of Christen- 
 dom was Protestant, and even now only a minority of it is so. 
 The very ground on which our free schools were founded, 
 therefore, if it were the only one, would have been a reason, 
 with more than half of Christendom, for their immediate abo- 
 lition. 
 
 In later times, and since the achievement of American inde- 
 pendence, the universal and ever-repeated argument in favor of 
 free schools has been, that the general intelligence which they 
 are capable of diffusing, and Avhich can be imparted by no 
 other human instrumentality, is indispensable to the continu- 
 ance of a republican government. This argument, it is obvi- 
 ous, assumes, as a postulatum, the superiority of a republican 
 over all other forms of government ; and, as a people, we re- 
 ligiously believe in the soundness both of the assumption- and 
 of the argument founded upon it. But if this be all, then a 
 sincere monarchist, or a defender of arbitrary power, or a be- 
 liever in the divine right of kings, would oppose free schools 
 for the identical reasons we offer in their behalf. A perfect 
 demonstration of our doctrine that free schools are the only 
 basis of republican institutions would be the pei'fection of 
 proof, to his mind, that they should be immediately extermi- 
 nated. 
 
 Admitting, nay, claiming for ourselves, the substantial just- 
 ness and soundness of the general grounds on which our sys- 
 tem was originally established, and has since been maintained, 
 yet it is most obvious, that, unless some broader and more com- 
 prehensive principle can be found, the system of free schools 
 will be repudiated by whole nations as impolitic and dangerous ;
 
 532 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 aud, even among ourselves, all who deny our premises will, of 
 course, set at nought the conclusions to which they lead. 
 
 Again : the expediency of free schools is sometimes advo- 
 cated on grouuds of political economy. An educated people 
 is always a more industrious and productive people. Knowl- 
 edge aud abundance sustain to each other the relation of cause 
 and effect. Intelligence is a primary ingredient in the wealth 
 of nations. Where this does not stand at the head of the inven- 
 tory, the items in a nation's valuation will be few, aud the sum 
 at the foot of the column insignificant. 
 
 The moralist, too, takes up the argument of the economist. 
 He demonstrates that vice aud crime are not only prodigals and 
 spendthrifts of their own, but defrauders and plunderers of the 
 means of others ; that they would seize upon all the gains of 
 honest industry, and exhaust the bounties of Heaven itself, 
 without satiating their rapacity for new means of indulgence ; 
 and that often, in the history of the world, whole generations 
 might have been trained to industry and virtue by the wealth 
 which one euemy to his race has destroyed. 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding these views have been presented a 
 thousand times with irrefutable logic, and with a divine elo- 
 quence of truth which it would seem that nothing but combined 
 stolidity and depravity could resist, thei'e is not at the present 
 time, with the exception of the States of New England and 
 a few small communities elsewhere, a country or a state in 
 Christendom which maintains a system of free schools for the 
 education of its children. Even in the State of New York, 
 with all its noble endowments, the schools are not free.* 
 
 I believe that this amazing dereliction from duty, especially 
 in our own country, originates more in the false notions which 
 men entertain respecting the nature of their rigid to property than 
 in any thing else. In the district-school-rneetiug, in the town- 
 meeting, in legislative halls, everywhere, the advocates for a 
 
 * By an act of the New-York legislature, passed at its last session, the question 
 whether free schools shall be established throughout the State is to be submitted 
 to the decision of the people, to be determined Dy ballot, at theirprimary meetings, 
 during the current year.
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 533 
 
 more generous education could carry their respective audiences 
 with them in behalf of increased privileges for our children, 
 were it not instinctively foreseen that increased privileges must 
 be followed by increased taxation. Against this obstacle, argu- 
 ment falls dead. The rich man who has no children declares 
 that the exaction of a contribution from him to educate the 
 children of his neighbor is an invasion of his rights of property. 
 The man who has reared and educated a family of children 
 denounces it as a double tax when he is called upon to assist 
 in educating the children of others also ; or, if he has reared 
 his own children without educating them, he thinks it pecu- 
 liarly oppressive to be obliged to do for others what he re- 
 frained from doing even for himself. Another, having children, 
 but disdaining to educate them with the common mass, with- 
 draws them from the public school, puts them under what he 
 calls " selecter influences," and then thinks it a grievance to be 
 obliged to support a school which he contemns. Or if these 
 different parties so far yield to the force of traditionary senti- 
 ment and usage, and to the public opinion around them, as to 
 consent to do something for the cause, they soon reach the limit 
 of expense at which their admitted obligation or their alleged 
 charity terminates. 
 
 It seems not irrelevant, therefore, in this connection, and for 
 the purpose of strengthening the foundation on which our free- 
 school system reposes, to inquire into the nature of a man's 
 right to the property he possesses ; and to satisfy ourselves re- 
 specting the question, whether any man has such an indefeasi- 
 ble title to his estates, or such an absolute ownership of them, 
 as renders it unjust in the government to assess upon him his 
 share of the expenses of educating the children of the commu- 
 nity up to such a point as the nature of the institutions under 
 which he lives, and the well-being of society, require. 
 
 I believe in the existence of a great, immortal, immutable 
 principle of natural law, or natural ethics, a principle ante- 
 cedent to all human institutions, and incapable of being abro- 
 gated by any ordinance of man, a principle of divine origiu,
 
 534 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 clearly legible in the ways of Providence as those ways are 
 manifested in the order of Nature and in the history of the race, 
 which proves the absolute right to an education of every human 
 being that comes into the world ; and which, of course, proves 
 the correlative duty of every government to see that the means 
 of that education are provided for all. 
 
 In regard to the application of this principle of natural law, 
 that is, in regard to the extent of the education to be pro- 
 vided for all at the public expense, some differences of opinion 
 may fairly exist under different political organizations ; but, 
 under our republican government, it seems clear that the mini- 
 mum of this education can never be less than such as is suffi- 
 cient to qualify each citizen for the civil and social duties he 
 will be called to discharge, such an education as teaches the 
 individual the great laws of bodily health, as qualifies for the 
 fulfilment of parental duties, as is indispensable for the civil 
 functions of a witness or a juror, as is necessary for the voter 
 in municipal and in national affairs, and, finally, as is requisite 
 for the faithful and conscientious discharge of all those duties 
 which devolve upon the inheritor of a portion of the sovereignty 
 of this great Republic. 
 
 The will of God, as conspicuously manifested in the order of 
 Nature, and in the relations which he has established among 
 men, founds the right of every child that is born into the world, 
 to such a degree of education as will enable him, and, as far 
 as possible, will predispose him, to perform all domestic, social, 
 civil, and moral duties, upon the same clear ground of natural 
 law and equity as it founds a child's right, upon his first com- 
 ing into the world, to distend his lungs with a portion of the 
 common air, or to open his eyes to the common light, or to 
 receive that shelter, protection, and nourishment, which are 
 necessary to the continuance of his bodily existence. And so 
 far is it from being a wrong or a hardship to demand of the 
 possessors of property their respective shares for the prosecu- 
 tion of this divinely-ordained work, that they themselves are 
 guilty of the most far-reaching injustice when they seek to
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 535 
 
 resist or to evade the contribution. The complainers are the 
 wrong-doers. The cry, "Stop thief!" comes from the thief 
 himself. 
 
 To any one who looks beyond the mere surface of things, it 
 is obvious that the primary and natural elements or ingredients 
 of all property consist in the riches of the soil, in the treasures 
 of the sea, in the light and warmth of the sun, in the fertilizing 
 clouds and streams and dews, in the winds, and in the chemi- 
 cal and vegetative agencies of Nature. In the majority of cases, 
 all that we call property, all that makes up the valuation or 
 inventory of a uatiou's capital, was prepared at the creation, 
 and was laid up of old in the capacious storehouses of Nature. 
 For every unit that a man earns by his own toil or skill, he 
 receives hundreds and thousands, without cost and without 
 recompense, from the all-bountiful Giver. A proud mortal, 
 standing in the midst of his luxuriant wheat-fields or cotton- 
 plantations, may arrogantly call them his own ; yet what bar- 
 ren wastes would they be, did not Heaven send down upon 
 them its dews and its rains, its warmth and its light, and sus- 
 tain, for their growth and ripening, the grateful vicissitude of 
 the seasons ! It is said that from eighty to ninety per cent of 
 the very substance of some of the great staples of agriculture 
 are not taken from the earth, but are absorbed from the air ; so 
 that these productions may more properly be called fruits of 
 the atmosphere than of the soil. Who prepares this elemental 
 wealth? Who scatters it, like a sower, through all the regions 
 of the atmosphere, and sends the richly-freighted winds, as His 
 messengers, to bear to each leaf in the forest, and to each blade 
 in the cultivated field, the nourishment which their infinitely- 
 varied needs demand ? Aided by machinery, a single manufac- 
 turer performs the labor of hundreds of men. Yet what could 
 he accomplish without the weight of the waters which God 
 causes ceaselessly to flow, or without those gigantic forces 
 which he has given to steam? And how would the commerce 
 of the world be carried on, were it not for those great laws of 
 Nature of electricity, of condensation, and of rarefaction
 
 536 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 that give birth to the winds, which, in conformity to the will of 
 Heaven, and not in obedience to any power of man, forever 
 traverse the earth, and offer themselves as an unchartered me- 
 dium for interchanging the products of all the zones? These few 
 references show how vast a proportion of all the wealth which 
 men presumptuously call their own, because they claim to have 
 earned it, is poured into their lap, unasked and unthanked for, 
 by the Being so infinitely gracious in his physical as well as in 
 his moral bestowments. 
 
 But for whose subsistence and benefit were these exhaustless 
 treasuries of wealth created? Surely not for any one man, 
 nor for any one generation, but for the subsistence and benefit 
 of the whole race from the beginning to the end of time. 
 They were not created for Adam alone, nor for Noah alone, 
 nor for the first discoverers or colonists who may have found 
 or have peopled any part of the earth's ample domain. No. 
 They were created for the race collectively, but to be possessed 
 and enjoyed in succession, as the generations, one after another, 
 should come into existence, equal rights, with a successive 
 enjoyment of them. If we consider the earth and the fulness 
 thereof as one great habitation or domain, then each generation, 
 subject to certain modifications for the encouragement of indus- 
 try and frugality, which modifications it is not necessary here 
 to specify, has only a life-lease in them. There are certain 
 reasonable regulations, indeed, in regard to the outgoing and 
 the incoming tenants, regulations which allow to the out- 
 going generations a brief control over their property after they 
 are called upon to leave it, and which also allow the incoming 
 generations to anticipate a little their full right of possession. 
 But, subject to these regulations, Nature ordains a perpetual 
 entail and transfer, from one generation to another, of all prop- 
 erty in the great, substantive, enduring elements of wealth, 
 in the soil ; in metals and minerals ; in precious stones, and in 
 more precious coal and iron and granite ; in the waters and 
 winds and sun, and no one man, nor any one generation of 
 men, has any such title to or ownership in these ingredients
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 537 
 
 and substantiate of all wealth, that his right is invaded when a 
 portion of them is taken for the benefit of posterity. 
 
 This great principle of natural law may be illustrated by a 
 reference to some of the unstable elements, in regard to which 
 each individual's right of property is strongly qualified in rela- 
 tion to his contemporaries, even while he has the acknowledged 
 right of possession. Take the streams of water, or the wind, 
 for an example. A stream, as it descends from its sources to its 
 mouth, is successively the property of all those through whose 
 laud it passes. My neighbor who lives above me owned it 
 yesterday, while it was passing through his lands ; I own it to- 
 day, while it is descending through mine ; and the contiguous 
 proprietor below will own it to-morrow, while it is flowing 
 through his, as it passes onward to the next. But the rights 
 of these successive owners are not absolute and unqualified. 
 They are limited by the rights of those who are entitled to the 
 subsequent possession and use. While a stream is passing 
 through my lands, I may not corrupt it, so that it shall be 
 offensive or valueless to the adjoining proprietor below. I may 
 not stop it in its downward course, nor divert it into any other 
 direction, so that it shall leave his channel dry. I may law- 
 fully use it for various purposes, for agriculture, as in irrigat- 
 ing lands, or watering cattle ; for manufactures, as in turning 
 wheels, &c., but, in all my uses of it, I must pay regard to 
 the rights of my neighbors lower down. So no two proprietors, 
 nor any half-dozen proprietors, by conspiring together, can de- 
 prive an owner, who lives below them all, of the ultimate right 
 which he has to the use of the stream in its descending course. 
 We see here, therefore, that a man has certain qualified rights 
 rights of which he cannot lawfully be divested without his 
 own consent in a stream of water, before it reaches the 
 limits of his own estate ; at which latter point, he may some- 
 what more emphatically call it his own. And, in this sense, 
 a man who lives at the outlet of a river, on the margin of the 
 ocean, has certain incipient rights in those fountain-sources that 
 well up from the earth at the distance of thousands of miles.
 
 538 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 So it is with the ever-moving winds. No man lias a perma- 
 nent interest in the breezes that blow by him, and bring heal- 
 ing and refreshment on their wings. Each man has a temporary 
 interest in them. From whatever quarter of the compass they 
 may come, I have a right to use them as they are passing by 
 me ; yet that use must always be regulated by the rights of j 
 those other participants and co-owners whom they are moving 
 forward to bless. It is not lawful, therefore, for me to corrupt 
 them, to load them with noxious gases or vapors by which 
 they will prove valueless or detrimental to him, whoever he 
 may be, towards whom they are moving. 
 
 In one respect, indeed, the winds illustrate our relative rights 
 and duties even better than the streams. In the latter case, 
 the rights are not only successive, but always in the same order 
 of priority ; those of the owner above necessarily preceding 
 those of the owner below : and this order is unchangeable, ex- 
 cept by changing the ownership of the land itself to which the 
 rights are appurtenant. In the case of the winds, however, 
 which blow from every quarter of the heavens, I may have the 
 prior right to-day ; but, with a change in their direction, my 
 neighbor may have it to-morrow. If, therefore, to-day, when 
 the wind is going from me to him, I should usurp the right to 
 use it to his detriment, to-morrow, when it is coming from him 
 to me, he may inflict retributive usurpation upon me. 
 
 The light of the sun, too, is subject to the same benign and 
 equitable regulations. As the waves of this ethereal element 
 pass by me, I have a right to bask in their genial warmth, or to 
 employ their quickening powers ; but I have no right, even on 
 my own land, to build up a wall, mountain-high, that shall 
 eclipse the sun to my neighbor's eyes. 
 
 Now, all these great principles of natural law which define 
 and limit the rights of neighbors and contemporaries are incor- 
 porated into and constitute a part of the civil law of every 
 civilized people ; and they are obvious and simple illustrations 
 of the great proprietary laws by which individuals and genera- 
 tions hold their rights in the solid substance of the globe, in
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 539 
 
 the elements that move over its surface, and in the chemical 
 and vital powers with which it is so marvellously endued. As 
 successive owners on a river's bank have equal rights to the 
 waters that flow through their respective domains, subject only 
 to the modification that the proprietors nearer the stream's 
 source must have precedence in the enjoyment of their rights 
 over those lower down, so the rights of all the generations of 
 mankind to the earth itself, to the streams that fertilize it, to 
 the winds that purify it, to the vital principles that animate it, 
 and to the reviving light, are common rights, though subject to 
 similar modifications in regard to the preceding and succeeding 
 generations of men. They did not belong to our ancestors in 
 perpetuity ; they do not belong to us in perpetuity ; and the 
 right of the next generation in them will be limited and de- 
 feasible like ours. As we hold these rights subject to the 
 claims of the next generation, so will they hold them subject 
 to the claims of their immediate successors, and so on to the 
 end of time ; and the savage tribes that roam about the head- 
 springs of the Mississippi have as good a right to ordain what 
 use shall be made of its copious waters when in their grand 
 descent across a continent they shall reach the shores of arts 
 and civilization, as any of our predecessors had, or as we our- 
 selves have, to say what shall be done, in perpetuity, with the 
 soil, the waters, the winds, the light, and the invisible agencies 
 of Nature, which must be allowed, on all hands, to constitute the 
 primary and indispensable elements of wealth. 
 
 Is not the inference irresistible, then, that no man, .by what- 
 ever means he may have come into possession of his property, 
 has any natural right, any more than he has a moral one, to 
 hold it, or to dispose of it, irrespective of the needs and claims 
 of those, who, in the august processions of the generations, are 
 to be his successors on the stage of existence ? Holding his 
 rights subject to their rights, he is bound not to impair the 
 value of their inheritance either by commission or by omission. 
 
 Generation after generation proceeds from the creative 
 energy of God. Each one stops for a brief period upon the
 
 540 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 earth, resting, as it were, only for a night, like migratory 
 birds upon their passage, and then leaving it forever to others 
 whose existence is as transitory as its own ; and the migratory 
 flocks of water-fowl which sweep across our latitudes in their 
 passage to another clime have as good a right to make a per- 
 petual appropriation, to their own use, of the lands over which 
 they fly, as any one generation has to arrogate perpetual domin- 
 ion and sovereignty, for its own purposes, over that portion of 
 the earth which it is its fortune to occupy during the brief 
 period of its temporal existence. 
 
 Another consideration, bearing upon this arrogant doctrine 
 of absolute ownership or sovereignty, has hardly less force 
 than the one just expounded. We have seen how insignificant 
 a portion of any man's possessions he can claim, in any proper 
 and just sense, to have earned ; and that, in regard to all the 
 residue, he is only taking his turn in the use of a bounty be- 
 stowed, in common, by the Giver of all, upon his ancestors, 
 upon himself, and upon his posterity, a line of indefinite 
 length, in which he is but a point. But this is not the only 
 deduction to be made from his assumed rights. The present 
 wealth of the world has an additional element in it. Much of 
 all that is capable of being earned by man has been earned by 
 our predecessors, and has come down to us in a solid and en- 
 during form. We have not erected all the houses in which 
 we live, nor constructed all the roads on which we travel, 
 nor built all the ships in which we carry on our commerce 
 with the Avorld. We have not reclaimed from the wilderness 
 all the fields whose harvests we now reap ; and if we had no 
 precious metals or stones or pearls but such as we ourselves 
 had dug from the mines, or brought up from the bottom of the 
 ocean, our coffers and our caskets would be empty indeed. 
 But, even if this were not so, whence came all the arts and sci- 
 ences, the discoveries and the inventions, without which, and 
 without a common right to which, the valuation of the prop- 
 erty of a whole nation would scarcely equal the inventory of 
 a single man, without which, indeed, we should now be in a
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 541 
 
 state of barbarism ? Whence canie a knowledge of agriculture, 
 without winch we should have so little to reap? or a knowl- 
 edge of astronomy, without which we could not traverse the 
 oceans? or a knowledge of chemistry and mechanical philoso- 
 phy, without which the arts and trades could not exist? Most 
 of all this was found out by those who have gone before us ; 
 and some of it has come down to us from a remote antiquity. 
 Surely all these boons and blessings belong as much to poster- 
 ity as to ourselves. They have not descended to us to be ar- 
 rested and consumed here, or to be sequestrated from the ages 
 to come. Cato and Archimedes, and Kepler and Newton, and 
 Franklin and Arkwright and Fulton, and all the bright host 
 of benefactors to science and art, did not make or bequeath 
 their discoveries or inventions to benefit any one generation, 
 but to increase the common enjoyments of mankind to the end 
 of time. So of all the great lawgivers and moralists who have 
 improved the civil institutions of the state, who have made it 
 dangerous to be wicked, or, far better than this, have made it 
 hateful to be so. Resources developed and property acquired 
 after all these ages of preparation, after all these facilities and 
 securities, accrue, not to the benefit of the possessor only, but to 
 that of the next and of all succeeding generations. 
 
 Surely these considerations limit still more extensively that 
 absolutism of ownership which is so often claimed by the pos- 
 sessors of wealth. 
 
 But sometimes the rich farmer, the opulent manufacturer, or 
 the capitalist, when sorely pressed with his natural and moral 
 obligation to contribute a portion of his means for the educa- 
 tion of the young, replies, either in form or in spirit, " My 
 lands, my machinery, my gold, and my silver, are mine : may 
 I not do what I will with my own?" There is one supposa- 
 ble case, and ouly one, where this argument would have plau- 
 sibility. If it were made by an isolated, solitary being, a 
 being having no relations to a community around him, having 
 no ancestors to whom he had been indebted for ninety-nine 
 parts in every hundred of all he possesses, and expecting to
 
 542 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 leave no posterity after him, it might not- be easy to answer 
 it. If there were but one family in this Western hemisphere, 
 and only one in the Eastern hemisphere, and these two families 
 bore no civil and social relations to each other, and were to be 
 the first and last of the whole race, it might be difficult, except 
 on very high and almost transcendental grounds, for either one 
 of them to show good cause why the other should contribute 
 to help educate children not his own. And perhaps the force 
 of the appeal for such an object would be still further dimin- 
 ished if the nearest neighbor of a single family upon our planet 
 were as far from the earth as Uranus or Sirius. In self-defence 
 or in selfishness, one might say to the other, " AVhat are your 
 fortunes to me? You can neither benefit nor molest me. Let 
 each of us keep to his own side of the planetary spaces." But 
 is this the relation which any man amongst us sustains to his 
 fellows? In the midst of a populous community to which he 
 is bound by innumerable ties, having had his own fortune and 
 condition almost predetermined and fore-ordained by his prede- 
 cessors, and being about to exert upon his successors as com- 
 manding an influence as has been exerted upon himself, the 
 objector can no longer shrink into his individuality, and dis- 
 claim connection and relationship with the world at large. He 
 cannot deny that there are thousands around him on whom he 
 acts, and who are continually re-acting upon him. The earth 
 is much too small, or the race is far too numerous, to allow us 
 to be hermits ; and therefore we cannot adopt either the phi- 
 losophy or the morals of hermits. All have derived benefits 
 from their ancestors, and all are bound, as by an oath, to trans- 
 mit those benefits, even in an improved condition, to posterity. 
 We may as well attempt to escape from our own personal iden- 
 tity as to shake off the threefold relation which \ve bear to 
 others, the relation of an associate with our contemporaries ; 
 of a beneficiary of our ancestors ; of a guardian to those who, 
 in the sublime order of Providence, are to succeed us. Out of 
 these relations, manifest duties are evolved. The society of 
 which we necessarily constitute a part must be preserved ; and,
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 543 
 
 in order to preserve it, we must not look merely to what one 
 individual or one family needs, but to what the whole commu- 
 nity needs ; not merely to what one generation needs, but to 
 the wants of a succession of generations. To draw conclusions 
 without considering these facts is to leave out the most im- 
 portant part of the premises. 
 
 A powerfully corroborating fact remains untouched. Though 
 the earth and the beneficent capabilities with which it is endued 
 belong in common to the race, yet we find that previous and 
 present possessors have laid their hands upon the whole of it, 
 have left no part of it unclaimed and unappropriated. They 
 have circumnavigated the globe ; they have drawn lines across 
 every habitable portion of it, and have partitioned amongst 
 themselves not only its whole area or superficial contents, but 
 have claimed it down to the centre, and up to the concave, 
 a great inverted pyramid for each proprietor, so that not an 
 unclaimed rood is left, either in the caverns below or in the 
 aerial spaces above, where a new adventurer upon existence can 
 take unresisted possession. They have entered into a solemn 
 compact with each other for the mutual defence of their respec- 
 tive allotments. They have created legislators and judges and 
 executive officers, who denounce and inflict penalties even to 
 the taking of life ; and they have organized armed bands to 
 repel aggression upon their claims. Indeed, so grasping and 
 rapacious have mankind been in this particular, that thev have 
 taken more than they could use, more than they could perambu- 
 late and survey, more than they could see from the top of the 
 masthead, or from the highest peak of the mountain. There 
 was some limit to their physical power of taking possession, 
 but none to the exorbitancy of their desires. Like robbers, who 
 divide their spoils before they know whether they shall find a 
 victim, men have claimed a continent while still doubtful of its 
 existence, and spread out their title from ocean to ocean before 
 their most adventurous pioneers had ever seen a shore of the 
 realms they coveted. The whole planet, then, having been ap- 
 propriated, there being no waste or open lands from which
 
 544 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the new generations may be supplied as they come into exist- 
 ence, have not those generations the strongest conceivable 
 claim upon the present occupants for that which is indispensable 
 to their well-being? They have more than a pre-emptive, they 
 have a possessory, right to some portion of the issues and profits 
 of that general domain, all of which has been thus taken up 
 and appropriated. A denial of this right by the present pos- 
 sessors is a breach of trust, a fraudulent misuse of power 
 given and of confidence implied. On mere principles of polit- 
 ical economy, it is folly ; on the broader principles of duty and 
 morality, it is embezzlement. 
 
 It is not at all in contravention of this view of the subject 
 that the adult portion of society does take, and must take, upon 
 itself the control and management of all existing property 
 until the rising generation has arrived at the age of majority. 
 Nay, one of the objects of their so doing is to preserve the 
 rights of the generation which is still in its minority. Society, 
 to this extent, is only a trustee managing an estate for the 
 benefit of a part-owner, or of one who has a reversionary inter- 
 est in it. This civil regulation, therefore, made necessary even 
 for the benefit of both present and future possessors, is only in 
 furtherance of the great law under consideration. 
 
 Coincident, too, with this great law, but in no manner super- 
 seding or invalidating it, is that wonderful provision which the 
 Creator has made for the care of offspring in the affection of 
 their parents. Heaven did not rely merely upon our percep- 
 tions of duty towards our children, and our fidelity in its per- 
 formance. A powerful, all-mastering instinct of love was 
 therefore implanted in the parental, and especially in the ma- 
 ternal breast, to anticipate the idea of duty, and to make duty 
 delightful. Yet the great doctrine founded upon the will of 
 God as made known to us in the natural order and relation of 
 things would still remain the same, though all this beautiful 
 portion of our moral being, whence parental affection springs, 
 were a void and a nonentity. Emphatically would the obli- 
 gations of society remain the same for all those children who
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 545 
 
 have been bereaved of parents ; or who, worse than bereave- 
 ment, have only monster parents of intemperance or cupidity, 
 or of any other of those forms of vice that seem to suspend or 
 to obliterate the law of love in the parental breast. For these, 
 society is doubly bound to be a parent, and to exercise all that 
 rational care and providence which a wise father would exer- 
 cise for his own children. 
 
 If the previous argument began with sound premises, and 
 has been logically conducted, then it has established this posi- 
 tion, that a vast portion of the present wealth of the world 
 either consists in, or has been immediately derived from, those 
 great natural substances and powers of the earth which were 
 bestowed by the Creator alike on all mankind ; or from the 
 discoveries, inventions, labors, and improvements of our ances- 
 tors, which were alike designed for the common benefit of all 
 their descendants. The question now arises, At what time is 
 this wealth to be transferred from a preceding to a succeeding 
 generation ? At what point are the latter to take possession of 
 it, or to derive benefit from it ? or at what time are the former 
 to surrender it in their behalf? Is each existing generation, 
 and each individual of an existing generation, to hold fast to 
 his possessions until death relaxes his grasp ? or is something 
 of the right to be acknowledged, and something of the benefit 
 to be yielded, beforehand? It seems too obvious for argument, 
 that the latter is the only alternative. If the incoming genera- 
 tion have no rights until the outgoing generation have actu- 
 ally retired, then is every individual that enters the world liable 
 to perish on the day he is born. According to the very consti- 
 tution of things, each individual must obtain sustenance and 
 succor as soon as his eyes open in quest of light, or his lungs 
 gasp for the first breath of air. His wants cannot be delayed 
 until he himself can supply them. If the demands of his 
 nature are ever to be answered, they must be answered years 
 before he can make any personal provision for them, either by 
 the performance of any labor, or by any exploits of skill. The 
 infant must be fed before he can earn his bread, he must be 
 
 35
 
 546 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 clothed before he can prepare garments, he must be protected 
 from the elements before he can erect a dwelling ; and it is 
 just as clear that he must be instructed before he can engage 
 or reward a tutor. A course contrary to this would be the 
 destruction of the young, that we might rob them of their 
 rightful inheritance. Carried to its extreme, it would be the 
 act of Herod, seeking, in a general massacre, the life of one 
 who was supposed to endanger his power. Here, then, the 
 claims of the succeeding generation, not only upon the affec- 
 tion and the care, but upon the property, of the preceding one, 
 attach. God having given to the second generation as full and 
 complete a right to the incomes and profits of the world as he 
 has given to the first, and to the third generation as full and 
 complete a right as he has given to the second, and so on while 
 the world stands, it necessarily follows that children must 
 come into a partial and qualified possession of these rights, by 
 the paramount law of Nature, as soon as they are born. No 
 human enactment can abolish or countervail this paramount 
 and supreme law ; and all those positive and often arbitrary 
 enactments of the civil code, by which, for the encouragement 
 of industry and frugality, the possessor of property is permitted 
 to control it for a limited period after his decease, must be con- 
 strued and executed in subservience to this sovereign and 
 irrepealable ordinance of Nature. 
 
 Nor is this transfer always, or even generally, to be made in 
 kind, but according to the needs of the recipient. The recog- 
 nition of this principle is universal. A guardian or trustee 
 may possess lauds, while the ward, or owner under the trust, 
 may need money ; or the former may have money while the 
 latter need raiment or shelter. The form of the estate must be 
 changed, if need be, and adapted to the wants of the receiver. 
 
 The claim of a child, then, to a portion of pre-existeut prop- 
 erty, begins with the first breath he draws. The new-born in- 
 fant must have sustenance and shelter and care. If the natu- 
 ral parents are removed, or parental ability fails ; in a word, if 
 parents either cannot or will not supply the infant's wants,
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 547 
 
 then society at large the government having assumed to it- 
 self the ultimate control of all property is bound to step in 
 and fill the parent's place. To deny this to any child would 
 be equivalent to a sentence of death, a capital execution of 
 the innocent, at \vhich every soul shudders. It would be a 
 more cruel form of infanticide than any which is practised in 
 China or in Africa. 
 
 But to preserve the animal life of a child only, and there to 
 stop, would be, not the bestowment of a blessing, or the per- 
 formance of a duty, but the infliction of a fearful curse. A 
 child has interests far higher than those of mere physical exist- 
 ence. Better that the wants of the natural life should be dis- 
 regarded than that the higher interests of the character should 
 be neglected. If a child has any claim to bread to keep him 
 from perishing, he has a far higher claim to knowledge to pre- 
 serve him from error and its fearful retinue of calamities. If a 
 child has any claim to shelter to protect him from the destroy- 
 ing elements, he has a far higher claim to be rescued from the 
 infamy and perdition of vice and crime. 
 
 All moralists agree, nay, all moralists maintain, that a man 
 is as responsible for his omissions as for his commissions ; that 
 he is as guilty of the wrong which he could have prevented, 
 but did not, as for that which his own hand has perpetrated. 
 They, then, who knowingly withhold sustenance from a new- 
 born child, and he dies, are guilty of infanticide. And, by the 
 same reasoning, they who refuse to enlighten the intellect of 
 the rising generation are guilty of degrading the human race. 
 They who refuse to train up children in the way they should 
 go are training up incendiaries and madmen to destroy prop- 
 erty and life, and to invade and pollute the sanctuaries of soci- 
 ety. In a word, if the mind is as real and substantive a part 
 of human existence as the body, then mental attributes, during 
 the periods of infancy and childhood, demand provision at least 
 as imperatively as bodily appetites. The time when these re- 
 spective obligations attach corresponds with the periods when 
 the nurture, whether physical or mental, is needed. As the
 
 548 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 right of sustenance is of equal date with birth, so the right to 
 intellectual and moral training begins at least as early as when 
 children are ordinarily sent to school. At that time, then, by 
 the irrepealable law of Nature, every child succeeds to so much 
 more of the property of the community as is necessary for his 
 education. He is to receive this, not in the form of lands, or 
 of gold and silver, but in the form of knowledge and a training 
 to good habits. This is one of the steps in the transfer of 
 property from a present to a succeeding generation. Human 
 sagacity may be at fault in fixing the amount of property to 
 be transferred, or the time when the transfer should be made, 
 to a dollar or to an hour ; but certainly, in a republican gov- 
 ernment, the obligation of the predecessors, and the right of 
 the successors, extend to and embrace the means of such an 
 amount of education as will prepare each individual to perform 
 all the duties which devolve upon him as a man and a citizen. 
 It may go farther than this point ; certainly it cannot fall 
 short of it. 
 
 Under our political organization, the places and the pro- 
 cesses where this transfer is to be provided for, and its amount 
 determined, are the district-school-meeting, the town-meeting, 
 legislative halls, and conventions for establishing or revising 
 the fundamental laws of the State. If it be not done there, so- 
 ciety is false to its high trusts ; and any community, whether 
 national or state, that ventures to organize a government, or to 
 administer a government already organized, without making 
 provision for the free education of all its children, dares the 
 certain vengeance of Heaven ; and in the squalid forms of 
 poverty and destitution, in the scourges of violence and mis- 
 rule, in the heart-destroying corruptions of licentiousness and 
 debauchery, and in political profligacy aud legalized perfidy, 
 in all the blended and mutually-aggravated crimes of civiliza- 
 tion and of barbarism, will be sure to feel the terrible retribu- 
 tions of its delinquency. 
 
 I bring my argument on this point, then, to a close ; and I 
 present a test of its validity, which, as it seems to me, defies 
 denial or evasion.
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 549 
 
 la obedience to the laws of G-od and to the laws of all civ- 
 ilized communities, society is bound to protect the natural life 
 of children ; and this natural life cannot be protected without 
 the appropriation and use of a portion of the property which 
 society possesses. We prohibit infanticide under penalty of 
 death. We practise a refinement- in this particular. The life 
 of an infant is inviolable, even before he is born ; and he who 
 feloniously takes it, even before birth, is as subject to the ex- 
 treme penalty of the law as though he had struck down man- 
 hood in its vigor, or taken away a mother by violence from 
 the sanctuary of home where she blesses her offspring. But 
 why preserve the natural life of a child, why preserve unborn 
 embryos of life, if we do not intend to watch over and to pro- 
 tect them, and to expand their subsequent existence into use- 
 fulness and happiness? As individuals, or as an organized 
 community, we have no natural right, we can derive no au- 
 thority or countenance from reason, we can cite no attribute 
 or purpose of the divine nature, for giving birth to any human 
 being, and then inflicting upon that being the curse of igno- 
 rance, of poverty, and of vice, with all their attendant calami- 
 ties. We are brought, then, to this startling but inevitable 
 alternative, the natural life of an infant should be extin- 
 guished as soon as it is born, or the means should be provided 
 to save that life from being a curse to its possessor ; and, there- 
 fore, every State is morally bound to enact a code of laws 
 legalizing and enforcing infanticide, or a code of laws estab- 
 lishing free schools. 
 
 The three following propositions, then, describe the broad 
 and ever-during foundation on which the common-school sys- 
 tem of Massachusetts reposes : 
 
 The successive generations of men, taken collectively, con- 
 stitute one great commonwealth. 
 
 The property of this commonwealth is pledged for the edu- 
 cation of all its youth, up to such a point as will save them 
 from poverty and vice, and prepare them for the adequate 
 performance of their social and civil duties.
 
 550 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The successive holders of this property are trustees, bound 
 to the faithful execution of their trust by the most sacred obli- 
 gations ; aud embezzlement and pillage from children and 
 descendants have not less of criminality, and have more of 
 meanness, tlmu the same offences when perpetrated against con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 Recognizing these eternal principles of natural ethics, the 
 Constitution of Massachusetts, the fundamental law of the 
 State, after declaring (among other things), in the preamble 
 to the first section of the fifth chapter, that u the encourage- 
 ment of arts and sciences, and all good literature, tends to the 
 honor of GOD, the advantage of the Christian religion, and 
 the great benefit of this and the other United States of Amer- 
 ica," proceeds, in the second section of the same chapter, to set 
 forth the duties of all future legislators and magistrates in the 
 following noble and impressive language : 
 
 " Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused gener- 
 ally among the body of the people, being necessary for the 
 preservation of their rights and liberties ; and as these depend 
 on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in 
 the various parts of the country, and among the different or- 
 ders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and 
 magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to 
 cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, aud all sem- 
 inaries of them, especially the University of Cambridge, public 
 schools and grammar schools in the towns ; to encourage 
 private societies and public institutions, rewards and immuni- 
 ties, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, 
 trade, manufactures, and a natural history of the country ; to 
 countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and gen- 
 c'ral benevolence, public aud private charity, industry and fru- 
 gality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity, 
 good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments 
 among the people." See also Rev. Stat., ch. 23, sect. 7. 
 
 Massachusetts is parental in her government. More and 
 more, as year after year rolls by, she seeks to substitute pre-
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 551 
 
 vention for remedy, and rewards for penalties. She strives to 
 make industry the antidote to poverty, and to counterwork the 
 progress of vice and crime by the diffusion of knowledge and 
 the culture of virtuous principles. She seeks not only to miti- 
 gate those great physical and mental calamities of which man- 
 kind are the sad inheritors, but also to avert those infinitely 
 greater moral calamities which form the disastrous heritage of 
 depraved passions. Hence it has long been her policy to endow 
 or to aid asylums for the cure of disease. She succors and 
 maintains all the poor within her borders, whatever may have 
 been the land of their nativity. She founds and supports hos- 
 pitals for restoring reason to the insane ; and, even for those 
 violators of the law whom she is obliged to sequestrate from 
 society, she provides daily instruction and the ministrations of 
 the gospel at the public charge. To those who, in the order 
 of Nature and Providence, have been bereft of the noble facul- 
 ties of hearing and of speech, she teaches a new language, and 
 opens their imprisoned minds and hearts to conversation with 
 men and to communion with God ; and it hardly transcends the 
 literal truth to say that she gives sight to the blind. For the 
 remnants of those aboriginal tribes, who, for so many ages, 
 roamed over this land without cultivating its soil, or elevating 
 themselves in the scale of being, her annual bounty provides 
 good schools ; and when the equal, natural, and constitutional 
 rights of the outcast children of Africa were thought to be in- 
 vaded, she armed her courts of judicature with power to pun- 
 ish the aggressors. The public highway is not more open and 
 free for every man in the community than is the public school- 
 house for every child ; and each parent feels that a free edu- 
 cation is as secure a part of the birthright of his offspring as 
 Heaven's bounties of light and air. The State not only com- 
 mands that the means of education shall be provided for all, 
 but she denounces penalties against all individuals, and all 
 towns and cities, however populous or powerful they may be, 
 that shall presume to stand between her bounty and its recipi- 
 ents. In her righteous code, the interception of knowledge is
 
 552 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 a crime ; and, if parents are unable to supply their children 
 with books, she becomes a parent, and supplies them. 
 
 The policy of the State promotes not only secular but reli- 
 gious instruction, yet in such a way as leaves to every indi- 
 vidual the right of private judgment and the sacred freedom of 
 conscience. 
 
 Public sentiment exceeds and excels the law. Annually, 
 vast sums are given for eleemosynary and charitable purposes, 
 to promote the cause of temperance, to send the gospel to 
 the heathen, and to diffuse the doctrines of peace, which are 
 the doctrines of the Prince of Peace. 
 
 For public, free education alone, including the direct outlay 
 of money and the interest on capital invested, Massachusetts 
 expends annually more than a million of dollars. To support 
 religious institutions for the worship of God and the salvation 
 of men, she annually expends more than another million ; and 
 what she gives away in the various forms of charity far ex- 
 ceeds a third sum of equal magnitude. She explores the world 
 for new objects of beneficence ; and so deep and common is the 
 feeling which expects and prompts all this, that she is grad- 
 ually changing and ennobling the definition of a cardinal word 
 in the language of morals, doing what no king or court with 
 all their authority, nor royal academy with all its sages and 
 literary men, can do : she is changing the meaning of charity 
 into duty. 
 
 For the support of the poor, nine-tenths of whose cost origi- 
 nate with foreigners or come from one prolific vice, whose last 
 convulsive energies she is now struggling to subdue, she annu- 
 ally pays more than three hundred thousand dollars ; for the 
 support and improvement of public highways, she pays a much 
 larger sum ; and, within the last dozen or fourteen years, she has 
 invested a capital in railroads, within and without the State, of 
 nearly or quite sixty millions of dollars. 
 
 Whence come her means to give, with each returning year, 
 more than a million of dollars to public education ; more than 
 another million to religion ; and more than a third to amelio-
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 553 
 
 rate and succor the afflicted and the ignorant at home, and to 
 bless, in distant lands, those who sit in the region and shadow 
 of death ? How does she support her poor, maintain her public 
 ways, and contribute such vast sums for purposes of internal 
 improvement, besides maintaining her immense commercial 
 transactions with every zone in the world? 
 
 Has she a vast domain? Her whole territory would not 
 make a court-yard of respectable dimensions to stand in front 
 of many of the States and Territories belonging to the Union. 
 
 Does she draw revenues from conquered provinces or subju- 
 gated realms? She conquers nothing, she subdues nothing, 
 save the great elemental forces of Nature, which God gives 
 freely, whenever and wherever they are asked for in the lan- 
 guage of genius and science ; and in regard to which no profu- 
 sion or prodigality to one can diminish the bounty always ready 
 for others. 
 
 Does she live by the toil of a race of serfs and vassals whom 
 she holds in personal and hereditary bondage? by one com- 
 prehensive and sovereign act of violence seizing upon both body 
 and soul at once, and superseding the thousand acts of plunder 
 which make up the life of a common robber ? Every man who 
 treads her sacred soil is free ; all are free alike ; and within her 
 borders, for any purpose connected with human slavery, iron 
 will not be welded into a fetter. 
 
 Has she rich mines of the precious metals? In all her cof- 
 fers there is not a drachm of silver or of gold which has not 
 been obtained by the sweat of her brow or the vigor of her 
 brain. 
 
 Has she magazines of mineral wealth embedded in the earth ? 
 or are her soil and climate so spontaneously exuberant that she 
 reaps luxuriant harvests from uncultivated fields ? Alas ! the 
 orator has barbed his satire by declaring her only natural pro- 
 ductions to be granite and ice. 
 
 Whence, then, I again ask, comes her wealth? I do not 
 mean the gorgeous wealth which is displayed in the voluptuous 
 and too often enervating residences of the affluent, but that
 
 554 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 golden mean of property such as Agur asked for iu his per- 
 fect prayer which carries blessings in its train to thousands 
 of householders ; which spreads solid comfort and competence 
 through the dwellings of the land ; which furnishes the means 
 of instruction, of social pleasures and refiuemeut, to the citizens 
 at large ; which saves from the cruel sufferings and the more 
 cruel temptations of penury. The families scattered over her 
 hills and along her valleys have not merely a shelter from the 
 inclemencies of the seasons, but the sanctuary of a home. Not 
 only food, but books, are spread upon their tables. Her com- 
 monest houses have the means of hospitality ; they have appli- 
 ances for sickness, and resources laid up against accident and 
 the infirmities of age. Whether in her rural districts or her 
 populous towns, a wandering, native-born beggar is a prodigy ; 
 and the twelve millions of dollars deposited in her savings in- 
 stitutions do not more loudly proclaim the frugality and provi- 
 dence of the past than they foretell the competence and enjoy- 
 ments of the future. 
 
 One copious, exhaustless fountain supplies all this abun- 
 dance. It is education, the intellectual, moral, and religious 
 education of the people. Having no other mines to work, 
 Massachusetts has mined into the human intellect : and, from 
 its limitless resources, she has won more sustaining and endur- 
 ing prosperity and happiness than if she had been founded on a 
 stratification of silver and gold, reaching deeper do\vu than 
 geology has yet penetrated. From her high religious convic- 
 tions, she has learned that great lesson, to set a value upon 
 time. Regarding the faculties as the gift of God, she has felt 
 bound both to use and to improve them. Mingling skill and 
 intelligence with the daily occupations of life, she has made 
 labor honorable ; and, as a necessary consequence, idleness is 
 disgraceful. Knowledge has been the ambition of her sons, 
 and she has reverenced "and venerated the purity and chastity 
 of her matrons and her daughters. At the hearth-stone, at the 
 family table, and at the family altar, on all those occasions 
 where the structure of the youthful character is builded jj,
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 555 
 
 these sentiments of love for knowledge, and of reverence for 
 maidenly virtue, have been builded in ; and there they stand, so 
 wrought and mingled with the fibres of being, that none but 
 God can tell which is Nature, and which is education ; which 
 we owe primarily to the grace of Heaven, and which to the 
 co-operating wisdom of the institutions of men. Verily, verily, 
 not as we ought have we obeyed the laws of Jehovah, or imi- 
 tated the divine example of the Saviour ; and yet, for such im- 
 perfect obedience and distant imitation as we have rendered, 
 God has showered down manna from the heavens, and opened 
 a rock whence flow living waters to gladden every thirsty place. 
 He who studies the present or the historic character of Massa- 
 chusetts will see (and he who studies it most profoundly will 
 see most clearly), that whatever of abundance, of intelligence, 
 or of integrity, whatever of character at home or of renown 
 abroad, she may possess, all has been evolved from the en- 
 lightened, and, at least, partially Christianized mind, not of a 
 few, but of the great masses, of her people. They are not the 
 result of outward riches or art brought around it, or laminated 
 over it, but of an awakened inward force, working energetically 
 outwards, and fashioning the most intractable circumstances to 
 the dominion of its own desires and resolves ; and this force 
 has been awakened, and its unspent energies replenished, more 
 than from all things else, by her common schools. 
 
 When we witness the mighty achievements of art, the loco- 
 motive, taking up its burden of a hundred tons, and transport- 
 ing it for hundreds of miles between the rising and the setting 
 sun ; the steamboat, cleaving its rapid way, triumphant over 
 wind and tide ; the power-loom, yielding products of greater 
 richness and abundance in a single day than all the inhabitants 
 of Tyre could have manufactured in years ; the printing-press, 
 which could have replaced the Alexandrian Library within a 
 week after it was burnt ; the lightning, not only domesticated 
 in the laboratories of the useful arts, but employed as a messen- 
 ger between distant cities ; and galleries of beautiful paintings, 
 quickened into life by the sunbeams, when we see all these
 
 556 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 marvels of power aud of celerity, we are prone to conclude that 
 it is to them we are indebted for the increase of our wealth and 
 for the progress of our society. But were there any statistics 
 to show the aggregate value of all the thrifty and gainful hab- 
 its of the people at large, the greater productiveness of the 
 educated than of the brutified laborer, the increased power of 
 the intelligent hand, and the broad survey and deep intuition of 
 the intelligent eye ; could we see a ledger account of the profits 
 which come from forethought, order, aud system, as they preside 
 over all our farms, in all our workshops, and emphatically in 
 all the labors of our households, we should then know how rap- 
 idly their gathered units swell into millions upon millions. The 
 skill that 'strikes the nail's head instead of the fingers' ends ; 
 the care that mends a fence and saves a cornfield, that drives a 
 horseshoe nail and secures both rider and horse, that extin- 
 guishes a light and saves a house ; the prudence that cuts the 
 coat according to the cloth, that lays by something for a rainy 
 day, and that postpones marriage until reasonably sure of a 
 livelihood ; the forethought that sees the end from the begin- 
 ning, and reaches it by the direct route of an hour instead of 
 the circuitous gropings of a day ; the exact remembrance im- 
 pressed upon childhood to do the errand as it was bidden ; and, 
 more than all, the economy of virtue over vice, of restrained 
 over pampered desires, these things are not set down in the 
 works on political economy ; but they have far more to do with 
 the wealth of nations than any laws which aim to regulate the 
 balance of trade, or any speculations on capital aud labor, or 
 any of the great achievements of art. That vast variety of 
 ways in which an intelligent people surpass a stupid one, and 
 an exemplary people an immoral one, has infinitely more to do 
 with the well-being of a nation than soil or climate, or even 
 than government itself, excepting so far as government may 
 prove to be the patron of intelligence and virtue. 
 
 From her earliest colonial history, the policy of Massachu- 
 setts has been to develop the minds of all her people, and to 
 imbue them with the principles of duty. To do this work most
 
 REPORT FOR 1846. 557 
 
 effectually, she has begun it with the young. If she would 
 continue to mount higher and higher towards the summit of 
 prosperity, she must continue the means by which her present 
 elevation has been gained. In doing this, she will not only 
 exercise the noblest prerogative of government, but will co- 
 operate with the Almighty in one of his sublimest works. 
 
 The Greek rhetorician Longinus quotes from the Mosaic 
 account of the creation what he calls the sublimest passage ever 
 uttered : " God said, Let there be light, and there was light." 
 From the centre of black immensity, effulgence burst forth. 
 Above, beneath, on every side, its radiance streamed out, silent, 
 yet making each spot in the vast concave brighter than the line 
 which the lightning pencils upon the midnight cloud. Dark- 
 ness fled as the swift beams spread onward and outward in an 
 unending circumfusion of splendor. Onward and outward 
 still they move to this day, glorifying, through wider and wider 
 regions of space, the infinite Author from whose po\ver and 
 beneficence they sprang. But not only in the beginning, when 
 God created the heavens and the earth, did he say, " Let there 
 be light." Whenever a human soul is born into the world, its 
 Creator stands over it, and again pronounces the same sublime 
 words, " Let there be light." 
 
 Magnificent, indeed, was the material creation, when, sud- 
 denly blazing forth in mid-space, the new-born sun dispelled 
 the darkness of the ancient night : but infinitely more mag- 
 nificent is it when the human soul rays forth its subtler and 
 swifter beams ; when the light of the senses irradiates all out- 
 ward things, revealing the beauty of their colors, and the ex- 
 quisite symmetry of their proportions and forms ; when the 
 light of reason penetrates to their invisible properties and laws, 
 and displays all those hidden relations that make up all the 
 sciences ; when the light of conscience illumines the moral 
 world, separating truth from error, and virtue from vice. The 
 light of the newly-kindled sun, indeed, was glorious. It struck 
 upon all the planets, and waked into existence their myriad 
 capacities of life and joy. As it rebounded from them, and
 
 558 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 showed their vast orbs all wheeling, circle beyond circle, in 
 their stupendous courses, the sons of God shouted for joy. 
 That light sped onward, beyond Sirius, beyond the Pole-star, 
 beyond Orion and the Pleiades, and is still speeding onward 
 into the abysses of space. But the light of the human soul 
 flies swifter than the light of the sun, and outshines its meri- 
 dian blaze. It can embrace not only the sun of our system, but 
 all suns, and galaxies of suns : ay, the soul is capable of know- 
 ing and of enjoying Him who created the suns themselves ; 
 and, when these starry lustres that now glorify the firmament 
 shall wax dim and fade away like a wasted taper, the light 
 of the soul shall still remain ; nor time nor cloud, nor any 
 power but its own perversity, shall ever quench its brightness. 
 Again I would say, that, whenever a human soul is born into 
 the world, God stands over it, and pronounces the same sublime 
 fiat, " Let there be light ; " and may the time soon come when 
 all human governments shall co-operate with the divine govern- 
 ment in carrying this benediction and baptism into fulfilment !
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 . . . THE incontestable progress which the cause of popular 
 education is making in Massachusetts, and in some of the other 
 States of our Union, is a subject for hearty congratulation 
 among ourselves, and for devout gratitude to Heaven. It can- 
 not be denied that the cause has won to itself most able and 
 earnest advocates, who are in no way officially connected with 
 it, but who cherish it from the purest motives of duty and phi- 
 lanthropy. But it happens to this, as to all other good causes, 
 that some of its professed friends have attached themselves to 
 it from collateral, and some from sinister motives. It is equally 
 true that the cause has enemies ; although, in this community, 
 there are but few who dare to make open proclamation of their 
 hostility. But opponents are all the more formidable when 
 their opposition is secret. Their measures of counteraction are 
 not the less efficient because they are indirect, and hide their 
 origin under specious pretences. There is a third class, who 
 have no faith in the utility of education. They number it 
 among what they are pleased to call the Utopian schemes of 
 reform with which the age is teeming ; and they regard with 
 an ill-concealed suspicion either the honesty of purpose or the 
 soundness of intellect of those who are laboring to uphold its 
 banner, and to bear it forward. There are those also who sus- 
 pect, in education, the existence of some unknown and mys- 
 
 559
 
 560 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 tical power, which, should it once obtain the ascendency, would 
 bear the community onward, they know not whither ; and 
 having some ism or ology of their own, by which, provided all 
 civil institutions, and Nature herself, will succumb to their dic- 
 tation, they can forthwith extricate the world from all its trou- 
 bles, and carry it forward in the directest line, and with the 
 swiftest speed, to a millennial goal, they discard an agency 
 whose power they can neither control nor comprehend. And, 
 lastly, there are those who array themselves against education 
 solely from mercenary motives, because of the one or two 
 mills upon the dollar which its support subtracts from their 
 property. 
 
 To meet the opposition and the indifference originating in 
 these and similar prejudgments, the subject of education has 
 been very much " agitated," particularly in the northern portion 
 of our country, within the last dozen years. There can be no 
 hazard in affirming, that far more has been spoken and printed, 
 heard and read, on this theme, within the last twelve years, 
 than ever before, were it all put together, since the settlement 
 of the colonies. The consequence certainly has been a very 
 marked development of the merits of the subject, and a corre- 
 sponding opening or expansion of the public mind for their rec- 
 ognition. To many sensible men, it has come like a revela- 
 tion, inspiring hopes for the amelioration of mankind, and for 
 the perpetuity of our institutions, which they had never dreamed 
 of before. There are thousands of persons amongst us, whose 
 once darkened minds have been so quickened with life, and il- 
 luminated with wisdom, on this subject, as to beget an intole- 
 rable impatience under old imperfections, a perception of 
 which has made rest impossible, and the pleasures of home un- 
 comfortable, until, within their respective spheres, they had 
 effected a reform. 
 
 In order to make this subject more intelligible to the com- 
 mon mind, as well as to conform to broad distinctions which 
 Nature herself has established, it has been considered under a 
 threefold aspect, first, as embracing the proper care and
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 561 
 
 training of the body, that its health and longevity may be se- 
 cured ; second, as cultivating the faculties by which we per- 
 ceive, compare, analyze and combine, remember, reason, and 
 perceive natural fitness and the beauty of things, so that we may 
 know more of the world in which we are placed, and of the 
 glorious attributes of its Maker, and so that, by more faithfully 
 harmonizing our conduct with its laws, we may the better enjoy 
 its exquisite adaptations to our welfare ; and, thirdly, as fash- 
 ioning our moral nature into some resemblance to its divine 
 original, subordinating our propensities to the law of duty, 
 expanding our benevolence into a sentiment of universal broth- 
 erhood, and lifting our hearts to the grateful and devout con- 
 templation of God. 
 
 In pursuance of these fundamental ideas, it has been shown, 
 by the authority of the highest medical men in the country, 
 that, even in the present imperfect state of physiological sci- 
 ence, more than one-half of all the cases of bodily disability 
 and disease, more than one-half of all the pains and expendi- 
 tures of sickness, more than one-half of all the cases of prema- 
 ture death, that is, of death under the age of seventy years, 
 are the consequence of sheer ignorance, not of any irrepeala- 
 ble decree or fatality necessitating their existence, independ- 
 ently of our consent and co-operation, but of our own brutish 
 ignorance of the conditions of health and life to which our 
 bodies have been subjected by their Maker. And I desire, also, 
 to be here understood as not including in this moiety of unne- 
 cessary suffering and of untimely death a single one of that 
 extensive class of cases which result from a slavish submission 
 to some tyrannous appetite, such as intemperance, for in- 
 stance, where the knowledge, even if we possessed it, might 
 be overborne in a conflict with the sensual desire : but I mean 
 maladies, pains, and death, which a bad man would be as quick 
 to avoid as a good one ; which every sane man would desire 
 to escape from, as he would from blindness or deafness, the 
 gout or the toothache. Even were ignorance, then, to be 
 classed among the greatest luxuries of life, it would be found 
 
 36
 
 562 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 too costly an indulgence to be borne by an economical peo- 
 ple.* 
 
 The indispensableness of education to worldly prosperity 
 has also been demonstrated. An ignorant people not only is, 
 but must be, a poor people. They must be destitute of sagacity 
 and providence, and, of course, of competence and comfort. 
 The proof of this does not depend upon the lessons of history, 
 but on the constitution of Nature. No richness of climate, no 
 spontaneous productiveness of soil, no facilities for commerce, 
 no stores of gold or of diamonds garnered in the treasure-cham- 
 bers of the earth, can confer even worldly prosperity upon an 
 uneducated nation. Such a nation cannot create wealth of 
 itself; and whatever riches may be showered upon it will run 
 to waste. The ignorant pearl-divers do not wear the pearls 
 they win. The diamond-hunters are not ornamented by the 
 gems they find. The miners for silver and gold are not enriched 
 by the precious metals they dig. Those who toil on the most 
 luxuriant soils are not filled with the harvests they gather. All 
 the choicest productions of the earth, whether mineral or vege- 
 table, wherever found or wherever gathered, will, in a short 
 time, as by some secret and resistless attraction, make their 
 way into the hands of the more intelligent. Within the last 
 four centuries, the people of Spain have owned as much silver 
 and gold as all the other nations of Europe put together ; yet, 
 at the present time, poor indeed is the people who have less 
 than they. The nation which has produced more of the raw 
 material, and manufactured from it more fine linen, than all 
 contemporary nations, are now the most ragged and squalid in 
 Christendom. Let whoever will sow the seed or gather the 
 fruit, intelligence will consume the banquet. 
 
 It must be admitted, indeed, that, when the people composing 
 any particular state or country are compared with each other, 
 the wisest are not always the wealthiest. This natural law, 
 like others, is liable to fluctuations and disturbances from arti- 
 
 * See letters of eminent physicians, in my Sixth Annual Report. Also Common- 
 school Journal, vol. v.
 
 KEPORT FOR 1847. 563 
 
 ficial and arbitrary institutions. Primogeniture, entail, mo- 
 nopoly, may derange its action ; yet even here, as if to add 
 confirmation to the general principle, it is always found that 
 the families of inferior minds who inherit wealth, and the im- 
 becile sovereigns or rulers who inherit power, owe their eleva- 
 tion to the greatness of some ancestor whose mental superiority 
 not only won pre-eminence for himself, but for his descendants 
 also. Where wealth or social position has not been eai'ned or 
 won by the possessors themselves, it is the representative of 
 some ancestral talent whose force is not yet expended. 
 
 Who that visited the late Mechanics' Fair in the city of 
 Boston was not bewildered by the number and diversity of the 
 products of inventive genius and skill there exhibited? To the 
 common observer, it was profusion producing confusion. What 
 would be the result and " sum total " of a Mechanics' Fair 
 among a tribe in the interior of Africa, or among the aborigines 
 of our Western wilderness ? Hardly more than a stone hatchet, 
 a flint-headed arrow, a stick burned at the end, and sharpened 
 into a spear, and a few yards of tawdry wampum. Yet the 
 variety and richness of the one, compared with the poverty and 
 rudeness of the other, would be but feeble symbols of the rela- 
 tive power and weakness of the minds from which they sprung. 
 Arid whence came the vast, the wonderful intellectual superi- 
 ority ? It came from the old slate and pencil ; the bit of chalk 
 and the bit of board, planed or uuplaued ; the spelling-book 
 and the reading-book, which have been found in every house- 
 hold through all our borders, from the time of the first rude 
 huts that went up, amid winter and storm, about Plymouth 
 Rock, which have been the companions and playthings of 
 every nursery, and the business-things of every schoolroom, for 
 more than two centuries, until the children, as if by force of 
 hereditary instinct, seem to look round inquiringly after them 
 almost as soon as they are born. These are the acorns whence 
 the majestic forest has sprung. 
 
 If the difference between persons dwelling in the same com- 
 munity, and living side by side, be less striking to the senses, it
 
 564 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 is not less instructive to the reason. In my Fifth Annual Re- 
 port, I presented the testimony of some of the most eminent 
 and successful business-men amongst us, proving from business- 
 data, and beyond controversy, that labor becomes more profit- 
 able as the laborer is more intelligent ; and that the true mint 
 of wealth, the veritable coinage of the country, is not to be 
 found in magnificent government establishments, at Philadel- 
 phia or New Orleans, but in the humble schoolhouse. 
 
 On the occasion referred to, one of our most sagacious manu- 
 facturers declared, not only in accordance with the conclusions 
 of his own reason, but as the result of an actual experiment, 
 that the best cotton-mill in New England, if worked by opera- 
 tives so low in the scale of intelligence as to be unable to read 
 and write, would never yield the proprietor a profit ; that the 
 machinery would soon be worn out, the owner impoverished, 
 and the operatives themselves left penniless. Another witness, 
 for a long time superintendent of many work-people, made the 
 following striking remark : " So confident am I that produc- 
 tion is affected by the intellectual and moral condition of help, 
 that, whenever a mill or a room should fail to give the proper 
 amount of work, my first inquiry, after that respecting the con- 
 dition of the machinery, would be as to the character of the 
 help ; and, if the deficiency remained any great length of time, 
 I am sure I should find many who had made their marks upon 
 the pay-roll, being unable to write their names ; and I should 
 be greatly disappointed, if I did not, upon inquiry, find a por- 
 tion of them of irregular habits and suspicious character." * 
 
 Is it not, in fact, most palpably demonstrable, from a com- 
 parison of the nature of man with the powers and properties of 
 the material universe in which he is placed, that he was de- 
 signed to reach a point of intellectual and moral elevation far 
 higher than any which the most favored people on the earth 
 have yet attained? A material world, active with such invisi- 
 ble energies, and constantly displaying such fitful changes, as 
 
 * See Fifth Aunual Report, pp. 86-100. Also Common-school Journal, vol. 
 iv. p. 361.
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 565 
 
 belong to our planet, would be the most cruel prison-house to 
 beings capable of perceiving its aspects, but incapable of under- 
 standing its laws. The superiority of our affective aud sympa- 
 thetic faculties over those possessed by the lower orders of crea- 
 tion would only render us so much the more miserable aud 
 defenceless, if we had not the faculties of reason aud judgment 
 also, by which we are able to bring ourselves into harmony 
 with surrounding circumstances. Without knowledge, our 
 present lives would be far more wretched than those of the 
 brutes which perish ; for we should be vulnerable on all sides, 
 capable of suffering the keenest pain, while incapable of avoid- 
 ing its causes. The revolution of the seasons would inflict 
 want and debasement upon the whole race, if we could not 
 foresee their vicissitudes and provide for their varying neces- 
 sities. Comets and eclipses are fitted, in their very natures, to 
 shed consternation aud dismay upon the hearts of rneu, until 
 the intellect comes in to explain the sublime order that pro- 
 duces them.* 
 
 To the savage, thunder and lightning are tokens of divine 
 wrath ; while to the Christian philosopher they are only em- 
 phatic and vivid proofs of the greatness aud wisdom of God. 
 To the enlightened mind, a tempest or a whirlwind is only a 
 tempest or a whirlwind ; but a barbarian dreads them a thou- 
 
 * It has been well said, '-No eye has ever witnessed the spectacle of a total 
 eclipse of the sun, even when announced with every characteristic of accuracy, 
 without a shudder of awe, a sensation of deep terror, which reason in vain essays 
 to subdue. The chilling and sombre darkness which spreads over Nature; the 
 mamiest terror of birds and animals, their instinctive retreat to the abodes of 
 man, ns if some awful danger were impending; the horror of the idea of the de- 
 struction of the gr-'at source of light aud life, and the possible dissolution of 
 Nature, all conspire to render this one of the most territic scenes that the eye 
 of man Im* ever witnessed. What, then, must have been the horror which seized 
 every spectator of this awful .scene in those ages of the world when profound 
 ignorance of its physical causes existed, and this terrible phenomenon burse 
 suddenly upon the world, unanticipated and unannounced ! 
 
 " The great Roman historian and annalist has, in a few graphic sentences, de- 
 picted the effect of an eclipse of the moon on the devoted legions of Pannonia. 
 These hardy veterans, these iron men, born and bred to battle and to war, cowered 
 before the awful spectacle, inarched in agony to their contemned commanders, and 
 implored tneir forgiveness, and deprecated the wrath of the avenging gods, for 
 their disobedience and insubordination." Si Icreal Messenger.
 
 563 AXXUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 sand titnss more for the anger of the gods which they denote, 
 and for the evils they portend, than for any actual injuries 
 which they inflict. The auroras of the North, so beautiful to 
 the eye of science, have shaken myriads of hearts with fear. 
 That numerous and various class of phenomena which we call 
 optical illusions are sources of the direst terror to the ignorant, 
 while they gratify a philosophic curiosity with the purest de- 
 light. In short, we know that all the wonders and glories 
 : which Nature displays in her majestic course are only sources 
 of superstition to those who have not learned her sublime 
 laws, darkening the already darkened mind, debasing the de- 
 based, and terrifying the affrighted. It seems impossible that 
 a benevolent Being could have gifted the human race with its 
 high faculties, if he had not provided for and ordained their 
 development and edification. All the other orders of animated 
 Nature are adapted to their condition : but a human soul, quick- 
 ened by irrepressible impulses of curiosity, subject to the illu- 
 sions of hope and to the agonies of fear, but with no power to 
 unriddle the mysteries by which it is encompassed ; with no 
 power to realize the hopes spontaneously springing up within 
 it, or to emancipate itself from the bondage of fear, such a 
 soul would be forever the trembling slave of Nature ; while 
 Nature would be a tyrant over it, deaf and remorseless. What- 
 ever name might be given to the place of its habitation, it 
 would be a habitation of unquenchable fire. 
 
 __p Knowledge and a highly-developed and highly-trained rea- 
 ; son are to the temporal necessities of man what instinct is to 
 j the brute. But instinct is complete, perfect, self-active ; while 
 knowledge and reason can never reach any adequate height 
 without vigorous self-effort and copious instruction from others. 
 Far better, therefore, would it have been for mankind, had they 
 never been elevated in the scale of existence above the Simla 
 tribe, the ape, the monkey, or the baboon, than that they 
 should have been endowed with the faculties of memory, of 
 hope, of fear, and of imagination, without an adequate ability 
 to derive wisdom from past experience, and to make provision
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 567 
 
 for future necessities. There is uo earthly power but education, 
 which, by supplying these wants, can rescue the human race 
 from sinking as much below the brute creation as they were 
 designed to rise above it. 
 
 So, too, if the practice of equity, virtue, and benevolence, ^ 
 were not possible for the race, its condition would be far more 
 deplorable than that of any horde of wild beasts that ever 
 prowled through a wilderness, or hid themselves for ambush 
 in the depths of a jungle. Even tigers and wolves, with all 
 their ferocity, can inflict but a transitory pain upon each other, 
 or upon the weaker races around them. The most ingenious of 
 all the animals have never invented machines to torture those 
 of their own or of an inferior order. The iron boot, the thumb- 
 screw, the rack, the fagot, are dreadful realities in natural his- 
 tory ; but the infamy of their invention and their use belongs 
 not to the brute creation. Brutes cannot build ships, and cross 
 oceans, to despoil or enslave a defenceless and kindred race in 
 another hemisphere ; nor can they forge any fetters, whether 
 of iron or of law, which shall bind in remorseless bondage, 
 not only the victim himself, but generations of his descendants. 
 Brutes cannot bereave each other of their natural instincts, 
 make the mother forget her young, the mated pair assail each 
 other's lives, or the offspring lay parricidal hands upon its 
 parent by transforming the choicest fruits of the earth into 
 poison, and selling this poison for ignominious gain. The most 
 selfish and ignoble races that ever flew through the air, or 
 swam in the sea, never availed themselves of the accidental 
 possession of power to establish orders of patrician and plebe- 
 ian, or of lord and commoner, and thus to doom one portion 
 of their number to perform all the toil and bear all the burdens 
 of the tribe, while they themselves monopolized all its leisure 
 and its luxuries. What a spectacle would be presented, if a ' 
 few individuals of some family of insects, gathering themselves 
 into conclave upon some spire of grass in the middle of a vast 
 plain, or upon some leaf in a boundless forest, should there 
 presume not only to adjudicate upon all the purposes of crea-
 
 568 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 tion and all the mysteries of eternity, but should denounce 
 imprisonment and torture, the fagot and the scaffold, upon all 
 who would not bow to their authority, and avow assent to their 
 conclusions ! There are tribes of the brute creation, it is true, 
 which prey upon other tribes ; but it is only for the satisfaction 
 of a physical want, and, when their hunger is appeased, their 
 fierceness subsides : but not in the north, where their rage is 
 whetted by arctic cold, nor in the south, where their blood is 
 fevered by tropical heats, do they ever inflict upon a victim the 
 life-long solitude of a dungeon, or gratuitously burn his body, 
 and heap contempt upon his ashes, for not believing as they be- 
 lieve, or for not acknowledging, as the Great Spirit of the uni- 
 verse, the idol which they may have set up. If, then, I say, it 
 had not been a part of the divine determination, in the creation 
 of our race, that its terrible propensities should be controlled, 
 and its higher susceptibilities advanced into supremacy, zool- 
 ogy has yet to discover the species of animals so vile, so 
 wretched, so mutually predaceous, that mankind has not rea- 
 son to envy them. If posterity is to be what history shows us 
 that uineteen-twentieths of all the preceding world have been, 
 what not less than four-fifths of it now are, then is man not the 
 noblest, but the ignoblest, work of creation ; the accursed, and 
 not the favored, of Heaven. Not believing in such a destiny, 
 I believe there is a way to avoid it. 
 
 Having proved, then, in former Reports, by the testimony of 
 wise and skilled men, that disease may be supplanted by health, 
 bodily pain by enjoyment, and premature death by length of 
 life, merely by the knowledge and practice of a few great phys- 
 iological principles, such as every person can easily master 
 before the age of sixteen years ; aud having also shown, by 
 testimony equally authentic aud satisfactory, that intelligence, 
 co-operating with the bounties of Nature, is sufficient to secure 
 comfort and competence to all mankind, I propose to myself, 
 in the residue of this Report, the still more delightful task of 
 showing, by proofs equally unexceptionable aud convincing, 
 that the great body of vices and crimes which now sadden
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 539 
 
 and torment the community may be dislodged, and driven out ' 
 from amongst us, by such improvements in our present com- 
 mon-school system as we are abundantly able immediately to 
 make. 
 
 During the last summer, in order to a clear and full presen- 
 tation of the subject to those persons whose testimony I wished 
 to obtain, I prepared a circular, setting forth, with as much pre- 
 cision and completeness as possible, certain specific emenda- 
 tions of our present school-system, only such emendations, 
 however, as we can readily make, and appealing to the expe- 
 rience and judgment of the persons addressed, to know what 
 would be the results, were the system to be so amended. This 
 circular was sent to teachers highly competent to give evidence 
 on so important a subject, competent from their science and 
 from their personal experience, from the sobriety of their judg- 
 ment, and from their freedom from any motive to overstate 
 facts, or to deduce inferences too broad for the premises on 
 which they were founded. In fine, the circular was sent to 
 persons whose elevated character, and whose extended personal 
 acquaintance with the subject-matter on which they testify, 
 place them above denial, cavil, or suspicion. 
 
 The circular, and the answers to it, follow : 
 
 CIKCULAR. 
 
 To . 
 
 I desire to obtain the opinion of teachers who are both scientific and prac- 
 tical on a subject of great importance to the cause of popular education. 
 Your long experience in school-keeping, the great number of children whom 
 you have had under your care, and your well-earned reputation as an in- 
 structor and trainer of youth, prompt me to apply to you for answers to the 
 subjoined inquiries. 
 
 My general object is to obtain such an opinion as your experience will 
 authorize you to give respecting the efficiency, in the formation of social 
 and moral character, of a good common-school education, conducted on tiie 
 cardinal principles of the New-England systems. In other words, how much 
 of improvement in the upright conduct and good morals of the community 
 might we reasonably hope and expect, if all our common schools were what
 
 570 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 they should be, what some of them now arc, and what all of them, by means 
 which the public is perfectly able to command, may soon be made to be- 
 come? 
 
 As we look around us, we see that society is infested by vices, both small 
 aud great. The value of lite is diminished, and even life itself is sometimes 
 niiiilc burdensome and odious, by the existence amongst us of pests and nui- 
 sances in human form, whom the law forbids us to destroy, and whom, with' 
 all our efforts, we are unable wholly to reform. Were we permitted to hunt 
 out and exterminate from society a wicked or mischievous man as we would 
 a prowling wolf from the sheep-fold, or could we apply the sovereign antidote 
 of extinction to a pestilent brood of children whom profligate parents are 
 about to send forth into the world, we might then secure ourselves in a sum- 
 mary manner from pi'esent fears and from future annoyance. So, too, if we 
 could arrest the momentum of long habit, or win back to the paths of virtue 
 those, who, by their frequent tread, have worn the highways of vice both 
 smooth and broad, we should then have access to a milder, though a more 
 laborious remedy. But the common sentiments of mankind would revolt at 
 any proposal to prevent all violations of the moral code by extinguishing the 
 life of the violators ; and all history and experience afford concurrent proof 
 that the inbred habits of grown men and women their accustomed trains 
 of thought and of action are mainly beyond the control of secondary 
 causes. Hence it is, that a great part of the legislation of every state and 
 nation, a vast majority of the decisions of all legal tribunals, and a still larger 
 proportion of all the labors and expenditures of philanthropic and Christian 
 men, have been devoted to the punishment of positive wrong, or to the vain 
 attempt to repair its nameless and numberless mischiefs. Could these 
 wrongs and mischiefs be prevented, our descendants would inherit a new 
 earth. 
 
 The classes of common offences by which society is vexed and tormented 
 are numerous ; but the individual acts of commission, under the respective 
 classes, are absolutely incomprehensible, save by the Omniscient. 
 
 There is the detestable practice of profane swearing, which is motiveless 
 and gratuitous wickedness. This is a vice which neither gives any property 
 to the poor man, nor any luxury to the rich one. It degrades even the clown 
 to a lower state of vulgarity ; aud it would render the presence even of the 
 most polished gentleman offensive and disgusting, if it were ever possible for 
 a r/entleman to be guilty of it. 
 
 Though greatly restricted, at the present day, in its destructive agency, 
 and gradually withdrawing itself from the more respectable and intelligent 
 classes to the two extremes of society, to the luxuriously rich and the self- 
 made poor, yet the vice of intemperance still exists amongst us. Wher- 
 ever it invades, it eats out the substance of families ; not only consumes the 
 means of educating children, but eradicates also the very disposition to cdu-
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 571 
 
 catc them ; involves the innocent in the sufferings of the guilty, even tortur- 
 ing them with superadded pangs of shame which the guilty do not feel ; and, 
 according to the divinely-ordained laws of our physical being, it visits the 
 iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth genera- 
 tion, by sowing in their constitution the seeds of inordinate desires. 
 
 Below that degree of slander or defamation which the law denounces as 
 punishable, there exists such an amount of censoriousness and detraction as 
 often estranges acquaintances, dissolves friendships, introduces discord into 
 neighborhoods and communities, and sometimes entails hereditary animosi- 
 ties upon families and circles, which might otherwise be blessed by harmony 
 and peace. 
 
 Nor can the gross and cowardly offence of lying be omitted from this odi- 
 ous catalogue. This vice includes in its very nature so much of the assassin 
 and the dastard, that it lurks to inflict secret blows, or only ventures abroad 
 when large numbers, bound together by strong ties of passion or of interest, 
 impart mutual confidence and boldness in the prosecution of a common 
 object. Hence a private individual who is known as a liar is detested, 
 scorned, and shunned ; while profligate political defamers and sectarian 
 zealots, inspired by a common sentiment of ambition or of intolerance, and 
 keeping themselves in countenance by their numbers and their partisanship, 
 welcome this vice as an ally, and rejoice in the successes obtained by its aid. 
 No patriotism is proof against the rancor of party spirit ; no piety or good 
 works, against the rage and blindness of religious bigotry. 
 
 In pecuniary transactions, the temptations to overreaching, to exorbitance, 
 and to actual dishonesty, arc yielded to with a most lamentable frequency. 
 The buyer takes advantage of the necessities of the seller, and obtains a 
 transfer of his property for a small part of its value ; or sometimes, by adroit 
 management and preliminary scheming, he creates the necessity which places 
 the victim within the jaws of his avarice. The seller knowingly overstates 
 the quantity, the quality, or the value of the commodities he sells ; and, per- 
 haps, takes advantage of the ignorance or credulity of the purchaser to obtain 
 a price which he knows to be exorbitant and inequitable. The employer 
 often avails himself of the necessities of the employed to obtain his services 
 for less than they are worth ; he summons in hunger and cold, and the suf- 
 ferings of a dependent family, as advisers in helping to make an unrighteous 
 bargain, and as sureties for its performance. Men, without any pecuniary 
 resources which they can call their own, embark in hazardous speculations, 
 where, if the rash adventure should chance to prove successful, they will 
 pocket all the gain ; but, should it turn out to be disastrous, their creditors 
 roust suffer all the loss. 
 
 In some of the commercial countries of Europe, a merchant's insolvency 
 affects his moral character hardly less than his pecuniary credit. If a bank- 
 rupt cannot show that his deficiency of means was occasioned by some dis-
 
 572 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 aster which he could not control, or by some loss which he could not reason- 
 ably be expected to foresee, he forfeits his mercantile standing amongst 
 honorable dealers, and can retrieve his character only by actual proof of 
 returning or of newly-created honesty. A second failure, unexplained and 
 unatoned for, brands with disgrace, and expels not more from the traffic than 
 from the companionship of honorable men. 
 
 The above classes of wrong-doing, together with many others of a kindred 
 nature, are regarded by the law as minor offences. Some of them it does 
 not undertake to punish ; yet, from their wide-spread prevalence and great 
 frequency, they perhaps inflict as large an aggregate of evil upon society 
 as those of a more heinous and formidable character, but of less frequent 
 occurrence. 
 
 In regard to offences of a graver nature, such as come under the head 
 of crimes or felonies, the condition of our country compares favorably with 
 that of any other part of Christendom. Especially will this remark appear 
 true if we consider the slight amount of preventive force made use of, in 
 any part of our Union, to deter from actual transgression, and, as a general 
 rule, the lightness of the penal sanctions held up as a terror to evil-doers. 
 Yet that there does exist amongst us an appalling amount of criminality 
 of this deeper dye ; that flagrant offences against the rights of property, of 
 person, of reputation, and of life, are perpetrated, is proved by the records 
 of our criminal courts, and by the mournful procession of convicts and felons 
 whom we see on their way to our penitentiaries and other receptacles pre- 
 pared for the guilty. 
 
 Including all classes of offenders, both the less and the more flagitious, it 
 is undeniable that there exists amonirst us a multitude of men, of whom it 
 may be truly said, that it would be better for the community had they never 
 been born, or had they died in childhood, before their propensities for evil 
 had been developed, or before they had gone abroad to disturb the peace of 
 society, and to destroy that sense of security which every honest man is 
 entitled to feel. To thin the ranks of this host of enemies to the welfare 
 of the race, or to cripple the evil energies of those who could not be wholly 
 reclaimed, has been the object of philanthropists and sages from the begin- 
 ning of time. Their efforts, however, have been expended a million-fold 
 more upon the old than upon the young ; and a million-fold more, also, 
 in the way of punishment than of prevention. 
 
 Among the republics of ancient times, a few wise and sagacious men did 
 clearly perceive the bearing of education upon character, and, of course, 
 upon innocence and guilt, both personal and public ; but among the masses 
 of the people there never existed any settled and operative conviction of 
 this truth : and not a single year can be pointed out in all their long annals, 
 where a majority of those who held the reins of government, and framed the 
 laws of the State, rose to any practical or even theoretic conception of the
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 573 
 
 grand idea, that the vital intelligence or the stupidity, the integrity or 
 the dishonesty, of the people at large, will be measured and bounded by the 
 kind and degree of the education imparted to its children, just as the zones 
 upon the earth's surface are measured and bounded by the amount of sun- 
 light which is shed upon them.* 
 
 In modern times, this relation of early education to adult character has 
 been more clearly and generally recognized as being, what it truly, to a very 
 great extent, is, a relation between cause and effect. As one means of estab- 
 lishing this truth, many earnest well-wishers of their race have made exten- 
 sive collections of what are called the " Statistics of Education and Crime." 
 The inmates of large penal establishments have been subjected to a personal 
 examination in order to ascertain whether a greater proportion of them 
 than of the community at large from which they were taken were wholly 
 ignorant of letters. In this investigation, the comparison has been made 
 between those who were able both to read and write, and those who could 
 perform neither or but one of these operations. 
 
 I will not dwell here upon the amazing absurdity of any definition of the 
 word " education," whose spirit or whose terms are satisfied by the mere 
 ability to read and write. Reading and writing may be, and, among this 
 class of persons, they usually are, mere mechanical processes : and how such 
 attainments should ever have been dignified by the name of education, "or 
 confounded with that noble culture of the soul which pours the noon-day 
 illumination of knowledge upon the midnight darkness of ignorance ; which 
 seeks to enthrone the moral faculties over all animal desires and propensities, 
 and to make the entire course of instruction subservient to the great duties 
 of love to God and love to man, how an absurdity so extravagant, and 
 now so obvious, could ever have been committed, can be explained only by 
 reference to the low and unworthy ideas of education which once prevailed. 
 
 The naked capacity to read and write is no more education than a tool is 
 a workman, or a telescope is a La Place or a Le Verrier. To possess the 
 means of education is not the same as to possess the lofty powers and im- 
 munities of education, any more than to possess the pen of a poet is to pos- 
 sess a poet's skill and ''faculty divine," or than the possession of the gos- 
 pel is the possession of that liberty wherewith Christ maketh his disciples 
 free ; and that reading and writing are only instruments or means to be 
 used in education is a truism now so intuitively obvious as to disdain argu- 
 ment. And hence it is, that of two persons, one of whom can barely write 
 his name or spell out a paragraph in a newspaper, while to the mind of the 
 other the contents of all manuscripts and of all libraries have no more exist- 
 ence than nonentity has to his senses, it would be hazardous to affirm that 
 the chances of the former for .a virtuous life are much superior to those of 
 
 * Even Marcus Aurelius declared himself satisfied if he could only improve a 
 few persons; and he denied the possibility of establishing Plato's republic.
 
 574. ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the latter. Nor do the best authorities dispel all the clouds of doubt which 
 hang over this question. Some writers maintain that crime actually in- 
 creases in proportion to the diffusion of the rudiments of knowledge, provid- 
 ed the knowledge which is diffused stops with mere rudiments. I think, 
 however, it must be conceded that the preponderance of names and of sta- 
 tistical results does, on the whole, clearly favor the opinion, that crime 
 recedes as knowledge advances ; and that, as the full-risen sun enables a 
 traveller to see his path, and to avoid the dangers that beset it, so the first 
 and faintest gleaming of the morning twilight helps him to discover his way, 
 and to shun its perils. It must also be remembered, that when great num- 
 bers are taken as the basis of comparison, all of whom possess the rudiments 
 of knowledge, it will always happen that some of them will possess more 
 than the rudiments Hence, taking whole communities together, I believe 
 the legitimate and inevitable conclusion to be, that every advance in knowl- 
 edge amongst a people is pro tanto an invasion of the domain of crime. 
 
 For years past, however, although I have carefully scrutinized these so- 
 called " Statistics of Education and Crime," and am convinced that they do 
 establish a distinction between the two classes, one of which can read and 
 write, while the other can do neither of these things, or but one of them, 
 in regard to their relative exemption from crime or exposure to it, yet I 
 have never been able to bring myself to present these schedules to our peo- 
 ple as an argument in favor of that elevated and ennobling education to 
 which it is their duty to aspire. I have felt, that, by so doing, the argument 
 would be shorn of half its power by the feebleness of the proofs brought to 
 sustain it. It would be like exhibiting a taper to prove the existence of 
 light while surrounded by the sun's effulgence. Our present state of socie- 
 ty, the form of government under which we live, the improvable faculties 
 with which we have been endowed by our Maker, and tiie solemn destiny 
 that awaits us, all demand vastly more than " a knowledge of the nature 
 and power of letters, and the just method of spelling words," and the me- 
 chanical ability to imitate, with a pen, their written or printed signs. 
 
 Yet this degrading idea of education, which was first conceived in refer- 
 ence to the ignorant classes of Europe, has been, to some extent, adopted 
 and acted upon in our own country. The last census of the United States, 
 taken by authority of a law of Congress, and in compliance wkh a provis- 
 ion of the Federal Constitution, proceeded upon this European fallacy. It 
 virtually adopted the old line of distinction between education and igno- 
 rance ; for it required an enumeration of all persons over twenty years of age 
 who were unable to read and write. The results have been published, and 
 they arc now embodied with the permanent statistics of the country. 
 Towns, counties, and states are classed ; theic condition is mentioned with 
 honor or with opprobrium, according to their relative position above or 
 below this absurd standard of knowledge and culture. It is inevitable th-u
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 575 
 
 this legislative sanction of such a standard this naturalization of it, so to 
 speak should have a most baneful effect in debasing public opinion upon 
 the subject. Facts of an interesting nature are presented, it is true ; but 
 their tendency is to rob education of all its noblest attributes. 
 
 But though the public mind always tends strongly to conform its modes 
 of thinking to legal definitions, and to subscribe to opinions sanctioned by 
 high authority, yet the common sense of the community, especially in the 
 more educated States of the Union, has outgrown these contracted notions, 
 and has claimed for the word " education " a far ampler and loftier significance. 
 All intelligent thinkers upon this subject now utterly discard and repudiate 
 the idea that reading and writing, with a knowledge of accounts, constitute 
 education. The lowest claim which any intelligent man now prefers in its 
 behalf is, that its domain extends over the threefold nature of man, over 
 his body, training it by the systematic and intelligent observance of those 
 benign laws which secure health, impart strength, and prolong life ; over his 
 intellect, invigorating the inind, replenishing it with knowledge, and culti- 
 vating all those tastes which are allied to virtue ; and over his moral and 
 religious susceptibilities also, dethroning selfishness, enthroning conscience, 
 leading the affections outward in good-will towards men, and upward in 
 gratitude and reverence to God. In thousands of reports prepared by 
 school-committees, in frequent addresses and lectures delivered on public 
 occasions, in all educational documents emanating from high official sources, 
 and in every work pretending to scientific accuracy, or to any comprehen- 
 sive outline of the subject, these sacred and m-ijestic attributes have been set 
 forth ; and it has been demonstrated, hundreds of times over, that the effect 
 of a sound education of the people must, not accidentally, but necessarily, 
 not occasionally, but always, be to repress the commission of crime, and to 
 promote the diffusion of human happiness ; and that to act in conscious 
 defiance or disregard of these truths is treachery to the test inn-rests of our 
 fellow-men, and impiety towards the Author of the moral universe. 
 
 But notwithstanding all that has been said, and so well said, as to the 
 moral power of education in reforming the world, there have still been a 
 vagueness and an indefiniteness in rei/ard to the extent of that power, which 
 have shorn argument and eloquence of much of their strength. Nowhere have 
 its advocates set forth, distinctly and specifically, hotv much they believe can 
 be accomplished by it. When an alleged improvement is presented to a ju- 
 dicious man, he wishes to know whether, and to what extent, its benefit will 
 exceed its cost. A capitalist will not aid a new enterprise with his money 
 until he is satisfied of the profitableness of the investment ; nor will a manu- 
 facturer purchase new machinery unless he is convinced that it will do bet- 
 ter work in the same time, or equal work in less. 
 
 It seems to me that the time is now arrived when the friends of this cause 
 should plant themselves on a more conspicuous position ; when, surveying
 
 576 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the infinite of wretchedness and crime around them, before which the stout, 
 est heart is appalled, and humanity stands aghast, they should proclaim the 
 power and the prerogatives of education to rescue mankind from their ca- 
 lamities. Founding themselves upon evidence that cannot be disputed, and 
 fortifying their conclusions by the results of personal experience, they should 
 proclaim how far the miseries of men can be alleviated, and how far the 
 dominion of crime can be overthrown, by such a system of education as it is 
 perfectly practicable for every civilized community forthwith to establish; 
 and thus they should awaken the conscience of the public to a sense of its 
 responsibility. 
 
 The idea will be more distinctly presented under an inquiry like the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 Under the soundest and most vigorous system of education which we can 
 now command, what proportion, or percentage, of all the children who are 
 born, can be made useful and exemplary men, honest dealers, conscien- 
 tious jurors, true witnesses, incorruptible voters or magistrates, good par- 
 ents, good neighbors, good members of society ? In other words, with our 
 present knowledge of the art and science of education, and with such new 
 fruit of experience as time may be expected to bear, what proportion, or per- 
 centage, of all children, must be pronounced irreclaimable and irredeemable, 
 notwithstanding the most vigorous educational efforts, which, in the present 
 state of society, can be put forth in their behalf? what proportion, or per- 
 centage, must become drunkards, profane swearors, detractors, vagabonds, 
 rioters, cheats, thieves, aggressors upon the rights of property, of person, 
 of reputation, or of life ; or, in a single phrase, must be guilty of such 
 omissions of right, and commissions of wrong, that it would have been bet- 
 ter for the community had they never been born ? This is a problem which 
 the course of events has evolved, and which society and the government 
 must meet. If, with such educational means and resources as we can now 
 command, eighty, ninety, ninety-five, or ninety-nine per cent of all childnn 
 can be made temperate, industrious, frugal, conscientious in all their deal- 
 ings, prompt to pity and instruct ignorance instead of ridiculing it and tak- 
 ing advantage of it, public-spirited, philanthropic, and observers of all things 
 sacred ; if, I say, any given proportion of our children, by human efforts, 
 and by such a divine blessing as the common course of God's providence 
 authorizes us to expect, can be made to possess these qualities, and to act 
 from them, then, just so far as our posterity shall fall below this practi- 
 cable exemption from vices and crimes, and just so far as they shall fail to 
 possess these attainable virtues, just so far will those who frame and exe- 
 cute our laws, shape public opinion, and lead public action, be criminally re- 
 sponsible for the difference. I can conceive of no moral proposition clearer 
 than this. Society, in its collective capacity, is the possessor of all the 
 knowledge, and the owner of all the property, in existence. Governments
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 577 
 
 have been organized, and are invested with power, to use any needful amount 
 of this property for purposes of education ; and, by holding out adequate 
 inducements and remuneration, they can command the services of the high- 
 est talent. Here, thyn, duty, and the means to perform it, come together. 
 The only remaining question is, How much can be done ? for, in a cause and 
 for a purpose like this, nothing which can actually be done can be guilt- 
 lessly omitted. If it is proved, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that 
 ninety-nine, ninety-five, ninety, eighty, or any other given percentage of all 
 children can be rescued from vice and crime, and can be so educated and 
 trained as to become valuable citizens, but the State refuses or declines to 
 do this work, then the State itself becomes a culprit; and, before the great 
 moral Judge who is seated on the throne of the universe, it must stand a 
 spectacle of shame and guilt, like one of its own inferior culprits before its 
 own judicial tribunals. 
 
 With these preliminary observations, which seemed to be necessarv in 
 order to a full exposition of the object I have in view, I proceed to submit 
 the following specific inquiries, and to request your answer to them : 
 
 1. How many years have you been engaged in school-keeping? and 
 whether in the country, or in populous towns or cities ? 
 
 2. About how many children have you had under your care ? of which 
 sex ? and between what ages ? 
 
 3. Should all our schools be kept by teachers of high intellectual and 
 moral qualifications, and should all the children in the community be 
 brought within these schools for ten months in a year, from the age of four 
 to that of sixteen years, fchen what proportion, what percentage, of such 
 children as you have had under your care, could, in your opinion, be so edu- 
 cated and trained, that their existence on going out into the world would 
 be a benefit, and not a detriment, an honor, and not a shame, to society? 
 Or, to state the question in a general form, if all children were brought 
 within the salutary and auspicious influences I have here supposed, what 
 percentage of them should you pronounce to be irreclaimable and hopeless? 
 Of course, I do not speak of imbeciles or idiots, but only of rational and 
 accountable beings. 
 
 You will perceive, that, in certain respects, I am supposing no change in 
 the present condition of society. I am taking families as they now are, and 
 am allowing all the unfavorable as well as the favorable influences of the old 
 upon the young to continue to operate, at least for a time, as heretofore. 
 Nor do I suppose any sudden or transforming change in co-operative or 
 auxiliary institutions, such as the Sabbath school, the pulpit, and so 
 forth, although it is certain that such a state of things as is here out- 
 lined would gradually impart new vigor to all that advances the progress 
 of society, while it would impair the force of all that retards it. 
 37
 
 578 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 On the other hand, however, I am supposing two great changes. I am 
 supposing all our children to be placed under the care of such a class of men 
 and women as we now honor by the appellation of first-class or first-rate 
 teachers, of such teachers as are able, in the schoolroom, both to teach 
 and to govern ; and who, out of the schoolroom, will be animated by a 
 missionary spirit in furthering the objects of their sacred vocation. I have 
 also supposed that all the children in the community shall be brought under 
 the forming hands of such teachers, from the age of four to that of sixteen, 
 for ten months in each year. 
 
 , While, therefore, the above supposition leaves children exposed, in many 
 cases, to the pernicious family and social influences under which they are 
 now suffering, it assumes that all the children, when out of school, shall 
 meet only such children as are enjoying the same high training, the same 
 daily instillation of moral principles, as themselves. My supposition allows 
 a continuance of the same family and adult influences (at least until these 
 shall be supplanted by the better influences of the rising generation, 
 action and re-action hastening results), because these influences are facts 
 which no earthly power can cause to be immediately changed. But I have 
 supposed this noble company of teachers, this length of schools, and this 
 universality of attendance, because these are reforms on the present condi- 
 tion of things, which can be effected without any great delay, at the 
 farthest, a very few years being an ample allowance for the completion of 
 such a change. 
 
 To reduce my third question, then, within its narrowest limits, and to 
 make it as definite and precise as possible, suppose yourself to be stationed 
 as a school-teacher in a place similar to any of those in which you have 
 before labored ; suppose yourself, too, to be surrounded by teachers fully as 
 capable and as zealous in all respects as yourself; and suppose, further, 
 that all the children are brought under your care or theirs, as above speci- 
 fied, that is, for a period of twelve years, or from four to sixteen, and ten 
 months in each year, and will you then please to declare what proportion, 
 or percentage, of those under your own care, you believe could be turned 
 out the blessing, and not the bane, the honor, and not the scandal, of society ? 
 and on what proportion, or percentage, the complement of the other, 
 would your experience compel you to pronounce the doom of hopelessness 
 and irreclaimability ? 
 
 Very truly and sincerely yours, 
 
 HOHACE MANN. 
 
 I extract from the replies to this circular only the specific 
 answers to the circular :
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 579 
 
 LETTER FROM JOHX GRISCOM, ESQ. 
 
 BURLINGTON, N.J., 8 mo. 27th, 1847. 
 
 MY ESTEEMED FRIEND, . . . My belief is, that, under the conditions 
 mentioned in the question, not more than two per cent would be irreclaima- 
 ble nuisances to society, and that ninety-five per cent would be supporters 
 of the moral welfare of the community in which they resided. 
 
 With teachers properly trained in normal schools, and with such a pop- 
 ular disposition towards schools as wise legislation might effect, nineteen- 
 twentieths of the immoralities which afflict society might, I verily believe, 
 be kept under hatches, or eradicated from the soil of our social institu- 
 tions. 
 
 Every step in such a progress renders the next more easy. This is 
 proved not only on the grand scale of comparing country with country, and 
 state with state, but district with its adjacent district, and neighborhood 
 with neighborhood. 
 
 Finally, in the predicament last stated in the circular, and supposing 
 the teachers to be imbued with the gospel spirit, I believe there would not 
 be more than one-half of one per cent of the children educated, on whom a 
 wise judge would be "compelled to pronounce the doom of hopelessness 
 and irreclaimability." 
 
 In nothing which I have advanced has it been my intention to advocate 
 any sectarian instruction in our schools, or any thing adverse to the statu- 
 tory limits of the Massachusetts school-system. I therefore expressly dis- 
 avow any intention to recommend truths or doctrines, as part of the moral 
 instruction to be given in public schools, which any believer in the Bible 
 would reasonably deem to be sectarian. 
 
 I am, with true esteem, thy friend, 
 
 JNO. GRISCOM. 
 
 LETTER FROM D. P. PAGE, ESQ. 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, ALBANY, N.Y., Nov. 20, 1847. 
 HON. HORACE MANN. 
 
 Dear Sir, ... Could I be connected with a school furnished with 
 all the appliances you name, where all the children should be constant 
 attendants upon my instruction for a succession of years, where all my 
 fellow-teachers should be such as you suppose, and where all the favorable 
 influences described in your circular should surround me and cheer me, 
 even with my moderate abilities as a teacher, I should scarcely expect, after
 
 580 ANNUAL KEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the first generation of children submitted to the experiment, to fail, in a 
 single case, to secure the results you have named. 
 
 . . . But I should not forgive myself, nor think myself longer fit to 
 be a teacher, if, with all the aids and influences you have supposed, I should 
 fail, in one case in a hundred, to rear up children who, when they should 
 hecome men, would be "honest dealers, conscientious jurors, true witnesses, 
 incorruptible voters or magistrates, good parents, good neighbors, good 
 members of society;" or, as you express it in another place, who would 
 be "temperate, industrious, frugal, conscientious in all their dealings, 
 prompt to pity and instruct ignorance instead of ridiculing it and taking 
 advantage of it, public-spirited, philanthropic, and observers of all things 
 sacred ; " and, negatively, who would not be " drunkards, profane swearers, 
 detractors, vagabonds, rioters, cheats, thieves, aggressors upon the rights 
 of property, of person, of reputation, or of life, or guilty of such omissions 
 of right, and commissions of wrong, that it would be better for the com- 
 munity had they never been born." 
 
 With sincere regard, your friend, 
 
 D. P. PAGE. 
 
 LETTER FROM SOLOMON ADAMS, ESQ. 
 
 BOSTON, Nov. 24, 1847. 
 HON. HORACE MANN. 
 
 My dear Sir, ... 1. I have been engaged in this profession twenty- 
 four years ; the first five years in the country, the remainder of the time 
 in a city. 
 
 2. My whole number of pupils is a little below two thousand. The 
 last nineteen years, my pupils have been females. Previously, both sexes. 
 
 If a well-conducted education produces benevolence, justice, truth, patriot- 
 ism, love to God and love to man, in one case, the same education, in the 
 same circumstances, will produce the same results in all cases. The results 
 for which we look and labor sometimes fail, not because the great law of uni- 
 formity is at fault, but by reason of counteracting causes, which may escape 
 our most careful scrutiny. Does the failure impair our confidence in the uni- 
 formity of moral causes and effects ? The moment this law fails, every cord 
 that binds society together is sundered ; society is disintegrated. Every social 
 enactment by which society attempts to regulate its members, every motive 
 by which one man hopes to influence another, assumes this uniformity. It is 
 the hinge on which all social influences turn. Without it, we could not shape 
 moral means to moral ends. To destroy it, to doubt it, would be the moral 
 unhingement of society.
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 581 
 
 In this great law are the teacher's hopes ami encouragements. The great 
 outline of the means he is to employ is well defined. It is his province to 
 bring all those moral appliances to bear upon the soul which are suited to 
 lead it into harmony with truth and with God, to train it to the percep- 
 tion and love of truth and goodness. In doing this, the faithful teacher is 
 a co-worker with God, and may confidently look to the Author of all good 
 to give the crowning blessing to his strenuous endeavors. There are those 
 (and I confess myself of the nnmher) who believe and feel that all hnraan 
 endeavors, unaided by an influence from on high, will prove fruitless, so far 
 as the highest wants of the immortal spirit are concerned. Yet those who 
 feel so can tell us of no way in which they are authorized to expect such 
 an influence, and of no way in which it is exerted even by almighty power, 
 except through the instrumentality of truth presented to the mind. There 
 might as well be a conflagration without fire, or a flood without fluid. 
 
 I confess I do not see how our different theological views can essentially 
 alter our modes of instruction. We are all to train the young in the way 
 in which they should go, " giving line upon line, precept upon precept, here 
 a little and there a little," waiting for and expecting precious fruit. The 
 fruit may ripen slowly. From day to day, you may not be able to see any 
 progress. This holds true both in moral and intellectual training. But, 
 by comparing distant intervals, progress is perceptible. At length a result 
 comes, which repays all the teacher's labor, and inspires new courage for 
 new efforts. Yon ask for my own experience. This is my apology for 
 alluding with freedom to myself. Permit me to say, that in very many cases, 
 after laboring long with individuals almost against hope, and sometimes in a 
 manner, too, which I can now see was not always wise. I have never had 
 a case which has not resulted in some good degree according to my wishes. 
 The many kind and voluntary testimonials given, years afterwards, by per- 
 sons who remembered that they were once my wayward pupils, are among 
 the pleasantcst and most cheering incidents of my life. So uniform have 
 been the results, when I have had a fair trial and time enough, that I have 
 unhesitatingly adopted the motto, Never despair. Parents and teachers are 
 apt to look for too speedy results from the labors of the latter. The moral 
 nature, like the intellectual and physical, is long and slow in reaching the 
 full maturity of its strength. I was told, a few years since, by a gentleman 
 who knew the history of nearly all my pupils for the first five years of my 
 labor, that not one of them had ever brought reproach upon himself, or 
 mortification upon friends, by a bad life. I cannot now look over the whole 
 list of my pupils, and find one, who had been with me long enough to re- 
 ceive a decided impression, whose life is not honorable and useful. I find 
 them in all the learned professions, and in the various mechanical arts. I 
 find my female pupils scattered as teachers through half the States of the 
 Union, and as the wives and assistants of Christian missionaries in every 
 quarter of the globe.
 
 582 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 So far, therefore, as my own experience goes, so f;ir ns my knowledge of 
 the experience of others extends, so far as the statistics of crime throw any 
 light on the subject, I should confidently expect that ninety-nine in a hun- 
 dred, and I think even more, with such means of education as you have 
 supposed, and with such divine favor as we are authorized to expect, would 
 become good members of society, the supporters of order and law, and 
 truth and justice, and all righteousness. 
 
 That I may not be misunderstood, allow me to add a few explanatory 
 remarks. 
 
 I have no confidence in the reformatory power of education into which 
 moral and religious influences do not enter. I assume, as any one having 
 the slightest acquaintance with your writings and teachings on this subject 
 knows that you do, that the three great classes of powers, the physical, 
 intellectual, and moral, shall each receive its proper training ; and then I ; 
 feel authorized to look confidently for that providential blessing which will 
 secure the high results already alluded to. Without such a training, I have 
 no right to expect the blessing of Heaven, or a good result. I do not fulfil 
 the conditions on which such results are promised. 
 
 It is to be feared, yea, to be for a lamentation, that comparatively few of 
 teachers, and still fewer of the community, have looked upon a school-edu- 
 cation as any thing more than a very limited intellectual training, leaving 
 physical and moral culture to take care of themselves. The school-laws of 
 Massachusetts have always contemplated other attainments and vastly 
 higher ends. Yet it so happens, that that part of the law has been best 
 remembered and acted on which speaks of reading, writing, and the ele- 
 ments of arithmetic. These have been insisted on chiefly with reference to 
 their direct application to the business and traffic of life ; as if it were 
 the chief end of man to count coppers, pocket them, and keep them. While 
 the law contemplates these elementary attainments as merely the beginnings 
 and inlets to all the treasures of wisdom, how many have looked upon them 
 as the education of the boy and the man ! 
 
 Very truly your obedient friend and servant, 
 
 S. ADAMS. 
 
 LETTER FROM REV. JACOB ABBOTT. 
 
 NEW- YORK CITY, June 25, 1847. 
 Hox. HORACE MANN. 
 
 Dear Sir, . . . 1. I have been engaged in the practical duties of 
 teaching for about ten years, chiefly in private schools in Boston and New 
 York.
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 583 
 
 2. I have had under my care, for a longer or shorter time, probably 
 nearly eight hundred pupils. They have been of both sexes, and of all 
 ages, from four to twenty-five. 
 
 3. If all our schools were under the charge of teachers possessing what 
 I regard as the right intellectual and moral qualifications, and if all the 
 children of the community were brought under the influence of these schools 
 for ten months in the year, I think that the work of training up the whole 
 community to intelligence and virtue would soon be accomplished, as com- 
 pletely as anv human end can be obtained by human means. 
 
 I do not think, however, that, so far as the formation of the habits of 
 virtue in the young is concerned, the accomplishment of the result depends 
 either upon the intellectual powers or attainments of the teacher, or upon 
 the amount of formal moral instructions which he gives his pupils. Knowl- 
 edge alone has but little tendency to affect the feelings and principles of the 
 heart ; and formal moral instructions, except as auxiliaries to other influ- 
 ences, have very little power, according to my experience, over the con- 
 sciences and characters of the young. 
 
 The true power of the teacher in giving to his pupils good characters in 
 future life seems to me to lie in his forming them to the practice of virtue, 
 while under his charge, by the influence of his mm personal character and 
 fictions. To do this, however, he must have the right character himself. 
 He must be governed in all that he does by high and honorable principles 
 of action. He must be really benevolent and kind. He must take an 
 honest interest in his pupils, not merely in their studies and general char- 
 acters, but in all their childish thoughts and feelings, in the difficulties they 
 encounter, in their temptations and trials, in their sports, in their conten- 
 tions, in their troubles; in everything, in fact, that affects them. He 
 must, in a word, feel a strong interest and sympathy for them in the thou- 
 >and difficulties and discouragements they must encounter in slowly finding 
 their way, with all their ignorance and inexperience, to their place in the 
 complicated and bewildering maze of human life. 
 
 A teacher who takes this sort of interest in his pupils will understand 
 them and sympathize with them in a way which will at once command tbeir 
 kind regard, and give him a powerful, and, in the view of others, a very 
 inysterious, ascendency over their minds. They feel as if he was upon 
 their side, taking their part, as it were, against the difficulties and dangers 
 and troubles which surround them. Thus lie becomes one of them, a 
 sharer in their enjoyments, a partaker of their feelings. They come to 
 him with confidence. He plans their amusements, he joins them in con- 
 versation, he settles their disputes. They see on what principles he acts; 
 and they catch, themselves, the same mode of action from him by a kind 
 of sympathy. They imbibe his sentiments insensibly and spontaneously, 
 not because he enunciates them, or proves them in lectures, but because he
 
 584 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 exhibits them in living reality in his conversation and conduct. This sort 
 of sympathetic action between heart and heart has far greater influence 
 among all mankind than formal teachings and exhortations. It is the life 
 and spirit of virtue in contradistinction from the letter and the form. 
 
 ... If all the children of this land were under the charge of such 
 teachers for six hours in the day, and ten months in the year, and were to 
 continue under these influences for the usual period of instruction in schools, 
 I do not see why the result would not be, that, in two generations, substan- 
 tially the whole population would be trained up to virtue, to habits of 
 integrity, fidelity in duty, justice, temperance, and mutual good-will. It 
 seems to me that this effect would take place in all cases, except where ex- 
 tremely unfavorable influences out of school should counteract it ; which, 
 I think, would hardly be the case, except in some districts in the more popu- 
 lous cities. 
 
 I am, very respectfully, yours, 
 
 JACOB ABBOTT. 
 
 LETTER FROM F. A. ADAMS, ESQ. 
 
 OKAXUK, N.J., Dec. 11, 1847. 
 HON. HORACE MANN. 
 
 Dear Sir, . . . I do not hesitate to express the conviction that there is 
 no agency which society can exert, through the government, capable of ex- 
 erting so great a moral influence for the rising generation as the steady 
 training of the young in the best schools. 
 
 In reply to the specific inquiry, in your circular, what proportion of our 
 youth would probably, under the advantages of schooling presupposed in 
 the cii'cular, fail of fulfilling honorably their social and moral obligations in 
 Society, I would say, that in the course of my experience, for ten years, 
 in teaching between three and four hundred children, mostly boys, I have 
 been acquainted with not more than two pupils in regard to whom I should 
 not feel a cheerful and strong confidence in the success of the proposed ex- 
 periment. In regard to these two cases, I should not despair, but should 
 have a strong preponderance of fear, that, under the best influences such as 
 you have supposed, they would still remain wedded to low and mischievous 
 habits. From their peculiar temperament, there was much reason to sup- 
 pose that a life of steady and hard labor would do for them much, in a moral 
 point of view, which the influences of school could not accomplish. 
 
 The class of youth I have had under my care would, in some respects, 
 afford a better than average chance for the success of the experiment, as
 
 EEPORT FOR 1847. 685 
 
 they, in all cases, have been exempt from the evils of poverty. In other 
 respects, however, this exemption was counterbalanced by habits of self- 
 indulgence, which could not have existed had the pecuniary means been 
 wanting. 
 
 I remain, dear sir, with sincere respect and esteem, yours, 
 
 P. A. ADAMS. 
 
 LETTER FROM E. A. ANDREWS, ESQ. 
 
 NEW BRITAIN, CONN., Dec. 8, 1847. 
 HON. HORACE MANN. 
 
 Dear Sir, ... In reply to your first and second questions, permit me 
 simply to remark, that I have been connected with the department of educa- 
 tion, either as pupil or as teacher, for more than fifty years. I have in- 
 structed both in the country and in cities : in the former I have, for the most 
 part, had the charge of only a few select pupils ; in the latter, for about 
 twenty years, I was connected with large institutions of instruction. I have 
 no means of determining, with any tolerable approach to accuracy, the whole 
 number of my pupils, nor the proportion of each sex. 
 
 I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that such an education as your 
 question supposes, continued for so long a period as twelve years, and in- 
 cluding all the children of the community, would remove a very large por- 
 tion of the evils with which society is now burdened. I need not say, that 
 I would be far from attributing so important results to any system of merely 
 intellectual training, or even to the most perfect combination of intellectual, 
 physical, and moral discipline, to the exclusion of that which is strictly 
 religious. Such a qualification of my meaning might have been necessary, 
 on account of the limited sense in which the word " education " is often used, 
 had not the necessity been removed by the express terms of the conditions 
 annexed to the question in your circular. 
 
 It may indeed be feared that society is not yet fully prepared to put forth 
 the effort necessary to accomplish so desirable a result ; but I cannot believe 
 that the time is very remote when its attainment will be considered an object 
 of paramount importance. It cannot be that the millions of intelligent men 
 found in this and in other Christian countries can much longer permit their 
 feelings to be enlisted, and the resources of the communities to which they 
 belong to be employed, in promoting objects of far inferior value, while the 
 advantages of a good system of general education are, in so great a degree, 
 overlooked. If, as I fully believe, it is in the power of the people of any 
 State, by means so simple as your question supposes, and so completelv in 
 their own power as these obviously are, so to change the whole face of so-
 
 586 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ciety in a single generation that scarcely one or two per cent of really incor- 
 rigible members shall be found in it, it cannot be that so great a good will 
 continue to be neglected, and the means for its attainment unemployed. 
 
 In forming our estimate of the probability of so important a result as I 
 have supposed, it must not be forgotten, that, simple as are the means now 
 proposed for its attainment, they have never been employed, so far as I know, 
 in any extended community whose experience is on record. In Scotland, 
 and of late in Prussia, a considerable approximation has been made towards 
 reaching the supposed conditions, and with benefits, it is believed, fully cor- 
 iv-itunding with the degree of perfection of their respective systems. The 
 common schools of New England, which have done so much to elevate her 
 character, have still fallen immeasurably short of the conditions supposed. 
 With all their acknowledged defects, however, the instances, I believe, are 
 few, in which those who have been trained in them, from childhood to the 
 close of the period usually allotted to education in these schools, have after- 
 wards, on mingling with the world, proved to be incorrigibly vicious, a bur- 
 den rather than a benefit to society. The records of our criminal courts 
 and the doors of our penitentiaries have seldom been opened to those who, 
 in childhood, had been in regular daily attendance for ten or twelve years 
 upon the exercises of our common schools, however imperfect these schools 
 may have been in their organization, and notwithstanding all the evil influ- 
 ences of uneducated associates to which the pupils have been exposed when 
 out of school. The cell of the convict has, on the contrary, been almost 
 uniformly occupied by those who have enjoyed few of the benefits of our 
 common schools ; and even the tenants of our poorhouses, it is believed, 
 have, in most instances, belonged to the same unfortunate class. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 E. A. ANDREWS. 
 
 LETTER FROM ROGER S. HOWARD, ESQ. 
 
 THETFORD, Vx., Sept. 1, 1847. 
 Hox. HORACE MAXX. 
 
 Dear Sir, ... Judging from what I have seen and do know, if the 
 conditions you have mentioned were strictly complied with ; if the attend- 
 ance of the scholars could be as universal, constant, and long-continued as 
 you have stated ; if the teachers were men of those high intellectual and 
 moral qualities, apt to teach, and devoted to their work, and favored with 
 that blessing which the word and providence of God teach us always to 
 expect on our honest, earnest, and well-directed efforts in so good a cause,
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 
 
 on these conditions, and under these circumstances, I do not hesitate to 
 express the opinion, that the failures need not be, would not he, one per 
 cent. Else what is the meaning of that explicit declaration of the Bible, 
 " Train up a child in the way he should go ; and, when he is old, he will not 
 depart from it " ? 
 
 I am aware that the opinion I have expressed above may by some be 
 considered extravagant. But I have not formed or expressed it without 
 deliberation. During all my experience as a teacher, I have never known 
 the scholar, whom, if brought within the reach of these salutary and auspi- 
 cious influences for the length of time named, I should now be willing to 
 believe, or dare to pronounce, utterly hopeless and irreclaimable. I do not 
 mean to say that I never failed. But I do say, that in some of the most 
 difficult and desperate cases I have ever met with, as a teacher, the result 
 of direct, special, and persevering effort, was such as to create the conviction, 
 that with more zeal, patience, and perseverance, and especially with the 
 favoring influences above alluded to, success would have been certain and 
 complete. And this conviction became more settled and strong the longer 
 I continued to teach. 
 
 The power of a truly enlightened and Christian system of common- 
 school education is but little understood and appreciated. When parents 
 shall begin to feel, as they ought, its importance ; when the community 
 generally shall be willing to make the necessary efforts and sacrifices ; 
 and when teachers of the requisite literary qualifications, and of high moral 
 aims, shall enter upon the work with a martyr's zeal, conscious that every 
 day they are making deathless impressions upon immortal minds, then 
 shall we see, as I believe, results which will greatly surpass the highest 
 expectations of the most ardent and enthusiastic advocates of popular edu- 
 cation. 
 
 But I am occupying more space than I intended, and will only add that 
 I am, dear sir, 
 
 Very respectfully and truly yours, 
 
 ROGER S. HOWARD. 
 
 LETTER FROM MISS CATHERINE E. BEECHER. 
 
 BRATTLEBOROUGH, Aug. 20, 1847. 
 HON. HORACE MANN. 
 
 Dear Sir, In reference to the questions you propose, I would reply, 
 that I have been engaged, directly and personally, as a teacher, about 
 fifteen years, in Hartford, Conn., and Cincinnati, O. I have had a few
 
 588 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 classes of quite young children under my care for the purpose of making 
 some practical educational experiments ; but most of my pupils, in age, have 
 ranged from twelve to twenty. I have had pupils from every State in the 
 Union ; and, though I have no precise records, I think the number cannot 
 be less than a thousand. 
 
 I have ever considered intellectual culture as subordinate to the main end 
 of education, which is the formation of that character which Jesus Christ 
 teaches to be indispensable to the eternal well-being of our race. Excepting 
 the few classes of young children before named, my efforts have been directed 
 to measures for reforming bad and supplying good habits and principles 
 in minds already more or less developed by education. And this I consider 
 a much more difficult work than the right training of minds as yet unin- 
 jured by pernicious influences. 
 
 In reference to the work of reforming miseducated minds, I have found 
 that the noblest-constructed minds, when greatly mismanaged, are most 
 liable to become the worst ; while, at the same time, they most readily yield 
 to reformatory measures : so that, as a general rule, with exceptions, of 
 course, I should expect to do the most good to the worst class of pupils, 
 and, in some cases, to make finer characters from this class than from those 
 who, possessing less excitable temperaments, have not fallen so far. 
 
 I would also remark, that, in the results I should anticipate in the case 
 to be supposed hereafter, my chief hope of success would rest on the proper 
 application of tho~e truths and motives which distinguish the teachings of 
 Jesus Christ from what is called " natural religion ; " and by modes of pre- 
 sentation more simple and practical than I have ever seen fully adopted, or 
 than I ever adopted myself when a practical teacher. 
 
 With these preliminaries, which I hope will be carefully pondered, and 
 borne in mind as indispensable, I will now suppose that it could be so 
 arranged, that in a given place, containing from ten to fifteen thousand 
 inhabitants, in any part of our country where I ever resided, all the children 
 at the age of four shall be placed, six hours a day, for twelve years, under 
 the care of teachers having the same views that I have, and having received 
 that course of training for their office that any State in this Union can 
 secure to the teachers of its children. Let it be so arranged, that all these 
 children shall remain till sixteen under these teachers, and also that they 
 shall spend their lives in this city ; and I have no hesitation in saying. I 
 do not believe that one, no, rtoi a single one, would fail of proving a respecta- 
 ble and prosperous member of society : nay, more, I believe every one 
 would, at the close of life, find admission into the world of endless peace 
 aud love. I say this solemnly, deliberately, and with the full belief that I 
 am upheld by such imperfect experimental trials as I have made, or seen 
 made by others ; but, more than this, that I am sustained by the authority 
 of Heaven, which sets forth this grand palladium of education, " Train
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 589 
 
 up a child in the way lie should go ; and, when he is old, he will not depart 
 from it." 
 
 This sacred maxim surely presents the divine imprimatur to the doctrine 
 that all children can be trained up in the way they should go, and that, 
 when so trained, they will not depart from it. Nor does it imply that edu- 
 cation alone will secure eternal life, without supernatural assistance ; but it 
 points to the true method of securing this indispensable aid. 
 
 In this view of the case, I can command no language strong enough to 
 express my infinite longings that my countrymen, who, as legislators, have 
 the control of the institutions, the laws, and the wealth of our physically 
 prosperous nation, should be brought to see that they now have in their 
 hands the power of securing to every child in the coming generation a life 
 of virtue and usefulness here, and an eternity of perfected bliss hereafter. 
 How, then, can I express or imagine the awful responsibility which rests 
 upon them, and which hereafter they must bear before the great Judge 
 of nations, if they suffer the present state of things to go on, bearing, as it 
 does, thousands and hundreds of thousands of helpless children in our 
 country to hopeless and irretrievable ruin ? 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 C. E. BEECHES. 
 
 P. S. All I anticipate, as stated in my communication, may come to pass 
 without any departure from your statutory regulations in regard to religious 
 instruction, as / understand these statutes, and as I suppose them to be under- 
 stood by the great body of those who formed them, and of those who are 
 bound by them. C. E. B. 
 
 The above answers are not choice specimens selected from 
 among many ; they are all I have received : and every person 
 to whom the circular was sent was pleased to answer it. From 
 conversations held at different times with many other teachers, 
 I believe the amount of testimony might have been very much 
 increased, though no confirmation can be needed of its authority. 
 The witnesses here introduced certainly possess all the requi- 
 sites to entitle them to implicit credence. Their character for 
 honor and veracity repels the idea of distrust. Years of expe- 
 rience in different places, and the training of children in great 
 numbers, qualify them, in point of knowledge, to speak with 
 authority ; and they are exempt from any imaginable bias to 
 warp or to color the truth.
 
 590 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 From time immemorial, it has been customary for parlia- 
 ments and other legislative bodies to commit important prac- 
 tical subjects to committees, and, through their instrumentality, 
 to obtain the testimony of learned and skilled men on the mat- 
 ter of inquiry. Sometimes witnesses are heard at the bar of 
 the House, that is, before the legislative body by whom the 
 inquiry was instituted. Xow, I have desired in the present 
 case to introduce testimony of such credibility and cogency, 
 that no legislative committee could report against it, and no 
 legislative body could act against it, without incurring an 
 historic odium, either for want of intelligence or want of in- 
 tegrity. 
 
 So, too, by the rules of the " common law," all questions of 
 fact are decided by the intervention of a jury. In ancient 
 times, when the character of juries was very different from 
 what it now is, they sometimes gave a corrupt verdict, that 
 is, a verdict so contradictory to evidence as to be of itself proof 
 that they had discarded the testimony adduced, and been gov- 
 erned by some dishonest motive in their own breasts. A jury 
 convicted of this offence was said to be " attainted : " its mem- 
 bers were punished by a fine, and rendered infamous ever after. 
 It was my intention, in the present case, to introduce evidence 
 of such authority and directness, as, if submitted to a jury and 
 rejected by them, would, under the ancient law referred to, 
 subject them to the penalties of an " attaint" 
 
 There is one quality or characteristic common to all the wit- 
 nesses whose testimony is above introduced, which, as it seems 
 to me, I am not only justified in stating, but which it would be 
 inexcusable to withhold. All of them, without exception, are 
 well-known believers in a theological creed, one of whose fun- 
 damental articles is the depravity of the natural heart. They 
 hold, in a literal sense and with regard to all mankind, that 
 the innate affections or dispositions of the soul are " not subject 
 to the law of God, neither indeed can be," until another influ- 
 ence, emanating from the Godhead, and equal in itself to an 
 act of creation, .shall have renewed them. AYith this private
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 591 
 
 belief of the witnesses, of course, neither the Board of Educa- 
 tion, nor any man or body of men, have aught to do, unless, 
 indeed, it be to affirm their right to hold it, in common with 
 every other man's right either to agree with them or to dissent 
 from them. But, as bearing upon the point under considera- 
 tion, the fact is most important : it adds great cogency to their 
 testimony, and invests it, as it were, with a compulsory power. 
 For if those who believe that the human heart is by nature 
 alienated from God, that its innate relation to the Holy One is 
 that of natural repulsion, and not of natural attraction, nor even 
 of neutrality, if they, from their own experience in the educa- 
 tion of youth, believe that our common-school system, under cer- 
 tain practicable modifications, can rear up a generation of men 
 who will practise towards their fellow-men whatsoever things 
 are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, then, 
 surely, a rational community can need no additional evidence 
 or motive to impel it to the work of reform. And all those, if 
 such there are, who believe that moral evil comes from the 
 abuse or misuse of powers in themselves good, and not from 
 any inborn and original predilection for wrong, may well take 
 courage, aud may tender their heartiest co-operation in further- 
 ing an enterprise, which, even under fundamental postulates the 
 most adverse, promises results so glorious. If they who be- 
 lieve that there is a principle of evil in the human soul, lying 
 back of consciousness, incorporated as an original element into 
 its constitution, beginning to be when the spirit itself began to 
 be, and growing with it through all the primordial stages of its 
 growth, which, indeed, belongs to the ante-natal period of 
 every descendant of Adam as much as spottedness belongs to 
 an unborn leopard before it has a skin, or venom to an un- 
 hatched cockatrice before it has a sting, if those who believe 
 this do nevertheless believe that our common-school system, 
 with certain practicable modifications, can send out redeeming 
 and transforming influences which shall expel uiuety-nine hun- 
 dredths of all the vices and crimes under which society now 
 mourus and agonizes, then those who dissent from the belief
 
 592 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 that the natural heart is thus organically intractable and per- 
 verse will be all the more ready to proclaim the ameliorating 
 power of education, and will all the more earnestly labor for its 
 diffusion. And the crowning beauty of the whole is, that Chris- 
 tian men of every faith may cordially unite in carrying forward 
 the work of reform, however various may be their opinions as 
 to the cause which has made that work necessary ; just as all 
 good citizens may unite in extinguishing a conflagration, though 
 there may be a hundred conflicting opinions as to the means or 
 the men that kindled it. In short, it may be difficult to deter- 
 mine which class will act under the more conscience-moving 
 motives, those who hold to a total depravity or corruption 
 of the human heart, but still believe it can be emancipated 
 from worldly vices and crimes by such instrumentalities as we 
 can readily command ; or those who hold that heart to be nat- 
 urally capable of good as well as evil, and who therefore be- 
 lieve, not only that a still larger proportion of the race can be 
 rescued from the dominion of wrong-doing, but that a consum- 
 mation so glorious can be reached at a still earlier period, and 
 with a less expenditure of effort. 
 
 But this divine result of staying the desolating torrent of 
 practical iniquity by drying up its fountain-head in the bosoms 
 of the young is promised only on the antecedence or performr 
 ance of certain prescribed conditions. These conditions are 
 the three following : 
 
 1. That the public schools shall be conducted on the cardi- 
 nal principles of the present New-England systems. 
 
 2. That they shall all be taught, for a period of ten months 
 in each year, by persons of high intellectual and moral qualifi- 
 cations ; or, in other words, that all the teachers shall be equal 
 in capacity and in character to those whom we now call first- 
 class or first rate teachers. And, 
 
 3. That all the children in the Commonwealth shall attend 
 school regularly that is, for the ten months each year during 
 which they are kept from the age of four to that of sixteen 
 years.
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 593 
 
 As it is on the performance of these conditions that the ren- 
 ovation of society is predicated, it is, of course, necessary to 
 show that they are practicable conditions. I therefore proceed 
 to consider, and, as I trust, to establish, their practicability. 
 
 I. The first condition namely, that the schools shall be 
 conducted on the cardinal principles of the New-England sys- 
 tems is already satisfied. The Massachusetts school-system 
 represents favorably the systems of all the New-England States. 
 Not one of them has an element of prosperity or of permanence, 
 of security against decay within, or the invasion of its rights 
 from without, which ours does not possess. Our law requires 
 that a school shall be sustained in every town in the State, 
 even the smallest and the poorest not being excepted ; and 
 that this school shall be as open and free to all the children as 
 the light of day or the air of heaven. No child is met on the 
 threshold of the schoolhouse-door, to be asked for money, or 
 whether his parents are native or foreign, whether or not they 
 pay a tax, or what is their faith. The schoolhouse is common 
 property. All about it are enclosures and hedges, indicating 
 private ownership, and forbidding intrusion ; but here is a spot 
 which even rapacity dares not lay its finger upon. The most 
 avaricious would as soon think of monopolizing the summer 
 cloud, as it comes floating up from the west to shed its treas- 
 ures upon the thirsty earth, as of monopolizing these fountains 
 of knowledge. Public opinion that sovereign in representa- 
 tive governments is in harmony with the law. Not unfre- 
 queutly there is some private opposition, and occasionally it 
 avows itself, and assumes an attitude of hostility ; but persever- 
 ance on the part of the friends of progress always subdues it, 
 and the success of their measures eventually shames it out of 
 existence. 
 
 The law requires all public schools to be kept by a teacher 
 whose literary and moral qualifications have been examined 
 and approved by a committee chosen for the purpose by the 
 people themselves. Not less than the six following branches 
 of knowledge are to be taught in every town ; namely, orthogra- 
 
 38
 
 594 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 phy, reading, writing, English grammar, geography and arith- 
 metic. The teaching of " good behavior," which includes all 
 the courtesies of life aud all the minor morals, is also expressly 
 enjoined. These peremptory requisitions are the minimum, but 
 not the maximum. Any town may enlarge the course of studies 
 to be pursued in its schools as much as it may choose, even to 
 the preparation of young men for the university, or for any 
 branch of educated labor. It may also bestow an equivalent 
 education upon the other sex. The law also contains a further 
 provision (subject, however, to be set aside by the express vote 
 of a district or town), that, in every school of more than fifty 
 scholars in regular attendance, an assistant teacher shall be 
 employed. Although there is no statutory provision to this 
 effect in any other of the New-England States, yet the good 
 sense of the community everywhere advocates this rule. 
 
 Nor are the needs of the intellect alone provided for. In pre- 
 scribing the education to be given to the moral nature, the law 
 grows more earnest and impressive. Its beautiful and deep- 
 toned language is, " It shall be the duty of the president, pro- 
 fessors, and tutors of the University at Cambridge, and of the 
 several colleges, and of all preceptors and teachers of acade- 
 mies, and all other instructors of youth, to exert their best en- 
 deavors to impress on the minds of children and youth commit- 
 ted to their care and instruction the principles of piety, justice, 
 and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity, 
 and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry, aud frugality, 
 chastity, moderation, and temperance, and those other virtues 
 which are the ornament of human society, and the basis upon 
 which a republican constitution is founded ; and it shall be the 
 duty of such instructors to endeavor to lead their pupils, as 
 their ages and capacities will admit, into a clear understanding 
 of the tendency of the above-mentioned virtues to preserve and 
 perfect a republican constitution, and secure the blessings of 
 liberty, as well as to promote their future happiness, and also 
 to point out to them the evil tendency of the opposite vices." 
 But lest any individual, or body of individuals, forgetful of the
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 595 
 
 divine precept to do unto others as they would be done unto, 
 should seize upon this statutory injunction, or upon some part 
 of it, as a pretext for turning the schools into proselytizing 
 institutions, the law rears a barrier against all sectarian en- 
 croachments. That which is " calculated to favor the tenets 
 of any particular sect of Christians " is excluded from the 
 schools. The use of the Bible in schools is not expressly en- 
 joined by the law, but both its letter and its spirit are in conso- 
 nance with that use ; and, as a matter of fact, I suppose there is 
 not, at the present time, a single town in the Commonwealth in 
 whose schools it is not read. Whoever, therefore, believes 
 in the Sacred Scriptures, has his belief, in form and in spirit, in 
 the schools ; and his children read and hear the words them- 
 selves which contain it. The aduiiuistration of this law is 
 intrusted to the local authorities in the respective towns. By 
 introducing the Bible, they introduce what all its believers hold 
 to be the rule of faith and practice ; and although, by excluding 
 theological systems of human origin, they may exclude a pecu- 
 liarity which one denomination believes to be true, they do but 
 exclude what other denominations believe to be erroneous. 
 Such is the present policy of our law for including what all 
 Christians hold to be rfght, and for excluding what all, except- 
 iug some one party, hold to be wrong. 
 
 If it be the tendency of all parties and sects to fasten the 
 mind upon what is peculiar to each, and to withdraw it from 
 what is common to all, these provisions of the law counterwork 
 that tendency. They turn the mind towards that which pro- 
 duces harmony, while they withdraw it from sources of dis- 
 cord ; and thus, through the medium of our schools, that song 
 which ushered in the Christian era " Peace on earth and 
 good-will to men " may be taken up and continued through 
 the ages. 
 
 The first condition, then, not only may be, but actually is, 
 complied with in the school-system of Massachusetts, as now 
 established and administered. 
 
 II. The second condition requires that all our schools shall
 
 596 ANNUAL REPOETS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 be kept, for ten months in each year, by persons of high intel- 
 lectual and moral qualifications, by persons equal in capacity 
 and in character to those whom we now call first-class or first- 
 rate teachers. 
 
 This condition supposes two things, which, as yet, we are 
 very far from having attained. The question is, Are they at- 
 tainable ? 
 
 In regard to teachers, it supposes such an improvement as 
 shall advance all those who are now behind what we call the 
 front rank, until they shall come upon a line with it. Of course, 
 if this be done, some will be found in advance of this line ; for 
 it never can happen with regard to all the members of any pro- 
 fession, that they will stand precisely abreast. It supposes, 
 also, that all our schools shall be kept for ten mouths each year. 
 
 The questions, then, for consideration under this head, are 
 two ; namely : 
 
 1. Is there, in the community at large, sufficient natural 
 endowment or capacity, from which, by appropriate training 
 and cultivation, the requisite number of teachers, possessing the 
 supposed qualifications, can be prepared? And, 
 
 2. Can the towns and the State, separately or as copartners, 
 bear the expense of maintaining the required class of teachers 
 for the required length of time? 
 
 Is not the first question answered in the affrrnative by obser- 
 vation and experience? For the last two generations, with 
 exceptions comparatively few, all the eminent men of our State, 
 whether men of letters, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, legisla- 
 tors, or judges, have taught school, more or less, during the 
 early part of their lives. Now, it is no disparagement to say, 
 respecting those who constitute at present our best class of 
 teachers, that they are not superior in endowments or natural 
 capacity, in industry, or iu versatility of genius, to a vast num- 
 ber of their predecessors, who, having labored for a limited 
 period in this field, at length abandoned it in quest of some 
 other occupation, truly known to be more lucrative, and falsely 
 supposed to be more honorable. It is no unauthorized assunip-
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 597 
 
 tion, then, to say, that great numbers of those who left the em- 
 ployment of school-keeping for something deemed to be more 
 eligible, would, had they continued in it, have won the honor 
 of standing in the foremost rank of this noble profession. 
 
 In the second place, to prove that there is no lack of natural 
 talent in existence from which to form the supposed class of 
 teachers, I may refer to the general history and experience of 
 mankind in all other departments of human effort. No new 
 calling has ever reached such an elevation as to insure honor 
 and emolument to its professors, which has not, without delay, 
 attracted to itself an adequate number of followers. Witness 
 the intrinsically odious profession of arms, a profession so 
 odious, that those have been held worthy of especial reward who 
 resisted the natural love of ease, and instincts of self-preserva- 
 tion, to encounter its hardships and perils. So, also, has it 
 been in regard to commerce and the useful arts. And in those 
 truly dignified and honorable professions, the legal and cleri- 
 cal, where mind is the object to be acted upon, as well as 
 the agent to act, the supply has generally exceeded the demand. 
 Now, could the business of education take its stand in public 
 estimation by the side of the most honorable and lucrative call- 
 ings in life, we are authorized by all the experience of mankind 
 to conclude that it would soon cluster around itself an amount 
 of talent, erudition, and genius, at least equal to what has ever 
 adorned any other avocation among civilized men. 
 
 But, independently of personal knowledge and of historic ex- 
 perience, may not a conclusive argument in support of the gen- 
 eral position be drawn from the energy and versatility with 
 \vhich. as we all know, Nature has gifted the minds of her chil- 
 dren? In the variety and strength of the capacities belonging to 
 the race, there must be the means or instruments by which Provi- 
 dence can accomplish every good work. Somewhere in each 
 generation, the powers exist by which the generation that is to 
 succeed it may be advanced another stage along the radiant 
 pathway of improvement. But in the whole of the past history 
 of the world, no generation has yet existed, whose faculties
 
 598 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 have not, to a very great extent, lain dormant, to say noth- 
 ing of the perversion of those which have been developed. But 
 our free institutions cherish growth. The future, with us, is not 
 to be measured by the past. The mind of the masses, which 
 for so many ages had been crippled, and fettered after it was 
 crippled, is here unbound. Under the stimulus applied to na- 
 tive vigor, talent and genius start up as naturally as vegetation 
 in the spring. The desire of bettering one's condition springs 
 from a universal instinct in the human mind. With us. every 
 man sees that the gratification of this desire is within his reach. 
 Including the lifetime of a single generation, that is, within 
 the last forty or fifty years, there is not a school-district in 
 Massachusetts, however obscure, which has shown any interest 
 in the character of its schools, that has not sent out one or 
 more men who have become conspicuous in some of the hon- 
 orable positions of society. They are found throughout the 
 Union, wherever enterprise or talent is rewarded. Those dis- 
 tricts, and, still more, those towns, where common schools have 
 been an object of special regard, have sent forth many such 
 men. While visiting different parts of the State for the last 
 ten years, facts, in sufficient numbers to make a most interest- 
 ing and instructive book, have come to my knowledge, show- 
 ing that those districts and towns, where special pains have 
 been exerted and special liberality bestowed in behalf of com- 
 mon schools, have supplied a proportion of all the distinguished 
 men of the vicinity, corresponding with the superior excellence 
 of the early education afforded them. So, on the other hand, 
 neglectful towns and districts have beea comparatively barren 
 of eminent men. The great cars of corn will not grow on sand- 
 hills. Great men will not spring up in au atmosphere void of 
 intellectual nutrition. Nature observes a law in this respect, 
 in regard to her spiritual as well as her physical productions. 
 Now, although something has been done in Massachusetts for 
 the culture and expansion of the common mind, yet indefinitely 
 more may be done. Even were it admitted, therefore, that the 
 State had not been able in past times to supply the requisite
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 599 
 
 number of teachers of the highest grade, it would by no means 
 follow that she could not do so in future. 
 
 The intrinsically noble profession of teaching has, most un- 
 fortunately, been surrounded by an atmosphere of repulsion 
 rather than of attraction. Young men of talent are generally 
 determined by two things in selecting an employment for life. 
 The first of these is the natural tendency of the mind, its 
 predisposition towards one pursuit rather than towards another. 
 In this way, Nature often predetermines what a man shall do ; 
 and, to make her purpose inevitable, she kneads it, as it were, 
 into the stamina of his existence. She does not content herself 
 with standing before his will, soliciting or tempting him to a 
 particular course, but she stands behind the will, guiding and 
 propelling it ; so that from birth he seems to be projected 
 towards his object like a well-aimed arrow to its mark. Those 
 in whom the love of beautiful forms, colors, and proportions, 
 predominates, are naturally won to the cultivation of the fine 
 arts, or to some branch of the useful arts most congenial to the 
 fine. Those who have a great fondness for botany and chem- 
 istry, and to whom physiological inquiries are especially grate- 
 ful, become physicians. Persons enamoured of forensic contests, 
 roused by their excitement?, and panting for the eclat which 
 their victories confer, betake themselves to the study of the 
 law, and become advocates. The clerical profession is com- 
 posed of men whose mind? are deeply imbued and penetrated 
 with the religious sentiment, and who ponder profoundly and 
 devoutly upon the solemn concerns of an hereafter.* This con- 
 stitutional or moral affinity for one sphere of employment rather 
 than for another predetermines many minds in choosing the 
 object of their pursuit for life. It is like the elective attractions 
 of the chemist, existing beforehand, and only awaiting the con- 
 tiguity of the related substances to make their secret affinities 
 manifest. 
 
 * This general remark must be taken with the exception of a few of the very 
 worst men which any age ever produces. These become members of the clerical 
 profession, because, under the mask of its sanctity, they hope to practise their 
 iniquities with impunity.
 
 600 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 But this natural tendency is often subjected to a disturbing 
 or modifying force ; and it yields to this force the more readily 
 as it is itself less intense and dominant. All minds have a de- 
 sire, more or less energetic, for pleasure, for wealth, for honor, 
 or for some of that assemblage of rewards which obtains such 
 willing allegiance from mankind. Hence the internal, inborn 
 impulse is often diverted from the specific object to which it 
 naturally points, and is lured away to another object, which, 
 from some collateral or adventitious reason, promises a readier 
 gratification. 
 
 There is also a class of minds of vigorous and varied capaci- 
 ties, which stand nearly balanced between different pursuits, 
 and which, therefore, may be turned, by slight circumstances, 
 in any one of many directions. They are like fountains of 
 water rising on a table-land, whose channels may be so cut as 
 to cover either of its slopes with fertility. 
 
 Now, the qualities which predispose their possessor to be- 
 come the companion, guide, and teacher of children, are good 
 sense, lively religious sensibilities, practical, unaffected benevo- 
 lence, a genuine sympathy with the young, and that sunny, 
 genial temperament which always sees its own cheerfulness 
 reflected from the ever-open mirror of a child's face. The 
 slightest exercise of good sense makes it apparent that any 
 one year of childhood will exert a more decisive control over 
 future destiny than any ten years afterwards. The religious 
 and benevolent elements seize instinctively upon the promise 
 made to those who train up children in the way they should go. 
 The love of children casts a pleasing illusion over the mind in 
 regard to every thing they do, if, indeed, it be an illusion, 
 and not a truth above the reach of the intellect, elevating 
 their puerile sports into dignity, hailing each step in their 
 progress as though it were some grand discovery in science, 
 and grieving over their youthful wanderings or backslidings 
 with as deep a sorrow as is felt for the turpitude of a full- 
 grown man, or for the heaven-defying sins of a nation. So 
 that genial, joyous, ever-smiling temperament, which .sees only
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 601 
 
 rainbows where others see clouds, and which is delighted by 
 the reflection of itself when coming from one child's face, will 
 never tire of its labors when the same charming image per- 
 petually comes back from the multiplying glasses of group 
 after group of happy children, ever-varying, but always 
 beautiful. 
 
 Now, I think we have abundant reason to believe that a 
 sufficient number of persons, bearing from the hand of Nature 
 this distinctive image and superscription of a school-teacher, 
 are born into the world with every generation. But the mis- 
 fortune is, that when they arrive at years of discretion, and 
 begin to survey the various fields of labor that lie open before 
 them, they find that the noblest of them all, and the one, too, 
 for which they have the greatest natural predilection, is neither 
 honored by distinction nor rewarded by emolument. They see, 
 that, if they enter it, many of their colleagues and associates 
 will be persons with whom they have no congeniality of feeling, 
 and who occupy a far less elevated position in the social scale 
 than that to which their own aspirations point. If they go 
 through the whole country, and question every man, they can- 
 not find a single public-school teacher who has acquired wealth 
 by the longest and the most devoted life of labor. They can- 
 not find one who has been promoted to the presidency of a 
 college, or to a professorship in it ; nor one who has been 
 elected or appointed to fill any distinguished civil station. 
 Hence, in most cases, the adventitious circumstances which 
 surround the object of their preference repel them from it. 
 Or, it they enter the profession, it is only for a brief period, 
 and for some collateral purpose ; and, when their temporary 
 end is gained, they sink it still lower by their avowed or well- 
 understood reasons for abandoning it. Such is the literal 
 history of hundreds and of thousands who have shone or are 
 now shining in other walks of life, but who would have shone 
 with beams more far creative of human happiness had they 
 not been struck from the sphere for which Nature pre-adapted 
 them.
 
 602 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Look at the average rate of wages paid to teachers in some 
 of the pattern States of the Union. In Maine, it is 15.40 per 
 month to males, and $4.80 to females. In New Hampshire, it 
 is $13.50 per month to males, and $5.65 to females. In Ver- 
 mont, it is $12.00 per month to males, and 84.75 to females. 
 In Connecticut, it is 816.00 per month to males, and $6.50 to) 
 females. In New York, it is $14.96 per mouth to males, and 
 86.69 to 'females. In Pennsylvania, it is $17.02 per month to 
 males, and 10.09 to females. In Ohio, it is 815.42 per month 
 to males, and 88.73 to females. In Indiana, it is 812.00 per 
 mouth to males, and $6.00 to females. In Michigan, it is 
 $12.71 per month for males, and $5.36 for females. Even in 
 Massachusetts, it is only $24.51 per month to males, and $8.07 
 to females. All this is exclusive of board ; but let it be com- 
 pared with what is paid to cashiers of banks, to secretaries of 
 insurance-companies, to engineers upon railroads, to superin- 
 tendents in factories, to custom-house officers, navy agents, and 
 so forth, and so forth, and it will then be seen what pecu- 
 niary temptations there are on every side, drawing enterpris- 
 ing and talented young men from the ranks of the teacher's 
 profession. 
 
 Nor does the social estimation accorded to teachers much 
 surpass the pecuniary value set upon their services. The 
 nature of their calling debars them, almost universally, from 
 political honors, which, throughout our whole country, have a 
 factitious value so much above their real worth. Without 
 entire faithlessness to their trust, they cannot engage in trade 
 or commercial speculations. Modes of education have here- 
 tofore been so imperfect, that I do not know a single instance 
 where a teacher has been transferred from his school to any 
 of those departments of educated labor in which such liberal 
 salaries are now given. And thus it is, that the profession at 
 large, while it enjoys but a measured degree of public respect, 
 seems shut out from all the paths that lead to fortune or to 
 fame. No worldly prize is held up before it ; and, in the 
 present condition of mankind, how few there are who will
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 603 
 
 work exclusively for the immortal reward ! It supposes the 
 possession only of very low faculties, to derive pleasure from 
 singing the praises of a martyr ; but to be the martyr one's 
 self requires very high ones. 
 
 Hence it is, as was before said, that when the aspiring and 
 highly-endowed youth of our country arrive at years of discre- 
 tion, and begin to survey the varied employments which lie 
 spread out before them, they find that the noblest of them all 
 presents the fewest external attractions. Those whose natural 
 or acquired ambition seeks for wealth, go into trade. The 
 mechanical genius applies himself to the useful arts. The 
 politically ambitious connect themselves with some one of 
 those classes from which public officers are usually selected. 
 Medicine attracts those who have the peculiar combination of 
 tastes congenial to it. Those who ponder most upon the ways 
 of God to men, minister in sacred things. Who, then, are left 
 to fill the most important position known to social life? A few 
 remain, whose natural tendencies in this direction are too vehe- 
 ment to be resisted or diverted ; a somewhat larger number, 
 who have no strong predilection for one sphere of exertion 
 rather than for another, and to whom, under the circumstances 
 peculiar to each, school-keeping is as eligible as any other em- 
 ployment : but many, very many, the great majority, engage in 
 it, not for its own sake, but only to make it subservient to some 
 ulterior object, or with humiliation it is said perhaps only 
 to escape from manual labor. 
 
 The profession of school-keeping, then, as a profession, has 
 never had an equal chance with its competitors. On the one 
 hand, it has been resorted to by great numbers, whose only ob- 
 ject was to make a little money out of it, and then abandon it ; 
 and, on the other, its true disciples, those who might have been 
 and should have been its leaders and priesthood, have been 
 lured and seduced away from it by all the more splendid prizes 
 of life. 
 
 Even though, therefore, the profession of school-keeping has 
 not been crowded by learned and able men, devoting their
 
 604 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 energies and their lives to its beneficent labors, this fact wholly 
 fails to prove that Nature does not produce, with each genera- 
 tion, a sufficient number of fit persons, who, under an equitable 
 distribution or apportionment of honors and rewards for meri- 
 torious services, would be found pre-adapted for school-keeping, 
 in the same way that Newton was for mathematics, or Pope 
 for poetry, or Franklin for the infallibility of his common 
 sense. Indeed, the proportion of good teachers whom we now 
 have, notwithstanding all their discouragements against enter- 
 ing, and their seducements for leaving, the profession, seem 
 demonstrative of the contrary. 
 
 Thus far, the argument has proceeded upon the basis that 
 the required number of teachers, possessing the high grade of 
 qualifications supposed, must equal the present number, such 
 as these are. But it is almost too obvious to need mentioning, 
 that if the qualifications of teachers were to be so greatly en- 
 hanced, and the term of the schools so materially lengthened, 
 as is proposed, teaching would then really become a profession, 
 and the same teachers would keep school through the year. 
 Instead, therefore, of changing from male teachers in the win- 
 ter to females in the summer, back again to males in the winter, 
 and so on alternately, the children of each school suffering 
 under a new step-father or a new step-mother each half-year, 
 they would enjoy the vastly-improved system of continuous 
 training under the same hands. This would diminish, by 
 almost one-half, the required number of teachers for our schools ; 
 the poorer half would be discarded, the better half retained. 
 Surely, under these circumstances, if a sufficient number of 
 the very highest class of teachers could not be found, it would 
 not be owing to any parsimony of Nature in withholding the 
 endowments, but to our unpardonable niggardliness in not 
 cultivating and employing them. 
 
 Feeling now authorized to assume that the first proposition 
 has been satisfactorily established, it only remains to be consid- 
 ered, under this head, whether the community at large the 
 towns separately, or the towns and the State by joint contribu-
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 605 
 
 tions cau afford to make such compensation as shall attract 
 to this field of labor the high order of teachers supposed, and 
 shall requite them generously for their services. 
 
 To induce persons of the highest order of talent to become 
 teachers, aud to deter good teachers from abandoning the pro- 
 fession, its emoluments must bear some close analogy to those 
 which the same persons could command in other employments. 
 The case, too, as presented in the circular, and upon which the 
 evidence has been obtained, supposes the schools to continue 
 for ten months in each year. Although in many large towns 
 the schools are now kept more than this portion of the year, 
 yet their average length for the whole State is but eight mouths. 
 The increased expense, then, both of the longer term and of 
 the more liberal compensation, must be provided for. Can the 
 community sustain this expense? 
 
 Let us suppose, for a moment, that ninety-nine per cent of 
 our whole community should be temperate, honest, industrious, 
 frugal people, conscientious in feeling, and exemplary in con- 
 duct, is it not certain that two grand pecuniary consequences 
 would immediately follow ; namely, a vast gain in productive 
 power, and a vast saving in the criminal destruction and loss 
 of property ? Either of these sources of gain would more than 
 defray the increased expenses of the system, which, according 
 to the evidence I have obtained, would insure both. The cur- 
 rent expenses last year, for the education of all the children in 
 the State between the ages of four and sixteen, was $3.14, on 
 an average, for each one. Look into the police courts of our 
 cities in the morning, and especially on Monday morning, when 
 the ghastly array of drunkards is marched in for trial. A case 
 may not occupy ten minutes ; and yet the fine, costs, and ex- 
 penses would educate two children, for a year, in our public 
 schools, at the present rate, or one child at double the present 
 rate. The expenses incurred in punishing the smallest theft 
 that is committed exceed the present cost of educating a child 
 in our schools for a year. A knave who proposes to obtain 
 goods by false pretences will hardly aim at making less than a
 
 606 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 thousand dollars by his speculation. There arc more than one 
 hundred and fifty towns in Massachusetts, that is, about half 
 the whole number in the State, in each of which the annual 
 appropriation for all its schools is less than one thousand dollars. 
 A burglar or highway robber will seldom peril his life without 
 the prospect of a prize which would educate five hundred or a 
 thousand children for a year. An incendiary exhibits fire-works 
 at an expense which would educate all the children of many a 
 school-district in the State, from the age of four to that of six- 
 teen ; while the only reward he expects is that of stealing a 
 few garments or trinkets during the conflagration. In a single 
 city in the State, consisting of sixteen or seventeen thousand 
 inhabitants, it was estimated by a most respectable and intelli- 
 gent committee, that the cost of alcoholic drinks during the last 
 year far exceeded the combined cost of all the schools and all 
 the churches in it, although, for both religion and education, it 
 is a highly liberal city. The police expenses alone of the city 
 of New York are about half a million a year. But all these 
 are but a part of the sluice-ways through which the hard-earned 
 wealth of the people is wasted. What shall be said of those 
 stock-swindlings and bank-failures whose capitals of hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars are embezzled in " fair business trans- 
 actions ; " whose vaults, sworn to be full of specie or bullion, 
 remind one, on inspection, not merely of a pecuniary, but of a 
 philosophical, vacuum? what of those epidemic speculations 
 in land (often Fairy-land, though void of both beauty and 
 poetry), where fortunes change hands as rapidly as if depend- 
 ent upon the throw of a gambler's dice? and what of those 
 enormous peculations by government defaulters, where more 
 money is ingulfed by one stupendous fraud than Massachusetts 
 expends for the education of all her children in a year? All 
 this devastation and loss the public bears with marvellous, with 
 most criminal composure. The people at large stand by the 
 wreck-covered shore, where so many millions are dashed in 
 pieces and sunk, and seem not to recognize the destruction ; 
 and, what is infinitely worse, there are those who rejoice in iuc
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 607 
 
 howl of the tempest and the shrieks of the sufferers, because 
 they can grow rich by plundering only here and there a frag- 
 ment of property from the dead or the defenceless. By charity, 
 by direct taxes, by paying twenty or thirty per cent more for 
 every article or necessary of life than it is equitably worth, by 
 bad debts, by the occasional and involuntary contribution of a 
 pocket-book, a watch, a horse, a carriage, a ship, or a cargo, 
 to which the robber and the barrator help themselves by paving 
 premiums for insurance, and in a hundred other ways, the 
 honest and industrious part of the people not only support 
 themselves, but supply the mighty current of wealth that goes 
 to destruction through these flood-gates of iniquity. The peo- 
 ple do not yet seem to see that all the cost of legislating against 
 criminals ; of judges and prosecuting officers, of jurors and 
 witnesses, to convict them ; of building houses of correction 
 and jails and penitentiaries for restraining and punishing them, 
 is not a hundredth part of the grand total of expenditure 
 incurred by private and social immoralities and crimes. The 
 people do not yet seem to see that the intelligence and the 
 morality which education can impart is that beneficent kind 
 of insurance, which, by preventing losses, obviates the necessity 
 of indemnifying for them ; thus saving both premium and 
 risk. What is ingulfed in the vortex of crime in each genera- 
 tion would build a palace of more than Oriental splendor in 
 every school-district in the laud, would endow it with a library 
 beyond the ability of a life-time to read, would supply it with 
 apparatus and laboratories for the illustration of every study 
 and the exemplification of every art, and munificently requite 
 the services of a teacher worthy to preside in such a sanctuary 
 of intelligence and virtue. 
 
 But the prevention of all that havoc of worldly goods which 
 is caused by vice transfers only one item from the loss to the 
 profit side of the account. Were all idle, intemperate, preda- 
 tory men to become industrious, sober, and honest, they would 
 add vast sums to the inventory of the nation's wealth, instead 
 of subtracting from it. Let any person take a single town, vil-
 
 608 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 lage, or neighborhood, and look at its inhabitants individually, 
 with the question in his mind, how many of them are produ- 
 cers, and how many are non-producers, that is, how many, 
 either by the labor of the body or the labor of the mind, add 
 value and dignity to life, and how many barely support them- 
 selves, and I think he 'will often be surprised at the smallness 
 of the number by whose talent and industry the storehouses of 
 the earth are mainly filled, and all the complicated business 
 of society is principally managed. Could we convert into co- 
 workers for the benefit of mankind all those physical and 
 spiritual powers of usefulness which are now antagonists or 
 neutrals, the gain would be incalculable. 
 
 Add the above two items together, namely, the saving of 
 what the vicious now squander or destroy, and the wealth, 
 which, as virtuous men, they would amass, and the only dif- 
 ficulty presented would be to find in what manner so vast an 
 amount could be beneficially disposed of. 
 
 But it is not to be disguised, whatever reforms may be insti- 
 tuted, that the cost of crime cannot, at once, be prevented. 
 For a season, therefore, and until the expenses of education 
 shall arrest and supersede the expenses of guilt, both must be 
 borne. I wish to state the difficulty without extenuation. The 
 question, then, is, Can both be temporarily borne? 
 
 The appropriations for which the towns voluntarily taxed 
 themselves last year for the current expenses of the schools 
 that is, for the wages and board of teachers, and for fuel 
 were $662,870.57. Adding the income of the surplus revenue, 
 when appropriated for the support of schools, it was $670,628. - 
 13. The valuation of the State I suppose to be not less than 
 $450,000,000. Last year's tax, therefore, for the current ex- 
 penses of the schools, was less than one mill and u half on the 
 dollar, less than one mill and a half on a thousand mills. 
 Taking the average of the State, then, no man was obliged to 
 pay more than one six hundred and sixty-sixth part of his prop- 
 erty for this purpose ; or, rather, such would have been the 
 case had there been no poll-tax, had the whole tax been lev-
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 609 
 
 led upon property alone. At this rate, it would take six hundred 
 and sixty-six years for all the property of the State to be once 
 devoted to this purpose. And does not the portion of our 
 worldly interests which is dependent upon public schools bear 
 a greater ratio to the whole of those interests than one to six 
 hundred and sixty-six? I need not argue this point ; for who, 
 out of an insane asylum, or even of the curable classes in 
 it, will question the fact? Who will say that the importance 
 of this interest, as compared with all the earthly interests of 
 mankind, is not indefinitely greater than this? Who will say, 
 that, to secure so precious an end as the diffusion of almost 
 universal intelligence and virtue, and the suppression, with an 
 equal degree of universality, of ignorance and vice, it would 
 not be expedient to do as the Bishop of Laudaff once pro- 
 posed that the British nation should do, in an eventful crisis of 
 its affairs, vote away, by acclamation, one-half of all the 
 wealth of the kingdom? But there is no need of carrying our 
 feelings or our reason to this pitch of exaltation. There is no 
 need of any signal or unwonted sacrifice. There is no need of 
 a devotion of life, as is done in battle. There is no need of 
 perilling fortunes, as is done every day in trade. There is no 
 need that any man in the community should lose one day from 
 his life, or an hour from his sleep, or a comfort from his ward- 
 robe or his table. Three times more than is now expended 
 that is, four and a half mills on every thousand mills of the 
 property of the State, or only one part in two hundred and 
 twenty-two, instead of one in six hundred and sixty-six 
 would defray every expense, and insure the result. Regarded 
 merely as a commercial transaction, a pecuniary enterprise, 
 whose elements are dollars and cents alone, there is not an 
 intelligent capitalist in the State who would not, on the evidence 
 here adduced, assume the whole of it, and pay a bonus for the 
 privilege. When the State was convinced of the lucrativeuess 
 or general expediency of a railroad from Worcester to its west- 
 ern border, it bound itself, at a word, to the amount of five mil- 
 lions of dollars ; and I suppose it to be now the opinion of every 
 
 39
 
 610 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 intelligent man in the Commonwealth, that, when the day of 
 payment shall arrive, the road itself, in addition to all the col- 
 lateral advantages which it will have conferred, will have paid 
 for itself, and will then forever remain, not merely a monu- 
 ment of wisdom, but a reward for sagacity. Yet what is a rail- 
 road, though it does cut down the mountains and lift up the 
 valleys, compared with an all-embracing agency of social and 
 moral reform which shall abase the pride of power, and elevate 
 the lowliness of misfortune? And those facilities for travel 
 which supersede the tediousness of former journeyings and the 
 labor of transportation what are they, when compared with 
 the prevention of that "lamentation, mourning, and woe" 
 which come from the perpetration of crime ? When the city of 
 Boston was convinced of the necessity of having a supply of 
 pure water from abroad for the use of its inhabitants, it voted 
 three millions of dollars to obtain it ; and he would be a bold 
 man who would now propose a repeal of the ordinance, though 
 all past expenditures could be refunded. Yet all the school- 
 houses in Boston, which it has erected during the present cen- 
 tury, are not worth a fourth part of this sum. For the supply 
 of water, the city of New York lately incurred an expenditure 
 of thirteen millions of dollars. Admitting, as I most cheerfully 
 do, that the use of water pertains to the moral as well as to the 
 ceremonial law, yet our cities have pollutions which water can 
 never wash away, defilements which the baptism of a moral 
 and Christian education alone can remove. There is not an 
 appetite that allies man to the brutes, nor a passion for vain 
 display which makes him more contemptible than any part of 
 the irrational creation, which does not cost the country m >re, 
 every year, than such a system of schools as would, according 
 to the evidence I have exhibited, redeem it, almost entirely, 
 from its follies and its guilt. Consider a single factitious habit 
 of our people, which no one will pretend adds any degree to the 
 health, or length to the life, or decency to the manners, of the 
 nation : I mean the smoking of tobacco. It is said, on good 
 authority, that the annual expenditure in the country for the
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 611 
 
 support of this habit is ten millions of dollars ; and if we reflect 
 that this sum, averaged upon all the people, would be only half 
 a dollar apiece, the estimate seems by no means extravagant. 
 Yet this is far more than is paid to the teachers of all the pub- 
 lic schools in the whole United States. 
 
 Were nations to embark in the cause of education for the 
 redemption of mankind, as they have in that of war for their 
 destruction, the darkest chapters in the history of earthly 
 calamities would soon be brought to a close. But, where units 
 have been grudged for education, millions have been lavished 
 for war. While, for the one purpose, mankind have refused to 
 part with superfluities, for the other they have not only impov- 
 erished themselves, but levied burdensome taxes upon posterity. 
 The vast national debts of Europe originated in war ; and, but 
 for that scourge of mankind, they never would have existed. 
 The amount of money now owed by the different European 
 nations, is said, on good authority, to be $6,387.000,000. Of 
 this inconceivable sum, the share of Great Britain is about 
 4,000,000,000 (in round numbers, 800,000,000 pounds ster- 
 ling) ; of France, $780,000,000 ; of Russia and Austria, $300,- 
 000,000 each ; of Prussia, $100,000,000 ; and the debts of the 
 minor powers increase this sum to $6,387,000,000. The 
 national debt of Great Britain now amounts to more than $140 
 for every man, woman, and child in the three kingdoms. Allow- 
 ing six persons to each family, it will average more than $850 
 to every household, a sum which would be deemed by thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands of families in that country to be a 
 handsome competence, nay, wealth itself, if it were owing to 
 instead of from them. 
 
 It is estimated, that, during the twenty-two years preceding 
 the general peace of 1815, the unimaginable sum of 6,250,- 
 000,000 pounds sterling, or $30,000,000,000, had been ex- 
 pended in war by nations calling themselves Christian, an 
 amount of wealth many fold greater than has ever been 
 expended, for the same purpose, by all the nations on the globe 
 whom we call savage, since the commencement of the Christian
 
 612 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 era. The earth itself could not be pawned for so vast a sum 
 as this, were there any pawn-broker's office which would accept 
 such a pledge. Were it to be set up at auction, in the presence 
 of fierce competitors for the purchase, it would not sell for 
 enough to pay its war-bills for a single century. The war- 
 estimates of the British Government, even for the current year 
 of peace, are $85,000,000 ; and the annual interest on the na- 
 tional debt incurred by war is at least 8120.000,000 more, or 
 more than $200,000,000 for a common, and, on the whole, a 
 very favorable year. Well might Christ, in the Beatitudes, 
 pronounce his emphatic benediction upon the " peace-makers." 
 We have emulated, in this country, the same gigantic scale 
 of expenditure for the same purpose. Since the organization 
 of the Federal Government, in 1789, the expense of our mili- 
 tary and naval establishments and equipments, in round num- 
 bers, is $700,000,000. Two of our ships of the line have cost 
 more than $2,000,000. The value of the arms accumulated 
 at one time at the Arsenal in Springfield, in this State, was 
 $2,000,000. The Military Academy at West Point has cost 
 more than $4,000,000. In our town-meetings, and in our 
 school-district-meetings, wealthy and substantial men oppose the 
 grant of $15 for a school-library, and of $30 for both library 
 and apparatus ; while at West Point they spend $50 in a 
 single lesson at target-firing ; and the government keeps a hun- 
 dred horses, and grooms and blacksmiths to take care of them, 
 as an indispensable part of the apparatus of the academy. The 
 pupils at our normal schools, who are preparing to become 
 teachers, must maintain themselves : the cadets at the academy 
 receive $28 a mouth, during their entire term, as a compensa- 
 tion for being educated at the public expense. Adding bounties 
 and pensions to wages and rations, I suppose the cost of a 
 common foot-soldier in the army cannot be less than $250 a 
 year. The average cost of female teachers for the public 
 schools of Massachusetts last year was only $13.00 a mouth, 
 inclusive of board, or at a rate which would give $163.20 for 
 the year ; but the average length of the schools was but eight
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 613 
 
 months : so that the cost of two common soldiers is nearly that 
 of five female teachers. The annual salary of a colonel of 
 dragoons in the United-States army is $2,206 ; of a brigadier- 
 general, $2,958 ; of a major-general, $4,512 ; that of a captain 
 of a ship of the line, when in service, $4,500 ; and, even when 
 off duty, it is $2,500. There are but seven towns in Massa- 
 chusetts where any teacher of a public school receives so high 
 a salary as $1,000 ; and, in four of these towns, one teacher 
 only receives this sum. 
 
 Had my purpose been simply to show the pecuniary ability 
 of the people at large to give the most generous compensation 
 to such a company of accomplished, high-minded, noble teach- 
 ers as would lift the race, at once, out of the pit of vice and 
 ignorance and superstition as safely and as tenderly as a 
 mother bears her infant in her arms, had my purpose been 
 merely to show this pecuniary ability, then I have already said 
 too much. But my design was, not merely to carry conviction 
 to the minds of those who would contest this fact, but to make 
 the denial of it ridiculous. 
 
 III. But the consummation of this reformatory work is not 
 promised, except upon the performance of a third condition, 
 namely, that all the children in the State between the ages of 
 four and sixteen years shall be brought into school for ten 
 mouths in each year. In other words, while the schools are 
 kept, the attendance of all the children upon them, with one 
 or two exceptions to be hereafter noticed, must be regular. 
 
 Since the keeping of registers in our schools has made 
 known the enormous amount of absences from them, there is 
 but one subject which has excited greater alarm, or given rise 
 to louder complaints. Teachers complain of this absence, 
 because, while it increases their labors, it diminishes their 
 success ; indeed, it makes entire success an impossibility. 
 Parents who do send their children regularly to school com- 
 plain of it, because the tardy and the occasional comers are a 
 dead weight upon the progress of those who are uniformly 
 present and prompt. Committees complain of it, in behalf of
 
 614 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION'. 
 
 the towns which they represent, because it lowers the general 
 standard of intelligence among the people ; and because, taken 
 on an average for the whole State, it incurs a total loss of from 
 one-third to one-half of all the money which is annually levied 
 by taxation for the support of schools. Men of wealth who 
 have no children to send to school, or who for any reason send 
 uone, complain of it, because, though they may be willing to 
 be taxed for the Education of all, yet they are not willing to be 
 taxed to have their money taken and thrown away. They 
 think it, and with good reason too, to be an intolerable hard- 
 ship to be first confronted with the argument that they are 
 bound to secure the general intelligence and morality of the 
 people through the instrumentality of schools, and when they 
 have acknowledged the validity of this argument, and cheerfully 
 paid their money, to have the vciy men who so argued and so 
 claimed turn upon them, and say. "We are still at liberty to 
 throw your money away by keeping our children at home ; and, 
 though you must keep the school regularly for us, we have a 
 right to use it irregularly, or not at all, as we please." Thus 
 the delinquents, where they owe apology and repentance, retort 
 with indignity, and persevere in injustice. 
 
 I cannot believe that our people will always, or even long, 
 submit to this enormous abuse, now made known to them by 
 well-authenticated documents. For an economical people, who 
 form political parties on the subject of expenditures by the gov- 
 ernment, and make " retrenchment " a watch-word ; for a 
 people whose legislature sometimes debates for days together 
 whether the salary of an officer shall be a few hundred dollars 
 more or less, to continue to throw away, as was done last 
 year, more than $200,000 on account of voluntary, gratuitous, 
 and, in most cases, wanton absences from school, is not credible. 
 For a people who are sufficiently proud, to say the least, of 
 their general intelligence, and who are sincerely anxious to 
 perpetuate and improve their moral character, to be willing to 
 forfeit one-third part of all the blessings of their free-school 
 system, without any necessity, or any plausible pretext, is not
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 615 
 
 to be believed. This great evil must be dealt with according 
 :o its magnitude. Violent diseases demand energetic remedies. 
 It would be as unwise in a State as in an individual to allow 
 its precautions to diminish while its dangers increase ; to sleep 
 more quietly as peril becomes more imminent. When we 
 know that a malady is dangerous, and that a remedy is at 
 hand, wisdom dictates its speedy application. 
 
 I propose, then, to consider the objections that may possibly 
 be urged to the regular attendance of all our children upon 
 school for ten months in each year, from the age of four to that 
 of sixteen years. I believe them to be by no means insur- 
 mountable ; nay, that their formidableness will wholly disap- 
 pear if subjected to a candid examination. 
 
 1. It may be said that there is a class of parents amongst 
 us who depend partially upon the labor of their children for 
 the support of their families, and who are too poor to forego 
 the earnings of these children for ten months in the year, and 
 for twelve years of their minority. 
 
 With regard to a portion of the class of parents referred to, 
 this suggestion would have a foundation in fact ; with regard 
 to another portion of them, it would have no such foundation. 
 It is well known that a class of parents exists amongst us, who 
 work their children that they may themselves be idle ; who 
 coin the health, the capacities, and the future welfare, of their, 
 own offspring into money, which money, when gained, is not 
 expended for the necessaries or the comforts of life, but is 
 wasted upon appetites that brutify or demonize their possessor. 
 The objections of this class against permitting their children to 
 be educated at the public expense are not legitimate. It would 
 be infinitely better for them, for their families, and for the pub- 
 lic, if they were cut off from these means of sinful indulgence. 
 It would improve their condition still further, if they were 
 obliged to be industrious, even though coerced to labor by the 
 goads of hunger and cold. The best of all conditions for them 
 would be, that they should themselves labor for the support 
 of their children at school, where those intellectual and vir-
 
 616 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 tuous habits would be formed, and that filial piety inculcated, 
 which would lead the children, in after-years, to return to 
 the parents, with a generous requital, the favors they had 
 received. 
 
 There is, doubtless, another portion of this general class, 
 with whom the alleged necessity for their children's earnings 
 as a part of the means for family support is no pretence. The 
 number or age of the family, sickness, misfortune, or other 
 cause, may render this or some other resource indispensable to 
 the procurement of the necessaries and decencies of life. I 
 would not underrate the number or the necessities of this class 
 of persons ; they have claims upon our warmest sympathies : 
 but I have reason to believe that the class itself is not a very 
 large one. Where the heads of the family enjoy good health ; 
 where they may have the assistance of their children, who are 
 of an age able to render it, for several hours each day, for one 
 or two entire half-days each week, and for two mouths unin- 
 terruptedly each year, the circumstances must be peculiar 
 where industry and frugality, with such favors as the honest 
 and praiseworthy poor may always count upon from their 
 better-conditioued neighbors, will not supply the means of a 
 comfortable subsistence. 
 
 Still, cases of necessity do and will exist ; and, where the 
 need is not supplied by individual charity, there is no other 
 alternative but to do it at the public expense. This would 
 introduce no new principle into our legislation. It would be 
 only a moderate but highly beneficial extension of an existing 
 one. Our laws now provide for physical destitution, whatever 
 may be its cause ; and they enjoin upon school-committees the 
 duty of furnishing all needful school-books, at the expense of 
 their respective towns, to all children whose parents are unable 
 to procure them. 
 
 The question then arises, What degree of destitution and 
 there is no propriety in restricting this to physical destitution 
 makes it expedient for a wise government to interfere, and 
 afford relief? " Poor-laws," as we understand the term, are
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 617 
 
 of modern origin. They were not only unknown to all bar- 
 barous nations, but to most Christian and civilized ones until 
 a recent period. In England, they date from the reign of 
 Elizabeth. In Scotland, although in a small class of extreme 
 cases legal relief may have been rendered, yet "poor-laws" 
 can hardly be said ever to have had an effective existence in 
 that country. In Ireland, they were unknown until recently. 
 In this country, they are almost coeval with our colonial set- 
 tlements. 
 
 But there neither is, nor ever has been, any legal standard 
 of poverty. The degree of destitution Avhich shall entitle the 
 sufferer to relief is not a fixed quantity, like the statutory 
 length of a yard, or the Winchester bushel. The general 
 notions of men as to what constitutes poverty range between 
 wide extremes, according to their prevalent- style of living, 
 their enlightenment, and their benevolence. It is said, that 
 when the present king of France heard that the income of the 
 Jewish banker in London amounted only to some hundreds of 
 dollars each hour, he expressed his deep grief at learning that 
 he was so poor. "With us, he who can command a comfortable 
 shelter, decent clothes, and a sufficient supply of wholesome 
 food, for himself and family, excites no special commisera- 
 tion for his poverty ; while there are places upon the earth 
 where a potato a day is considered an independent fortune. 
 Now, between these extremes, what shall the true definition of 
 poverty be? 
 
 So the line which divides poverty from competence is not a 
 stationary but a movable one. The laws themselves change ; 
 and the same law, on a question like this, will be made to 
 speak a very different language under different administrators. 
 In favor of the militia, or of the country's defence, our law 
 exempts from attachment, execution, and distress, whether for 
 debt or for taxes, the uniform, arms, ammunition, and accou- 
 trements which officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, 
 are required to possess. In favor of the common sentiments 
 of humanity, our law exempts also from attachment and execu-
 
 618 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 tion not only wearing apparel, but a great variety of articles 
 of household furniture, bedsteads, beds, bedding, an iron 
 stove, fuel, and other commodities, to the value of fifty dollars ; 
 also a cow, six sheep, one swine, and two tons of hay ; also 
 the tools and implements used by a debtor in his trade, not 
 exceeding fifty dollars in value ; and also rights of burial, and* 
 tombs used as repositories for the dead. Our legislatioa on' 
 this subject has been humanely progressive, as may be seen by 
 reference to statutes 1805, ch. 100 ; 1813, ch. 172 ; 1822, ch. 
 93, 8 ; 1832, ch. 58 ; 1838, ch. 145, &c. In a neighboring 
 State, by a late law, a portion of the debtor's homestead is also 
 brought within the same rule. In favor of learning and reli- 
 gion, all school-books and Bibles used in the family are also 
 exempted from attachment and execution for debt : and, as was 
 before said, all school-children destitute of school-books are 
 first supplied with them at the public expense ; and, where the 
 parents are unable to reimburse the cost, the supply is gra- 
 tuitous. Massachusetts has, from time to time, founded and 
 endowed hospitals for the insane ; and she makes annual and 
 liberal appropriations for the education of the blind and the 
 deaf and dumb. She is now engaged in erecting a noble insti- 
 tution for the reformation of juvenile delinquents ; and a com- 
 mission instituted by her is inquiring, at the present time, 
 into the condition of idiots, which unfortunate, repulsive, 
 and hitherto outcast portion of the community, it is not to be 
 doubted, she will soon gather together, and, in imitation of the 
 noble examples set by France, Switzerland, and Prussia, will 
 educate to cleanliness, to decency, and to no inconsiderable 
 degree of positive enjoyment and usefulness. Each one, too, 
 of all these great movements, when carried out into execution, 
 has proved economical as well as philanthropic and Christian. 
 What striking results, in proof of this, are exhibited by the 
 statistics of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester ! Accord- 
 ing to the last report of that institution which Dr. Woodward 
 made, the average expense of twenty-four old cases taking 
 the first twenty-four on the list, and not selecting them, or
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 619 
 
 taking them at random was $1.945.83 each; and their 
 aggregate expense, $46,700 : while the average expense of the 
 same number of recent cases, taking the last on the list who 
 were discharged cured, was $41.53 each ; and their aggregate 
 expense, $996.75 : so that the whole expense of twenty-four 
 recent cases was but about one-half as much as of one old one. 
 That hospital already has far more than paid for itself by the 
 saving it has effected ; because, without it, all the new cases 
 would have been old ones. I preseut these economical aspects 
 of the subject, by no means because I deem them to be the 
 most important, but because, all over the world, there is a 
 large class of persons with whom the pecuniary argument is 
 the most persuasive and eloquent, and who will be induced to 
 lend their services in aid of great social ameliorations only 
 when they find that humanity is economy, and that " godli- 
 ness" is "great gain" in a worldly sense. They will then 
 enlist for the sake of the " great gain," though quite indifferent 
 as to the other quality. When I have been asked by persons 
 from the fertile and exuberant regions of our own country, or 
 from transatlantic nations, how it is, that, with our ungenerous 
 soil and uugenial clime, we are pecuniarily able to support 
 these various and costly establishments, my answer has been, 
 that we are able because we do support them. 
 
 But the question recurs, What is poverty? What is that 
 straitness of circumstances, which, for educational purposes, 
 would require a wise and profound statesman, and, of course, 
 the State itself, to interpose, and to supply those means for the 
 education of the child which the parent is unable to render? It 
 being proved, if all our children were to be brought under the 
 benignant influences of such teachers as the State can supply, 
 from the age of four years to that of sixteen, and for ten mouths 
 in each year, that ninety-nine in every hundred of them can be 
 rescued from uncharitableness, from falsehood, from intemper- 
 ance, from cupidity, licentiousness, violence, and fraud, and 
 reared to the performance of all the duties, and to the practice 
 of all the kindnesses and courtesies, of domestic and social lite ;
 
 620 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 made promoters of the common weal, instead of subtracters 
 from it, this being proved, I respectfully and with deference 
 submit to the Board, and, through them, to the legislature, and 
 to my fellow-citizens at large, that every man is POOR, in an 
 educational sense, who cannot both spare and equip his children 
 for school for the entire period above specified ; and that, while 
 he remains thus poor, it is not only the dictate of generosity and 
 Christianity, but it is the wisest policy and profoundest states- 
 manship too, to supply from the public treasury municipal 
 or state, or both whatever means may be wanted to make 
 certain so glorious an end. These principles and this practice 
 the divine doctrines of Christianity have always pointed at, and 
 a progressive civilization has now brought us into proximity to 
 them. How is it that we can call a man poor because his body 
 is cold, and not because his highest sympathies and affections 
 have been frozen up within him, in one polar and perpetual 
 winter, from his birth? Hunger does not stint the growth of 
 the body half so much as ignorance dwarfs the capacities of the 
 mind. No wound upon the limbs, or gangrene of vital organs, 
 is a thousandth part so terrible as those maladies of the soul 
 that jeopard its highest happiness, and defeat the end for which 
 it was created. And infinitely aggravated is the case where 
 children are the sufferers ; where moral distempers are inflicted 
 upon them by parents, or are inherited by them from ancestors ; 
 where they are born into an atmosphere saturated with the in- 
 fection of crime ; where vice obtrudes itself upon every sense, 
 and presses inward, through every pore, to be imbibed and 
 copied, just as the common air forces itself into the nostrils to 
 be breathed ; and where, in their early imitative transgressions, 
 they are no more consciously guilty than in the heaving of their 
 lungs in an act of respiration. 
 
 Were a ship, in mid-ocean, to be overtaken by a storm, to 
 be dismantled, dismasted, and reduced to an unmanageable 
 hulk, and while its crew were famishing, and in momentary 
 danger of foundering, were another ship to pass within hail, 
 but to refuse all succor and deliverance, should we not justly
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 621 
 
 regard the deed as an enormous atrocity? But what moral 
 difference does it make whether we pass by our perishing 
 " neighbor" on the sea or on the dry land? The pitfalls of 
 perdition on shore are deeper and far more terrible, and are 
 inhabited by direr monsters, than any ocean-caves. Now, it is 
 the children of the man who, through sickness or other misfor- 
 tune, has not the means fully and thoroughly to educate them 
 for the duties of life, who represent this perishing and founder- 
 ing crew ; and the man who has superfluities, or even an inde- 
 pendency of means, but refuses to aid in giving these children 
 an education sufficient for all the common responsibilities of 
 life. lie is the hardened mariner who sails recklessly by, and 
 sees the helpless sufferers ingulfed in the wake of his own 
 proud vessel. 
 
 On this point, then, are we not authorized to conclude, in the 
 first place, that the cases are comparatively few where parents 
 cannot afford to forego the earnings of their children, and to 
 send them to school for the length of time and with the regu- 
 larity proposed? and, in the second place, were the cases of 
 destitution fur more numerous than they are, that there is still 
 an abundance of means, as well as an obvious duty, on the part 
 of the public, to supply all deficiencies? Assuming the value 
 of all the property in the State to be four hundred and fifty 
 millions of dollars, the simple interest upon it alone, at six per 
 cent, and without any addition from earnings, is twenty-seven 
 millions annually. The industrial statistics of the State show 
 that its income, from all its occupations and trades, is more 
 than a hundred millions of dollars annually ; and even this does 
 not include improvements upon its wharves, bridges, roads, or 
 lands. Must such a State pare and clip and scrimp, and dole 
 out its means with a niggardly hand, when unfolding the mortal 
 and the immortal capacities of its children ? 
 
 2. But though the means for supporting the schools are 
 abundant, and though the earnings of children, as a part of the 
 family's daily livelihood, may be forborne in one class of cases, 
 and made up in the other, a further question still remains,
 
 622 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Can the State itself afford to forego these juveniles services? 
 Can the machinery be operated, the shoes bound, the types set, 
 the errands and "chores" done, and the door-bells tended, if 
 all children under sixteen years of age are withdrawn from the 
 performance of these kinds of service for ten months each year? 
 Minors, under sixteen, are let out to corporations to be em- 
 ployed in manufacturing- establishments ; they are taken into 
 the families of the wealthy and forehanded as under-servants ; 
 a few are employed as errand-boys in the offices and shops of 
 cities ; and, in several of the lighter handicrafts, they are put 
 to regular labor. There are no exact data by which to deter- 
 mine the number of children so employed in the State. Com- 
 pared with the whole number of children in it between the 
 ages of four and sixteen, I suppose it to be inconsiderable ; so 
 inconsiderable, indeed, that, if their services in these employ- 
 ments were henceforth to be wholly discontinued, it would sub- 
 tract hardly an appreciable fraction from the aggregate products 
 of our labor and machinery. A highly-intelligent gentleman, 
 who has been engaged in manufacturing business for many 
 years, informs me that the company with which he is associat- 
 ed now employs 3,119 persons, namely, 2,571 in five cotton- 
 mills, 450 in two machine-shops, and 98 in one woollen-mill. 
 In the cotton-mills, 346 persons are employed who are under 
 sixteen years of age, equal to thirteen per cent. In the ma- 
 chine-shops, there are none. In the woollen-mill, there are six, 
 or six per cent. The average for the whole is about eleven per 
 cent. He adds, " I am of the opinion that this statement may 
 be taken as a fair representation, in regard to age, of the per- 
 sons in these several employments. Very few are under fifteen. 
 . . . This class of labor is not profitable to the employer, 
 and, except in particular cases, is only employed from motives 
 of charity. From my recollection of the labor required in 
 print-works" [he was formerly extensively engaged in printing 
 calicoes], " I am inclined to think the proportion of persons 
 under sixteen is not greater than the average in the mills and 
 shops before mentioned."
 
 EEPORT FOE 1847. 623 
 
 Here, then, is a statement, worthy of implicit reliance, re- 
 specting the largest branch of labor in which those children are 
 employed, who, on the proposed reformatory plan, would be 
 sent to school. Can a substitute be found for this juvenile 
 labor ? 
 
 In the first place, if that class of parents who now coin into 
 money their children's highest capacities for usefulness and en- 
 joyment, that they themselves may live in idleness aud intem- 
 perance, were peremptorily deprived of this source of gain, 
 they could perform a portion of the labor now exacted of the 
 children ; or, if not capable of performing this particular kind 
 of labor, they could at least do some other work, and thus set 
 free a class of persons who could perform it. 
 
 In the second place, manufacturers could employ, at a 
 slightly-enhanced price, a few more adults, or more persons 
 over the age of sixteen. I trust that no liberal-minded manu- 
 facturer would object to employing older help, at the present 
 time, on the plea of non-remunerating returns. 
 
 But, thirdly, a consideration of more significance than all 
 the rest, the children who had enjoyed such a school develop- 
 ment and training as we are now supposing would go into 
 the mills, after the completion of their educational course, with 
 physical and intellectual ability to help, and with a moral in- 
 ability to harm, which, of itself, would far more than compen- 
 sate for all the loss of their previous absence. Take any manu- 
 facturer whose mind has ever wandered, even by chance, to a 
 contemplation of the only true sources and securities of wealth, 
 and what would he not give to have all his operatives trans- 
 formed at once into men and women of high intelligence and 
 unswei'ving morality? to have them become so faithful and 
 honest, that they would always turn out the greatest quantity 
 and the best quality of work, without the trouble and expense 
 of watching and weighing and counting and superintending? 
 that they would be as careful of his machinery as though it 
 were their own? that they would never ask or accept more in 
 payment than their just due? that they would always consult
 
 624 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 their employer's interest, and never sacrifice it from motives of 
 personal ease or gain or ill-will? 
 
 I have been told by one of our most careful and successful 
 manufacturers, that, on substituting in one of his cotton-mills 
 a better for a poorer educated class of operatives, he was 
 enabled to add twelve or fifteen per cent to the speed of his 
 machinery, without any increase of damage or danger from the 
 acceleration. Here there was a direct gain of twelve or fifteen 
 per cent, a larger percentage than that of the supposed whole 
 number of children under sixteen years of age in all our facto- 
 ries. And this gain was effected, too, without any additional 
 investment of capital, or any increased expense for board. The 
 gain from improved morals would far exceed that from increased 
 intelligence. On the whole, then, if all children under sixteen 
 years of age were withdrawn from the factories for ten months 
 of each year in order to be sent to school, there is reason to 
 believe that the aggregate amount of the fabrics produced by 
 the mills would not be diminished even a yard. 
 
 The above considerations have special reference to children 
 employed in factories. I have selected this department of 
 labor, because I suppose that at least as many children under 
 sixteen are let out to service in factories as in all other 
 branches of business taken together. The same views, with 
 inconsiderable modifications, will apply to all others. It will 
 be seen at a glance, therefore, that the contemplated diversion 
 of children from manual labor to mental and moral pursuits 
 will not be such as to impair the industrial resources of the 
 State, or to diminish the marketable value of its products. 
 
 But theie is one remark which applies alike to all these 
 classes of employers. They use the services of children not 
 their own. Now, it must be conceded, that there exists a well- 
 grounded reluctance, on the part of free governments, to any 
 such interference with parental relations as is not made neces- 
 sary by the nature of the government itself, or by the criminal 
 conduct or culpable neglect of the parents. But those who 
 employ other men's children for their own profit cannot
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 625 
 
 intrench themselves behind the sacredness of parental rights. 
 Their object is their own personal gain, a lawful and lauda- 
 ble object, it is true, when pursued by justifiable means, but 
 one which cannot sanction for a moment the infliction of a 
 positive injury upon any child, or the deprivation of any privi- 
 lege essential either to his well-being, or to the permanence and 
 prosperity of the republic. The republic, indeed, if true to 
 itself, can never allow any of its members to do what will 
 redound to its own injury ; and, where no parental title can be 
 alleged, the assertion of any right over the labor of children 
 has as little foundation in natural justice or equity as the 
 tyrant's claim to the toil of his vassals. How can any man, 
 having any claim to the character, I will not say of a Chris- 
 tian or a philanthropist, but to the vastly lower one of a patriot, 
 use the services of a child in his household, his shop, his office, 
 or his mill, when he knows that he does it at the sacrifice, to 
 say the least, of that child's highest earthly interests? How 
 can any man seek to enlarge his own gains, or to pamper his 
 own luxurious habits, by taking the bread of intellectual and 
 moral life from the children around him? 
 
 I can anticipate but one objection more, having the aspect of 
 plausibility. It may be said, that although the schools should 
 be kept for the proposed length of time by teachers ennobled 
 with all the intellectual and moral attributes contemplated, yet 
 there are persons capable, like brutes, of bringing children 
 into the world, but impervious to those moral considerations 
 which should impel them to train up those children in the way 
 they should go ; and that, in regard to this class of parents, 
 some coercive measures will be necessary to secure the attend- 
 ance of their children at school. I admit this. But is coercion 
 a new idea in a community where there are houses of correc- 
 tion and jails and state-prisons and the gallows? Surely, 
 bolts and bars, granite walls, and strangulating hemp, are 
 strange emblems of the voluntary principle. Massachusetts 
 has, at the present moment, about two thousand persons under 
 lock and key, nineteen-twentieths of whom, had they been 
 
 40
 
 626 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 blessed with a good common-school education, would, accord- 
 ing to the testimony I have adduced, be now useful and exem- 
 plary citizens, building up, instead of tearing down, the 
 fabric of public welfare. With a population of between eight 
 hundred thousand and nine hundred thousand, she has at least 
 flve thousand police-officers and magistrates, armed with power 
 to seize and restrain, and bring to trial and punishment, any 
 transgressors of those laws which she has paid many other 
 thousands for enacting. Does it not argue, then, a perversion 
 of intellect, or an obliquity of the moral sense, to contend that 
 a child, for the purpose of being blessed by the influences of a 
 good school, cannot be taken from a parent who is preparing 
 him to become at least a private, if not an officer, in the great 
 army of malefactors ; while it is conceded, that by and by, 
 when this same child becomes a parent, he may then be taken 
 from his children, imprisoned, put to hard labor, or put to 
 death? So far as force is concerned, so far as any supposed 
 invasion of private rights is concerned, does not the greater 
 contain the less a thousand times over? If the State can send 
 a sheriff's posse to take a man from his own bed at midnight, 
 and carry him to jail, to trial, and to execution, does it require 
 a greater extension, or a bolder use, of its prerogatives, for the 
 same State to send a kind moral guardian to take a child from 
 the temptations of the street, or from the haunts of wickedness, 
 and bring him within the benign influences of a good school? 
 
 Should it be said, that, in the case of the adult offender, there 
 has been a forfeiture of civil rights by some overt act of viola- 
 tion, while in the case of the child the violation is prospective 
 only, I reply, that nothing is more commou than to arrest and 
 imprison men on probable suspicion merely ; nothing is more 
 common than to hold men to bail in sums proportioned to the 
 suspected offence ; and when a man gives proof that he intends 
 to do a wrong, and is only awaiting a favorable opportunity to 
 execute his intention, nothing is more common than to put him 
 under bonds for his good behavior. Every child who is not 
 receiving a <jood education comes at least within these latter
 
 REPORT FOE 1847. 627 
 
 categories. lie is aii object of violent suspicion. The pre- 
 sumption is strong that he will not make a good citizen ; that, 
 in some form or other, he will get his living out of the earnings 
 of his fellow-men, or offend against their welfare. If the Com- 
 monwealth, then, has a right to imprison an adult, or hold him 
 to bail on suspicion, or to bind him over to keep the peace and 
 be of good behavior, has it not an equal, nay. a superior right, 
 to demand guaranties for the child's appearance upon the stage 
 of manhood, there to answer to the great duties that shall be 
 required of him as a citizen? and a good education is surely 
 better security than any bail-bond that ever was executed. 
 Has not the State a right to bind each child to his good be- 
 havior by imparting to him the instruction, and by instilling 
 into his mind the principles, of virtue and religion, by which he 
 shall be twice-bound or doubly-fastened (for such is the etymo- 
 logical meaning of the word " religion") to perform, with in- 
 telligence and uprightness, his social and political duties when 
 he becomes a man? 
 
 Nor is our legislation without numerous precedents in favor 
 of securing education, even at the expense of coercive meas- 
 ures. These precedents are scattered along our annals from 
 the earliest periods of our colonial existence. The colonial 
 law of 1642, after premising that " forasmuch as the good 
 education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any 
 commonwealth." ordered " that the selectmen of every town 
 . . . shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neigh- 
 bors, to see, first, that none of them shall suffer so much bar- 
 barism in any of their families as not to endeavor to teach, by 
 themselves or others, their children and apprentices so much 
 learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English 
 tongue, and knowledge of the capital laws ; " and it imposed 
 upon parents what in those times was a heavy penalty for 
 neglect. 
 
 By the law of 1671, the selectmen were again required to see 
 that all children and youth " be taught to read perfectly the 
 English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws," &c.
 
 6-8 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 So the laws of the Plymouth Colony, after setting forth that 
 " whereas many Parents & Masters, either through an over- 
 respect to their own occasions and business, or not duely con- 
 sidering the good of their Children & Servants, have too much 
 neglected their duty in their Education, whilest they are young 
 & capable of Learning," proceeded to make substantially the 
 same requirements as were made by the above-cited provisions 
 in the laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ; and then de- 
 clared, that if any parents or masters, after warning and ad- 
 monition, should still remain negligent in their duty, " whereby 
 Children & Servants may be in danger to grow Barberous, 
 Rude, or Stubborn, & so prove Pests instead of Blessings to the 
 Country," then " a fine of ten shillings shall be levied upon the 
 goods of such negligent Parent or Master." If, after three 
 months subsequent to the levying of this fine, " no due care 
 shall be taken & continued for the Education of such children 
 & apprentices," then a fine of twenty shillings was to be levied. 
 " And Lastly, if, in three months after that, there be no Reforma- 
 tion of the said neglect, then the Select-men, with the help of 
 two Magistrates, shall take such children & servants from them 
 [the parents], & place them with some Masters for years, 
 (boyes till they come to twenty-one, and girls eighteen years of 
 age), which will more strictly educate and govern them, accord- 
 ing to the rules of the Order." 
 
 Nor were the above enactments a dead letter. The earlier 
 judicial and municipal records show, that, when the natural 
 parent broke from the ties of consanguinity and duty by neg- 
 lecting the education of his children, the law interfered, and 
 provided a civil parent for them. 
 
 Modern legislation, it is true, has greatly relaxed the strin- 
 gency of these provisions. No adequate substitute is to be 
 found for them in our present educational code ; and already 
 neglected childhood is avenging itself upon society by its man- 
 hood of crime, not unfrequeutly by its precocity in crime 
 long before the years of manhood have beeti reached. 
 
 Compulsory enactments, however, still attest that all the
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 629 
 
 spirit of our ancestors is not yet gone. Our laws provide, in 
 various cases, that minor children may be bound out to service, 
 males to the age of twenty-one years, and females to the 
 age of eighteen years ; but, in all cases, it is to be stipulated in 
 the contract that they shall be taught to " read, write, and 
 cipher." " Stubborn children " may be committed to the house 
 of correction. Children in the city of Boston, under the age 
 of sixteen years, whose " parents are dead, or, if living, do, 
 from vice or any other cause, neglect to provide suitable em- 
 ployment for or to exercise salutary control over " them, may 
 be sent by the court to the house of reformation. By the late 
 act establishing the State Reform School, male convicts under 
 sixteen years of age may be sent to this school from any part 
 of the Commonwealth, to be there " instructed in piety and 
 morality, and in such branches of useful knowledge as shall 
 be adapted to their age and capacity." The inmates may be 
 bound out ; but, in executing this part of their duty, the trus- 
 tees " shall have scrupulous regard to the religious and moral 
 character of those to whom they are to be bound, to the end 
 that they may secure to the boys the benefit of a good example 
 and wholesome instruction, and the sure means of improvement 
 in virtue and knowledge, and thus the opportunity of becoming 
 intelligent, moral, useful, and happy citizens of the Common- 
 wealth." Manufacturers, and overseers in manufacturing es- 
 tablishments, are prohibited, under a penalty, from employing 
 any child in their factories under fifteen years of age who has 
 not attended some day-school for a specified portion of the 
 year within which he may be so employed ; and they are also 
 prohibited from employing any child under twelve years of 
 age more than ten hours a day, under any circumstances. In 
 the case of fires, of explosive commodities, of contagious dis- 
 eases, of immigrant passengers from infected countries, and 
 so forth, the law vests its officers with plenary and summary 
 powers " to save the republic from detriment." 
 
 Paley has said, that " to send an uneducated child into the 
 world is injurious to the rest of mankind : it is little better than
 
 630 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 to turn out a mad dog or a wild beast into the streets." It is 
 difficult to conceive why he thought it to be any " better" 
 since one uneducated, vicious man may do infinitely more 
 harm to the world than all the rabid dogs or wild beasts that 
 ever existed. Much as we may need energetic remedies 
 against contagious diseases, we need them against contagious 
 vices more ; and quarantine-laws in favor of moral health are 
 the most necessary of all sanitary regulations. 
 
 But I forbear to press further considerations of this character 
 upon the attention of the Board. I hope that the great ma- 
 jority of our people will rather wonder why such an argument 
 should be deemed necessary than be disposed to question its 
 conclusions. 
 
 Having now surveyed, somewhat at length, the various 
 points pertaining to this subject, a brief recapitulation may 
 riot be amiss. 
 
 The basis on which it is suggested that our public school- 
 system shall be put is carefully defined in the circular. 
 
 In some important particulars, no change is necessary, as 
 our practice has already reached the point of theoretic excel- 
 lence. Such arc the unconditional rights of all children to enter 
 the school, or their entire exemption from rate-bills or any 
 capitation-tax, cither as a condition precedent or subsequent of 
 their attending school, the range of studies which may be 
 taught, the provision for moral and religious instruction, with 
 guaranties against its abuse, and so forth. 
 
 But, in other respects, important improvements are contem- 
 plated, no cardinal or organic change in the system itself, but 
 only progression in courses already begun. Such are, more be- 
 fitting qualifications in teachers for the great work they un- 
 dertake ; the maintenance of the schools for a period of ten 
 months in each year, instead of the present average of eight 
 months, and, as a necessary consequence, the appropriation 
 of moneys sufficient to sustain the prolonged school, and to 
 pay the better-qualified teachers ; and, finally, the gathering 
 into the schools, during their entire term, of all the children
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 631 
 
 in the community between the ages of four and sixteen 
 years. 
 
 From the comprehensiveness of this last condition, it is obvi- 
 ous that all cases of sickness, casualty, or other reasonable 
 cause of absence, must be excepted. And equally clear is it, 
 that when any parent or guardian prefers to educate his chil- 
 dren at home, or in a private school, he should be allowed to 
 do so, the means of education to be left wholly optional with 
 every one, provided assurance is given to the State that the end 
 is attained. 
 
 So far as the proposed changes in \~olve the appropriation of 
 more money, it has been shown that the State possesses not 
 only a sufficiency, but a redundancy of wealth for the purpose. 
 Besides, when once in operation, the system will be found 
 not merely a self-supporting one, but one yielding large reve- 
 nues, both saving and producing many times more than it 
 will cost, requiting a single expenditure by a manifold re- 
 muneration. 
 
 So far as higher mental and moral attributes in teachers will 
 be required, reasons have been offered to show that Nature, 
 or the common course of Providence, supplies an abundance of 
 intellectual power and of moral capability ; but that, through 
 our present misuse or mal-administration of these noble quali- 
 ties, they are either lost by neglect of culture, or diverted to 
 less worthy pursuits. There is no more iron in the world now 
 than there ever was ; we have only discovered how to use it 
 more advantageously, for steamboats, for railroads, for ma- 
 chinery, and a thousand mechanical purposes : and thus, in 
 point of mere pecuniary value, we have given it the first rank ' 
 among the precious metals. There is no more water flowing; 
 down our streams now than there was centuries ago ; but we 
 have just found out how to make it saw timber, grind wheat, 
 and make cloth : and already it does a thousand times more 
 work than all our twenty millions of people could do by their 
 own unassisted strength, should every man vie with his neigh-
 
 632 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 bor in the severity of his toil and in the amount of his produc- 
 tions. There are no more individual particles of electricity in 
 the air or in the earth to-day than there always have been. 
 Forever, since the creation, there has been an inconceivable 
 host of these particles, a multitude deriding all human power 
 of computation, which have careered round the earth by laws 
 of their own, each one being as distinct from all the rest, and 
 having as separate and independent an existence, as one wild 
 horse upon the prairies has from another. Long ago, science 
 learned how to catch and confine these natural racers ; but it 
 was not until our day that she discovered how to take them, 
 one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand, and despatch them as 
 messengers to distant cities ; to make tkem the common car- 
 riers of intelligence, whom no pursuers can overtake, no bribe 
 can corrupt, nor robbers despoil. Thus it is with the capaci- 
 ties of the human mind. By the bounty of Providence, they 
 may be employed and made sufficient for the greatest work of 
 reform. It is through our blindness and perversity that they 
 are not yet used to achieve their sublime purposes. Like the 
 iron, like the gravity of falling water, like the electric coursers, 
 they, too, have the power of conferring unimaginable blessings 
 upon the race ; but as yet they have only been very partially 
 enlisted in the highest services of humanity. 
 
 On the third point, that which contemplates the regular 
 attendance of all the children upon the school (with certain 
 specified exceptions), and even their compulsory attendance in 
 a class of extreme cases, I rely upon legal precedents and 
 analogies ; upon the necessity which is imposed upon a repub- 
 lican government, if it means to keep itself republican ; and 
 upon the broad principle, that a parent who neglects to educate 
 his child up to the point proposed proves that he has taken the 
 parental relation upon himself without any corresponding idea 
 of its solemnity, and thus, by the non-performance of his pa- 
 rental duties, forfeits his parental rights. 
 
 The coincidence of the results, too, to which the witnesses
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. G33 
 
 have come, is, on its face, a very remarkable circumstance ; 
 but it is rendered still more remarkable by the fact, that 
 they made their statements without any concert or compari- 
 son of views, and in entire independence of each other. The 
 proof, therefore, is not cumulative merely ; but its cogency is 
 raised to a mathematical power equal to the number of the 
 witnesses. 
 
 Such, then, is a condensed view or summary of the testimony 
 given by credible and trustworthy witnesses on a subject so 
 unspeakably important. The judicial mind cannot fail to ob- 
 serve that the section of country whence these results of expe- 
 rience have been gathered is large, embracing all the States 
 north and east of Pennsylvania. The schools have been both 
 public and private, in town and country ; have consisted of both 
 sexes and of all ages ; and have contained children from all the 
 States in the Union. They have embraced thousands and thou- 
 sands of the youth of the laud ; and, commencing at a point 
 of time now more than fifty years gone by, they reach in un- 
 broken continuity to the present day. We have, therefore, no 
 isolated or solitary case, illogically generalized, and made to 
 yield an inference too bi'oad for its premises. 
 
 Nor is it to be forgotten that each of the witnesses, in theo- 
 logical character, is a sincere believer in such an innate natural 
 condition of the human heart as opposes the most formidable 
 obstacles to success in moral training. Sovereign, indeed, must 
 be the influences which can educe exemplary lives and a well- 
 ordered society from a race, each one of whom could say lite- 
 rally, u I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother con- 
 ceive me," in a race whose alienation from the righteous law 
 of God is supposed to antedate volition, and even consciousness, 
 and to be mingled and inbred with the primary corpuscles of 
 being. It was no disrespect towards the many able and eminent 
 teachers of a different religious faith which deterred me from 
 propounding the same questions to them, and soliciting the re- 
 sults of their experience ; but it was because I wished to know 
 what was deemed to be practicable by those who saw the great-
 
 634 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 est difficulties to be overcome before success could be achieved. 
 While, therefore, their statements were solicited respecting the 
 moral efficacy or "potentiality" of schools " conducted on the 
 cardinal principles of the Neiv-England systems," yet it was my 
 wish that each one should make his own theological views 
 manifest on the face of his communication ; so that governors I 
 and legislators, and all leaders of public opinion, might see' 
 how much was believed to be attainable, even while contending 
 against the most formidable obstacles. I reasoned thus, that 
 if those who believe the battle-ground to be most nearly inac- 
 cessible, and the enemy's iutrenchments to be most nearly im- 
 pregnable, and his power to be most nearly invincible, do still 
 believe that victory can be won, then all would say there 
 should be no sleep in the camp until the war-cry is rung, and 
 the hand-to-hand struggle is begun. 
 
 But I must not disguise the fact, nor in any way divert 
 attention from it, that universality of education (either public 
 or private) is a substantive part of the plan here proposed, and 
 indispensable to its successful working. Indeed, I should have 
 thought it nugatory and trifling to ask the opinion of any 
 teacher about attainable results, had this condition been omit- 
 ted from the scheme. Had it been stipulated, or supposed, as 
 a preliminary of the plan, that one per cent only of the chil- 
 dren might be left out of the schools, doubtless the witnesses 
 would have made a deduction of at least five per cent in their 
 estimate of results. They would have felt bound to make an 
 allowance, not only for the abandoned class themselves, but for 
 the poisonous influence of that class upon all the rest. Doubt- 
 less every advance in the qualification of teachers, and in 
 gathering more and more of the children within the renovating 
 influences of the schools, will yield a great reward of mental 
 and moral benefits ; but universality in the end to be accom- 
 plished demands universality in the means to be employed. If 
 a contagious or infectious distemper were to break out in any 
 quarter of a city, and all its victims but one were to be re- 
 moved, though this removal would abate something from the
 
 EEPORT FOR 1847. 635 
 
 malignant type of the disease, and contract the circle of its 
 ravages, yet who would feel secure while even one should 
 remain to impart its virus by contact, or radiate its noxious 
 effluvia? In moral, no less than in physical maladies, the 
 security of each is conditioned on the security of all. The 
 confidence of every rational man must be impaired respecting 
 the prospective virtue of his own children while the children 
 of his neighbor are vicious ; and. for the comprehensive mean- 
 ing of the word " neighbor," Christ is our authority. I 
 thank God that there can be no safety for any until there is 
 safety for all. Were the sky to be opened, and a voice to ad- 
 dress us audibly from the heavens, it could not proclaim more 
 articulately than is done by the common course of Divine 
 Providence, that God has made of one blood all nations of men 
 to dwell on all the face of the earth ; and that, therefore, being 
 by the law of consanguinity one brotherhood and one body, 
 no one member of this body can suffer but all the members 
 must suffer with it, and no one member can be truly honored 
 but all the members must rejoice with it. Where men are 
 religious, therefore, this principle appeals to their religion, and 
 enforces all its dictates ; where men are not religious, but have 
 only an enlightened selfishness, it invokes that selfishness to 
 do good to others for the reflected benefits upon itself: and thus 
 it leaves only those to pursue a different course who are 
 morally selfish and intellectually blind. Hence, any system 
 of education which does violence to this great principle of uni- 
 versal benevolence which circumscribes itself within the 
 limits of a family, a caste, a party, or a sect is but human 
 weakness wrestling against Divine Power ; and, under what- 
 ever specious disguises it may mask itself, it is only mortal self- 
 ishness, seeking, by feigned and counterfeited compliances, to 
 cajole Heaven out of blessings promised only to those who do 
 unto others as they would that others should do unto them. 
 What right has any man, or body of men, to make the second 
 table of the law of less account than the first? or to delude 
 themselves with the belief that they love the Lord their God
 
 636 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 with all the heart, while they do not love their neighbor as 
 themselves? If God is our Father, all men must be our 
 brethren. 
 
 I believe it would not be only practicable, but easy, for the 
 legislature, at its ensuing session, now so soon to be com- 
 menced, to initiate a series of measures, which, in a very brief 
 period, would carry us through the earlier stages of the con- 
 templated reform, measures which would command the 
 ready asseut of a vast majority of the citizens of Massachu- 
 setts, and would thus leave but few of those unnatural cases 
 of those parents who are not parents to be dealt with com- 
 pulsively. 
 
 In concluding this Report, I shall not attempt to heighten the 
 effect of the evidence and the argument which have been sub- 
 mitted by any effort to describe the blessedness of that state of 
 society which the universal application of this reformatory 
 agency would usher in. Such an endeavor would be vain. He 
 who would do this must first behold the scenes, and be thrilled 
 by the joys, he would delineate ; he must borrow the language 
 of the Paradise he would describe. And, more than this, he 
 must be able to depict the depth and fierceness of the pains 
 which have been inflicted by the crimes of mankind, not only 
 upon the guilty perpetrators themselves, but upon the innocent 
 circles of their families and friends ; the terrors of the con- 
 science-stricken malefactor ; the sorrow and shame of children 
 bemoaning a parent's guilt ; the madness of the mother at the 
 ruin of her child ; the agony which brings down a father's gray 
 hairs with sorrow to the grave ; the pangs of fraternal and sis- 
 terly affection, to which a stain upon a brother's or a sister's 
 name is a dark spot upon the sun of life, which spreads and 
 deepens until it eclipses all the light of existence ; all the va- 
 ried cries of this mingled wail of distress, which have been 
 heard in all lands and at all times, from the death of Abel to 
 the present hour, all these he must have power to describe 
 who would describe the blessedness of a deliverance from them. 
 
 There is one consideratiou, however, which I cannot forbear
 
 REPORT FOR 1847. 637 
 
 to introduce, because it appeals alike to all those various and 
 oftentimes conflicting classes of men who are endeavoring in so 
 many different ways to ameliorate the condition of mankind. 
 Will not a moment's reflection convince them all, that, so far 
 as human instrumentality is concerned, education encompasses, 
 pervades, and overrules all their efforts, grants them whatever 
 triumphs they may achieve, and sets bounds to their successes 
 which they cannot overpass? Why does the advocate of tem- 
 perance, every time he returns upon his circuit of beneficence, 
 find his way again blocked up with the prostrate victims of 
 inebriation ? Why so long, in both hemispheres, have the 
 divinest appeals of the advocate of peace been drowned by the 
 din of mustering squadrons and the clarion of war ? Why does 
 the opponent of slavery, before he can strike the fetters even from 
 one victim, see other fetters riveted upon the limbs of many 
 more? Why do our moral-reform societies and our home- 
 mission societies call annually for more money and more labor- 
 ers wherewith to enter the ever-enlarging fields, as they open 
 before them, of licentiousness and of irreligion? Why do those 
 rich and powerful associations formed for evangelizing the 
 heathen world see the very ships which carry out the gospel 
 and its heralds freighted also with idols, made in Christian 
 lands, for those heathen to buy, and to worship as true gods, 
 and laden with a liquid poison, too, which sinks its victims to 
 such a depth of debasement as to make common heathenism 
 enviable? Why is it that the political parties into which our 
 country is divided, persist, year after year, in solemnly and un- 
 ceasingly charging each other with heinous and premeditated 
 offences against the fundamental principles of our government 
 and the highest welfare of the people? charges which, if true, 
 must brand the accused with infamy ; if untrue, the accusers. 
 So far as the members of any one of these various parties are 
 lovers of truth, of righteousness, and of peace, let them be 
 asked what is the reason why they accomplish so little, and 
 why so much ever remains to be done, and they will answer, 
 and answer truly, that they do not fail through lack of reason
 
 638 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 or of authority, but because of blindness of mind, or perversity 
 of heart, in those whom they address. The admonitions of his- 
 tory, the precepts of the gospel, the attributes of the Deity, are 
 all on their side ; but they are not heard, because they speak 
 to adders' ears ; they are not felt, because their words of fire 
 fall upon stony hearts. It is not, therefore, better or more ar- 
 guments that they need, but men capable of appreciating argu- 
 ment. Their eloquence is sufficiently electric and powerful, 
 were it not for the flintiness of the hearts that glance off its 
 lightnings. They want men whose intellects are not blind to 
 the most radiant truths, whose consciences are not as the 
 nether mill-stone, whose prejudices have not become fossilized. 
 The merits of the divinest cause may be all cancelled by the de- 
 merits of the hearers ; as the innocence of Christ was no better 
 than guilt at the unholy tribunal of Pilate. 
 
 But, in universal education, every " follower of God and 
 friend of human kind " will find the only sure means of carry- 
 ing forward that particular reform to which he is devoted. In 
 whatever department of philanthropy he may be engaged, he 
 will find that department to be only a segment of the great cir- 
 cle of beneficence, of which universal education is centre and 
 circumference ; and that it is only when these segments are fit- 
 ly joined together that the wheel of progress can move harmo- 
 niously and resistlessly onward. Whether, therefore, he is 
 struggling, on the one hand, to emancipate society from the 
 thraldom of some particular enormity which to him seems 
 more flagitious than all the rest, or whether, on the other 
 hand, he is striving to endue his age with some special virtue, 
 in no way can he pursue his own peculiar aim so directly and 
 so speedily as by preparing a generation of men, ninety-nine 
 in every hundred of whom even of the first subjects submit- 
 ted to the experiment shall be trained " to do justly, to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with God." And however a por- 
 tion of my fellow-mortals, or I myself, may feel in regard to 
 the highest religious concernments of the soul, I trust there are 
 none who believe that such an education as is here coutemphit-
 
 REPORT FOB 1847. 639 
 
 ed would be an obstacle, and not an aid, to the reception of 
 divine truth. I trust there are none who would not readily 
 adopt the language of Mr. Page, in his letter above cited, 
 where he says, " I am fully of the opinion that the right of ex- 
 pectation of a religious character would be increased very much 
 in proportion to the excellence of the training given, since God 
 never ordains means which he does not intend to bless."
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 . . . MASSACHUSETTS may be regarded either as a State by 
 herself, or as a member of a mighty and yet increasing confed- 
 eracy of States. In the former capacity, she has great and 
 abiding interests, which are mainly dependent upon her own 
 domestic or internal policy. In the latter relation, her fate de- 
 pends upon the will of her partners in the association. Hence, 
 although, in regard to all nations, the Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs is the officer of first importance in the State, yet, in 
 regard to our own Commonwealth, the Home Department has 
 decided pi'ecedence. 
 
 As an individual State, the geographical extent of Massachu- 
 setts, and her civil and social interests, will remain the same ; 
 but when compared, or rather contrasted, with the vast do- 
 main, and the magnificent and overshadowing interests, of the 
 whole Union, she is, and from year to year must be, growing 
 relatively less and less and less. At the epoch of the Revolu- 
 tion, she was one of thirteen States. Now she is one of thirty. 
 Even so late as 1790, when the first census of the United States 
 was taken, there were but three States whose population ex- 
 ceeded hers. Deducting slaves, of whom she had none, there 
 were but two. Her population at that time amounted to about 
 one-tenth part of the population of the whole Union. It is now 
 much below one-twentieth. At the time, too, of the adoption 
 of the Federal Constitution, the area of Massachusetts bore 
 
 640
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 641 
 
 some assignable and palpable proportion to that of the whole 
 United States. The Mississippi was then the western boundary 
 of the nation. Now our domain not only extends to the Pacific, 
 but stretches through almost seventeen degrees of latitude upon 
 that ocean. Florida then lay between us and the Gulf of 
 Mexico ; and, the gates of the Mississippi River being liable 
 at any time to be closed against the Western States, their only 
 unobstructed egress to the Atlantic was through Eastern ports. 
 Now the Gulf is our southern boundary ; and the Mississippi 
 and its tributaries, with their more than sixteen thousand miles 
 of waters navigable by steam, afford a channel capacious enough 
 to drain the West of its vast productions, and then, with the 
 refluent tide of commerce, to supply their demands for foreign 
 merchandise. Territorially considered, the loss of Cape Cod, 
 or of the few acres that compose the Islands of Nantucket and 
 the Vineyard, would be greater to Massachusetts than the loss 
 of Massachusetts would be to the Union. Our native and be- 
 loved State, indeed, seems contracting and dwindling away so 
 fast as to suggest the idea of its more careful perambulation 
 to see if some clandestine and rapacious neighbor has not in- 
 curred the curse of the Mosaic law by removing our landmarks 
 inward and inward. It is only by taking Massachusetts as a 
 unit, and comparing her area with that of other States in the 
 Union, that we can realize how narrow and diminutive she is 
 becoming. Ohio and Kentucky could each be divided into five 
 States, and each of the ten would be larger than our own. New 
 York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, 
 Mississippi, and Tennessee would each make considerably 
 more than six States or the whole of them more than forty- 
 two States of the size of Massachusetts. Michigan, Illinois, 
 Iowa, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arkansas are each equal in 
 territory to seven such States as ours, amounting to another 
 group of forty-two. Virginia and Florida are each equal to 
 more than eight ; Missouri is equal to nine ; and Texas alone, 
 according to the boundaries now claimed by her, would make 
 
 forty-four such States. Taking an official estimate of the area 
 41
 
 642 
 
 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 of the United States, exclusive of the portion lately acquired 
 from Mexico, it is divisible into three hundred and seventy-six 
 such States as Massachusetts. The territory ceded by the treaty 
 with Mexico, which was ratified on the thirtieth day of May 
 last, exclusive of what is claimed by Texas, would make more 
 than seventy-two States of equal dimensions. Hence it is plain 
 that Massachusetts, territorially considered, constitutes, not ex- 
 ceeding, in round numbers, one four-hundred and forty-eighth 
 part of the Union to which she belongs, or far less than the 
 proportion which a single degree bears to the three hundred 
 and sixty degrees of a circle. The bull's hide mentioned in 
 Virgil's epic would nearly enclose her.* 
 
 Table exhibiting the areas of the several States and Territories of the United 
 States in square miles and acres. 
 
 FREE 
 
 Maine .... 
 
 STATES. 
 Sq. Miles. 
 . 35,000 
 
 Acres. 
 22,400,000 
 5,139,200 
 5,120,000 
 4,640,000 
 768,000 
 3,040,000 
 29,440,000 
 4,384,640 
 30,080,000 
 25,576,960 
 21,637,760 
 35,459,200 
 35,995,520 
 32,584,960 
 34,511,300 
 
 SLAVE 
 
 Delaware .... 
 Maryland . . . . 
 Virginia . . . . 
 North Carolina . . 
 South Carolina . . 
 
 STATES. 
 Sq. Miles. 
 2,120 
 11,000 
 61,352 
 45,500 
 28,000 
 58 000 
 
 Acres. 
 1,356,800 
 7,040,000 
 39,265,280 
 29,120,000 
 17,920,000 
 37,120,000 
 24,115,200 
 28,160,000 
 29,715,840 
 30,174,080 
 32,402,080 
 43,123,200 
 33,406,720 
 37,931,520 
 
 208,332,800 
 32,000 
 
 New Hampshire 
 Vermont . . . 
 Massachusetts . 
 Rhode Island . 
 Connecticut . . 
 New York . . 
 New Jersey . . 
 Pennsylvania . 
 Ohio .... 
 
 . 8,030 
 . 8,000 
 . 7,250 
 . 1,200 
 . 4,750 
 . 46,000 
 . 6,851 
 . 47,000 
 . 39,964 
 
 Kentucky .... 
 Tennessee . . . 
 Louisiana . . . 
 Mississippi . . . 
 Alabama . . . . 
 Missouri . . . . 
 Arkansas . . . . 
 Florida . . . . 
 Texas (if bounded 
 by Rio Grande) . 
 Dist't of Columbia 
 
 Total .... 
 
 37,680 
 44,000 
 46,431 
 47,147 
 50,722 
 67,380 
 52,198 
 59,268 
 
 325,520 
 50 
 
 Indiana . . . 
 Illinois . . . 
 Michigan . . . 
 Iowa .... 
 
 . 33,809 
 . 55,405 
 . 56,243 
 . 50,914 
 
 Wisconsin . . 
 Total . . . 
 
 . 53,924 
 . 454,340 
 
 290,777,600 
 
 936,368 
 
 599,2/0,520 
 
 Territory north and west of Mississippi River, and east of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Sq. Miles. Acres. 
 
 Bounded north by 49 north latitude, east by Mississippi 
 River, south by the State of Iowa and Platte River, 
 and west by the Rocky Mountains 723,248 
 
 Indian Territory, situated west of Arkansas and Missouri, 
 
 and eouth of Platte River 248,851 
 
 Carried forward 972,099 
 
 462,878,720 
 
 159,204,640 
 622,143,360
 
 REPOET FOR 1848. 643 
 
 In other elements of national greatness, in mineral re- 
 sources, in productiveness of soil, and in natural facilities for 
 internal intercourse, she falls far below even this insignificant 
 fraction. She has not an inland bay, not a navigable river ; no 
 gold is scattered among her sands ; granite is her best mineral, 
 and ice the only pearl to be found in her waters. 
 
 So far, too, as political power, founded on numbers, is con- 
 cerned, Massachusetts is shrinking hardly less rapidly than in 
 the relative compass of her borders. Out of two hundred and 
 thirty representatives in the national Congress, she has but ten ; 
 and the next census, now so soon to be taken, will seriously 
 reduce this meagre proportion. In the first Congress, she had 
 eight out of sixty-five, or one in eight (and a fraction), instead 
 of one in twenty-three, as at present, with waning prospects for 
 the future. In the presidential election of the current year, she 
 gives but twelve out of two hundred and ninety votes. In 
 choosing electors, therefore ; in declaring war and in making 
 peace ; and in all the mighty interests, political and moral, 
 that depend upon war and peace ; in the deep pecuniary stake 
 which every commercial and manufacturing people have in 
 questions of foreign commerce and domestic currency ; and in 
 all civil, military, and diplomatic appointments which require 
 
 Sq. Miles. Acres. 
 
 Brought forward 972,099 622,143,360 
 
 Old North-west Territory, balance remaining east of Mis- 
 sissippi River, aud north-west of Wisconsin . . . 22,336 14,295,040 
 Oregon Territory west of Rocky Mountains . . . 341,463 218,536,320 
 
 Total of old territory not organized into States . 1,335,898 854,974,7-'0 
 
 California 448,691 287,162,240 
 
 New Mexico 77,387 49,527,680 
 
 Total 520,078 336,689,920 
 
 Grand Aggregate. 
 
 Total in Free States 454,340 290,777,600 
 
 Total in Slave States 936,368 599,275,520 
 
 Total in States 1,390,708 890,053,120 
 
 Total, old territory 1,335,898 854,974,720 
 
 Total, new territory 526,078 336,689,920 
 
 Total 3,252,684 2,081,717,7(30
 
 644 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the concurrence of the Senate, Massachusetts is at the mercy 
 of her sisters ; and if those sisters become imperious and aggres- 
 sive, as some of them give significant tokens of becoming, she 
 must succumb and suffer, like the abused Cordelia among the 
 haughty Gonerils and Regans of the family. 
 
 This picture is no fancy-sketch. It is drawn from the origi- 
 nal without the exaggeration of a color or a line. We are con- 
 fronted by these stern realities, these incontrovertible facts : 
 
 Miles. 
 
 Length of the Atlantic Coast to the mouth of St. Mary's River . . 1,450 
 From mouth of St. Mary's River to Cape of Florida .... 450 
 
 Gulf Coast to mouth of the Sabine Kiver 1,200 
 
 Total 3,100 
 
 Those States where the public lands are situated are generally exclusive of lakes, 
 ponds, &c. Marshes are estimated. 
 
 The Territories include such waters as are interior. 
 
 And no illusions of a poetic temperament, no complacent retro- 
 spection over periods of past renown, can avert or delay our 
 impending fate. Like the foolish bird which supposes it can 
 avoid danger by hiding its head from its pursuer, we may hide 
 our eyes and avert our thoughts from all contemplation of the 
 fortunes that await us ; but those fortunes will nevertheless 
 overtake us with a speed that we cannot escape from, and a 
 resistlessness that we cannot overcome. 
 
 What, then, shall save our native and beloved State from van- 
 ishing quite away, from being unknown in the councils of the 
 nation, and lost to the history of the world? In our domestic 
 legislation, and in all our social relationships, what policy shall 
 prevail, and by what spirit shall we be animated, in order to avert 
 so deplorable a fate? Has not every patriot, every worthy son 
 of a Pilgrim sire, an answer at hand? If Massachusetts can 
 no longer challenge respect on account of her numbers, she must 
 challenge it on account of her character. If she is no longer 
 visible by her magnitude, she must become so by her light. 
 She must be, like Hesper, " fairest of all the train of night," 
 and compensate for the diminutiveuess of her size by the intense- 
 ness of her brilliancy.
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 645 
 
 Let us reflect, then, in the first place, that Massachusetts has 
 an absolute as well as a relative existence. She exists for 
 her present people and for their posterity, as well as for the 
 Union at large. Though relatively declining, when compared 
 with the whole country, yet there is an actual and constant 
 increase in her numbers. Within her narrow borders she will 
 soon have a million of people ; and what finite power can ade- 
 quately comprehend the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, 
 the honor or shame, of a million of human beings belonging to 
 the same generation, or sum up the fearful aggregate of happi- 
 ness or misery for themselves and their descendants ! 
 
 Let us thank Heaven, too, that there are other standards of 
 greatness besides vastness of territory, and other forms of 
 wealth besides mineral deposits or agricultural exuberance. 
 Though every hill were a Potosi, though every valley, like that 
 of the Nile, were rank with fatness, yet might a nation be poor 
 in the most desperate sense, benighted in the darkness of 
 barbarism, and judgment-stricken of Heaven for its sins. A 
 State has local boundaries which it cannot rightfully transcend ; 
 but the realm of intelligence, the sphere of charity, the moral 
 domain iu which the soul can expand and expatiate, are illimit- 
 able, vast and boundless as the omnipresence of the Being 
 that created them. Worldly treasure is of that nature that rust 
 may corrupt, or the moth destroy, or thieves steal ; but even 
 upon the earth there are mental treasures which are unap- 
 proachable by fraud, impregnable to violence, and whose value 
 does not perish, but is redoubled with the using. A State, 
 then, is not necessarily fated to insignificance because its dimen- 
 sions are narrow, nor doomed to obscurity and powerlessuess 
 because its numbers are few. Athens was small ; yet, low as 
 were her moral aims, she lighted up the whole earth as a lamp 
 lights up a temple. Judasa was small ; but her prophets and 
 her teachers were, and will continue to be, the guides of the 
 world. The narrow strip of half-cultivable land that lies be- 
 tween her eastern and western boundaries is not Massachusetts ; 
 but her noble and incorruptible men, her pure and exalted
 
 6-16 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 women, the children in all her schools, whose daily lessons are 
 the preludes and rehearsals of the great duties of life, and the 
 prophecies of future eminence, THESE ARE THE STATE. 
 
 Under the providence of God, our means of education are 
 the grand machinery by which the " raw material " of human 
 nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into 
 skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, 
 into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great ex- 
 pounders of ethical and theological science. By means of 
 early education, those embryos of talent may be quickened 
 which will solve the difficult problems of political and economi- 
 cal law ; and by them, too, the genius may be kindled which 
 will blaze forth in the poets of humanity. Our schools, far 
 more than they have done, may supply the presidents and pro- 
 fessors of colleges, and superintendents of public instruction, 
 all over the land ; and send, not only into our sister States, but 
 across the Atlantic, the men of practical science to superintend 
 the construction of the great works of art. Here, too, may 
 those judicial powers be developed and invigorated which will 
 make legal principles so clear and convincing as to prevent 
 appeals to force ; and, should the clouds of war ever lower over 
 our country, some hero may be found the nursling of our 
 .schools, and ready to become the leader of our armies, that 
 best of all heroes who will secure the glories of a peace, 
 unstained by the magnificent murders of the battle-field. 
 
 The fortunes of a State depend upon antecedent causes, 
 working with greater or less energy through longer or shorter 
 periods of time. By virtue of this universal law, the future 
 condition of the people of Ifaaafceiifnettfl will be modified, and 
 to a great extent determined, by the force of causes now put 
 iu operation. Enlightened reason discerns the connection be- 
 i \veen cause and effect ; it measures the efficiency of causes ; 
 and thus, to a great extent, it is able to adopt and adapt means 
 to the accomplishment of designed ends. Feeble and erring a? 
 is the reason of man, yet in this attribute, far more nearly 
 than in any other, does he preserve the divine image in which
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 647 
 
 he was originally formed. Supposing matter to have been first 
 created by the fiat of the Almighty, a substantial and beautiful 
 analogy may be traced between the methods pursued by the 
 Creator and the creature in the formation of the works of their 
 hands. When the fulness of time for creating the parent of 
 the human race had arrived, we must suppose the idea or 
 archetype of a man to have existed in the divine Mind as 
 :vally as " the dust of the earth " from which he was to be 
 formed existed in his hand ; and that, in obedience to the sove- 
 reign volition, all the elements of which man is composed 
 the oxygen, the hydrogen, the nitrogeu, the carbon, and all the 
 rest were brought together, and were arranged into his hun- 
 dreds of bones and of muscles, his thousands of blood-vessels, 
 and his millions of nerves ; in fine, into his limbs, and into 
 the manifold apparatus of his senses ; into that wonderful or- 
 gan, the heart ; and, if any thing can surpass the heart as a 
 miracle of creative power, into that still more wonderful organ, 
 the brain, we must suppose, I say, that the elements for the 
 formation of this work were assigned, each to its appropriate 
 place, until God saw the noble and majestic structure of the 
 human form before him, perfect in all its parts. At a vast 
 distance, but still in humble imitation of the divine processes, 
 does man proceed for the completion of every work of his 
 hands. The architect, for instance, through the medium of 
 his senses, acquires a knowledge of all the various properties 
 of all the substances which enter into the construction of an 
 edifice. By his reason, he discovers the special uses and capa- 
 bilities of all the materials to be employed. Then, in the soli- 
 tude of his closet, or in the darkness of midnight, he revives in 
 his mind the images of all the substances and ingredients 
 necessary to his work ; he measures and arranges and combines 
 the ideas of them ; he applies to them the architectural laws of 
 fitness, proportion, and strength, until, at last, the grand con- 
 ception of the edifice whether sacred temple or human 
 dwelling rises in his mind, complete from foundation to 
 turret. He brings together and adjusts the ideas of things, just
 
 648 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 as an omnipotent arm would briny together and adjust the pon- 
 derous things themselves. After this, he orders the materials to 
 be collected from their respective localities, it may be from 
 different quarters of the globe, the wood from the forest, the 
 marble from the quarry, the iron from the mine, the bricks 
 from the clay-pit, the glass, the furniture, the tapestry, and so 
 forth, each from its place, until that ideal image which had 
 before risen up in the silent recesses of his mind now stands 
 forth in full and majestic proportions, embodied in visible and 
 enduring substance, and supplying for centuries to come a fit 
 place for the dwelling of man, or for the worship of God. So, 
 when the Garden of Eden was planted, and when every tree 
 that is pleasant to the sight and good for use was made to 
 grow out of the ground, we must suppose that the Creator, 
 proceeding upon the perfect ideas already in his mind, mingled 
 together, in due proportion, those few chemical elements, 
 which, in their various combinations, make up the almost infi- 
 nite varieties of the vegetable world, until all of nourishment 
 and perfume and beauty which enters into our imagination of 
 Paradise clustered and glowed and bloomed around, and filled 
 the air with its sweets. In like manner, the gardener, who 
 wishes to bring together, within a narrow compass, specimens 
 of the various plants and flowers that grow between the Equa- 
 tor and the Arctic, first acquires a knowledge of whatever he 
 would cultivate ; he classifies them, and arranges all the classes 
 in his mind according to their respective natures ; he encloses 
 and prepares his grounds ; and then he gathers together seed 
 and plant and vine, indigenous and exotic : on some he 
 pours a double portion of the suu, some he removes into the 
 shade, others he buries in darkness to imitate the growth of 
 caverns, and others still he surrounds with ice, to reproduce 
 the dwarfish vegetation of the frigid zone ; for some he pre- 
 pares a soil dry as an Arabian desert, and for others he 
 makes an artificial pool ; until that, which at first was only a 
 bodiless creation of fancy in the mind of the designer, becomes 
 a utility and an embellishment, sustaining the life, and minis- 
 tering to the luxury, of men.
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. (U9 
 
 Now, it is the especial province and function of the states- 
 man and the lawgiver of all those, indeed, whose influence 
 moulds or modifies public opinion to study out the eternal 
 principles which conduce to the strength, wisdom, and right- 
 eousness of a community ; to search for these principles as 
 for hidden riches ; to strive for them as one would strive for 
 his life ; and then to form public institutions in accordance with 
 them. And he is not worthy to be called a statesman, he is 
 not worthy to be a lawgiver or leader among men, who, either 
 through the weakness of his head or the selfishness of his heart, 
 is incapable of marshalling in his mind the great ideas of knowl- 
 edge, justice, temperance, and obedience to the laws of God, 
 on which foundation alone the structure of human welfare can 
 be erected ; who is not capable of organizing these ideas into 
 a system, and then of putting that system into operation, as a 
 mechanic does a machine. This only is true statesmanship. 
 
 The chief men in society, whether they derive their pre-emi- 
 nence from birth or wealth or office, or superiority in natural 
 endowments, are mainly responsible for the institutions they 
 leave behind them ; because it is in their power to form or con- 
 form those institutions according to their own ideas of excel- 
 lence. The leading spirits of one of the great nations of anti- 
 quity had no higher idea of female excellence than that of per- 
 sonal beauty and the attractions of voluptuousness ; and hence 
 their brightest and most boasted female ornament was a cour- 
 tesan. The leading spirits of that other ancient nation, whose 
 perpetual and disgraceful boast it was that it had conquered 
 the whole world, were proud to trace back their ferocious line- 
 age, through patrician and regal blood, to the wolf that suckled 
 their founder, a tradition, which, whether fact or fiction, is 
 full of allegoric truth. The founders of communities contem- 
 poraneous with our own, and now component parts of this re- 
 public, filled their veins at their birth with the cancerous blood 
 of slavery, which has now spread itself over and corrupted 
 their whole organism ; and yet the tormented sufferer contends 
 for his disease as for his life, fights for the devil that rends
 
 650 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 him, because, as he affirms, the exorcism of the evil spirit will 
 be death to himself. For centuries, a leading feature in the 
 policy of Great Britain towards Ireland was the utter abolition 
 of all education which did not conform to the government 
 standard of theology, and was not administered by teachers of 
 its own choosing. None but a Protestant was allowed to keep , 
 a school. From 1709 to 1782, any Roman Catholic who should 
 presume to be a schoolmaster, or assistant to a schoolmaster, 
 or even a tutor in a private family, was to be transported ; and 
 if the party returned, then he was to be adjudged guilty of high 
 treason, and to be hung, drawn, and quartered. A great por- 
 tion of the present agony of starving, diseased, distracted Ire- 
 laud, is directly referable to the ignorance which has resulted 
 from those imperial interdicts against knowledge. No other 
 acts of British oppression have been so fatal in driving sanity 
 out of the head, and kindness out of the heart, of that maddened 
 country, as the cruel laws by which every child in Ireland was 
 prohibited from nourishing himself with a grain of knowledge, 
 unless he would swallow with it a scruple of theology. These 
 are a few specimens taken from the great storehouse of history, 
 showing how those who enact laws and organize public institu- 
 tions predetermine the fate of the masses. And are not all 
 those who control legislation, and lead public opinion among 
 ourselves, adjured by these admonitions of history, as well as 
 by the voice of conscience and the precepts of Christianity, to 
 form a model idea of a healthy, industrious, frugal, tempe- 
 rate, wise Christian Commonwealth, and then to exert all their 
 faculties and all their activities in turning this idea into a liv- 
 ing reality? 
 
 Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be 
 safely affirmed that the common school, improved and ener- 
 gized as it can easily be, may become the most effective and 
 benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain 
 this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its 
 operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution what- 
 ever. If administered in the spirit of justice and conciliation,
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 651 
 
 all the rising generation may be brought within the circle of its 
 reformatory and elevating influences. And, in the second place, 
 the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile 
 as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than 
 any other earthly work of the Creator. The inflexibility and 
 ruggedness of the oak, when compared with the lithe sapling or 
 the tender germ, are but feeble emblems to typify the docility 
 of childhood when contrasted with the obduracy and intracta- 
 bleness of man. It is these inherent advantages of the com- 
 mon school, which, in our own State, have produced results so 
 striking, from a system so imperfect, and an administration so 
 feeble. In teaching the blind and the deaf and dumb, in kin- 
 dling the latent spark of intelligence that lurks in an idiot's 
 mind, and in the more holy work of reforming abandoned and 
 outcast children, education has proved what it can do by glo- 
 rious experiments. These wonders it has done in its infancy, 
 and with the lights of a limited experience ; but when its fac- 
 ulties shall be fully developed, when it shall be trained to wield 
 its mighty energies for the protection of society against the 
 giant vices which now invade and torment it, against intem- 
 perance, avarice, war, slavery, bigotry, the woes of want, and 
 the wickedness of waste, then there will not be a height to 
 which these enemies of the race can escape which it will not 
 scale, nor a Titan among them all whom it will not slay. 
 
 I proceed, then, in endeavoring to show how the true busi- 
 ness of the schoolroom connects itself, and becomes identical, 
 with the great interests of society. The former is the infant, 
 immature state of those interests ; the latter their developed, 
 adult state. As " the child is father to the man," so may the 
 training of the schoolroom expand into the institutions and for- 
 tunes of the State. 
 
 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 In the worldly prosperity of mankind, health and strength 
 are indispensable ingredients. Reflect, for a moment, what an 
 inroad upon the comfort of a family, and its means of support,
 
 652 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 is a case of chronic sickness or debility in a single one of its 
 members. Should a farmer contract to support, and to con- 
 tinue to pay, his laborer, or a manufacturer his operative, 
 whether able or unable to work, they would demand a serious 
 abatement of wages as a premium for the risk. But what- 
 ever drawback a sick member would be to the pecuniary pros- 
 perity of a family, or a sick laborer to that of an employer 
 bound to support him, just such a drawback is a sick or dis- 
 abled member of the community to the financial prosperity of 
 the State to which he belongs. The amount of loss consequent 
 upon such sickness or disability may not be drawn out of the 
 public treasury ; but it is subtracted from the common property 
 of the State in a way still more injurious than if the same 
 amount of gold were taken from the public coffers by warrant 
 of the Executive. Money so taken would be transferred to 
 another hand. It would still exist. But the want of health 
 and strength is a dead loss to the community ; and, whenever 
 the next valuation is taken, there will be a corresponding deficit 
 in the aggregate of national property. Hence, every citizen, as 
 such, is pecuniarily interested in the health and strength of all 
 his fellow-citizens. It is right, therefore, that he should look 
 upon them all, not only as a benevolent and Christian man 
 would do, pitying and succoring their misfortunes ; but he 
 should look upon them, also, as a man of business. as one 
 who contributes, or is bound to contribute, to a reserved fund 
 from which all the non-producing sick and valetudinary are 
 supported. 
 
 Men see this community of interests plainly enough when 
 sickness comes in the form of a pestilence, and decimates and 
 redecimates a city, arresting all the currents of business, gath- 
 ering the well about the sick-bed or the hearse, or scattering 
 them abroad with fear. But in the aggregate of its periods 
 of sickness, and in the number of its victims, the plague itself 
 is less destructive to human life than the ordinary and stereo- 
 typed causes of mortality, which familiarity has bereft of their 
 terrors. It is the concentration of its havoc that makes pesti-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 653 
 
 lence terrific. This concentration men's senses can perceive, 
 and therefore they are affrighted. But to the eye of reason 
 that is most alarming which is most injurious ; and it is this 
 eye with which a statesman or philosopher should look when 
 he takes a survey of human interests. 
 
 Leaving out, then, for the present purpose, all consideration 
 of the pains of sickness and the anguish of bereavement, the 
 momentous truth still remains, that sickness and premature 
 death are positive evils for the statesman and political econo- 
 mist to cope with. The earth, as a hospital for the diseased, 
 would soon wear out the love of life ; and, if but the half of 
 mankind were sick, famine, from non-production, would speed- 
 ily threaten the whole. 
 
 Now, modern science has made nothing more certain than 
 that both good and ill health are the direct result of causes 
 mainly within our own control. In other words, the health of 
 the race is dependent upon the conduct of the race. The 
 health of the individual is determined primarily by his parents, 
 secondarily by himself. The vigorous growth of the body, its 
 strength and its activity, its powers of endurance, and its length 
 of life, on the one hand ; and dwarfishuess, sluggishness, infir- 
 mity, and premature death on the other, are all the subjects of 
 unchangeable laws. These laws are ordained of God ; but the 
 knowledge of them is left to our diligence, and the observance 
 of them to our free agency. These laws are very few : they 
 are so simple, that all can understand them ; and so beautiful, 
 that the pleasure of contemplating them, even independent of 
 their utility, is a tenfold reward for all the labor of their ac- 
 quisition. The laws, I repeat, are few. The circumstances, 
 however, under which they are to be applied, are exceedingly 
 various and complicated. These cii'cumstances embrace the 
 almost infinite varieties of our daily life, exercise and rest ; 
 sleeping and watching ; eating, drinking, and abstinence ; the 
 affections and passions ; exposure to vicissitudes of tempera- 
 ture, to dryuess and humidity, to the effluvia and exhalations 
 of dead animal or decaying vegetable matter : in fine, they
 
 654 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 embrace all cases where excesses, indiscretions, or exposures 
 may induce disease ; or where exercise, temperance, cleanli- 
 ness, and pure air may avert it. Heuce it would be wholly 
 impossible to write out any code of " rules and regulations " 
 applicable to all cases. So, too, the occasions for applying the 
 laws to new circumstances recur so continually, that no man 
 can have a mentor at his side, in the form of a physician or 
 physiologist, to direct his conduct in new emergencies. Even 
 the most favored individual, in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, 
 must prescribe for himself. And hence the uncompromising 
 necessity that all children should be instructed in these laws ; 
 and not only instructed, but that they should receive such a 
 training during the whole course of pupilage as to enlist the 
 mighty forces of habit on the side of obedience ; and that their 
 judgment also should be so developed and matured, that they 
 will be able to discriminate between different combinations of 
 circumstances, and to adapt, in each case, the regimen to the 
 exigency. 
 
 Looking to the various disorders and disabilities, which, as 
 every one's experience or observation shows him, do invade and 
 prostrate the human frame, some may be slow to believe that 
 all men, or even the majority of them, will ever be able to 
 administer to those which fall to their share. But, in the first 
 place, it may be remarked that a judicious course of physical 
 training, faithfully observed through all the years of infancy, 
 childhood, and adolescence, will avert a vast proportion of the 
 pains and distempers that now besiege and subdue the human 
 system or some of its vital organs ; and hence, that one may 
 safely be ignorant of symptoms and of remedies which he will 
 never have occasion to recognize or to use, as one who seeks 
 a residence remote from wild beasts has no practical occa- 
 sion to know how they are huuted ; and in the next place, 
 that if every one does not know, in all cases, how to prescribe 
 for himself, yet he may always know what part of his machine- 
 ry is out of order, and how necessary it is to apply promptly 
 to a repairer. Even such a degree of anatomical kuowledge as
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 655 
 
 enables one to point out the suffering organ is of great value : 
 for, doubtless, not merely children, but ignorant men, have killed 
 themselves by giving a false location to their malady ; or, 
 which is the same kind of error, have caused their physician 
 so to prescribe as to inflict disease on a sound organ, instead of 
 healing a diseased one. It is not every one that can inform a 
 dentist which tooth is the offender. 
 
 But to the objection, that all men and women cannot be 
 physicians, the decisive answer is, that the physician must be 
 acquainted with the laws of disease, which are countless in 
 number, and are ever developing new symptoms. But the 
 sound man or woman needs to be acquainted ouly with the laws 
 of health, which are few, and whose results, though acting 
 upon different systems, are substantially uniform. The phar- 
 macopoeia of the physician embraces nearly all minerals and 
 all vegetables, and several of the more offensive classes of the 
 animal kingdom, with the various mechanical or chemical com- 
 binations which can be formed from or among them. But the 
 whole pharmacoposia of the healthy man comprises but little 
 more than pure water and pure air, simple viands, vegetables, 
 and bread. In quality, they are as different as in number ; as 
 different as the sweet and savory contents of store-room and 
 larder from those acrid and mephitic substances which make 
 the druggist's warehouse a universal conservatory of particu- 
 lar abominations. 
 
 Is it too much, then, to say that the leaders of society, 
 whether makers of law, or creators of custom and fashion, are 
 bound, by the most solemn obligations of duty as well as by 
 interest, to curtail the ravages of sickness and untimely death, 
 and, as far as possible, to make health and longevity the com- 
 mon property of meu ? The civil government takes cognizance 
 of pauperism ; and meu of worldly substance are obliged to bear 
 its expenses. The disabilities of ill health, and the pecuniary 
 losses by early death, are among the leading causes of pauper- 
 ism. He, therefore, who would prevent the latter, must pre- 
 vent the former. The civil government exercises penal juris-
 
 656 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 diction over crimes, and over the grosser vices ; and is it not 
 true that many of those morbid appetites and unnatural desires 
 that seek to assuage their longings by indulgence and excess 
 have their origin in the action of a distempered body upon the 
 mind, rather than of the mind upon the body? Indeed, how 
 often have pure and pious hearts encountered a re'entless an- 
 tagonist to their highest and most devout resolves and aspira- 
 tions in the pruriences and hankerings of the body in which 
 they were imprisoned! Many a waspish man would become 
 amiable if he could be hung on a new set of nerves. Many a 
 misanthropic disposition would warm into kindliness, could the 
 acrid humors of the body be evaporated or washed away. The 
 dyspeptic contends with evil spirits, " blue and black," against 
 whom the eupeptic bears an invincible charm. 
 
 The civil government, too, is bound to provide for the in- 
 sane, both for the security of the sane, and for the recovery 
 or amelioration of the insane. The diseases incident to several 
 bodily organs give direct birth to insanity. A disease of the 
 brain induces it at once. Indeed, insanity is often only an ex- 
 acerbation of some bodily disorder. As a brook swells into a 
 river, so the inflammation of certain organs matures into insan- 
 ity. General health would greatly reduce the size of those 
 deplorable necessities of an imperfect civilization, hospitals 
 for the insane. 
 
 In extraordinary emergencies, governments do not hesitate 
 to interfere for preventing the spread of contagion, and for 
 excluding the media through which diseases are propagated. 
 When sudden pestilence breaks out in a city, the infected dis- 
 trict is put under a bar of non-intercourse with the healthy. 
 When a crew of men, or a cargo of merchandise, arrives from 
 an infected port, a quarantine is enforced. In these cases, the 
 civil magistracy acts under the impulse of fear. But has not 
 government a capacity of reflection and of foresight, as well as 
 a susceptibility to fear? Is a civilized government of modern 
 times to be classified with those orders of existence that have 
 propensity and appetite merely, but not reason and providence?
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 657 
 
 If not, then, surely, is the government bound to do all it can 
 against the wastings of ill health, and the havoc of unnecessary 
 death ; and it is bound to use equal vigilance, whether these 
 calamities invade us from abroad, or are born of home-bred 
 ignorance and folly. And, as has been before intimated, who 
 does not know that the aggregate suffering and loss from gen- 
 eral and diffused causes of ill health are indefinitely greater 
 than from the sudden irruption or outbreak of all the contagions 
 and epidemics with which we are ever afflicted? For this 
 greater evil, then, society is bound to provide, not a reme- 
 dy, but something better than a remedy, a preventive. In- 
 telligence and obedience would be an antidote, sovereign in its 
 efficacy, and universal in its applicability. 
 
 Now, it is beyond all question, that, with the rarest excep- 
 tions, every child in the Commonwealth may be endued with 
 this intelligence, and, what is equally important, trained to 
 conforming personal habits. Enlightened by knowledge, and 
 impelled by the force of early and long-continued habit, he 
 would not only see the reasonableness of adapting his regimen 
 to his condition in the varying circumstances of life, but he 
 would feel a personal interest in doing so, as men now feel a 
 personal interest in procuring the gratifications of money or of 
 power. Habit and knowledge will coincide ; they will draw 
 in the same direction ; they will not be antagonists, as is now 
 so generally the case with those adult men who acquire sound 
 knowledge after bad habits have been enthroned, the blind 
 force of the latter spurning all the arguments and warnings of 
 the former. This work may be mainly done during the period 
 of non-age, or before children are emancipated from parental 
 control. Let a child wash himself all over every morning for 
 sixteen years, and he will as soon go without his breakt'ast as 
 his bath. This is but a specimen of the effect of a long-contin- 
 ued observance of Nature's " health regulations." 
 
 Not only will a general knowledge of human physiology, or 
 the laws of health, do much to supersede the necessity of a 
 knowledge of pathology, or the laws of disease, but the ibr- 
 
 42
 
 658 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 mer is as much better than the latter as prevention is better 
 than remedy, as much better as all the comforts and securi- 
 ties of an unburnt dwelling are than two-thirds of its value in 
 money from the insurance-office. A general diffusion of physi- 
 ological knowledge will save millions annually to the State. It 
 will gradually revolutionize many of the absurd customs and 
 usages of society, conforming them more and more to the 
 rules of reason and true enjoyment, and withdrawing them 
 more and more from the equally vicious extremes of barbarism 
 and of artificial life. It will restrain the caprices and follies of 
 fashion in regard to dress and amusement, and subordinate its 
 ridiculous excesses to the laws of health and decency. It will 
 reproduce the obliterated lines that once divided day and night. 
 It will secure cleanliness and purity, more intimate and per- 
 sonal than any the laundress can supply. It will teach men 
 " to eat that they may live, instead of living that they may 
 eat." When Satan approaches in that form in which he has 
 hitherto been most seductive and successful, the form of in- 
 toxicating beverages, those who wear the talisman of this 
 science will have an antidote against his temptations. It is a 
 lesson of unspeakable importance to learn that nourishment, 
 and not pleasure, is the primary object of food. God, indeed, 
 in his benevolence, has made the reception of this food not only 
 reparative, but pleasant. But to lose sight of the first object, in 
 a brutish desire for the second, is voluntarily to alter our posi- 
 tion in the scale of being, and from the rank of men to descend 
 to the order of beasts. Physiology would reverse the ancient 
 fable, and transform into men the swine who now sit at epicu- 
 rean tables, and drink of the Circean cup. Every intelligent 
 man deplores the almost universal condition of our dwelling- 
 houses and public edifices, which have been built without regard 
 to the necessities of the human system for pure air. Were phys- 
 iology universally understood, no man would think of erecting 
 a mansion without an apparatus for its thorough ventilation at 
 all times, any more than without windows for the admission of 
 light. Apertures and flues for the ingress and egress of air
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 659 
 
 into and from sitting-rooms and sleeping-rooms are as neces- 
 sary to the architectural idea of a well-finished house as nasal 
 orifices are to the anatomical idea of a man ; and a dwelling 
 without the means of ventilation is as incomplete and as un- 
 sightly as a man without a nose. A knowledge of this science 
 would establish a ne\v standard of beauty, the classic stand- 
 ard of the Greeks, in which strength was a primary and indis- 
 pensable element ; and it would demoustrate the unspeakable 
 folly and guilt of those matrimonial alliances where hereditary 
 disease, and even insanity itself, are wedded, and the health, 
 mind, and happiness of a family of children are sacrificed for 
 the mercenary object of a dowry. 
 
 But an immunity from expense, privation, pain, and bereave- 
 ment, is not the only boon connected with health and longevity. 
 Sound health is not merely the negation of ill : it is a medium 
 through which alone we can gain access to many invaluable 
 blessings. It enhances every pleasure, and is indispensable to 
 the full performance of almost every duty. The elements en- 
 viron us with fatal dangers, against which health is our only 
 preserver. The vicissitudes of the climate must be encoun- 
 tered. We have no power to arrest the north wind that con- 
 geals by its cold, nor the south that dissolves by its heat. The 
 humidity of one part of the year, and the aridness of another, 
 are equally beyond human control. As our planet wheels 
 around the sun, now turning up our hemisphere to its vertical 
 and fervid rays, and now, by its oblique position, reducing tem- 
 perature to an opposite extreme, we have no choice but to at- 
 tend its circuit, and abide its changes. It is certain that nothing 
 but health will enable us to survive exposure to these natural 
 extremes. A thousand causes exist, too, which engender im- 
 purity in the air we breathe ; we ourselves being the principal. 
 Nothing but knowledge can enable us to eliminate the grossest 
 of these noxious ingredients ; and nothing but health, to resist 
 the poison of those which remain. The waste constantly 
 going on in the particles that compose our bodies lays us under 
 an ever-recurring necessity to replenish their exhausted sub-
 
 660 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 stance by the reception of food. And here, if the food we take 
 is not subjected to the transforming and assimilating power of 
 the alimentary organs, a power which is wholly lost with the 
 loss of health, it will prove our destruction. Each of our or- 
 gans is an avenue, through which death may invade us ; and 
 innumerable deaths that is, innumerable agencies, each one 
 of which has the power of causing death hold perpetual siege 
 at every avenue, and watch for an opportunity to enter and 
 destroy. And yet air and nourishment, heat and cold, moist- 
 ure and dryuess, we must encounter, and we must have ; for 
 they are the permanent conditions of our being. How intel- 
 ligible, then, and how authoritative, does the doctrine become, 
 that high health, and high health alone, is harmony with Na- 
 ture ! A person without high health is just as much at war 
 with Nature as a guilty soul is at war with the spirit of God ; 
 and the struggles of our frail bodies against the resistless might 
 of the elements will be as unavailing as that of our souls 
 against the retributions of Omnipotence. 
 
 The capacities of the body for resisting the force of the ele- 
 ments, and for appropriating and assimilating the substances 
 around it into its own substance, is one thing ; its capacities for 
 labor are another. Let any man, who has fallen from a state 
 of vigorous health to that of a valetudinary, compare his stand- 
 ard of " a day's work" in the one state with that in the other, 
 and he can then form a better estimate of the value of the 
 health that measures the difference between the two conditions. 
 Sound health opens new and more lucrative employments to its 
 possessor. Ill health often closes a career of the highest useful- 
 ness : and though the mind may have been prepared by splen- 
 did natural endowments, and by years of study and experience, 
 to lead forward the race in the march of civilization, yet it is 
 stricken down in the midst of its beneficence by the assaults of 
 disease ; and thus the onward movement of humanity is ar- 
 rested, or becomes retrograde, and must wait through another 
 cycle for another leader. What great works in art, in science, 
 and in morals, have been left unfinished or unattempted bv
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 661 
 
 reason of the slow decays, or the sudden extinction, of health 
 and of life ! When any man of sense has an important work 
 to perform, the first thing he does is to provide a fitting instru- 
 ment a tool, a machine, or whatever it may be with 
 which the work can be done. Health is the prime instrument 
 for the performance of all the labors of life. 
 
 One more idea is inseparable from this subject. When the 
 religious man reflects that our bodies are God's workmanship, 
 he sees that the laws impressed upon them can be no less than 
 God's laws. If these laws, then, are God's laws, we are bound 
 to recognize and obey them. We are bound to obey a law 
 which God has impressed upon the body, on the same principle 
 that we are bound to obey a law which he has impressed upon 
 the soul. And here how pertinent and forcible is the great idea 
 which has been set forth so distinctly by a late writer,* that, 
 when we know a law to be God's law, it matters not by what 
 means we may have arrived at the knowledge, the law becomes 
 imperatively and equally binding upon us ! Between the law 
 of the body and the law of the soul, there may, indeed, some- 
 times arise what we call a conflict of duty, when the subordi- 
 nate obligation of the former must yield to the supremacy of 
 the latter ; but this refers to relative importance, and not to 
 inherent obligation. 
 
 My general conclusion, then, under this head, is, that it is 
 the duty of all the governing minds in society whether in 
 office or out of it to diffuse a knowledge of these beautiful 
 and beneficent laws of health and life throughout the length and 
 breadth of the State ; to popularize them ; to make them, in 
 the first place, the common acquisition of all, and, through edu- 
 cation and custom, the common inheritance of all, so that the 
 healthful habits naturally growing out of their observance shall 
 be inbred in the people, exemplified in the personal regimen of 
 each individual, incorporated into the economy of every house- 
 hold, observable in all private dwellings, and in all public edi- 
 i'K'es, especially in those buildings which are erected by capital- 
 it t? tor the residence of their work-people, or for renting to the 
 * Mr. George Combe.
 
 662 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 poorer classes ; obeyed, by supplying cities with pure water ; 
 by providing public baths, public walks, aud public squares ; by 
 rural cemeteries ; by the drainage and sewerage of populous 
 towns, and by whatever else may promote the general salubrity 
 of the atmosphere : in fine, by a religious observance of all 
 those sanitary regulatious with which modern science has 
 blessed the world. 
 
 For this thorough diffusion of sanitary intelligence, the com- 
 mon school is the only agency. It is, however, an adequate 
 agency. Let human physiology be introduced as an indispen- 
 sable branch of study into our public schools ; let no teacher be 
 approved who is not master of its leading principles, and of 
 their applications to the varying circumstances of life ; let all 
 the older classes in the schools be regularly and rigidly exam- 
 ined upon this study by the school-committees, and a speedy 
 change would come over our personal habits, over our domestic 
 usages, and over the public arrangements of society. Temper- 
 ance and moderation would not be such strangers at the table. 
 Fashion, like European sovereigns, if not compelled to abdicate 
 and fly, would be forced to compromise for the continued posses- 
 sion of her throne by the surrender to her subjects of many of 
 their natural rights. A sixth order of architecture would be in- 
 vented, the hygienic, which, without subtracting at all from 
 the beauty of any other order, would add a new element of 
 utility to them all. The " health-regulations " of cities would 
 be issued in a revised code. a code that would bear the scru- 
 tiny of science. And, as the result and reward of all, a race' 
 of men aud women, loftier in stature, firmer in structure, fairer 
 iu form, and better able to perform the duties aud bear the bur- 
 dens of life, would revisit the earth. The minikin specimens 
 of the race, who now go on dwindling aud tapering from pareut 
 to child, would re-asceud to manhood aud womanhood. Just iu 
 proportion as the laws of health aud life were discovered aud 
 obeyed, would pain, disease, insanity, aud untimely death, cease 
 from among men. Consumption would remain ; but it would 
 be consumption in the active sense.
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 663 
 
 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION AS A MEANS OP REMOVING POV- 
 ERTY, AND SECCRING ABUNDANCE. 
 
 Another cardinal object which the government of Massachu- 
 setts, and all the influential men in the State, should propose to 
 themselves, is the physical well-being of all the people, the 
 sufficiency, comfort, competence, of every individual in regard 
 to food, raiment, and shelter. Aud these necessaries and con- 
 veniences of life should be obtained by each individual for him- 
 self, or by each family for themselves, rather than accepted 
 from the hand of charity or extorted by poor-laws. It is not 
 averred that this most desirable result can, in all instances, be 
 obtained ; but it is, nevertheless, the end to be aimed at. True 
 statesmanship and true political economy, not less than true 
 philanthropy, present this perfect theory as the goal, to be more 
 and more closely approximated by our imperfect practice. The 
 desire to achieve such a result cannot be regarded as an unrea- 
 sonable ambition ; for, though all mankind were well fed, well 
 clothed, and well housed, they might still be but half civilized. 
 
 Poverty is a public as well as a private evil. There is no 
 physical law necessitating its existence. The earth contains 
 abundant resources for ten times doubtless for twenty times 
 its present inhabitants. Cold, hunger, and nakedness are 
 not, like death, an inevitable lot. There are many single 
 States in this Union which conld supply an abundance of edible 
 products for the inhabitants of the thirty States that compose it. 
 There are single States capable of raising a sufficient quantity 
 of cotton to clothe the whole nation ; and there are other States 
 having sufficient factories and machinery to manufacture it. 
 The coal-fields of Pennsylvania are sufficiently abundant to keep 
 every house in the land at the temperature of sixty-five degrees 
 for centuries to come. Were there to be a competition, on 
 the one hand, to supply wool for every conceivable fabric, and, 
 ou the other, to wear out these fabrics as fast as possible, the 
 single State of New York would beat the whole country. There 
 is, indeed, uo assignable limit to the capacities of the earth for
 
 664 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 producing whatever is necessary for the sustenance, comfort, 
 and improvement of the race. Indigence, therefore, and the 
 miseries and degradations incident to indigence, seem to be no 
 part of the eternal ordinances of Heaven. The bounty of God 
 is not brought into question or suspicion by its existence ; for 
 man who suffers it might have avoided it. Even the wealth 
 which the world now has on hand is more than sufficient to 
 supply all the rational wants of every individual in it. Priva- 
 tions and sufferings exist, not from the smallness of its sum, 
 but from the inequality of its distribution. Poverty is set over 
 against profusion. In some, all healthy appetite is cloyed and 
 sickened by repletion ; while in others, the stomach seems to be 
 a supernumerary organ in the system, or, like the human eye 
 or human lungs before birth, is waiting to be transferred to 
 some other region, where its functions may come into use. One 
 gorgeous palace absorbs all the labor and expense that might 
 have made a thousand hovels comfoi'table. That one man may 
 ride in carriages of Oriental luxury, hundreds of other men are 
 turned into beasts of burden. To supply a superfluous ward- 
 robe for the gratification of one man's pride, a thousand women 
 and children shiver with cold ; and, for every flash of the dia- 
 monds that royalty wears, there is a tear of distress in the poor 
 man's dwelling. Not one Lazarus, but a hundred, sit at the gate 
 of Dives. Tantalus is no fiction. The ancient one might have 
 been fabulous ; but the modern ones are terrible realities. Mil- 
 lions are perishing in the midst of superfluities. 
 
 According to the European theory, men are divided into 
 classes, some to toil and earn, others to seize and enjoy. 
 According to the Massachusetts theory, all are to have an equal 
 chauce for earning, and equal security in the enjoyment of 
 what they earn. The latter tends to equality of condition ; 
 the former, to the grossest inequalities. Tried by any Christian 
 standard of morals, or even by any of the better sort of heathen 
 standards, can any one hesitate, for a moment, in declaring 
 which of the two will produce the greater amount of human 
 welfare, and which, therefore, is the more conformable to the
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 665 
 
 divine will? The European theory is blind to what consti- 
 tutes the highest glory as well as the highest duty of a State. 
 Its advocates and admirers are forgetful of that which should 
 be their highest ambition, and proud of that which constitutes 
 their shame. How can any one possessed of the attributes of 
 humanity look with satisfaction upon the splendid treasures, 
 the golden regalia, deposited in the Tower of London or in 
 Windsor Palace, each " an India iu itself," while thousands 
 around are dying of starvation, or have been made criminals 
 by the combined forces of temptation and neglect? The pres- 
 ent condition of Ireland cancels all the glories of the British 
 crown. The brilliant conception which symbolizes the na- 
 tionality of Great Britain as a superb temple, whose massive 
 and grand proportions are upheld and adorned by the four hun- 
 dred and thirty Corinthian columns of the aristocracy, is turned 
 into a loathing and a scorn when we behold the five millions 
 of paupers that cower and shiver at its base. The galleries 
 and fountains of Versailles, the Louvre of Paris, her Notre 
 Dame, and her Madeleine, though multiplied by thousands in 
 number and in brilliancy, would be no atonement for the hun- 
 dred thousand Parisian ouvriers without bread and without work. 
 The galleries of painting and of sculpture at Rome, at Munich, 
 or at Dresden, which body forth the divinest ideals ever exe- 
 cuted or ever conceived, are but an abomination in the sight of 
 Heaven and of all good men, while actual, living beings be- 
 ings that have hearts to palpitate, and nerves to agonize, and 
 affections to be crushed or corrupted are experimenting all 
 around them upon the capacities of human nature for suffering 
 and for sin. Where standards like these exist, and are upheld 
 by council and by court, by fashion and by law, Christianity is 
 yet to be discovered ; at least, it is yet to be applied in practice 
 to the social condition of men. 
 
 Our ambition as a State should trace itself to a different ori- 
 gin, and propose to itself a different object. Its flame should be 
 lighted at the skies. Its radiance and its warmth should reach 
 the darkest and the coldest abodes of men. It should seek
 
 666 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the solution of such problems as these : To Avhat extent 
 can competence displace pauperism? How nearly can we free 
 ourselves from the low-minded and the vicious, not by their 
 expatriation, but by their elevation? To what extent can 
 the resources and powers of Nature be converted into human 
 welfare, the peaceful arts of life be advanced, and the vastl 
 treasures of human talent and genius be developed? How 
 much of suffering, in all its forms, can be relieved ? or, what is 
 better than relief, how much can be prevented? Cannot the 
 classes of crimes be lessened, and the number of criminals in 
 each class be diminished? Our exemplars, both for public 
 and for private imitation, should be the parables of the lost 
 sheep and of the lost piece of silver. When we have spread 
 competence through all the abodes of poverty, when we have 
 substituted knowledge for ignorance jn the minds of the whole 
 people, when we have reformed the vicious and reclaimed the 
 criminal, then may we invite all neighboring nations to behold 
 the spectacle, and say to them, in the conscious elation of vir- 
 tue, " Rejoice with me," for I have found that which was lost. 
 Until that day shall arrive, our duties will not be wholly ful- 
 filled, and our ambition will have new honors to win. 
 
 But is it not true that Massachusetts, in some respects, in- 
 stead of adhering more and more closely to her own theory, is 
 becoming emulous of the baneful examples of Europe ? The 
 distance between the two extremes of society is lengthening, 
 instead of being abridged. With every generation, fortunes 
 increase on the one hand, and some new privation is added to 
 poverty on the other. We are verging towards those extremes 
 of opulence and of penury, each of which uuhumanizes the 
 human mind. A perpetual struggle for the bare necessaries of 
 life, without the ability to obtain them, makes men wolfish. 
 Avarice, on the other hand, sees, in all the victims of misery 
 around it, not objects for pity aud succor, but only crude mate- 
 rials to be worked up into more money. 
 
 I suppose it to be the universal sentiment of all those who 
 mingle any ingredient of benevolence with their notions on
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 667 
 
 political economy, that vast and overshadowing private for- 
 tunes are among the greatest dangers to which the happiness of 
 the people in a republic can be subjected. Such fortunes would 
 create a feudalism of a new kind, but one more oppressive and 
 unrelenting than that of the middle ages. The feudal lords 
 in England and on the Continent never held their retainers in 
 a more abject condition of servitude than the great majority 
 of foreign manufacturers and capitalists hold their operatives 
 and laborers at the present day. The means employed are 
 different ; but the similarity in results is striking. What force 
 did then, money does now. The villein of the middle ages 
 had no spot of earth on which he could live, unless one were 
 granted to him by his lord. The operative or laborer of the 
 present day has no employment, and therefore no bread, unless 
 the capitalist will accept his services. The vassal had no 
 shelter but such as his master provided for him. Not one in 
 five thousand of English operatives or farm-laborers is able 
 to build or own even a hovel ; and therefore they must accept 
 such shelter as capital offers them. The baron pi-escribed his 
 own terms to his retainers : those terms were peremptory, and 
 the serf must submit or perish. The British manufacturer or 
 farmer prescribes the rate of wages he will give to his work- 
 people ; he reduces these wages under whatever pretext he 
 pleases ; and they, too, have no alternative but submission or 
 starvation. In some respects, indeed, the condition of the 
 modern dependant is more forlorn than that of the correspond- 
 ing serf class in former times. Some attributes, of the patri- 
 archal relation did spring up between the lord and his lieges 
 to soften the harsh relations subsisting between them. Hence 
 came some oversight of the condition of children, some relief in 
 sickness, some protection and support in the decrepitude of 
 age. But only in instances comparatively few have kindly 
 offices smoothed the rugged relation between British capital 
 and British labo'r. The children of the work-people are aban- 
 doned to their fate ; and notwithstanding the privations they 
 suffer, and the dangers they threaten, no power in the realm
 
 668 ANNUAL EEPORTS ON EDDCATION. 
 
 has yet been able to secure them an education ; and when the 
 adult laborer is prostrated by sickness, or eventually worn out 
 by toil and age, the poor-house, which has all along been his 
 destination, becomes his destiny. 
 
 Now, two or three things will doubtless be admitted to be 
 true, beyond all controversy, in regard to Massachusetts. By 
 its industrial condition, and its business operations, it is exposed, 
 far beyond any other State in the Union, to the fatal extremes 
 of overgrown wealth and desperate poverty. Its population is 
 far more dense than that of any other State. It is four or five 
 times more dense than the average of all the other States taken 
 together ; and density of population has always been one of the 
 proximate causes of social inequality. According to population 
 and territorial extent, there is far more capital in Massachu- 
 setts capital which is movable, and instantaneously availa- 
 ble than in any other State in the Union ; and probably both 
 these qualifications respecting population and territory could be 
 omitted without endangering the truth of the assertion. It 
 has been recently stated in a very respectable public journal, 
 on the authority of a writer conversant with the subject, that 
 from the last of June, 1846, to the first of August, 1848, the 
 amount of money invested by the citizens of Massachusetts 
 " in manufacturing cities, railroads, and other improvements," 
 is " fifty-seven millions of dollars, of which more than fifty has 
 been paid in and expended." The dividends to be received by 
 citizens of Massachusetts from June, 1848, to April, 1849, are 
 estimated by the same writer at ten millions, and the annual 
 increase of capital at " little short of twenty-two millions." 
 If this be so, are we not in danger of naturalizing and domes- 
 ticating among ourselves those hideous evils which are always 
 engendered between capital aud labor, when all the capital is 
 in the hands of one class, and all the labor is thrown upon 
 another ? 
 
 Now, surely nothing but universal education can counter- 
 work this tendency to the domination of capital and the servil- 
 ity of labor. If one class possesses all the wealth and the edu-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 669 
 
 cation, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it 
 matters not by what name the relation between them may be 
 called : the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile de- 
 pendants and subjects of the former. But, if education be 
 equably diffused, it will draw property after it by the strongest 
 of all attractions ; for such a thing never did happen, and never 
 can happen, as that an intelligent and practical body of men 
 should be permanently poor. Property and labor in different 
 classes are essentially antagonistic ; but property and labor 
 in the same class are essentially fraternal. The people of 
 Massachusetts have, in some degree, appreciated the truth, that 
 the unexampled prosperity of the State its comfort, its com- 
 petence, its general intelligence and virtue is attributable to 
 the education, more or less perfect, which all its people have 
 received : but are they sensible of a fact equally important ; 
 namely, that it is to this same education that two-thirds of the 
 people are indebted for not being to-day the vassals of as severe 
 a tyranny, in the form of capital, as the lower classes of Europe 
 are bound to in the form of brute force ? 
 
 Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is 
 the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel 
 of the social machinery. I do not here mean that it so elevates 
 the moral nature as to make men disdain and abhor the oppres- 
 sion of their fellow-men. This idea pertains to another of its 
 attributes. But I mean that it gives each man the independ- 
 ence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of 
 other men. It does better than to disarm the poor of their hos- 
 tility towards the rich : it prevents being poor. Agrarianism 
 is the revenge of poverty against wealth. The wanton destruc- 
 tion of the property of others the burning of hay-ricks and 
 corn-ricks, the demolition of machinery because it supersedes 
 hand-labor, the sprinkling of vitriol on rich dresses is only 
 agrarianism run mad. Education prevents both the revenge 
 and the madness. On the other hand, a fellow-feeling for one's 
 class or caste is the common instinct of hearts not wholly sunk 
 in selfish regards for person or for family. The spread of edu-
 
 670 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 cation, by enlarging the cultivated class or caste, will open a 
 wider area over which the social feelings will expand ; and, 
 if this education should be universal and complete, it would do 
 more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions in 
 society. 
 
 The main idea set forth in the creeds of some political reform- 
 ers, or revolutionizers, is, that some people are poor because 
 others are rich. This idea supposes a fixed amount of property 
 in the community, which by fraud or force, or arbitrary law, is 
 unequally divided among men ; and the problem presented for 
 solution is, how to transfer a portion of this property from 
 those who are supposed to have too much to those who feel 
 and know that they have too little. At this point, both their 
 theory and their expectation of reform stop. But the benefi- 
 cent power of education would not be exhausted, even though 
 it should peaceably abolish all the miseries that spring from the 
 co-existence, side by side, of enormous wealth and squalid want. 
 It has a higher function. Beyond the power of diffusing old 
 wealth, it has the prerogative of creating new. It is a thousand 
 times more lucrative than fraud, and adds a thousand-fold 
 more to a nation's resources than the most successful conquests. 
 Knaves and robbers can obtain only what was before possessed 
 by others. But education creates or develops new treasures, 
 treasures not before possessed or dreamed of by any one. 
 
 Had mankind been endowed with only the instincts and fac- 
 ulties of the brute creation, there are hundreds of the irrational 
 tribes to which they would have been inferior, and of which 
 they would have been the prey. Did they, with oilier animals, 
 roam a common forest, how many of their fellow-tenants of 
 the wood would overcome them by superior force, or outstrip 
 them by greater fleetuess, or circumvent them by a sharper cun- 
 ning ! There are but few of the irrational tribes whose bodies 
 are not better provided with the means of defence or attack 
 than is the body of a man. The claws and canine teeth of the 
 lion and of the whole tiger family, the beak and talons of the 
 eagle and the vulture, the speed of the deer and of other timid
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 671 
 
 races, are means of assault or of escape far superior to any we 
 possess ; and all the power which we have, like so many of the 
 reptile and insect classes, of secreting a deadly venom, either 
 for protection or for aggression, has relation to moral venom, 
 and not to physical. 
 
 In a few lines, nowhere surpassed in philosophic strength 
 and beauty, Pope groups together the remarkable qualities of 
 several different races of animals, the strength of one class, 
 the genial covering of another, the fleetuess of a third. He 
 brings vividly to our recollection the lynx's vision of excelling 
 keenness, the sagacity of the houud that reads a name or a 
 sign in the last vanishing odor of a footprint, the exquisite 
 fineness of the spider's touch, and that chemical nicety by 
 -.vhich the bee discriminates between honey and poison in the 
 same flower-cup. He then closes with an interrogatory, which 
 has human reason both for its subject and its object : 
 
 " The powers of all sub.lued l>y thee alone: 
 Is not thy reason all these powers in one ? " 
 
 When Pope, now a little more than a century ago, mingled 
 these beauties with his didactic strains, he had no conception, 
 the world at that time had no conception, of other powers and 
 properties, infinitely more energetic and more exhaustless than 
 all which the animal races possess, to which the reason of man 
 is an equivalent. It was not then known that God had endued 
 the earth and the elements with energies and activities as much 
 superior to those which animals or men possess as the bulk and 
 frame of the earth itself exceeds their diminutive proportions. 
 It was not then known that the earth is a great reservoir of 
 powers, and that any man is free to use any quantity of them 
 if he will but possess himself of the key of knowledge, the 
 only key, but the infallible one, by which to unlock their gates. 
 At that time, if a philosopher wished to operate a mechanical 
 toy, he could lift or pump a few gallons of water for a moving- 
 power : but it was not understood that Nature, by the processes 
 of evaporation and condensation, is constantly lifting up into
 
 672 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the sky, and pouriug back upon the earth, all the mass of wa- 
 ters that flow in all the rivers of the world ; and that, in order 
 to perform the work of the world, the weight of all these waters 
 might be used again and again in each one of their perpetual 
 circuits.* The power-press and the power-loom, the steam- 
 boat and the locomotive, the paper-machine and the telegraph, 
 were not then known. All these instruments of human com- 
 fort and aggrandizement, and others almost innumerable, simi- 
 lar to them, are operated by the energies and the velocities of 
 Nature ; and, had Pope grouped together all the splendid profu- 
 sion and prodigality of her powers, he might still have appealed 
 to man, and said, 
 
 " 7s not thy reason all these powers in one ? " 
 
 To the weight of waters, the velocity of winds, the expansive 
 force of heat, and other kindred agencies, any man may go, 
 and he may draw from them as much as he pleases without 
 money and without price : or rather, I should say, any edu- 
 cated man may go ; for Nature flouts and scorns, and seems to 
 abhor, an ignorant man. She drowns him, and consumes him, 
 and tears him in pieces, if he but ventures to profane with his 
 touch her divinely-wrought machinery. 
 
 Now, these powers of Nature, by being enlisted in the service 
 of man, ADD to the wealth of the world, unlike robbery or 
 slavery or agrarianism, which aim only at the appropriation, 
 by one man or one class, of the wealth belonging to another 
 man or class. One man, with a Foudriuier, will make more 
 paper in a twelvemonth than all Egypt could have made iu a 
 hundred years during the reign of the Ptolemies. One man, 
 with a power-press, will print books faster than a million of 
 scribes could copy them before the invention of printing. One 
 man, with an iron-foundery, will make more utensils or ma- 
 chinery than Tubal-Caiu could have made had he worked 
 
 * The waters of the Blackstone River, which flows partly in Massachusetts, and 
 partly in Rhode Island, are used for driving mills, twenty-five times over, in a dis- 
 tance of less than forty miles.
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 673 
 
 diligently till this time.* And so in all the departments of 
 mechanical labor, in the whole circle of the useful arts. These 
 powers of Nature are able to give to all the inhabitants of the 
 earth, not merely shelter, covering, and food, but all the means 
 of refinement, embellishment, and mental improvement. In 
 the most strict and literal sense, they are bounties which God 
 gives for proficiency in knowledge. 
 
 The above ideas are beginning to be pretty well understood 
 by all men of respectable intelligence. I have adverted to 
 them, not so much on their own account, as by way of introduc- 
 tion or preface to two or three considerations, which certainly 
 are not understood, or not appreciated, as they deserve to be. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that human progress, even in regard 
 to the worldly interests of the race, did not begin with those im- 
 provements which are most closely allied to material prosperity. 
 One would have supposed, beforehand, that improvements 
 would commence with the near rather than with the remote. 
 Yet mankind had made great advances in astronomy, in ge- 
 ometry, and other mathematical sciences ; in the writing of his- 
 tory, in oratory, and in poetry : it is supposed by many to 
 have reached the highest point of yet attained perfection in 
 painting and in sculpture, and in those kinds of architecture 
 which may be called regal or religious, centuries before the 
 great mechanical discoveries and inventions which now bless 
 the world were brought to light. And the question has often 
 forced itself upon reflecting minds, why there was this prepos- 
 terousness, this inversion of what would appear to be the natu- 
 ral order of progress. Why was it, for instance, that men 
 should have learned the courses of the stars, and the revolutions 
 of the planets, before they found out how to make a good wagon- 
 wheel ? Why was it that they built the Parthenon and the Colos- 
 seum before they knew how to construct a comfortable, healthful 
 
 * In 1740, the whole amount of iron made in England and Wales was seventeen 
 thousand tons ; in 1840, it was more than a million tons, notwithstanding all that 
 had been manufactured and accumulated in the intervening century. What would 
 u Jewish or a Roman artificer have said to an annual product of a million tons of 
 iron? 
 
 43
 
 674 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 dwelling-house ? "Why did they construct the Roman aqueducts 
 before they constructed a saw-mill? Or why did they achieve 
 the noblest models in eloquence, in poetry, and in the drama, 
 before they invented movable types? I think we have now- 
 arrived at a point where we can unriddle this enigma. The 
 labor of the world has been performed by ignorant men, by 
 classes doomed to ignorance from sire to son, by the bondmen 
 and bond-women of the Jews, by the helots of Sparta, by 
 the captives who passed under the Roman yoke, and by the 
 villeins and serfs and slaves of more modern times. The 
 masters the aristocratic or patrician orders not only dis- 
 dained labor for themselves and their children, which was one 
 fatal mistake, but they supposed that knowledge was of no use 
 to a laborer, which was a mistake still more fatal. Hence, 
 ignorance, for almost six thousand years, has gone on plying 
 its animal muscles, and dropping its bloody sweat, and never 
 discovered any way, nor dreamed that there was any way, by 
 which it might accomplish many times more work with mauy 
 times less labor. And yet nothing is more true than that an 
 ignorant man will toil all his life long, moving to and fro within 
 an inch of some great discovery, and will never see it. All the 
 elements of a great discovery may fall into his hands, or be 
 thrust into his face ; but his eyes will be too blind to behold it. 
 If he is a slave, what motive has he to behold it? Its greater 
 profitableness will not redound to his benefit ; for another stands 
 ready to seize all the gain. Its abridgment of labor will not 
 conduce to his ease ; for other toils await him. But the moment 
 an intelligent man applies himself to labor, and labors for his 
 own benefit or for that of his family, he begins to inq lire 
 whether the same task cannot be performed with a less expendi- 
 ture of strength, or a greater ta#k with an equal expenditure. 
 He makes his wits save his bones. He fiuds it to be easier to 
 think than to work ; nay, that it is easier both to think and 
 work than to work without thinking. He foresees a prize as 
 the reward of successful effort ; and this stimulates his braiu to 
 deep contrivance, as well as his arms to rapid motion. Taking,
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 675 
 
 for illustration, the result of an experiment which has been 
 actually made, let us suppose this intelligent laborer to be 
 employed in moving blocks of squared granite, each weighing 
 1080 pounds. To move such a block along the floor of a 
 roughly-chiselled quarry requires a force equal to 758 pounds. 
 An ignorant man, therefore, must employ and pay several as- 
 sistants, or he can never move such a block an inch. But to 
 draw the same block over a floor of planks will require a force 
 of only 652 pounds. The expense of one assistant, therefore, 
 might be dispensed with. Placed on a platform of wood, and 
 drawn over the same floor, a draught of 606 pounds would be 
 sufficient. By soaping the two surfaces of the wood, the requi- 
 site force would be reduced to 182 pounds. Placed on rollers 
 three inches in diameter, a force equal to 34 pounds would be 
 sufficient. Substituting a wooden for a stone floor, and the 
 requisite force is 28 pounds. With the same rollers on a 
 wooden platform, 22 pounds only would be required. And now, 
 by the invention and use of locomotives and railroads, a traction 
 or draught of between three and four pounds is found to be suffi- 
 cient to move a body weighing 1080 pounds. Thus the amount 
 of force necessary to remove the body is reduced about two 
 hundred times. Xow, take away from these steps the single 
 element of intelligence, and each improvement would have been 
 impossible. The ignorant man would never have discovered 
 how nearly synonymous are freight and friction. 
 
 If a savage will learn how to swim, he can fasten a dozen 
 pounds' weight to his back, and transport it across a narrow 
 river or other body of water of moderate width. If he will 
 invent an axe, or other instrument, by which to cut down a 
 tree, he can use the tree for a float, and one of it? limbs for a 
 paddle, and can thus transport many times the former weight 
 many times the former distance. Hollowing out his log, he 
 will increase what may be called its tonnage, or rather its 
 poundage ; and, by sharpening its ends, it will cleave the 
 water both more easily and more swiftly. Fastening several 
 trees together, he makes a raft, and thus increases the buoyant
 
 676 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 power of his embryo water-craft. Turning up the ends of small 
 poles, or using knees of timber instead of straight pieces, and 
 grooving them together, or filling up the interstices between 
 them in some other way, so as to make them water-tight, he 
 brings his rude raft literally into ship-shape. Improving upon 
 hull below and rigging above, he makes a proud merchant- 
 man, to be wafted by the winds from continent to continent. 
 But even this does not content the adventurous naval architect. 
 He frames iron arms for his ship ; and, for oars, affixes iron 
 wheels, capable of swift revolution, and stronger than the strong 
 sea. Into iron-walled cavities in her bosom he puts iron organs 
 of massive structure and strength, and of cohesion insoluble by 
 fire. Within these he kindles a small volcano ; and then, like 
 a sentient and rational existence, this wonderful creation of his 
 hands cleaves oceans, breasts tides, defies tempests, and bears 
 its living and jubilant freight around the globe. Now, take 
 away intelligence from the ship-builder, and the steamship 
 that miracle of human art falls back into a floating log ; the 
 log itself is lost ; and the savage swimmer, bearing his dozen 
 pounds on his back, alone remains. 
 
 And so it is, not in one department only, but in the whole 
 circle of human labors. The annihilation of the sun would no 
 more certainly be followed by darkness than the extinction of 
 human intelligence would plunge the race at once into the weak- 
 ness and helplessness of barbarism. To have created such 
 beings as we are, and to have placed them in this world with- 
 out the light of the sun, would be no more cruel than for a 
 government to suffer its laboring classes to grow up without 
 knowledge. 
 
 In this fact, then, we find a solution of the problem that so 
 long embarrassed inquirers. The reason why the mechanical 
 and useful arts, those arts which have done so much to civil- 
 ize mankind, and which have given comforts and luxuries to 
 the common laborer of the present day, such as kings and 
 queens could not command three centuries ago, the reason 
 why these arts made no progress, and until recently, indeed,
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 677 
 
 can hardly be said to have had any thing more than a beginning, 
 is, that the labor of the world was performed by ignorant men. 
 As soon as some degree of intelligence dawned upon the work- 
 man, then a corresponding degree of improvement in his work 
 followed. At first, this intelligence was confined to a very 
 small number, and therefore improvements were few ; and they 
 followed each other only after long intervals. They uniformly 
 began in the nations and among the classes where there was 
 most intelligence. The middle classes of England, and the 
 people of Holland and Scotland, have done a hundred times 
 more than all the Eastern hemisphere besides. What single 
 improvement in art, or discovery in science, has ever originated 
 in Spain, or throughout the vast empire of the Russias? But 
 just in proportion as intelligence that is, education has 
 quickened and stimulated a greater and a greater number of 
 minds, just in the same proportion have inventions and discov- 
 eries increased in their wonderfulness, and in the rapidity of 
 their succession. The progression has been rather geometrical 
 than arithmetical. By the laws of Nature, it must be so. If, 
 among ten well-educated children, the chance is that at least 
 one of them will originate some new and useful process in the 
 arts, or will discover some new scientific principle, or some new 
 application of one, then, among a hundred such well-educated 
 children, there is a moral certainty that there will be more than 
 ten such originators or discoverers of new utilities ; for the 
 action of the mind is like the action of fire. One billet of 
 wood will hardly burn alone, though dry as suns and north-west 
 winds can make it, and though placed in the range of a current 
 of air ; ten such billets will burn well together ; but a hundred 
 will create a heat fifty times as intense as ten, will make a 
 current of air to fan their own flame, and consume even green- 
 ness itself. 
 
 For the creation of wealth, then, for the existence of a 
 wealthy people and a wealthy nation, intelligence is the grand 
 condition. The number of improvers will increase as the in- 
 tellectual constituency, if I may so call it, increases. In former
 
 678 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 times, and in most parts of the world even at the present day, 
 not one man in a million has ever had such a development of 
 mind as made it possible for him to become a contributor to 
 art or science. Let this development precede, and contribu- 
 tions, numberless, and of inestimable value, will be sure to fol- 
 low. That political economy, therefore, which busies itself 
 about capital and labor, supply and demand, interest and rents, 
 favorable and unfavorable balances of trade, but leaves out of 
 account the element of a widespread mental development, is 
 nought but stupendous folly. The greatest of all the arts in 
 political economy is to change a consumer into a producer ; 
 and the next greatest is to increase the producer's producing 
 power, an end to be directly attained by increasing his in- 
 telligence. For mere delving, an ignorant man is but little 
 better than a swine, whom he so much resembles in his appe- 
 tites, and surpasses in his powers of mischief. 
 
 But there is a class of persons who are not unwilling to con- 
 cede the advantages which education has over ignorance, both 
 in the more rapid and perfect performance of all kinds of labor, 
 and in the creation of all those mechanical instruments through 
 which Nature stands ready to do the work of the world: but, 
 while they acknowledge all this, they seem to think that the 
 argument in favor of knowledge has lost much of its force, be- 
 cause mechanical ingenuity and scientific discovery must have 
 nearly reached the outermost limit of possible advancement ; 
 that either the powers of Nature are exhausted, or human 
 genius is in its decrepitude. The past achievements of the 
 mind excite their admiration, but not their hope. They are 
 regarded as the measure of what man can perform, but not as 
 the promise of what he is yet to perform. They are accepted, 
 not as a little earnest-money, but as full payment. 
 
 Now, the view which I am constrained to take of the history 
 aud destiny of man is exactly the contrary of this one. I hold 
 all past achievements of the human mind to be rather in the 
 nature of prophecy than of fulfilment, the first-fruits of the 
 beneficence of God in endowing us with the faculties of per-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 679 
 
 ception, comparison, calculation, and causality, rather than the 
 full harvest of their eventual development. For look at the 
 magnificent creation into which we have been brought, and at 
 the adaptation of our faculties to understand, admire, and use 
 it. All around us are works worthy of an infinite God ; and 
 we are led, by irresistible evidence, to believe, that, just so far as 
 we acquire his knowledge, we shall be endued with his power. 
 From history and from consciousness, we find ourselves capable 
 of ever-onward improvement : and therefore it seems to be a 
 denial of first principles it seems no better .than impiety to 
 .suppose that we shall ever become such finished scholars, that 
 the works of the All-wise will have no new problem for our so- 
 lution, and will, therefore, be able to teach us no longer. Nor 
 is it any less than impiety to suppose that we shall ever so com- 
 pletely enlist the powers of Nature in our service, that ex- 
 hausted Omnipotence can reward our industry with no further 
 bounties. This would be to suppose that we shall arrive at a 
 period when our active and progressive natures will become 
 passive and stationary ; when we shall have nothing to do but 
 to sit in indolent and inglorious contemplation of past achieve- 
 ments ; and when, all aspirations having been lost in fruition, we 
 shall have outlived the joys of hope and the rewards of effort, 
 and no new glories will beckon us onward to new felicities. 
 
 Xeither our faculties, uor their spheres of action, seem to 
 have been projected on any such narrow plan. Ever-expand- 
 ing powers are within us ; eternity lies before us ; and an 
 Infinite Being, amidst his works, is the adorable object of 
 these faculties throughout this eternity. These, no height of 
 attainment which our powers will ever reach, and no length 
 of duration to which the cycles of eternity shall ever have run, 
 will enable us to exhaust or fully to comprehend. To affirm 
 the contrary would be to affirm that our finite minds can em- 
 brace and encircle their infinite Author, as his mind embraces 
 and encircles ours. Our relation to our Maker, then, is a 
 moral phase of the problem of the asymptote, a Hue forever 
 approaching a point which it can never reach.
 
 680 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 And, if we believe in our individual capacity for indefinite 
 improvement, why should we doubt the capacity of the race 
 for continued progress as long as it dwells upon the earth ? 
 Can man, " by searching, find out God " in a physical sense 
 any more than in a moral one? or can all the generations of 
 the race, by the longest and the profouudest investigations, ever 
 fathom the depths of eternal wisdom and power as they are 
 incorporated into this earthly frame? However far, then, 
 science and art may push their explorations, there will always 
 be a frontier bounding their advances ; there will always be a 
 terra incognita beyond the regions they have surveyed, 
 beyond the utmost verge of the horizon which the eye can see 
 from the topmast pinnacle of existing discoveries. Each new 
 adventurer can gain new trophies by penetrating still deeper 
 into the illimitable solitudes where alone Omnipotence dwells 
 and works. The most perfect instrument which the brightest 
 genius of any age may ever construct will be excelled by an- 
 other instrument, made after a higher ideal of perfection by the 
 brighter genius of a succeeding age. The most rapid processes 
 of art known to any generation will be accelerated in the gen- 
 eration that shall follow it, and science will be found not only 
 a plant of perennial growth, but, in each succeeding age, it 
 Avill bear blossoms of a more celestial splendor, and fruits of 
 beneficence unknown before. 
 
 Astronomers now tell us, that the sun is not a stationary orb, 
 fixed and immovable at one place in the heavens, as, since the 
 days of Copernicus, it had been supposed to be, but that, in 
 some far-oiF region of immensity, at a distance wholly incon- 
 ceivable by us, there is a central point of attraction, around 
 which our sun, with its attendant train of planets, is perform- 
 ing a magnificent revolution ; just as, within their narrow 
 orbits, the planets of our local system are revolving about the 
 sun. They tell us, further, that the circumference of this solar 
 orbit is so vast, that, during the six thousand years which are 
 supposed to have elapsed since the creation of Adam, the sun 
 has not yet travelled through so much as one of the three hun-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. C81 
 
 dred and sixty degrees that make up its mighty circle ; not 
 through so much as one of those hundreds of astronomical 
 spaces through which it must move before it will complete a 
 single revolution. What number of these immense circuits the 
 earth is destined to perform, or what part even of a single rev- 
 olution it will accomplish, before it will meet with some such 
 catastrophe as will unfit it to be the abode of a race like ours, 
 we know not ; but we have no reason to believe, even if the 
 mighty years of the solar revolutions should equal the number 
 of our terrestrial years since the creation of Adam, that the 
 race will ever have exhausted the earth of all the latent capaci- 
 ties for ministering to the improvement and happiness of man 
 with which God has endued it. No invention or discovery 
 will ever be made, upon which the author can stand, and lift 
 up his proud voice, and exclaim, " / have found the last miracle 
 of the miracle-working God ! " 
 
 Now, so far as these natural and yet undeveloped resources 
 of the earth are hereafter to be brought to light, and made the 
 ministering servants of human welfare, we suppose they are to 
 be brought to light by the exercise of the human faculties, in 
 the same way that all the scientific and mechanical improve- 
 ments of past times have been brought to light, that is, by 
 education. And the greater the proportion of minds in any 
 community which are educated, and the more thorough and 
 complete the education which is given them, the more rapidly, 
 through these sublime stages of progress, will that community 
 advance in all the means of enjoyment and elevation, and the 
 more will it outstrip and outshine its less educated neighbors. 
 The advance-guard of education and intelligence will gather 
 the virgin wealth of whatever region they explore, as the re- 
 ward of their knowledge, just as the Portuguese reaped the great 
 harvest of the riches of India as their reward for discovering 
 the new route to India. 
 
 I know that it may be said, and said, too, not without a cer- 
 tain measure of truth, that when a more intelligent community 
 has made a discovery in science, or devised or perfected the
 
 682 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 processes of any art, a less intelligent community by its side 
 may adopt and copy them, and thus make the improvements 
 their own by possession, though the invention belonged to 
 another. After a bold navigator has opened a new channel of 
 commerce, and while he is gathering the first-fruits of his 
 sagacity, the stupid or the predatory may follow in his wake,| 
 and share the gains of his enterprise. Dr. Franklin may dis- 
 cover the uses of the lightning-rod ; but when once discovered, 
 and the manner of its use exhibited, any half-taught son of 
 Vulcan can make and erect one by copying the given model. 
 When a school-boy of New England has invented the cotton- 
 gin, or perfected cotton machinery, the slaves of the South, 
 stupid and ignorant as cattle, " according to the form of the 
 statute in such cases made and provided," can operate them 
 with a greater or less degree of success and profit. But there 
 are two considerations which show how inferior the condition 
 of the aping community must always be to that of the originat- 
 ing one. 
 
 In the first place, all copying is in the nature of empiricism. 
 The copyist operates blindly, and not on principle ; and there- 
 fore he is constantly exposed to failure. In untried emergen- 
 cies, he never knows what to do, for the light of example shines 
 only in one direction; while it is the very nature of principle, 
 like its divine Author, to circumfuse its beams, and so to leave 
 110 darkness in any direction. 
 
 And, in the second place, even supposing the aping commu- 
 nity to be able, after long delays and toils, to equal the origi- 
 nating one, still, before the period shall have elapsed which the 
 pupil will require for studying out or copying the old lesson, 
 his master will have studied out some new one ; will have dis- 
 covered some new improvement, diffusive of new utility, and 
 Fadiant with new beauty : so that the distance will be kept us 
 great as ever between him and the learner. 
 
 The slave States of this Union may buy cotton machinery 
 made by the intelligent mechanics of the free States, and they 
 may train their slaves to work it with more or less skill ; but
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 683 
 
 should they succeed ever so well, should they eventually be- 
 come able to meet their entire home demand, it will neverthe- 
 less be true, that, in the mean time, the new wants and refine- 
 ments generated by the progress of the age will demand some 
 new fabric, requiring for its manufacture either more inge- 
 niously-wrought machinery, or greater skill in the operator: 
 and thus will the more educated community forever keep ahead 
 of the less educated one. The progress of mankind may be 
 compared to an ascending spiral. In moving upward along 
 this spiral, the less intelligent community will see the more 
 intelligent one at a point above its head. It will labor on to 
 overtake it, and, making another toilsome circuit, will at length 
 reach the place where the victor had been seen ; but, lo ! the 
 victor is not there : he, too, has made a circuit along the 
 ascending curve, and is still far aloft, above the head of his 
 pursuer. 
 
 Another common idea is this : it is supposed that intelligence 
 in workmen is relatively less important in agricultural labors 
 than in the mechanic and manufacturing arts. The great agri- 
 cultural staples of the country corn, cotton, sugar, rice, and 
 so forth have been stigmatized, or at least characterized, as 
 "coarser" products, and, therefore, requiring less skill and 
 science for their culture and improvement than the fabrics of 
 the loom and the workshop. This may be true ; but I am by 
 no means convinced of its truth. It seems to me that there is, 
 as yet, no adequate proof that skill and science, if applied to 
 agriculture, will not yield practical benefits as copious and as 
 wonderful as any that have rewarded the mechanician or the 
 artisan in any department of their labors. Why vegetable 
 growths, so exquisite in their organization, animated by the 
 mysterious principle of life, and so susceptive of all the influences 
 of climate, whether good or ill, why these should be called 
 " coarser " than iron-ore or other unorganized metals, or any 
 kind of wealth that is found in mines ; or why cotton or flax, 
 wool or leather, wood or grain, should be denominated ; ' coarser " 
 before they have been deprived of the principle of life than after
 
 684 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 it, and before they have lost the marvellous power of assimilat- 
 ing inorganic matter to their own peculiar substance, it is not 
 easy to perceive. May it not yet be found that a better knowl- 
 edge of the laws that govern vegetable growth ; a better knowl- 
 edge of the properties and adaptations of different soils ; a 
 better knowledge of the conditions of fructification and germi- 
 nation, and of the mysterious chemistry that determines the 
 quality of texture, color, flavor, and perfume ; a better knowl- 
 of the uncombined gases, and of the effect of light, heat, elec- 
 tricity, and other imponderable agents, upon the size, rapidity, 
 and variegation of vegetable growths, in fine, a better knowl- 
 edge of vegetable physiology, and of that, too, which may be 
 called vegetable pathology, will redeem the whole circle of 
 agricultural occupations from the stigma of requiring less in- 
 telligent cultivators than are required for other pursuits, and 
 thus supply a new and irresistible argument in favor of diffus- 
 ing a vastly-increased amount of knowledge among our free 
 field-laborers and our rural population generally? The mar- 
 vellous improvements which have been made under the auspices 
 of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, in horticulture, 
 floriculture, and pomology, already betoken such a result.* 
 
 Now, it is in these various ways that all the means of human 
 subsistence, comfort, improvement, or what, in one word, we 
 call wealth, are created, additional wealth, new wealth, not 
 another man's earnings, not another nation's treasures or lands, 
 tricked away by fraud or wrested by force, but substantially, 
 and for all practical purposes, knowledge-created, mind-created 
 wealth ; as much so as though we had been endued with a 
 miraculous power of turning a granite quarry into a city at 
 a word, or a wilderness into cultivated fields, or of command- 
 ing harvests to ripen in a day. To see a community acquiring 
 and redoubling its wealth in this way ; enriching itself with- 
 
 * As an illustration of the value of knowledge in agricultural pursuits, it may be 
 mentioned, that the researches and discoveries by M. MeneviUe, in regard to the 
 fly which was lately so destructive to the olive in the south of France, have in- 
 creased the annual product of this fruit almost a million of dollars' worth. When 
 would an iyuoraut man, or a slave, have made such a discovery ?
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 685 
 
 out impoverishing others, without despoiling others, is it not 
 a noble spectacle? Aud will not the community that gains its 
 wealth in this way, ten times faster than any robber-nation ever 
 did by plunder, will not such a community be a model and a 
 pattern for the nations, a type of excellence to be admired and 
 followed by the world? Has Massachusetts no ambition to 
 win the palm in so glorious a rivalry? 
 
 But suppose that Massachusetts, notwithstanding her deplo- 
 rable inferiority in all natural resources as compared with 
 other States, should be content to be their equal only in the 
 means of education, and in the development of the intelligence 
 of her present children and her future citizens, down, down 
 to what a despicable depth of inferiority would she suddenly 
 pluuge ! Her ancient glory would become dim. No historian, 
 no orator, no poet, would rise up among her children. Her 
 sons would cease, as now, to fill chairs in the halls of learning 
 in more than half the States of the Union. Her jurists would 
 no longer expound the laws of Nature, of nations, and of 
 States, to guide the judicial tribunals of the country. Her 
 skilled artisans and master-mechanics would not be sought for, 
 wherever, throughout the land, educated labor is wanted. Her 
 ship-captains would be driven home from every ocean by more 
 successful competitors. At home, a narrowing in the range of 
 thought and action, a lowering of the tone of life and enter- 
 prise, a straitening in the means of living and of culture, a 
 sinking in spirit and in all laudable and generous ambitions, 
 the rearing of sons to obscurity and of (laughters to vulgarity, 
 would mark the incoming of a degenerate age, an age too 
 ignorant to know its own ignorance, too shameless to mouru its 
 degradation, and too spiritless even to rise with recuperative 
 energy from its guilty fall. But little less disastrous would it 
 be to stop where we now are, instead of pressing onward with 
 invigorated strength to a further goal. What has been done is 
 not the fulfilment or consummation of our work. It only affords 
 better vantage-ground from which our successors can start 
 anew in a nobler career of improvement. And ii there is any
 
 686 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 one thing for which the friends of humanity have reason to join 
 in a universal song of thanksgiving to Heaven, it is that there 
 is a large and an increasing body of people in Massachusetts 
 who cannot be beguiled or persuaded into the belief that our 
 common schools are what they may and should be ; and who, 
 with the sincerest good-will and warmest affections towards the 
 higher institutions of learning, are yet resolved that the educa- 
 tion of the people at large of the sous and daughters of farm- 
 ers, mechanics, tradesmen, operatives, and laborers of all 
 kinds shall be carried to a point of perfection indefinitely 
 higher than it has yet reached.* 
 
 POLITICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 The necessity of general intelligence, that is, of education 
 '(for I use the terms as substantially synonymous, because gen- 
 eral intelligence can never exist without general education, and 
 general education will be sure to produce general intelligence), 
 
 * la the letter of the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, making a donation of fifty thou- 
 sand dollars for the purpose of founding a scientific school at Cambridge (to 
 which he has since added fifty thousand dollars more), the following expression 
 occurs: "Elementary education appears to be well provided for in Massachu- 
 setts." And in the Memorial in behalf of the three colleges, Harvard, Amherst, 
 and Williams, presented to the legislature in January, 1848, and signed by each 
 of the three presidents of those institutions, it is said, " The provision [in 
 Massachusetts] for elementary education . . . seems to be all that can be desired, 
 or that can be advantageously done by the legislature." The average salaries of 
 female teachers throughout the State, at the time when these declarations were 
 made, was only $8.55 a month (exclusive of board), which, as the average length 
 of the schools was only eight months, would give to this most faithful and meri- 
 torious class of persons but $(is.40 a year. The whole value of the apparatus in 
 all the schools of the State was but SS^3,8'2C; and the whole number of volumes 
 in their libraries was only 91,5 : J9, or an average of but twenty-five volumes for 
 each school. In accordance with the prayer of the Memorial, the Committee on 
 Education reported a bill, making a grant of half a million of dollars to the colleges. 
 The House of Representatives, after maturely considering the bill, changed the 
 destination of the money from the colleges to the common schools, and then 
 passed it. The donation of Mr. Lawrence will be lisghly beneficial to the few 
 hundreds of students who will have the direct enjoyment of his munificence; and, 
 through them, it will also benefit the State. So, too, would the contemplated grant 
 to the colleges. Thus far, it is believed, all liberal minds will agree. Hut what 
 is needed is the universal prevalence of the further idea, that there are two hun- 
 dred thousand children in the State, each one of whom would be far more than 
 proportionally benefited by the expenditure for their improved education of one- 
 tenth part of sums so liberal.
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 687 
 
 the necessity of general intelligence under a republican form 
 of government, like most other very important truths, has become 
 a very trite one. It is so trite, indeed, as to have lost much of 
 its force by its familiarity. Almost all the champions of educa- 
 tion seize upon this argument first of all, because it is so 
 simple as to be understood by the ignorant, and so strong as to 
 convince the sceptical. Nothing would be easier than to follow 
 in the train of so many writers, and to demonstrate by logic, 
 by history, and by the nature of the case, that a republican 
 form of government, without intelligence in the people, must 
 be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent 
 or keepers, would be on a small one. the despotism of a few 
 succeeded by universal anarchy, and anarchy by despotism, 
 with no change but from bad to worse. Want of space and 
 time alike forbid me to attempt any full development of the 
 merits of this theme ; but yet, in the closing one of a series of 
 reports partaking somewhat of the nature of a summary of 
 former arguments, an omission of this topic would suggest to 
 the comprehensive mind the idea of incompleteness. 
 
 That the aifairs of a great nation or state are exceedingly 
 complicated and momentous, no one will dispute. Xor will it 
 be questioned that the degree of intelligence that superintends 
 should be proportioned to the magnitude of the interests super- 
 intended. He who scoops out a wooden dish needs less skill 
 than the maker of a steam-engine or a telescope. The dealer 
 in small wares requires less knowledge than the merchant who 
 exports and imports to and from all quarters of the globe. An 
 ambassador cannot execute his functions with the stock of 
 attainments or of talents sufficient for a parish clerk. Indeed, 
 it is clear that the want of adequate intelligence of intelli- 
 gence commensurate with the nature of the duties to be per- 
 formed will bring ruin or disaster upon any department. A 
 merchant loses his intelligence, and he becomes a bankrupt. A 
 lawyer loses his intelligence, and he forfeits all the interests of 
 his clients. Intelligence abandons a physician, and his patients 
 die with more than the pains of natural dissolution. Should
 
 688 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 judges upon the bench be bereft of this guide, what havoc would 
 be made of the property and the innocence of men ! Let this 
 counsellor be taken from executive officers, and the penalties due 
 to the wicked would be visited upon the righteous, while the 
 rewards and immunities of the righteous would be bestowed 
 upon the guilty. And so, should intelligence desert the halls of 
 legislation, weakness, rashness, contradiction, and error would 
 glare out from every page of the statute-book. Now, as a 
 republican government represents almost all interests, whether 
 social, civil, or military, the necessity of a degree of intelligence 
 adequate to the due administration of them all is so self-evident, 
 that a bare statement is the best argument. 
 
 But, in the possession of this attribute of intelligence, elective 
 legislators will never far surpass their electors. By a natural 
 law, like that which regulates the equilibrium of fluids, elector 
 and elected, appoiuter and appointee, tend to the same lev-el. 
 It is not more certain that a wise and enlightened constituency 
 will refuse to iuvest a reckless and profligate man with office, 
 or discard him if accidentally chosen, than it is that a foolish 
 or immoral constituency will discard or eject a wise man. 
 This law of assimilation between the choosers and the chosen 
 results, not only from the fact that the voter originally selects 
 his representative according to the affinities of good or of ill, 
 of wisdom or of folly, which exist between them, but if the 
 legislator enacts or favors a law which i? too wise for the con- 
 stituent to understand, or too just for him to approve, the next 
 election will set him aside as certainly as if he had made open 
 merchandise of the dearest interests of the people by perjury 
 and for a bribe. And if the infinitely Just and Good, in giving 
 laws to the Jews, recognized the " hardness of their hearts," 
 how much more will an earthly ruler recognize the baseness or 
 wickedness of the people when his heart is as hard as theirs ! 
 In a republican government, legislators are a mirror reflecting 
 the moral countenance of their constituents. And hence it is, 
 that the establishment of a republican government, without 
 well-appointed and efficient means for the universal education
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 689 
 
 of the people, is the most rash and fool-hardy experiment ever 
 tried by man. Its fatal results may not be immediately devel- 
 oped, they may not follow as the thunder follows the lightning ; 
 for time is an element in maturing them, and the calamity is 
 too great to be prepared in a day : but, like the slow-accumulat- 
 ing avalanche, they will grow more terrific by delay, and at 
 length, though it may be at a late hour, will overwhelm with 
 ruin whatever lies athwart their path. It may be an easy 
 thing to make a republic ; but it is a very laborious thing to 
 make republicans ; and woe to the republic that rests upon 
 no better foundations than ignorance, selfishness, and passion ! 
 Such a republic may grow in numbers and in wealth. As an 
 avaricious man adds acres to his lands, so its rapacious govern- 
 ment may increase its own darkness by annexing provinces and 
 states to its ignorant domain. Its armies may be invincible, 
 and its fleets may strike terror into nations on the opposite 
 sides of the globe at the same hour. Vast in its extent, and 
 enriched with all the prodigality of Nature, it may possess 
 every capacity and opportunity of being great and of doing 
 good. But, if such a republic be devoid of intelligence, it will 
 only the more closely resemble an obscene giant who has 
 waxed strong in his youth, and grown wanton in his strength ; 
 whose brain has been developed only in the region of the appe- 
 tites and passions, and not in the organs of reason and con- 
 science ; and who, therefore, is boastful of his bulk alone, and 
 glories in the weight of his heel, and in the destruction of his 
 arm. Such a republic, with all its noble capacities for benefi- 
 cence, will rush with the speed of a whirlwind to an ignomini- 
 ous end ; and all good men of after-times would be fain to 
 weep over its downfall, did not their scorn and contempt at 
 its folly and its wickedness repress all sorrow for its fate. 
 
 As the merits of this subject cannot even be sketched on the 
 present occasion, I will confine myself to a single illustration, 
 showing how an unenlightened people will permit, and some- 
 times will even require, that their government should injure 
 their own interests. 
 
 44
 
 690 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 A universal function of government one that has per- 
 tained to every government that has ever existed, and doubtless 
 will continue to do so while the world stands is the collec- 
 tion of revenues. The government must be maintained ; but it 
 has no power of earning or of creating wealth to defray its own 
 expenses. It must therefore be supported by revenues derived 
 from the people. 
 
 In absolute despotisms, arbitrary exactions are made upon 
 all the possessors of wealth, or upon all but a few excepted fa- 
 vorites. Where a pretence for such exactions is wanted, acts 
 which are not crimes are declared to be criminal, so that the 
 ruler may claim a forfeiture, or penalty, for the performance of 
 deeds, which, before any tribunal of conscience or of justice, 
 would be held innocent. Ex post facto laws are made ; that is, 
 laws which act backwards, and subject an act to punishment 
 after the law, which was not punishable at the time it was 
 done, which might have been, indeed, not only guiltless, but 
 laudable at the time of its performance. 
 
 Now, it must be obvious that such methods of raising revenue 
 must have an almost annihilating effect upon the production of 
 wealth ; for no man will earn money beyond his immediate ne- 
 cessities, when the very fact of his acquisition only exposed 
 him to pillage. When the richest men are worst plundered, 
 poverty becomes the privilege. Intelligence, though it had been 
 that of the Prince of Darkness, would have saved nations from 
 this cause of poverty. 
 
 Governments less arbitrary have resorted to expedients for 
 self-support scarcely less baneful to the general welfare. 
 Among these are monopolies, such as that, for instance, 
 by which the Pacha of Egypt required all the cotton grown by 
 his subjects to be sold to him at his own price, that he might 
 resell it at an advanced one ; or that by which the French king 
 exercised the privilege of selling all the tobacco consumed in 
 his kingdom, and then sold out the privilege to sell, at an enor- 
 mous price. Some governments have derived a revenue from 
 the sale of offices, even those which demand, for the fit dis-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 691 
 
 charge of their duties, the highest talents and the purest integ- 
 rity, such as the judicial ; and so have cared every thing 
 for the amount of the bribe, and nothing for the fitness of the 
 incumbent. In all such cases, the most vital and enduring in- 
 terests of the community have been sacrificed to the incidental 
 benefit of revenue, a policy vastly more ruinous than that 
 of the incendiary who burns a house that he may steal a shil- 
 ling. 
 
 Even the freest and most enlightened governments have been 
 guilty of similar improvidences and follies. The raising of reve- 
 nue from licensed lotteries furnishes a signal illustration. For 
 every unit of gain to the public treasury, by the levy of a tax 
 on the sale of lottery-tickets, hundreds of loss are subtracted 
 from the public wealth. For it is obvious, in the first place, 
 that lotteries create no wealth. They add nothing to the aggre- 
 gate of silver and gold belonging to a community, any more 
 than they add to the number of its houses or the extent of its 
 lauds. They can do nothing more than to transfer one man's 
 money to another man's pocket. Then they occupy the time of- 
 many individuals, who otherwise might be usefully employed 
 in the creation or augmentation of the public wealth. Besides 
 this, the expenses actually incurred by agencies, brokerage, ad- 
 vertisements, apparatus, and so forth, is not inconsiderable. It 
 is also true, that the poorest class of people are usually the pur- 
 chasers of lottery-tickets, on the same principle that a man 
 must first be drowning before he will catch at a straw, and 
 generally with the same result. Thus all the evils of poverty 
 are aggravated by the loss of a part of its pittance. Then 
 adventuring in this traffic substitutes hopes of gain, founded on 
 chance, for the certainties of regular industry. The services of 
 a laborer or an apprentice, of a journeyman mechanic or a clerk, 
 with an undrawn lottery-ticket in his pocket, are hardly worth 
 half-price ; for how can any one work for a few shillings a day, 
 while hope is jingling a bag of gold in his ears to be had for 
 nothing? But, while the earnings of a ticket-holder are less, 
 his expenditures are greater ; for why should not a man who is
 
 602 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 so soon to be rich anticipate a little the receipt of his fortune? 
 It is on the same principle which leads a profligate heir to 
 bind himself by post-obits. Is it said that none but a weak- 
 minded man will be so confident of success as to be less indus- 
 trious or less frugal after the purchase of a ticket than before, 
 the answer is, that the fact of the purchase proves the weak- 
 mindedness. A tempter of fortune may limit himself either to 
 one or to any prescribed number of trials, and resolve, that, if 
 unsuccessful, he will abide by the decisions of his luck, and 
 never venture again ; but such a man does not reflect that he 
 will come out of the experiment a different man from what he 
 was when he went into it. The state of his mind will be al- 
 tered more than that of his purse ; and he has no second uncor- 
 rupted will whose energies he can now use to restrain the back- 
 sliding of the first. But suppose a man to meet with the mis- 
 fortune of being what he calls fortunate ; suppose him to draw 
 a prize of fifty thousand dollars ; and thus, without any valid 
 consideration, or any moral right, to pick the pockets of five 
 thousand persons of ten dollars each (and this, too, without 
 the dexterity or sleight of hand of a common pickpocket), yet 
 it is proved by data derived from the widest observation, that 
 the chances are fifty to one, that, while his unjust gains will 
 only injure the losers, they will ruin himself. Take all these 
 evils into consideration, and take into consideration, also, what 
 is far more important than all these evils united, the imposi- 
 tions and the frauds which accompany the whole operation, and 
 which often bear as great a proportion to the fair dealing as 
 the blanks bear to the prizes, take all these pecuniary, 
 social, and moral mischiefs into account, and how is it possible 
 for any intelligent legislator, for the sake of a little incidental 
 revenue, ever to legalize an institution which destroys wealth 
 by wholesale, and cankers the morals of entire classes of 
 the people? 
 
 And yet, until within a few years, there was not a State in 
 this whole Union whose legislature did not stand so low, not 
 only in the scale of morals, but of political economy, as to
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 693 
 
 authorize lotteries. Sometimes they were granted for a paltry 
 revenue to be paid into the treasury ; sometimes to aid in the 
 erection of public works, to build a bridge, a canal, or a 
 church.* Just in proportion as intelligence has advanced, pe- 
 titions for lotteries have been refused, and the sale of lottery- 
 tickets interdicted by law ; until now they are driven almost 
 exclusively into the Southern and South-western States. There 
 they await the dawning of that general enlightenment which 
 common schools could so rapidly give, to be banished from the 
 country forever. 
 
 On the clearest principles of morality and political economy, 
 the licensing of houses for the sale of intoxicating drinks, of 
 gaming-houses, and houses of ill-fame, for the ignominious pur- 
 pose of raising a revenue out of the misery and licentiousness 
 of men, stands even on a more unsound and criminal footing 
 than legalizing the pest of lotteries. Yet all this is done, even 
 at the present day, by legislators \vho would think it an indig- 
 nity if they were denied an exalted place on the roll of enlight- 
 ened, patriotic, and Christian men. Great Britain, for a series 
 of years, has derived more than one-fourth part of all her enor- 
 mous revenue from the various manufactures of malt, and sale 
 of spirituous liquors, though every pound which has gone into 
 the treasury from this source represented some stage in the ter- 
 rible process by which sanity was turned iuto madness, or a 
 well man iuto a sick beast. France, and even some parts of our 
 own country, have exhibited hateful specimens of the other 
 kinds of these incarnations of evil, these devouring monsters, 
 who have been permitted, for a fee, by the governments which 
 should have protected their people, to stalk through society, and 
 to iuflict upon all its interests body, soul, and estate direr 
 calamities than death itself. 
 
 The multiplication of oaths is another signal illustration of 
 the fact, how prone incompetent legislators ever are to sacrifice 
 the greater interest to the less, the spiritual to the outward, the 
 
 * When a church is built by a lottery, can there be any doubt which has the 
 best side of the bargain, the Evil Spirit, or the Good?
 
 694 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 enduring to the temporary. Adherence to truth is so neces- 
 sary among men, that even the lowest instincts of self-inter- 
 est will visit the falsifier with retribution, though honor and 
 conscience should not. But the utterance of truth, very gene- 
 rally speaking, is considered more in the light of an obligation 
 between man and man than as a due to Heaven ; and there are 
 many who would not hesitate to tell a falsehood, who would 
 tremble at the commission of gerjury. But governments, for 
 some collateral and incidental benefit, most generally for the 
 purpose of securing themselves against fraud in the collection 
 of revenues, impose an oath upon men, not merely where 
 the oath - taker is adversely interested, but where, from the 
 nature of the case, he cannot certainly determine the truth of 
 the statement to which he deposes. This leads to moral laxity, 
 and relaxes laxity itself. Hence, in mercantile communities, 
 there has arisen a class of oaths called *' custom-house oaths," 
 an appellation which indicates that men swear, if not to what 
 they know to be untrue, yet, at least, to what they do not know 
 to be true. Often the oath is administered to persons who are 
 under the strongest temptations to perjury, and where, too, the 
 danger of detection is small. This is PERJURY MADE EASY ; 
 for the step is a short one between swearing to a thing as true, 
 with only a general inference or supposition that it is so, and 
 ^wearing to a known untruth. 
 
 Now, can any money compensate government for contami- 
 nating public morals? Or in a republic, which is a government 
 of the people by the people, can they afford to barter their own 
 integrity, in order to get a little of their own money, out of 
 their own pockets, into their own public treasury, whence it is 
 so soon to flow back into their own pockets again? Every 
 legislator should be a political economist, and every voter should 
 know at least the leading elements of political economy, and 
 be able to understand their application to the affairs of life ; 
 but, surely, that political economy is a delusion and a cheat 
 which does not hold the morals of the community as the primal 
 element in its prosperity ; and the prayer, u Lead us not into
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 695 
 
 temptation," is one which may be as appropriately addressed 
 by a people to its rulers as by a frail and fallible mortal to his 
 Maker. 
 
 I have now given a hasty review of a single class of errors 
 those pertaining to the collection of revenue into which 
 governments have fallen thiough a want of intelligence; 
 through a want of such intelligence, it may be added, as any 
 discreet and reflecting man would exercise in the management 
 of his own affairs. And when will rulers be wiser than they 
 have been ? Never, until the people, to whom they are respon- 
 sible, shall permit it and demand it. Never will wisdom pre- 
 side in the halls of legislation, and its profound utterances be 
 recorded on the pages of the statute-book, until common 
 schools or some other agency of equal power not yet dis- 
 covered shall create a more far-seeing intelligence, and a 
 purer morality, than has ever yet existed among communities 
 of men. Legislators, in the execution of their high guardian- 
 ship over public interests, will never secure to the State even 
 the greatest amount of wealth while they seek to obtain it at 
 the price of morality. It is only when the virtue of the people 
 is supremely cared for, that they will discover the comprehen- 
 sive meaning of the Scripture, that godliness is profitable unto 
 all things. 
 
 However elevated the moral character of a constituency may 
 be, however well informed in matters of general science or 
 history, yet they must, if citizens of a republic, understand 
 something of the true nature and functions of the government 
 under which they live. That any one, who is to participate in 
 the government of a country when he becomes a man, should 
 receive no instruction respecting the nature and functions of the 
 government he is afterwai'ds to administer, is a political sole- 
 cism. In all nations, hardly excepting the most rude and 
 barbarous, the future sovereign receives some training which is 
 supposed to fit him for the exercise of the powers and duties of 
 his anticipated station. Where, by force of law, the govern- 
 ment devolves upon the heir while yet in a state of legal
 
 696 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 infancy, some regency, or other substitute, is appointed to act 
 in his stead until his arrival at mature age ; and, in the mean 
 time, he is subjected to such a course of study and discipline 
 as will tend to prepare him, according to the political theory of 
 the time and the place, to assume the reins of authority at the 
 appointed age. If in England, or in the most enlightened 
 European monarchies, it would be a proof of restored barba- 
 rism to permit the future sovereign to grow up without any 
 knowledge of his duties, and who can doubt that it would be 
 such a proof? then, surely, it would be not less a proof of 
 restored or of never-removed barbarism amongst us to em- 
 power any individual to use the elective franchise without 
 preparing him for so momentous a trust. Hence the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States, and of our own State, should be 
 made a study in our public schools. The partition of the 
 powers of government into the three co-ordinate branches, 
 legislative, judicial, and executive, with the duties appropri- 
 ately devolving upon each ; the mode of electing or of appoint- 
 ing all officers, with the reasons on which it was founded ; and, 
 especially, the duty of every citizen, in a government of laws, 
 to appeal to the courts for redress in all cases of alleged wrong, 
 instead of undertaking to vindicate his own rights by his own 
 arm ; and, in a government where the people are the acknowl- 
 edged sources of power, the duty of changing laws and rulers 
 by an appeal to the ballot, and not by rebellion, should be 
 taught to all the children until they are fully understood. 
 
 Had the obligations of the future citizen been sedulously 
 inculcated upon all the children of this Republic, would the 
 patriot have had to mourn over so many instances where the 
 voter, not being able to accomplish his purpose by voting, has 
 proceeded to accomplish it by violence ; where, agreeing witli 
 his fellow-citizens to use the machinery of the ballot, he makes 
 a tacit reservation, that, if that machinery does not move 
 according to his pleasure, he will wrest or break it ? If the 
 responsibleness and value of the elective franchise were duly 
 appreciated, the day of our state and national elections would
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 697 
 
 be among the most solemn and religious days in the calendar. 
 Men Avould approach them, not only with preparation and 
 solicitude, but with the sobriety and solemnity with which dis-. 
 creet and religious-minded men meet the great crises of life. 
 No man would throw away his vote through caprice or 
 wantonness, any more than he would throw away his estate, 
 or sell his family into bondage. No man would cast his vote 
 through malice or revenge, any more than a good surgeon 
 would amputate a limb, or a good navigator sail through 
 perilous straits, under the same criminal passions. 
 
 But perhaps it will be objected, that the Constitution is 
 subject to different readings, or that the policy of different 
 administrations has become the subject of party strife ; and, 
 therefore, if any thing of constitutional or political law is in- 
 troduced into our schools, there is danger that teachers will be 
 chosen on account of their affinities to this or that political 
 party, or that teachers will feign affinities which they do not 
 feel in order that they may be chosen ; and so each school- 
 room will at length become a miniature political club-room, 
 exploding with political resolves, or flaming out with political 
 addresses, prepared by beardless boys in scarcely legible 
 hand-writing and in worse grammar. 
 
 With the most limited exercise of discretion, all apprehen- 
 sions of this kind are wholly groundless. There are different 
 readings of the Constitution, it is true ; and there are partisan 
 topics which agitate the country from side to side : but the 
 controverted points, compared with those about which there is 
 no dispute, do not bear the proportion of one to a hundred. 
 And, what is more, no man is qualified, or can be qualified, to 
 discuss the disputable questions, unless previously and thorough- 
 ly versed in those questions about which there is no dispute. In 
 the terms and principles common to all, and recognized by all, 
 is to be found the only common medium of language and of 
 idea by which the parties can become intelligible to each other ; 
 and there, too, is the only common ground whence the argu- 
 ments of the disputants can be drawn.
 
 698 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 It is obvious, on the other hand, that, if the tempest of politi- 
 cal strife were to be let loose upon our common schools, they 
 would be overwhelmed with sudden ruin. Let it be once 
 understood that the schoolroom is a legitimate theatre for 
 party politics, and with what violence will hostile partisans 
 struggle to gain possession of the stage, and to play their partsl 
 upon it ! Nor will the stage be the only scene of gladiatorial! 
 contests. These will rage in all the avenues that lead to it. A 
 preliminary advantage, indispensable to ultimate success, will 
 be the appointment of a teacher of the true faith. As the great 
 majority of the schools in the State are now organized, this can 
 be done only by electing a prudential committee, who will make 
 what he calls political soundness paramount to all other con- 
 siderations of fitness. Thus, after petty skirmishings among 
 neighbors, the fierce encounter will begin in the district's pri- 
 mary assembly, in the schoolroom itself. This contest 
 being over, the election of the superintending or town's com- 
 mittee must be determined in the same way ; and this will 
 bring together the combustibles of each district, to burn with 
 an iutenser and a more devouring flame in the town-meeting. 
 It is very possible, nay, not at all improbable, that the town 
 may be of one political complexion, while a majority of the 
 districts are of the opposite. Who shall moderate the fury of 
 these conflicting elements when they rage against each other? 
 and who shall save the dearest interests of the children from 
 being consumed in the fierce combustion? If parents find that 
 their children are indoctrinated into what they call political 
 heresies, will they not withdraw them from the school? and, 
 if they withdraw them from the school, will they not resist all 
 appropriations to support a school from which they derive no 
 benefit? 
 
 But, could the schools themselves survive these dangers for 
 a single year, it would be only to encounter others still more 
 perilous. Why should not the same infection that poisons all 
 the relations of the schoolroom spread itself abroad, and min- 
 gle with all questions of external organization and arrange-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. C99 
 
 ment? Why should not political hostility cause the dismem- 
 berment of districts already too small? or, what would work 
 equal injury, prevent the union of districts whose po\ver of 
 usefulness would be doubled by a combination of their re- 
 sources ? What better could be expected than that one set of 
 school-books should be expelled, and another introduced, as 
 they might be supposed, however remotely, to favor one party 
 or the other, or as the authors of the books might belong to 
 one party or the other? And who could rely upon the reports, 
 or even the statistics, of a committee chosen by partisan votes, 
 goaded on by partisan impulses, and responsible to partisan 
 domination, and this, too, without any opportunity of control or 
 check from the minority? Nay, if the schools could survive 
 long enough to meet the crisis, why should not any and every 
 measure be taken, either to maintain an existing political ascen- 
 dency, or to recover a lost one, in a school-district, or in a town, 
 which has even been taken by unscrupulous politicians to 
 maintain or to recover an ascendency at the polls ? Into a 
 district, or into a town, voters may be introduced from abroad 
 to turn the scale. An employer may dismiss the employed for 
 their refusal to submit to his dictation, or make the bread that 
 is given to the poor man's children perform the double office of 
 payment for labor to be performed, and of a bribe for principle 
 to be surrendered. And beyond all this, if the imagination 
 can conceive anything more deplorable than this, what kind of 
 political doctrines would be administered to the children amid 
 the vicissitudes of party domination, their alternations of 
 triumph and defeat ? This year, under the ascendency of one 
 side, the Constitution declares one thing ; and commentaries, 
 glosses, and the authority of distinguished names, all ratify and 
 confirm its decisions. But Victory is a fickle goddess. Xext 
 year, the vanquished triumph ; and Constitution, gloss, and au- 
 thority make that sound doctrine which was pestilent error 
 before, and that false which was true. Right and wrong have 
 changed sides. The children must now join in chorus to de- 
 nounce what they had been taught to reverence before, and to
 
 700 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 reverence what they had been taught to denounce. In the mean 
 time, those great principles, which, according to Cicero, are the 
 same at Rome and at Athens, the same now and forever, and 
 which, according to Hooker, have their seat in the bosom of 
 God, become the fittest emblems of chance and change. 
 
 Long, however, before this series of calamities would exhaust 
 itself upon our schools, these schools themselves would cease to 
 be. The ploughshare would have turned up their foundations. 
 Their history would have been brought to a close, a glorious 
 and ascending history, until struck down by the hand of politi- 
 cal parricide ; then suddenly falling with a double ruin, with 
 death and with ignominy. 
 
 But, to avoid such a catastrophe, shall all teaching relative 
 to the nature of our government be banished from our schools ? 
 and shall our children be permitted to grow up in entire igno- 
 rance of the political history of their country? In the schools 
 of a republic, shall the children be left without any distinct 
 knowledge of the nature of a republican government, or only 
 with such knowledge as they may pick up from angry political 
 discussions, or from party newspapers, from caucus speeches, 
 or Fourth-of-July orations, the Apocrypha of Apocrypha? 
 
 Surely, between these extremes, there must be a medium not 
 difficult to be found. And is not this the middle course, which 
 all sensible and judicious men, all patriots, and all genuine 
 republicans, must approve? namely, that those articles in the 
 creed of republicanism which are accepted by all, believed in 
 by all, and which form the common basis of our political faith, 
 shall be taught to all. But when the teacher, in the course of 
 his lessons or lectures on the fundamental law, arrives at a 
 controverted text, he is either to read it without comment or 
 remark ; or, at most, he is only to say that the passage is the 
 subject of disputation, and that the schoolroom is neither the 
 tribunal to adjudicate, nor the forum to discuss it. 
 
 Such being the rule established by common consent, and such 
 the practice observed with fidelity under it, it will come to be 
 universally understood that political proselytism is no function
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 701 
 
 of the school, but that indoctrination into matters of contro- 
 versy between hostile political parties is to be elsewhere sought 
 for, and elsewhere imparted. Thus may all the children of the 
 Commonwealth receive instruction in all the great essentials of 
 political knowledge, in those elementary ideas without which 
 they will never be able to investigate more recondite and debata- 
 ble questions ; thus will the only practicable method be adopted 
 tor discovering new truths, and for discarding, instead of per- 
 petuating, old errors ; and thus, too, will that peruicious race 
 of intolerant zealots, whose whole faith may be summed up in 
 two articles, that they themselves are always infallibly right, 
 and that all dissenters are certainly wrong, be extinguished, 
 extinguished, not by violence, nor by proscription, but by 
 the more copious inflowing of the light of truth. 
 
 MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Moral education is a primal necessity of social existence. The 
 unrestrained passions of men are not only homicidal, but suici- 
 dal ; and a community without a conscience would soon extin- 
 guish itself. Even with a natural conscience, how often has 
 evil triumphed over good ! From the beginning of time, wrong 
 has followed right, as the shadow the substance. As the rela- 
 tions of men became more complex, and the business of the 
 world more extended, new opportunities and new temptations for 
 wrong-doing have been created. With the endearing relations 
 of parent and child came also the possibility of infanticide and 
 parricide ; and the first domestic altar that brothers ever reared 
 was stained with fratricidal blood. Following close upon the 
 obligations to truth came falsehood and perjury, and closer still 
 upon the duty of obedience to the divine law came disobedi- 
 ence. With the existence of private relations between men 
 came fraud ; and with the existence of public relations between 
 nations came aggression, war, and slavery. And so, just in 
 proportion as the relations of life became more numerous, and 
 the interests of society more various and manifold, the range of
 
 702 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 possible and of actual offences has been continually enlarging. 
 As for every new substance there may be a new shadow, so 
 for every new law there may be a new transgression. No form 
 of the precious metals has ever been used which dishonest, men 
 have not counterfeited, and no kind of artificial currency has 
 ever been legalized which rogues have not forged. The gov- 
 ernment sees the evils that come from the use of intoxicating 
 drinks, and prohibits their sale ; but unprincipled men pander 
 to depraved appetites, and gather a harvest of dishonest profits. 
 Instead of licensing lotteries, and deriving a revenue from the 
 sale of tickets, the State forbids the mischievous traffic ; but, 
 while law-abiding men disdain to practise an illicit trade, 
 knavish brokers, by means of the prohibition itself, secure a 
 monopoly of the sales, and pocket the infamous gain. The 
 government imposes duties on imported goods : smugglers evade 
 the law, and bring goods into the market clandestinely ; or per- 
 jurers swear to false invoices, and escape the payment of duty, 
 and thus secure to themselves the double advantage of in- 
 creased sales, and enhanced profits upon what is sold. Science 
 prepares a new medicine to heal or alleviate the diseases of 
 men ; crime adulterates it, or prepares as a substitute some 
 cheap poison that resembles it, and can be sold instead of it. 
 A benefactor of the race discovers an agent which has the mar- 
 vellous power to suspend consciousness, and take away the 
 susceptibility of pain ; a villain uses it to rob men or pollute 
 women. Houses are built ; the incendiary burns them, that he 
 may purloin the smallest portion of their goods. The press is 
 invented to spread intelligence ; but libellers use it to give wings 
 to slander. And so, throughout the infinitely complex and 
 ramified relations of society, wherever there is a right, there 
 may be a wrong ; and wherever a law ie made to repress the 
 wrong, it may be evaded by artifice or overborne by violence. 
 In fine, all means and laws designed to repress injustice and 
 crime give occasion to new injustice and crime. For every 
 lock that is made, a false key is made to pick it ; aud, for every 
 Paradise that is created, there is a Satan who would scale its 
 walls.
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 703 
 
 Nor does this view of the subject exhibit the scope and mul- 
 titude of the transgressions that may be committed. To rep- 
 resent the range and compass of possible violations, every law 
 that exists must be multiplied by a high power. When the 
 whole family of mankind consisted of but two persons, there 
 could be only two offenders. But now, when the race has in- 
 creased to millions and hundreds of millions, the laws may be 
 broken by millions and hundreds of millions, au increased 
 number of transgressors of an increased number of laws. The 
 multitude, then, of possible violations of law, is terrific to the 
 imagination : even the actual violations are sufficient to make 
 our best civilization look but little better (linn barbarism. 
 
 But the above outline, whose vast circumference may be 
 filled up by the commission of crimes against positive law, em- 
 braces not a tithe of possible transgressions. Every law in the 
 statute-book might be obeyed, so as to leave no penalty to be 
 awarded by the courts, or inflicted by executive officers, and 
 yet myriads of private vices, too subtle and intangible for legis- 
 lative enactments, and too undefinable to be dealt with by the 
 tribunals of justice, might still imbitter all domestic and social 
 relations, and leave nothing in life worth living for. Were the 
 greater plagues of public crime and open violence to be stayed, 
 still the lesser ones might remain ; like the plagues of Egypt. 
 they might invade every house, penetrate to every chamber, 
 corrupt the water in the fountains and the bread in the knead- 
 ing-troughs, and turn the dust into loathsome life, so that the 
 plague of hail and the plague of darkness might seem to be 
 blessings in the comparison. In offences against what are usu- 
 ally called the " minor morals," against propriety, against 
 decency, against the domestic relations, and against good neigh- 
 borhood, as they are illustrated and enjoined by the example 
 of Christ, the precepts of the gospel, and the perfect law of 
 love, here is a vast region where offences may grow, and 
 where they do grow, thick-standing and rankly luxuriant. 
 
 Against these social vices in all ages of the world, the ad- 
 monitions of good men have been directed. The moralist has
 
 704 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 exposed their deformity in his didactic page ; the satirist has 
 chastised them in his pungent verse ; the dramatist has held 
 them up to ridicule on the mimic stage ; and, to some extent, 
 the Christian minister has exhibited their gross repugnancy to 
 the character of a disciple of Jesus. Still they continue to 
 exist ; and, to say nothing of heathen nations, the moral con- 
 dition of all Christendom is, iu this respect, like the physical 
 condition of one of the nations that compose it, that extraor- 
 dinary people, I mean, whose dwellings, whose flocks, whose 
 agriculture, whose merchandise, and who themselves, are below 
 the level of the ocean ; and against them, at all times, this 
 ocean rages, and lifts itself up ; and whenever or wherever it 
 can find a breach, or make one, it rushes in, and overwhelms 
 men and their possessions in one common inundation. Even 
 so, like a weltering flood, do immoralities and crimes break 
 over all moral barriers, destroying and profaning the securities 
 and the sanctities of life. Now, how best shall this deluge be 
 repelled? What mighty power or combination of powers can 
 prevent its inrushing, or narrow the sweep of its ravages? 
 
 The race has existed long enough to try many experiments 
 for the solution of this greatest problem ever submitted to its 
 hands ; and the race has experimented, without stint of time 
 or circumscription of space to mar or modify legitimate results. 
 Mankind have tried despotisms, monarchies, and republican 
 forms of government. They have tried the extremes of anar- 
 chy and of autocracy. They have tried Draconian codes of 
 law ; and, for the lightest offences, have extinguished the life of 
 the offender. They have established theological standards, 
 claiming for them the sanction of divine authority, and the attri- 
 butes of a perfect and infallible law ; and then they have im- 
 prisoned, burnt, massacred, not individuals only, but whole 
 communities at a time, for not bowing down to idols which 
 ecclesiastical authority had set up. These and other great 
 systems of measures have been adopted as barriers against 
 error and guilt : they have been extended over empires, pro- 
 longed through centuries, and administered with terrible en-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 705 
 
 ergy ; and yet the great ocean of vice and crime overleaps 
 every embankment, pours down upon our heads, saps the foun- 
 dations under our feet, and sweeps away the securities of social 
 order, of property, liberty, and life. 
 
 At length, these experiments have been so numerous, and all 
 of them have terminated so disastrously, that a body of men 
 has risen up in later times, powerful in influence, and not incon- 
 siderable in numbers, who, if I may use a mercantile phrase, 
 would abandon the world as a total loss ; who mock at the idea 
 of its having a benevolent or even an intelligent Author or Gov- 
 ernor ; and who, therefore, would give over the race to the do- 
 minion of chance, or to that of their own licentious passions, 
 whose rule would be more fatal than chance. 
 
 But to all doubters, disbelievers, or despairers in human 
 progress, it may still be said, there is one experiment which 
 has never yet been tried. It is an experiment, which, even 
 before its inception, offers the highest authority for its ultimate 
 success. Its formula is intelligible to all ; and it is as legible 
 as though written in starry letters on an azure sky. It is ex- 
 pressed in these few and simple words : " Train up a child in 
 the way he should go ; and, when he is old, he will not depart from 
 it." This declaration is positive. If the conditions are com- 
 plied with, it makes no provision for a failure. Though per- 
 taining to morals, yet, if the terms of the direction are observed, 
 there is no more reason to doubt the result than there would be 
 in an optical or a chemical experiment. 
 
 But this experiment has never yet been tried. Education 
 has never yet been brought to bear with one-hundredth part of 
 its potential force upon the natures of children, and, through 
 them, upon the character of men and of the race. In all the 
 attempts to reform mankind which have hitherto been made, 
 whether by changing the frame of government, by aggravating 
 or softening the severity of the penal code, or by substituting a 
 government-created for a God-created religion, in all these 
 attempts, the infantile and youthful mind, its amenability to 
 influences, and the enduring and self-operating character of 
 
 45
 
 706 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the influences it receives, have been almost wholly unrecog- 
 nized. Here, then, is a new agency, whose powers are but just 
 beginning to be understood, and whose mighty energies hith- 
 erto have been but feebly invoked ; and yet, from our experi- 
 ence, limited and imperfect as it is, we do know, that, far 
 beyond any other earthly instrumentality, it is comprehensive 
 and decisive. 
 
 Reformatory efforts hitherto made have been mainly ex- 
 pended upon the oaken-fibred hardihood and incorrigibleness 
 of adult offenders, and not upon the flexibleness and ductility 
 of youthful tendencies. Rulers have forgotten, that though a 
 giant's arm cannot bend a tree of a century's growth, yet the 
 finger of an infant could have given direction to its germ. 
 When a man has invested fifty thousand dollars in the business 
 of importing ardent spirits into the country, it often does little 
 more than to enrage him to point out the different results be- 
 tween such an investment and the investment of the same sum 
 in whale-ships, where, besides its own permanent value, it will 
 soon add fifty thousand dollars more to the actual wealth of the 
 community. Show the distiller how he changes the life-sus- 
 taining fruits of the earth into a physical and moral poison, and 
 what a deluge of destruction he is sending forth over society, 
 and his blood will boil hardly less fiercely than his accursed 
 caldrons : but who will be rash enough to say of any child in 
 the land ; who will be rash enough to say of any man now 
 engaged in the business of promoting and spreading intemper- 
 ance, and visiting another generation with all its calamities, 
 who will dare say of any of them that the nature and conse- 
 quences of this direful occupation might uot have been so viv- 
 idly depicted to the imagination, and so clearly explained to the 
 conscience, during the years of childhood, that any child would 
 sooner think of getting a living by counterfeiting money than 
 by engagiug in the traffic? Would any child, on whose heart 
 the horrors and atrocities of the slave-trade had made their 
 natural impression before his arrival at the age of fourteen 
 years, ever connect himself with slavery afterwards? Were a
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 707 
 
 child taught the dignity, the healthfulness, and the advantages 
 of voluntary labor, and the meanness of living upon the unre- 
 quited services of the weak and defenceless, could he ever bear 
 to live a life of pampered indolence secured to him by a hun- 
 dred lives, each as precious and as sacred in the sight of 
 Heaven as his own, of unpaid toil and irredeemable debase- 
 ment ? Did genius pour out its heart as fervently to depict the 
 calamities of war as it has done to blazon forth what is called 
 military glory, would not children be led to abhor all unneces- 
 sary wars as much more than they abhor murder as the de- 
 struction of an army is greater than that of a single murderer? 
 If the schools were earnestly to teach children that office and 
 honor are not synonymous terms, and that the only value of 
 any office consists in its opening a wider sphere for useful ex- 
 ertion, should we find so many men renouncing usefulness and 
 forfeiting honor for the acquisition of office? If wealth were 
 not forever talked of before children as among the chief prizes 
 of life, should we see such throngs making haste to be rich, 
 with all the attendant consequences of fraud and dishonor? 
 Indeed, so decisive is the effect of early training upon adult 
 habits and character, that numbers of the most able and expe- 
 rienced teachers those who have had the best opportunities 
 to become acquainted with the errors and the excellences of 
 children, their waywardness, and their docility have unani- 
 mously declared it to be their belief, that if all the children in the 
 community, from the age of four years to that of sixteen, could 
 be brought within the reformatory and elevating influences of 
 good schools, the dark host of private vices and public crimes 
 which now imbitter domestic peace, and stain the civilization 
 of the age, might, in ninety-nine cases in every hundred, be 
 banished from the world. When Christ taught his disciples 
 to pray, " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it 
 is done in heaven," did he teach them to pray for what shall 
 never come to pass ? And, if this consummation is ever to be 
 realized, is it to be by some mighty, sudden, instantaneous
 
 708 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 revolution effected by a miracle? or is it to be produced gradu- 
 ally by that Providence which uses human agents as its instru- 
 ments? 
 
 Were we to hear that some far-off land had been discovered, 
 over which the tempest of war had never swept ; where institu- 
 tions of learning and religion were reverenced, and their minis- 
 ters held in the foremost rank of honor ; where falsehood, de- 
 traction, and pei-jury were never uttered ; where neither intem- 
 perance, nor the guilty knowledge how to prepare its means, 
 nor the guilty agents to diffuse them, were ever known ; where 
 all the obligations growing out of domestic relations were 
 sacredly kept ; where office always sought the wisest and best 
 men for incumbents, and never failed to find them ; where wit- 
 nesses were true, and jurors just (for we can hardly conceive of 
 a state of society upon earth so perfect as to exclude all differ- 
 ences of opinion about rights) ; in fine, where all men were hon- 
 est in their dealings, and exemplary in their lives, with the 
 exception of here and there an individual, who, from the rare- 
 ness of his appearance, would be regarded almost a monster, 
 were we to hear of such a realm, who that loves peace, and the 
 happiness that comes from security and order, would not wish 
 to escape from the turmoil and the violence, the rancor and the 
 mean ambitions, of our present sphere, and go there to dwell 
 and to die ? And yet it is the opinion of our most intelligent, 
 dispassionate, and experienced teachers, that we can, in the 
 course of two or three generations, and through the instrumen- 
 tality of good teachers and good schools, superinduce, substan- 
 tially, such a state of society upon the present one, and this, too, 
 without any miracle, without any extraordinary sacrifices or 
 costly effort, bur only by working our existing common-school 
 system with such a degree of vigor as can easily be put forth, 
 and at such an expense as even the poorest community can 
 easily bear. If the leaders of society, those whose law-giv- 
 ing eloquence determines what statutes shall be enacted by the 
 legislature, or those who speak for the common heart in self-con-
 
 EEPORT FOR 1848. 709 
 
 stituted assemblies, or those who shape popular opinion through 
 the public press or in the private intercourse of life, if these 
 are not yet prepared to have faith in the reformatory power of 
 an eai'ly and wise training for the young, the fact only shows 
 and measures the extent of the work which teachers and educa- 
 tionists have yet to perform. If men decline to co-operate 
 with us because uninspired by our living faith, then the argu- 
 ments, the labors, and the results which will create this faith 
 are a preliminary step in our noble work. 
 
 Is any high-minded, exemplary, and conscientious man dis- 
 posed to believe that this substantial extirpation of social vices 
 and crimes (according to the testimony of the witnesses above 
 referred to) is a Utopian idea, is more than we have any 
 reason to expect while human nature remains as it is, let me 
 use the ad hominem argument to refute him. Let me refer him 
 to himself, and ask him why the same influences which have 
 saved him from gaming, intemperance, dissoluteness, falsehood, 
 dishonesty, violence, and their kirdred offences, and have 
 made him a man of sobriety, frugality, and probity, why the 
 same influences which have saved him from ruin, might not, if 
 brought to bear upon others, save them also. So far as human 
 instrumentalities are concerned, we have abundant means for 
 surrounding every child in the State with preservative and mor- 
 al influences as extensive and as efficient as those under which 
 the present industrious, worthy, and virtuous members of the 
 community were reared. And as to all those things in regard 
 to which we are directly dependent upon the divine favor, have 
 we not the promise, explicit and unconditional, that the men 
 SHALL NOT depart from the way in which they should go, if the 
 children are trained up in it? It has been overlooked that this 
 promise is not restricted to parents, but seems to be addressed 
 indiscriminately to all, whether parents, communities, states, or 
 mankind.
 
 710 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 But it will be said that this grand result iu practical morals 
 is a consummation of blessedness that can never be attained 
 without religion, and that no community will ever be religious 
 without a religious education. Both these propositions I regard 
 as eternal and immutable truths. Devoid of religious princi- 
 ples and religious affections, the race can never fall so low but 
 that it may sink still lower ; animated and sanctified by them, it 
 can never rise so high but that it may ascend still higher. And 
 is it not at least as presumptuous to expect that mankind will 
 attain to the knowledge of truth, without being instructed in 
 truth, and without that general expansion and development of 
 faculty which will enable them to recognize and comprehend 
 truth in any other department of human interest as in the de- 
 partment of religion? No creature of God of whom we have 
 auy knowledge has such a range of moral oscillation as a hu- 
 man being. He may despise privileges, and turn a deaf ear to 
 warnings and instructions such as evil spirits may never have 
 known, and therefore be more guilty than they ; or, ascending 
 through temptation and conflict along the radiant pathway of 
 duty, he may reach the sublimest heights of happiness, and may 
 there experience the joys of a contrast such as ever-perfect 
 beings can never feel. And can it be that our nature in this 
 respect is taken out of the law that governs it iu every other 
 respect, the law, namely, that the teachings which supply it 
 with new views, and the trainiug that leads it to act in con- 
 tormity with those views, are ineffective and nugatory? 
 
 indeed, the whole frame and constitution of the human soul 
 .-how, that, if man be not a religious being, lie is among the most 
 deformed and monstrous of all possible existences. His pro- 
 pensities and passions need the fear of God as a restraint from 
 evil ; and his sentiments and affections need the love of God as 
 a condition and preliminary to every thing worthy of the name 
 uf happiness. Without a capability or susceptibility, therefore, 
 of knowing and reverencing his Maker and Preserver, his whole
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 711 
 
 nature is a contradiction and a solecism : it is a moral absurdi- 
 ty, as strictly so as a triangle with but two sides, or a circle 
 without a circumference, is a mathematical absurdity. The 
 man, indeed, of whatever denomination or kindred or tongue he 
 iiay be, who believes that the human race, or any nation, or 
 any individual in it, can attain to happiness, or avoid misery, 
 without religious principle and religious affections, must be ig- 
 norant of the capacities of the human soul, and of the highest 
 attributes in the nature of man. We know, from the very struc- 
 ture and functions of our physical organization, that all the de- 
 lights of the appetites and of the grosser instincts are evanes- 
 cent and perishing. All bodily pleasures over-indulged become 
 pains. Abstemiousness is the stern condition of prolonged en- 
 joyment. a condition that balks desire at the very moment 
 when it is most craving. Did the fields teem, and the forests 
 bend, and the streams flow, with the most exquisite delicacies, 
 how small the proportion of our time in which we could luxu- 
 riate in their sweets without satiety and disgust ! Unchastened 
 by temperance, the richest earthly banquets stimulate, only to 
 end in loathing. Perpetual self-restraint on the one side, or 
 intolerable pains on the other, is the law of all our animal de- 
 sires ; and it may well be questioned which are the sharper 
 sufferings, the fiercest pangs of hunger and of thirst, or the ago- 
 nizing diseases that form the fearful retinue of epicurism and 
 bacchanalian indulgence. Were the pleasures of sense the 
 only pleasures we could enjoy, immortality might well be 
 scoffed at as worthless, and annihilation welcomed ; for if 
 another Eden were created around us, filled with all that could 
 gratify the appetite or regale the sense, and were the whole 
 range and command of its embowering shades and clustering 
 fruits bestowed upon us, still, with our present natures, we 
 should feel intellectual longings which not all the objects of 
 sight and of sense could appease ; and luxuries would sate the 
 palate, and beauties pall upon the eye, in the absence of objects 
 to quicken and stimulate the sterner energies of the mind. 
 The delights of the intellect are of a far nobler order than
 
 712 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 those of the senses ; but even these have no power to fill up the 
 capacities of an immortal mind. The strongest intellect tires. 
 It cannot sustain an ever-upward wing. Even in minds of 
 Olympian vastness and vigor, there must be seasons for relaxa- 
 tion and repose, intervals when the wearied faculties, mount- 
 ed upon the topmast of all their achievements, must stop in 
 their ascending career to review the distance they have trav- 
 ersed, and to replenish their energies for an onward flight. 
 And although, in the far-off cycles of eternity, the stature of 
 the intellect should become lofty as an archangel's ; although 
 its powers of comprehension should become so vast, and its in- 
 tuitions so penetrating, that it could learn the history of a planet 
 in a day, and master at a single lesson all the sciences that 
 belong to a system of stars, still, I repeat, that, with our pres- 
 ent nature, we should be conscious of faculties unoccupied, and 
 restless, yea, tormented with a sense of privation and loss, like 
 lungs in a vacuum gasping vainly for breath, or like the eye 
 in darkness straining to catch some glimmering of light. 
 Without sympathy, without spiritual companionship with other 
 beings, without some Being, all-glorious in his perfections, 
 whom the spirit could commune with and adore, it would be a 
 mourner and a wanderer amid all the splendors of the universe. 
 Through the lone realms of immensity would it fly, calling for 
 love as a mother calls for her departed first-born ; but its voice 
 would return to it in echoes of mockery. Nay, though the 
 intellect of man should become as effulgent as the stars amid 
 which he might walk, yet sympathetic and devout affections 
 alone can fertilize the desolations of the heart. Love is as 
 necessary to the human heart as knowledge is to the mind ; and 
 infinite knowledge can never supply the place of infinite good. 
 The universe, grand, glorious, and beautiful as it is, can be 
 truly enjoyed only through the worship as well as the knowl- 
 edge of the great Being that created it. Among people where 
 there is no true knowledge of God, the errors, superstitions, and 
 sufferings of a false religion always rush in to fill the vacuum. 
 There is not a faculty nor a susceptibility in the nature of
 
 EEPORT FOR 1848. 713 
 
 man, from the lightning-like intuitions that make him akin to 
 the cherubim, or the fire and fervor of affection that assimilate 
 him to seraphic beings, down to the lowest appetites and de- 
 sires by which he holds brotherhood with beast and reptile and 
 worm, there is not one of them all that will ever be governed 
 by its proper law, or enjoy a full measure of the gratification it 
 was adapted to feel, without a knowledge of the true God, 
 without a sense of acting in harmony with his will, and with- 
 out spontaneous effusions of gratitude for his goodness. Con- 
 victions and sentiments such as these can alone supply the 
 vacuity in the soul of man, and fill with significance and loveli- 
 ness what would otherwise be a blank and hollow universe. 
 
 How limited and meagre, too, would be the knowledge which 
 should know all things else, but still be ignorant of the self- 
 existent Author of all ! What is the exquisite beauty of flow- 
 ers, of foliage, or of plumage, if we know nothing of the great 
 Limner who has painted them, and blended their colors with 
 such marvellous skill? So the profundity of all science is 
 shallowness, if we know nothing of the eternal Mind that 
 projected all sciences, and made their laws so exact and har- 
 monious, that all the objects in an immensity can move onward 
 throughout an eternity without deviation or error. Even the 
 visible architecture of the heavens, majestic and refulgent as it 
 is, dwindles and glooms into littleness and darkness in the 
 presence of the great Builder, who " of old laid the foundation 
 of the earth," ana " meted out heaven with a span." Among 
 all the objects of knowledge, the Author of knowledge is infi- 
 nitely the greatest ; and the microscopic animalcule, which, by 
 a life of perseverance, has circumnavigated a drop of water, or 
 the tiny insect which has toiled and climbed until it has at last 
 reached the highest peak of a grain of sand, knows propor- 
 tionately more of the height and depth and compass of plane- 
 tary spaces than the philosopher who has circuited all other 
 knowledge, but is still ignorant of God. In the acquisition of 
 whatever art, or in the pursuit of whatever science, there is a 
 painful sense of incompleteness and imperfection while we
 
 714 ANNUAL REPORTS OX EDUCATION. 
 
 remain untaught in any great department known to belong to 
 it. And so, in the development and culture of the human 
 soul, we are conscious not merely of the want of symmetry, 
 but of gross disfigurement and mutilation, when the noblest 
 and most enduring part of an appropriate development and 
 culture is wanting. In merely an artistical point of view, to 
 be presented with the torso of Hercules, or with the truncated 
 body of Minerva, when we were expecting to behold the fulness 
 of their majestic proportions, would be less painful and shock- 
 ing than a system of human culture from which religious cul- 
 ture should be omitted. 
 
 So, too, if the subject be viewed in relation to all the purer 
 and loftier affections and susceptibilities of the human soul, 
 the results are the same. If, in surveying the highest states of 
 perfection which the character of man has ever yet reached 
 upon earth, we select from among the whole circle of our per- 
 sonal or historical acquaintances those who are adorned with 
 the purest quality and the greatest number of excellences as 
 the objects of our most joyful admiration and love, why should 
 not the soul be lifted into sublimer ecstasies, and into raptures 
 proportionately more exalted and enduring, if it could be raised 
 to the contemplation of Him whose " name alone is excel- 
 lent"? If we delight in exhibitions of power, why should we 
 pass heedlessly by the All-powerful? If human hearts are 
 touched with deeds of mercy, there is One whose tender mer- 
 cies are over all his works. If we reverence wisdom, there 
 is such perfect wisdom on high, that that of angels becomes 
 ' folly " in its presence. If we love the sentiment of love, has 
 not the apostle told* us that God is love? There are many 
 endearing objects upon earth from which the heart of man may 
 be sundered ; but he only is bereaved of all things who is 
 bereaved of his Father in heaven. 
 
 I here place the argument in favor of a religious education 
 for the young upon the most broad and general grounds, pur- 
 posely leaving it to every individual to add for himself those 
 auxiliary arguments which may result from his own peculiar
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 715 
 
 views of religious truth. But such is the force of the convic- 
 tion to which ray own mind is brought by these general consid- 
 erations, that I could not avoid regarding the man who should 
 oppose the religious education of the young as an insane man ; 
 and, were it proposed to debate the question between us, I should 
 desire to restore him to his reason before entering upon the 
 discussion. If, suddenly summoned to eternity, I were able to 
 give but one parting word of advice to my own children, or to 
 the children of others ; if I were sinking beneath the wave, 
 and had time to utter but one articulate breath ; or were wasting 
 away upon the death-bed, and had strength to make but one 
 exhortation more, that dying legacy should be, " Remember 
 thy Creator in the days of thy youth." 
 
 I can, then, confess myself second to no one in the depth 
 and sincerity of my convictions and desires respecting the ne- 
 cessity and universality, both on abstract and on practical 
 grounds, of a religious education for the young ; and, if I had 
 stronger words at command in which to embody these views, I 
 would not fail to use them. But the question still remains, 
 How shall so momentous an object be pursued? In the 
 measures we adopt to give a religious education to others, shall 
 we ourselves abide by the dictates of religion? or shall we do. 
 as has almost universally been done ever since the unhallowed 
 union between Church and State under Constantino, shall we 
 seek to educate the community religiously through the use of 
 the most irreligious means? 
 
 On this subject I propose to speak with freedom and plain- 
 ness, and more at length than I should feel required to do but 
 for the peculiar circumstances in which I have been placed. 
 It is matter of notoriety, that the views of the Board of Edu- 
 cation, and my own, perhaps, still more than those of the 
 Board, on the subject of religious instruction in our public 
 schools, have been subjected to animadversion. Grave charges 
 have been made against us, that our purpose was to exclude re- 
 ligion, and to exclude that, too, which is the common exponent 
 of religion, the Bible, from the common schools of the
 
 716 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 State ; or, at least, to derogate from its authority, and destroy 
 its influence in them. Whatever prevalence a suspicion of the 
 truth of these imputations may have heretofore had, I have 
 reason to believe that further inquiry and examination have 
 done much to disabuse the too credulous recipients of so ground- 
 less a charge. Still, amongst a people so commendably sensi- 
 tive on the subject of religion as are the people of Massachu- 
 setts, any suspicion of irreligious tendencies will greatly preju- 
 dice any cause, and, so far as any cause may otherwise have 
 the power of doing good, will greatly impair that power. 
 
 It is known, too, that our noble system of free schools for 
 the whole people is strenuously opposed by a few persons in 
 our own State, and by no inconsiderable numbers in some of 
 the other states of this Union ; and that a rival system of 
 " parochial " or " sectarian schools " is now urged upon the 
 public by a numerous, a powerful, and a well-organized body 
 of men. It has pleased the advocates of this rival system, in 
 various public addresses, in reports, and through periodicals 
 devoted to their cause, to denounce our system as irreligious 
 and anti-Christian. They do not trouble themselves to describe 
 what our system is, but adopt a more summary way to fore- 
 stall public opinion against it by using general epithets of 
 reproach, and signals of alarm. 
 
 In this age of the world, it seems to me that no student of 
 history, or observer of mankind, can be hostile to the precepts 
 and the doctrines of the Christian religion, or opposed to any 
 institutions which expound and exemplify them ; and no man 
 who thinks, as I cannot but think, respecting the enduring ele- 
 ments of character, whether public or private, can be willing 
 to have his name mentioned while he is living, or remembered 
 when he is dead, as opposed to religious instruction and Bible 
 instruction for the young. In making this final Report, there- 
 fore, I desire to vindicate my conduct from the charges that 
 have been made against it ; and, so far as the Board has been 
 implicated in these charges, to leave my testimony on record 
 for their exculpation. Indeed, on this point, the Board and
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 717 
 
 myself must be justified or condemned together ; for I do not 
 believe they would have enabled me, by their annual re-elections, 
 to carry forward any plan for excluding either the Bible or re- 
 ligious instruction from the schools ; and, had the Board required 
 me to execute such a purpose, I certainly should have given 
 them the earliest opportunity to appoint my successor. I de- 
 sire, also, to vindicate the system with which I have been so 
 long and so intimately connected, not only from the aspersion, 
 but from the suspicion, of being an irreligious or anti-Christian 
 or an un-Chrisrian system. I know full well, that it is unlike 
 the systems which prevail in Great Britain, and in many of the 
 Continental nations of Europe, where the Established Church 
 controls the education of the young in order to keep itself 
 established. But this is presumptive evidence in its favor, 
 rather than against it. 
 
 All the schemes ever devised by governments to secure the 
 prevalence and permanence of religion among the people, how- 
 ever variant in form they may have been, are substantially 
 resolvable into two systems. One of these systems holds the 
 regulation and control of the religious belief of the people to be 
 one of the functions of government, like the command of the 
 army or the navy, or the establishment of courts, or the collec- 
 tion of revenues. According to the other system, religious be- 
 lief is a matter of individual and parental concern ; and, while 
 the government furnishes all practicable facilities for the inde- 
 pendent formation of that belief, it exercises no authority to 
 prescribe, or coercion to enforce it. The former is the system, 
 which, with very few exceptions, has prevailed throughout 
 Christendom for fifteen hundred years. Our own government 
 is almost a solitary example among the nations of the earth, 
 where freedom of opinion, and the inviolability of conscience, 
 have been even theoretically recognized by the law. 
 
 The argument in behalf of a government-established religion, 
 at the time when it was first used, was not without its plausi- 
 bility ; but the principle, once admitted, drew after it a train of 
 the most appalling consequences. If religion is absolutely es-
 
 718 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 i 
 
 sential to the stability of the State as well as to the present and 
 future happiness of the subject, why, it was naturally asked, 
 should not the government enforce it? And, if government is 
 to enforce religion, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that 
 it must define it ; for how can it enforce a duty, which, being 
 undefined, is uncertain? And again: if government begins to 
 define religion, it must define what it is not, as Avell as what it 
 is ; and, while it upholds whatever is included in the definition, 
 it must suppress and abolish whatever is excluded from it. The 
 definition, too, must keep pace with speculation, and must take 
 cognizance of all outward forms and observances ; for if specu- 
 lation is allowed to run riot, and ceremonies and observances 
 to spring up unrestrained, religion will soon elude control, 
 emerge into new forms, and exercise, if it does not arrogate, a 
 substantial independence. Both in regard to matters of form 
 and of substance, all recusancy must be subdued, either by the 
 deprivation of civil rights, or by positive inflictions ; for the 
 laws of man, not possessing, like the laws of God, a self-execut- 
 ing power, must be accompanied by some effective sanction, or 
 they will not be obeyed. If a light penalty proves inadequate, 
 a heavier one must follow, the loss of civil privileges by dis- 
 franchisement, or of religious hopes by excommunication. If 
 the non-conformist feels himself, by the aid of a higher power, 
 to be secure against threats of future perdition, the civil magis- 
 trate has terrible resources at command in this life, imprison- 
 ment, scourging, the rack, the fagot, death. Should it ever be 
 said that these are excessive punishments for exercising free- 
 dom of thought, and for allowing the heart to pour forth those 
 sentiments of adoration to God with which it believes God 
 himself has inspired it, the answer is always ready, that 
 nothing is so terrible as the heresy that draws after it the end- 
 less wrath of the Omnipotent ; and, therefore, that Smithfield 
 fires, and inquisitorial tortures, and auto-da-fes. and St. Bar- 
 tholomews, are cheap offerings at the shrine of truth : nay, 
 compared with the awful and endless consequences of a false 
 faith, they are of less momeut'than the slightest puncture of a
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 719 
 
 nerve. And assuming the truth of the theory, and the right 
 of the government to secure faith by force, it surely would be 
 better, infinitely better, that every hill-top should be lighted 
 with the fires of Smithfield, and every day in the calendar 
 should be a St. Bartholomew's, than that errors so fatal should 
 go unabolished. 
 
 In the council-hall of the Inquisition at Avignon, there still 
 is, or lately was, to be seen, a picture of the Good Samaritan 
 painted upon the wall. The deed of mercy commemorated by 
 this picture was supposed to be the appropriate emblem of the 
 inquisitor's work. The humanity of pouring oil and wine 
 into the wounds of the bleeding wayfarer who had fallen 
 among thieves ; the kindness of dismounting from his own 
 beast, and setting the half-dead victim of violence upon it ; 
 and the generosity of purchasing comfort and restoration for 
 him at an inn, were held to be copied and imitated, upon an 
 ampler and a nobler scale, by the arrest of the heretic, by the 
 violence that tore him from home and friends, and by the 
 excruciating tortures that at last wrenched soul and body 
 asunder. The priests who sentenced, and the familiars that 
 turned the wheel or lighted the fagot, or, with red-hot pin- 
 cers, tore the living flesh from the quivering limbs, were but 
 imitators of the Good Samaritan, binding up moral wounds, 
 and seeking to take a lost traveller to a place of recovery and 
 eternal repose. So when the news of the Massacre of St. Bar- 
 tholomew's on which occasion thirty thousand men, women, 
 and children were butchered at the stroke of a signal-bell 
 reached Rome, the pope and his cardinals ordained a thanks- 
 giving, that all true believers might rejoice together at so glo- 
 rious an event, and that God might be honored for the pious 
 hearts that designed, and the benevolent hands that executed, so 
 Christian a deed. And, admitting their premises, surely they 
 were right. Could communities, or even individuals, be res- 
 cued from endless perdition at the price of a massacre or an 
 auto-da-fe, the men who would wield the sword, or kindle the 
 flame, would be only nobler Samaritans ; and the picture upon
 
 720 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the Inquisition walls at Avignon would be but an inadequate 
 emblem of their soul-saving beneficence. 
 
 But, in all the persecutions and oppressions ever committed 
 in the name of religion, one point has been unwarrantably 
 assumed ; namely, that the faith of their authors was certainly 
 and infallibly the true faith. With the fewest exceptions, the 
 advocates of all the myriad conflicting creeds that have ever 
 been promulgated have held substantially the same language : 
 " Our faith we know to be true. For its truth, we have the 
 evidence of our reason and our conscience ; we have the Word 
 of God in our hands, and we have the Spirit of God in ur 
 hearts, testifying to its truth." * The answer to this claim 
 is almost too obvious to be mentioned. The advocates of 
 hundreds and thousands of hostile creeds have placed them- 
 selves upon the same ground. Each has claimed the same 
 proof from reason and conscience, the same external revela- 
 tion from God, and the same inward light of his Spirit. 
 But if truth be one, and hence necessarily harmonious ; if 
 God be its author ; and if the voice of God be not more 
 dissonant than the tongues of Babel, then, at least, all but 
 one of the different forms of faith ever promulgated by hu- 
 man authority, so far as these forms conflict with each other, 
 cannot have emanated from the Fountain of all truth. These 
 faiths must have been more or less erroneous. The believers 
 in them must have been more or less mistaken. Who, on an 
 impartial survey of the whole, and a recollection of the confi- 
 dence with which each one has been claimed to be infallibly 
 true, shall dare to affirm that any one of them all is a perfect 
 transcript of the perfect law as it exists in the Divine Mind, 
 and that that one is his f 
 
 But here arises a practical distinction, which the world has 
 lost sight of. It is this : after seeking all possible light from 
 within, from without, and from above, each man's belief is his 
 
 * Or, as I once heard the same sentiment expressed in the pulpit, from the 
 lips of an eminent divine, "I am right; and I know I am right; and I know I 
 know it."
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 721 
 
 own standard of truth ; but it is not the standard for any other 
 man. The believer is bound to live by his belief under all 
 circumstances, in the face of all perils, and at the cost of any 
 sacrifice. But his standard of truth is the standard for himself 
 alone ; never for his neighbor. That neighbor must have his 
 own standard, which to him must be supreme. And the fact 
 that each man is bound to follow his own best light and guid- 
 ance is an express negation of any other man's right, and of any 
 government's right, of forcible interference. Here is the divid- 
 ing-line. On one side lie personal freedom and the recognition 
 of freedom in others ; on the other side are intolerance, oppres- 
 sion, and all the wrongs and woes of persecution for conscience' 
 sake. The hierarchs of the world have generally reversed this 
 rule of duty. They have been more rigid in demanding that 
 others should live according to their faith than in living in 
 accordance with it themselves. 
 
 Did the history of mankind show that there has been the 
 most of virtue and piety iu those nations where religion has 
 been most rigorously enforced by law, the advocates of eccle- 
 siastical domination would have a powerful argument in favor 
 of their measures of coercion ; but the united and universal 
 voice of history, observation, and experience, gives the argu- 
 ment to the other side. Nor is this surprising. Weak and 
 fallible as human reason is, it was too much to expect that any 
 mere man, even though aided by the light of a written revela- 
 tion, would ever fathom the whole counsels of the Omnipotent 
 and the Eternal. But the limitations and short-sightedness of 
 men's reason did not constitute the only obstacle to their dis- 
 covery of truth. All the passions and perversities of human 
 nature conspired to prevent so glorious an achievement. The 
 easily-acquired but awful power possessed by those who were 
 acknowledged to be the chosen expounders of the divine will 
 tempted men to set up a false claim to be the depositaries of 
 God's purposes towards men, and the selected medium of his 
 communication with them ; and to this temptation erring mor- 
 tals were fain to yield. Those who were supposed able to 
 
 46
 
 722 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 determine the destiny of the soul in the next world came easily 
 to control opinion, conduct, and fortune in this. Hence they 
 established themselves as a third power, a power between the 
 creature and the Creator, not to facilitate the direct commu- 
 nion between man and his Maker, but to supersede it. They 
 claimed to carry on the intercourse between heaven and earth 
 as merchants carry on commerce between distant nations, 
 where the parties to the interchange never meet each other. 
 The consequence soon was, that this celestial commerce degene- 
 rated into the basest and most mercenary traffic. The favors 
 of heaven were bought and sold like goods in the market- 
 place. Robbery purchased pardon and impunity by bribing 
 the judge with a portion of the wealth it had plundered. The 
 assassin bought permission to murder, and the incendiary to 
 burn. A price-current of crime was established, in which sins 
 were so graduated as to meet the pecuniary ability of both rich 
 and poor offenders. Licenses to violate the laws of God and 
 man became luxuries, for which customers paid according to 
 their several ability. Gold was the representative of all vir- 
 tues as well as of all values. Under such a system, men lost 
 their conscience, and women their virtue ; for the right to com- 
 mit all enormities was purchasable by money, and pardonable 
 by grace, save only the guilt of heresy ; and the worst of 
 all heresies consisted in men's worshipping the God of their 
 fathers according to the dictates of their consciences. 
 
 Those religious exercises which consist in a communion of 
 the soul with its Father in heaven have been beautifully com- 
 pared to telegraphic communications between distant friends ; 
 where, silent as thought, and swift as the lightning, each makes 
 known to the other his joys and his desires, his affection and 
 his fidelity, while the busy world around may know nought of 
 their sacred communings. But, as soon as hierarchies obtained 
 control over men, they changed the channel of these commu- 
 nications between heaven and earth. An ecclesiastical bureau 
 was established ; and it was decreed that all the telegraphic 
 wires should centre in that, so that all the communications
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 723 
 
 between man and his Maker should be subject to the inspection 
 of its chiefs, and carried on through their agency alone. Thus, 
 whether the soul had gratitude or repentance to offer to its God, 
 or light or forgiveness to receive from on high, the whole inter- 
 course, in both directions, must go through the government 
 office, and there be subject to take such form, to be added to 
 or subtracted from, as the ministers or managers in possession 
 of power might deem to be expedient. Considering the na- 
 ture of man, one may well suppose that many of the most pre- 
 cious of the messages were never forwarded ; that others were 
 perverted, or forged ones put in their place ; and that, in some 
 instances at least, the reception of fees was the main induce- 
 ment to keep the machinery in operation. 
 
 Among the infinite errors and enormities resulting from sys- 
 tems of religion devised by man, and enforced by the terrors of 
 human government, have been those dreadful re-actions which 
 have abjured all religion, spurned its obligations, and voted the 
 Deity into non-existence. This extreme is, if possible, more 
 fatal than that by which it was produced. Between these 
 extremes, philanthropic and godly men have sought to find a 
 medium, which should avoid both the evils of ecclesiastical 
 tyranny and the greater evils of atheism. And this medium 
 lias at length been supposed to be found. It is promulgated in 
 the great principle, that government should do all that it can to 
 facilitate the acquisition of religious truth, but shall leave the 
 decision of the question, what religious truth is, to the arbit- 
 rament, without human appeal, of each man's reason and 
 conscience : in other words, that government shall never, by 
 the infliction of pains and penalties, or by the privation of 
 rights or immunities, call such decision either into pre-judg- 
 meut or into review. The formula in which the constitution 
 of Massachusetts expresses it is in these words : " All religious 
 sects and denominations demeaning themselves peaceably and 
 as good citizens shall be equally under the protection of law ; 
 and no subordination of one sect or denomination to another 
 shall ever be established by law."
 
 724 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The great truth recognized and expressed in these few words 
 of our constitution is one which it has cost centuries of strug- 
 gle and of suffering, and the shedding of rivers of blood, to at- 
 tain ; and he who would relinquish or forfeit it, virtually impe- 
 trates upon his fellow-men other centuries of suffering and the 
 shedding of other rivers of blood. Nor are we as yet entirely 
 removed from all danger of relapse. The universal interfer- 
 ence of government in matters of religion, for so many centu- 
 ries, has hardened the public mind to its usurpations. Men 
 have become tolerant of intolerance ; and, among many nations 
 of Christendom, the common idea of religious freedom is satis- 
 fied by an exemption from fine and imprisonment for religious 
 belief. They have not yet reached the conception of equal 
 privileges and franchises for all. Doubtless the time will come 
 when any interference, either by positive infliction or by legal 
 disability, with another man's conscience iu religious concern- 
 ments, so long as he molests no one by the exercise of his faith, 
 will be regarded as the crowning and superemineut act of guilt 
 which one human being can perpetrate against another. But 
 this time is far from having yet arrived, and nations otherwise 
 equally enlightened are at very different distances from this 
 moral goal. The oppressed, on succeeding to power, are prone 
 to become oppressors in their turn, and to forget, as victors, 
 the lessons, which, as victims, they had learned. 
 
 The Colouial, Provincial, and State history of Massachusetts 
 shows by what slow degrees the rigor of our own laws was 
 relaxed, as the day-star of religious freedom slowly arose after 
 the long, black midnight of the past. It was not, indeed, until 
 a very recent period, that all vestige of legal penalty or coer- 
 cion was obliterated from our statute-book, and all sects and 
 denominations were placed upon a footing of absolute equality 
 in the eye of the law. Until the ninth day of April, 1821, no 
 person in Massachusetts was eligible to the office of governor, 
 lieutenant-governor, or councillor, or to that of senator, or rep- 
 resentative in the General Court, unless he would make oath to 
 a belief in the particular form of religion adopted and sane-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 725 
 
 tioned by the State. And until the eleventh day of November, 
 1833, every citizen was taxable, by the constitution and laws of 
 the State, for the support of the Protestant religion, whether he 
 were a Protestant, a Catholic, or a believer in any other faith. 
 Nor was it until the tenth day of March, 1827 (St. 1826, ch. 
 143, 7), that it was made unlawful to use the common schools 
 of the State as the means of proselyting children to a belief in 
 the doctrines of particular sects, whether their parents believed 
 in those doctrines or not. 
 
 All know the energetic tendency of men's minds to continue 
 in a course to which long habit has accustomed them. The 
 same law is as true in regard to institutions administered 
 by bodies of men as in regard to individual minds. The doc- 
 trine of momentum, or head-way, belongs to metaphysics as 
 much as to mechanics. A statute may be enacted, and may 
 even be executed by the courts, long before it is ratified and 
 enforced by public opinion. Within the last few years, how 
 many examples of this truth has the cause of temperance fur- 
 nished ! And such was the case in regard to the law of 1827, 
 prohibiting sectarian instruction in our public schools. It was 
 not easy for committees at once to withdraw or to exclude the 
 books, nor for teachers to renounce the habits, by which this 
 kind of instruction had been given. Hence, more than ten 
 years subsequent to the passage of that law, at the time Avhen 
 I made my first educational and official circuits over the State, 
 I found books in the schools as strictly and exclusively doc- 
 trinal as any on the shelves of a theological library. I heard 
 teachers giving oral instruction as strictly and purely doctrinal 
 as any ever heard from the pulpit or from the professor's chair. 
 And more than this : I have now in my possession printed 
 directions, given by committee-men to teachers, enjoining upon 
 them the use of a catechism in school, which is wholly de- 
 voted to an exposition of the doctrines of one of the denomina- 
 tions amongst us. These directions bear date a dozen years 
 subsequent to the prohibitory law above referred to. I pur- 
 posely forbear to intimate what doctrine or what denomination
 
 726 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 was " favored ," in the language of the law, by these means, 
 because I desire to have this statement as impersonal as it 
 can be. 
 
 In the first place, then, I believed these proceedings not 
 only to be wholly unwarranted by law, but to be in plain con- 
 travention of law. And, in the next place, the legislature had 
 made it the express duty of the Secretary, " diligently to 
 apply himself to the object of collecting information of the 
 condition of the public schools [throughout the State], of 
 the fulfilment of the duties of their office by all members of 
 the school-committees of all the towns, and the circumstances 
 of the several school-districts in regard to all the subjects 
 of teachers, pupils, books, apparatus, and methods of educa- 
 tion," and so forth. I believed then, as now, that religious 
 instruction in our schools, to the extent which the constitution 
 and laws of the State allowed and prescribed, was indispensa- 
 ble to their highest welfare, and essential to the vitality of 
 moral education. Then as now, also, I believed that sectarian 
 books and sectarian instruction, if their encroachments were 
 not resisted, would prove the overthrow of the schools. 
 While, on the one hand, therefore, I deplored, in language 
 as earnest and solemn as I was capable of commanding, the 
 insufficiency of moral and religious instruction given in the 
 schools ; on the other hand, instead of detailing what I be- 
 lieved to be infractions of the law in regard to sectarian 
 instruction, I endeavored to set forth what was supposed to be 
 the true meaning and intent of the law. Such a general 
 statement of legal limitations and prohibitions, instead of a 
 specific arraignment of teachers or of committees for disre- 
 garding them, I judged to be the milder and more eligible 
 course. Less I could not do, and discharge the duty which 
 the law had expressly enjoined upon me. More I deemed it 
 (inadvisable to do, lest transgressors should take offence at what 
 they might deem to be an unnecessary personal exposure. 
 And, further, I had confidence, that when the law itself, and 
 the reasons of equity and public policy on which it was founded,
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 727 
 
 should be better understood, all violations of it would cease. 
 Every word of my early Reports having any reference to this 
 subject was read in the presence of the Board, on which sat 
 able lawyers and distinguished clergymen of different denomi- 
 nations ; and no word of exception was ever taken to the views 
 there presented, either on the ground that they were contrary 
 to law, or had any sinister or objectionable tendency. 
 
 No person, then, in the whole community, could have been 
 more surprised or grieved than myself at finding my views in 
 regard to the extent and the limitation of religious instruction 
 in our public schools attributed to a hostility to religion itself, 
 or a hostility to the Scriptures, which are the " lively oracles " 
 of the Christian's faith. As the Board was implicated with 
 me in these charges (they never having dissented from my 
 views, and continuing to re-elect me annually to the office of 
 Secretai'y), it is well known to its earlier members that I 
 urged the propriety of their meeting these charges with a pub- 
 lic and explicit denial of their truth. In so grave a matter, I 
 did not think that a refutation of the calumny would derogate 
 from their dignity, but only evince the sensitiveness of their 
 moral feelings, and the firmness of their moral principles. 
 Such was the course pursued by the Board of Commissioners 
 <f Education in Ireland, composed of some of the most pious 
 and elevated dignitaries in both communions, and at whose 
 head was that most able and venerable prelate, Archbishop 
 Whately. When their conduct was assailed, and their mo- 
 tives impugned, because they refused to turn the national 
 schools into engines for proselyting from one sect to another, 
 they met the charges from year to year in their Annual 
 Reports, and finally discomfited and put to shame their bigoted 
 assailants. 
 
 To my suggestion in regard to vindicatory measures, the 
 reply was, that, as the charges were groundless, they probably 
 would be temporary ; and that a formal reply to the accusa- 
 tions might bestow an undeserved importance upon the accus- 
 ers. Were it not that the opinion of the Board, at that time,
 
 728 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 did not coincide with my own, I should still think that an early, 
 temperate, but decided refutation, by the Board itself, of the 
 charges against them, and against the system administered by 
 them or under their auspices, would have been greatly pre- 
 ventive of evil, and fruitful of good. The pre-occupancy of the 
 public mind with error on so important a subject is an un- 
 speakable calamity ; and errors that derive their support from 
 religious views are among the most invincible. But different 
 counsels prevailed ; and for several years, in certain quarters, 
 suspicions continued rife. I was made to see, and deeply to 
 feel, their disastrous and alienating influence as I travelled 
 about the State ; sometimes withdrawing the hand of needed 
 assistance, and sometimes, when conduct extorted approval, 
 impeaching the motives that prompted it. For no cause, not 
 dearer to me than life itself, could I ever have persevered, amid 
 the trials and anxieties, and against the obstacles, that beset my 
 path. But I felt that there is a profound gratification in stand- 
 ing by a good cause in the hour of its adversity. I believed 
 there must be a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaf- 
 fold than in shouting in the retinue where error triumphs. I 
 felt, too, a religious confidence that truth would ultimately 
 prevail ; and that it was my duty to labor in the spirit of a 
 genuine disciple, who toils on with equal diligence and alacrity, 
 whether his cause is to be crowned with success in his own 
 lifetime, or only at the end of a thousand years. And, as the 
 complement of all other motives, I felt that a true education 
 would be among the most efficient of means to prevent the 
 re-appearance, in another generation, of such an aggressive and 
 unscrupulous opposition as the Board and myself were suffer- 
 ing under in this. 
 
 After years of endurance, after suffering under misconstruc- 
 tions of conduct, and the imputation of motives whose edge is 
 sharper than a knife, it was at my suggestion, and by making 
 use of materials which I had laboriously collected, that the 
 Board made its Eighth Annual Report, a document said to be 
 the ablest argument in favor of the use of the Bible in schools
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 729 
 
 anywhere to be found. This Report had my full concurrence. 
 Since its appearance, I have always referred to it as explana- 
 tory of the views of the Board, and as setting forth the law of 
 a wise commonwealth and the policy of a Christian people. 
 Officially and unofficially, publicly and privately, in theory and 
 in practice, my course has always been in conformity Avith its 
 doctrines. And I avail myself of this, the last opportunity 
 which I may ever have, to say, in regard to all affirmations or 
 intimations that I have ever attempted to exclude religious 
 instruction from school, or to exclude the Bible from school, 
 or to impair the force of that volume, that they are now. 
 and always have been, without substance or semblance of 
 truth. 
 
 But it may still be said, and it is said, that however sin- 
 cere, or however religiously disposed, the advocates of our 
 school-system may be, still the character of the system is not 
 to be determined by the number nor by the sincerity of its 
 defenders, but by its own inherent attributes ; and that, if 
 judged by these attributes, it is, in fact and in truth, an irreli- 
 gious, an un-Christian, and an anti-Christian system. Having 
 devoted the best part of my life to the promotion of this sys- 
 tem, and believing it to be the only system which ought to 
 prevail, or can permanently prevail, in any free country, I am 
 not content to see it suffer, unrelieved, beneath the weight of 
 imputations so grievous ; nor is it right that any hostile system 
 should be built up by so gross a misrepresentation of ours. 
 That our public schools are not theological seminaries, is ad- 
 mitted. That they are debarred by law from inculcating the pe- 
 culiar and distinctive doctrines of any one religious denomination 
 amongst us, is claimed ; and that they are also prohibited from 
 ever teaching that what they do teach is the whole of religion, 
 or all that is essential to religion or to salvation, is equally 
 certain. But our system earnestly inculcates all Christian 
 morals ; it founds its morals ou the basis of religion ; it wel- 
 comes the religion of the Bible ; and, in receiving the Bible, it 
 allows it to do what it is allowed to do in no other system,
 
 730 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 to speak for itself. But here it stops, not because it claims to 
 have compassed all truth, but because it disclaims to act as an 
 umpire between hostile religious opinions. 
 
 The very terms "public school" and "common school" bear 
 upon their face that they are schools which the children of the 
 entire community may attend. Every man not on the pauper- 
 list is taxed for their support ; but he is not taxed to support 
 them as special religious institutions : if he were, it would 
 satisfy at once the largest definition of a religious establish- 
 ment. But he is taxed to support them as a preventive means 
 against dishonesty, against fraud, and against violence, on the 
 same principle that he is taxed to support criminal courts as a 
 punitive means against the same offences. He is taxed to sup- 
 port schools, on the same principle that he is taxed to support 
 paupers, because a child without education is poorer and more 
 wretched than a man without bread. He is taxed to support 
 schools, on the same principle that he would be taxed to defend 
 the nation against foreign invasion, or against rapine committed 
 by a foreign foe, because the general prevalence of ignorance, 
 superstition, and vice, will breed Goth and Vandal at home 
 more fatal to the public well-being than any Goth or Vandal 
 from abroad. And, finally, he is taxed to support schools, 
 because they are the most effective means of developing and 
 training those powers and faculties in a child, by which, when 
 he becomes a man, he may understand what his highest inter- 
 ests and his highest duties are, and may be in fact, and not in 
 name only, a free agent. The elements of a political educa- 
 tion are not bestowed upon any school child for the purpose 
 of making him vote with this or that political party when he 
 becomes of age, but for the purpose of enabling him to choose 
 for himself with which party he will vote. So the religious 
 education which a child receives at school is not imparted to 
 him for the purpose of making him join this or that denomina- 
 tion when he arrives at years of discretion, but for the purpose 
 of enabling him to judge for himself, according to the dictates 
 of his own reason and conscience, what his religious obligations
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 731 
 
 are, and whither they lead. But if a man is taxed to support 
 a school where religious doctrines are inculcated which he be- 
 lieves to be false, and which he believes that God condemns, 
 then he is excluded from the school by the divine law, at the 
 same time that he is compelled to support it by the human law. 
 This is a double wrong. It is politically wrong, because, if 
 such a man educates his children at all, he must educate them 
 elsewhere, and thus pay two taxes, while some of his neighbors 
 pay less than their due proportion of one ; and it is religiously 
 wrong, because he is constrained by human power to promote 
 what he believes the divine power forbids. The principle 
 involved in such a course is pregnant with all tyrannical conse- 
 quences. It is broad enough to sustain any claim of ecclesias- 
 tical domination ever made in the darkest ages of the world. 
 Every religious persecution since the time of Constantine may 
 find its warrant in it, and can be legitimately defended upon it. 
 If a man's estate may be taken from him to pay for teaching a 
 creed which he believes to be false, his children can be taken 
 from him to be taught the same creed ; and he, too, may be 
 punished to any extent for not voluntarily surrendering both 
 his estate and his offspring. If his children can be compulso- 
 rily taken, and taught to believe a creed which the parent disbe- 
 lieves, then the parent can be compulsorily taken, and made to 
 subscribe the same creed. And, in regard to the extent of the 
 penalties which may be invoked to compel conformity, there is 
 no stopping-place between taking a penny and inflicting perdi- 
 tion. It is only necessary to call a man's reason and conscience 
 and religious faith by the name of recusancy or contumacy or 
 heresy, and so to inscribe them on the statute-book, and then the 
 non-conformist or dissenter may be subdued by steel or cord 
 or fire ; by anathema and excommunication in this life, and the 
 terrors of endless perdition in the next. Surely that system 
 cannot be an irreligious, an anti-Christian, or an un-Christian 
 one, whose first and cardinal principle it is to recognize and 
 protect the highest and dearest of all human interests and of 
 all human rights.
 
 732 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Again : it seems almost too clear for exposition, that our sys- 
 tem, in one of its most essential features, is not only not an 
 irreligious one, but that it is more strictly religious than any 
 other which has ever yet been adopted. Every intelligent man 
 understands what is meant by the term "jurisdiction." It is 
 the rightful authority which one person, or one body of men, 
 exercises over another person or persons. Every intelligent 
 man understands that there are some things which are within 
 the jurisdiction of government, and other things which are not 
 within it. As Americans, we understand that there is a line 
 dividing the jurisdiction of the State governments from the 
 jurisdiction of the Federal government, and that it is a viola- 
 tion of the constitutions of both for either to invade the legiti- 
 mate sphere of action Avhich belongs to the other. We all 
 understand, that neither any State in this Union, nor the Union 
 itself, has any right of interference between the British sover- 
 eign and a British subject, or between the French government 
 and a citizen of France. Let this doctrine be applied to the 
 relations which our fellow-citizens bear to the rulers who have 
 authority over them. Primarily, religious rights embrace the 
 relations between the creature and the Creator, just as political 
 rights embrace the relations between subject and sovereign, or 
 between a free citizen and the government of his choice, and 
 just as parental rights embrace the relation between parent 
 and child. Eights, therefore, which are strictly religious, lie 
 out of and beyond the jurisdiction of civil governments. They 
 belong exclusively to the jurisdiction of the divine government. 
 If, then, the State of Massachusetts has no right of forcible 
 interference between an Englishman or a Frenchman, and the 
 English or French government, still less, far less, has it any 
 right of forcible interference between the soul of man and the 
 King and Lord to whom that soul owes undivided and supreme 
 allegiance. Civil society may exist, or it may cease to exist. 
 Civil government may continue for centuries in the hands of 
 the same dynasty, or it may change hands, by revolution, with 
 every new .moon. The man outcast and outlawed to-day, and
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 733 
 
 to whom, therefore, we owe no obedience, may be rightfully 
 installed in office to-morrow, and may then require submission 
 to his legitimate authority. The civil governor may resign or 
 be deposed ; the framework of the government may be changed, 
 or its laws altered ; so that the duty of allegiance to a temporal 
 sovereign may have a succession of new objects, or a succes- 
 sion of new definitious. But the relation of man to his Maker 
 never changes. Its object and its obligations are immutable. 
 The jurisdiction which God exercises over the religious obliga- 
 tions which his rational and accountable offspring owe to him 
 excludes human jurisdiction. And hence it is that religious 
 rights are inalienable rights. Hence, also, it is, that it is an 
 infinitely greater offence to invade the special and exclusive 
 jurisdiction which the Creator claims over the consciences and 
 hearts of men than it would be to invade the jurisdiction which 
 any foreign nation rightfully possesses over its own subjects or 
 citizens. The latter would be only an offence against interna- 
 tional law ; the former is treason against the majesty of 
 Heaven. The one violates secular and temporal rights only ; 
 the other violates sacred and eternal ones. When the British 
 government passed its various statutes of prcemunire, as they 
 were called. statutes to prevent the Roman pontiff from 
 interfering between the British sovereign and the British sub- 
 ject, it was itself constantly enacting and enforcing laws 
 which interfered between the Sovereign of the universe and his 
 subjects upon earth, far more directly and aggressively than 
 any edict of the Roman see ever interfered with any allegiance 
 due from a British subject to the self-styled defender of the 
 faith. 
 
 It was in consequence of laws that invaded the direct and 
 exclusive jurisdiction which our Father in heaven exercises 
 over his children upon earth, that the Pilgrims fled from their 
 native land to that which is the land of our nativity. They 
 sought a residence so remote and so inaccessible, in the hope 
 that the prerogatives of the Divine Magistrate might no longer 
 he set at nought by the usurpations of the civil power. Was it
 
 734 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 not an irreligious and an impious act on the part of the British 
 government to pursue our ancestors with such cruel penalties 
 and privations as to drive them into banishment ? Was it not 
 a religious and a pious act in the Pilgrim Fathers to seek a 
 place of refuge where the arm of earthly power could neither 
 restrain them from worshipping God in the manner which they 
 believed to be most acceptable to him, nor command their wor- 
 ship in a manner believed to be unacceptable? And if it was 
 irreligious in the British government to violate freedom of con- 
 science in the case of our forefathers two centuries ago, then it 
 is more flagrantly irreligious to repeat the oppression in this 
 more enlightened age of the world. If it was a religious act 
 in our forefathers to escape from ecclesiastical tyranny, then it 
 must be in the strictest conformity to religion for us to abstain 
 from all religious oppression over others, and to oppose it 
 wherever it is threatened. And this abstinence from religious 
 oppression, this acknowledgment of the rights of others, this 
 explicit recognition and avowal of the supreme and exclusive 
 jurisdiction of Heaven, and this denial of the right of any 
 earthly power to encroach upon that jurisdiction, is precisely 
 what the Massachusetts school-system purports to do in theory, 
 and what it does actually in practice. Hence I infer that our 
 system is not an irreligious one, but is iu the strictest accord- 
 ance with religion and its obligations. 
 
 It is still easier to prove that the Massachusetts school-sys- 
 tem is not anti-Christian nor un-Christian. The Bible is the 
 acknowledged expositor of Christianity. In strictness, Chris- 
 tianity has no other authoritative expounder. This Bible is in 
 our common schools by common consent. Twelve years ago, 
 it was not in all the schools. Contrary to the genius of our 
 government, if not contrary to the express letter of the law. it 
 had been used for sectarian purposes, to prove one sect to be 
 right, and others to be wrong. Hence it had been excluded 
 from the schools of some towns by an express vote. But since 
 the law, and the reasons on which it is founded, have beeu more 
 fully explained and better understood, and since sectarian
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 735 
 
 instruction has, to a great extent, ceased to be given, the Bible 
 has been restored. I am not aware of the existence of a single 
 town in the State in whose schools it is not now introduced, 
 either by a direct vote of the school-committee, or by such 
 general desire and acquiescence as supersede the necessity of a 
 vote. In all my intercourse for twelve years, whether personal 
 or by letter, with all the school-officers in the State, and with 
 tens of thousands of individuals in it, I have never heard an 
 objection made to the use of the Bible in school, except in one 
 or two instances ; and, in those cases, the objection was put upon 
 the ground that daily familiarity with the book in school would 
 tend to impair a reverence for it. 
 
 If the Bible, then, is the exponent of Christianity ; if the 
 Bible contains the communications, precepts, and doctrines 
 which make up the religious system called and known as 
 Christianity ; if the Bible makes known those truths, which, 
 according to the faith of Christians, are able to make men wise 
 unto salvation ; and if this Bible is in the schools, how can 
 it be said that Christianity is excluded from the schools ? or how 
 can it be said that the school-system which adopts and uses the 
 Bible is an anti-Christian or an uu-Christian system? If that 
 which is the acknowledged exponent and basis of Christianity 
 is in the schools, by what tergiversation in language, or paralo- 
 gism in logic, can Christianity be said to be shut out from the 
 schools? If the Old Testament were in the schools, could a 
 Jew complain that Judaism was excluded from them? If the 
 Koran were read regularly and reverently in the schools, could 
 a Mahometan say that Mahometanism was excluded ? Or, if 
 the Mormon Bible were in the schools, could it be said that 
 Mormonism was excluded from them? 
 
 Is it not, indeed, too plain to require the formality of a syl- 
 logism, that if any man's creed is to be found in the Bible, and 
 the Bible is in the schools, then that man's creed is in the 
 schools? This seems even plainer than the proposition, that 
 two and two make four ; that is, we can conceive of a creature 
 so low down in the scale of intelligence, that he could not see
 
 736 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 what sum would be produced by adding two and two together, 
 who still could not fail to see, that, if a certain system called 
 Christianity were contained in and inseparable from a certain 
 book called the Bible, then, wherever the Bible might go, there 
 the system of Christianity must be. If a vase of purest ala- 
 baster, filled with myrrh and frankincense and precious oint- 
 ments, were in the school, would not their perfumes be there 
 also? And would the beautiful vase, and the sweet aroma of 
 spice and unguent, be any more truly there, if some concocter 
 of odors, such as Nature never made, should insist upon satu- 
 rating the air with the products of his own distillations, which, 
 though pleasant to his idiosyncrasy, would be nauseous to every- 
 body else? But if a man is conscious or suspicious that his 
 creed is not in the Bible, but resolves that it shall be in the 
 schools at any rate, then it is easy to see that he has a motive 
 either to exclude the Bible from school, or to introduce some 
 other book, or some oral interpreter in company with it, to 
 misconstrue and override it. If the Bible is in the schools, we 
 can see a reason why a Jew, who disbelieves in the mission of 
 our Saviour, or a Mahometan, who believes in that of the 
 Prophet, should desire, by oral instruction or catechism or 
 otherwise, to foist in his own views, and thereby smother all 
 conflicting views ; but even they would not dare to say that the 
 schools where the Bible was found were either anti-Christian 
 or un-Christian. So fur from this, if they were candid, they 
 would acknowledge that the system of Christianity was in the 
 schools, and that they wished to neutralize and discard it by 
 hostile means. 
 
 And further : our law explicitly and solemnly enjoins it 
 upon all teachers, without any exception, " to exert their best 
 endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth com- 
 mitted to their care and instruction the principles of piety, 
 justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, 
 humanity, and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry, and 
 frugality, chastity, moderation, and temperance, and those 
 other virtues which are the ornament of human society, and
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 737 
 
 the basis upon which a republican constitution is founded." 
 Are not these virtues and graces part and parcel of Chris- 
 tianity? In other words, can there be Christianity without 
 them? While these virtues and these duties towards God and 
 man are inculcated in our schools, any one who says that the 
 schools are anti-Christian or un-Christian expressly affirms 
 that his own system of Christianity does not embrace any one 
 of this radiant catalogue ; that it rejects them all ; that it em- 
 braces their opposites. 
 
 And further still : our system makes it the express duty of 
 all the " resident ministers of the gospel " to bring all the 
 children within the moral and Christian inculcations above 
 enumerated ; so that he who avers that our system is an anti- 
 Christian or an uu-Christian one avers that it is both anti- 
 Christian and un-Christian for a " minister OF THE GOSPEL" to 
 promote, or labor to diffuse, the moral attributes and excel- 
 lences which the statute so earnestly enjoins. 
 
 So far, the argument has been of an affirmative character. 
 Its scope and purpose show, or at least tend to show, by direct 
 proof, that the school-system of Massachusetts is not an anti- 
 Christian nor an un-Christian system. But there is still an- 
 other mode of proof. The truth of a proposition may be estab- 
 lished by showing the falsity or absurdity of all conflicting 
 propositions. So far as this method can be applied to moral 
 questions, its aid may safely be invoked here. 
 
 What are the other courses which the State of Massachu- 
 setts might adopt or sanction in relation to the education of its 
 youth ? They are these four : 
 
 1. It might establish schools, but expressly exclude all reli- 
 gious instruction from them, making them merely schools for 
 secular instruction. 
 
 2. It might adopt a course directly the reverse of this. It 
 might define and prescribe a system of religion for the schools, 
 and appoint the teachers and officers, whose duty it should be 
 to carry out that system. 
 
 3. It might establish schools by law, and empower each 
 
 47
 
 738 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 religious sect, whenever and wherever it could get a majority, 
 to determine what religious faith should be taught in them. 
 And, 
 
 4. It might expressly disclaim and refuse all interference 
 with the education of the young, and abandon the whole work 
 to the hazards of private enterprise, or to parental will, ability, 
 or caprice. 
 
 1. A system of schools from which all religious instruction 
 should be excluded might properly be called uu-Christian, or 
 rather non-Christian, in the same sense in which it could be 
 called non-Jewish or non-Mahometan ; that is, as having no 
 connection with either. I do not suppose a man can be found 
 in Massachusetts who would declare such a system to be his 
 first choice. 
 
 2. Were the State to establish schools, and prescribe a sys- 
 tem of religion to be taught in them, and appoint the teachers 
 and officers to superintend it, could there be any better defi- 
 nition or exemplification of an ecclesiastical establishment? 
 Such a system would create at once the most formidable and 
 terrible hierarchy ever established upon earth. It would 
 plunge society back into the dark ages at one precipitation. 
 The people would be compelled to worship the image which 
 the government, like another Nebuchadnezzar, might set up ; 
 and, for any refusal, the fiery furnace, seven times heated, would 
 be their fate. And worse than this. The sacerdotal tyranny 
 of the dark ages, aud of more ancient as well as of more mod- 
 ern times, addressed its commands to men. Against men it 
 fulminated its anathemas. On men its lightnings fell. But 
 men had free agency. They could sometimes escape. They 
 could always resist. They were capable of thought. They 
 had powers of endurance. They could be upheld by a sense 
 of duty here, and by visions of ti'anscendiug rewards aud 
 glories hereafter. They could proclaim truth in the gaspiugs 
 of death, on the scaffold, in the fire, in the interludes of the 
 rack, and leave it as a legacy and a testimony to others. 
 But children have no such resources to ward off tyranny, or to
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 739 
 
 endure it? terrors. They are incapable of the same compre- 
 hensive survey of truth, of the same invincible resolve, of being 
 inspired with an all-sustaining courage and endurance from the 
 realities of another life. They would die under imprisonment. 
 Affrighted at the sight of the stake, or of any of the dread ma- 
 chinery of torture, they would surrender their souls to be dis- 
 torted into any deformity, or mutilated into any hideousness. 
 Before the process of starvation had gone on for a day, they 
 would swallow any belief, from Atheism to Thuggery. 
 
 For any human government, then, to attempt to coerce and 
 predetermine the religious opinions of children by law, and 
 contrary to the will of their parents, is unspeakably more crimi- 
 nal than the usurpation of such control over the opinions of 
 men. The latter is treason against truth ; but the former is 
 sacrilege. As the worst of all crimes against chastity are 
 those which debauch the infant victim before she knows what 
 chastity is, so the worst of all crimes against religious truth 
 arc those which forcibly close up the avenues and bar the doors 
 that lead to the forum of reason and conscience. The spirit of 
 ecclesiastical domination in modern times, finding that the 
 principles of men are too strong for it, is attempting the seduc- 
 tion of children. Fearing the opinions that may be developed 
 by mature reflection, it anticipates and forestalls those opin- 
 ions, and seeks to imprint upon the ignorance and receptiveness 
 of childhood the convictions which it could never fasten upon 
 the minds of men in their maturity. As an instance of this, the 
 Factories Bill," so called, which, in the year 1843, was sub- 
 mitted by Sir James Graham to the British Parliament, may 
 be cited. Among other things, this bill provided that schools 
 should be established in manufacturing districts, under the 
 auspices of the nation, and partly at its expense. These 
 schools were to be placed under the immediate superintendence 
 and visitation of officers appointed by the government. No 
 teacher was to be eligible, unless approved by a bishop or arch- 
 bishop. Any parent who hired out his child to work in a 
 factory for half a day, unless he should go to this sectarian or
 
 740 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 government school the other half of the day, was to be fined ; 
 and, for non-payment of the fine, imprisonment was the legal 
 ^consequence. So any overseer or factory proprietor, who 
 should employ a child for half a day who did not attend 
 school the other half, was also subject to a fine ; and, of course, 
 to imprisonment, if the fine were not paid. It did not at all 
 alter the principle, that in a few excepted cases, owing to the 
 peculiar nature of the work, the children were allowed to 
 prosecute it for a whole day, or for two or three days in suc- 
 cession ; because, just so long as they were permitted to work, 
 just so long were they required to go to the school after the 
 work. Nor, in the great majority of cases, was it any mitiga- 
 tion of the plan, that, if the parents would provide a separate 
 school for their children at their own expense, they might send 
 to it ; because not one in ten of the operatives had either time 
 or knowledge to found such a school, or pecuniary ability to 
 pay its expenses if it were founded. The direct object and 
 effect, therefore, of the proposed law, were to compel children 
 to attend the government school, and to be taught the govern- 
 ment religion, under the penalty of starvation or the poor- 
 house. Children were debarred from a morsel of bread, unless 
 they took it saturated with the government theology. 
 
 Now, to the moral sentiments of every lover of truth, of 
 every lover of freedom for the human soul, is there not a mean- 
 ness, is there not an infamy, in such a law, compared with 
 which the bloody statutes of Elizabeth and Mary were mag- 
 nanimous and honorable? To bring the awful forces of govern- 
 ment to bear upon and to crush such lofty and indomitable 
 souls as those of Latimer and Cranmer, of Ridley and Rogers, 
 one would suppose to be diabolical enough to satisfy the worst 
 spirits in the worst regions of the universe ; but for a govern- 
 ment to doom its children to starvation unless they will say its 
 catechism, and to imprison the parent, and compel him to hear 
 the wailiugs of his own famishing offspring, compel him to 
 see them perish, physically by starvation, or morally by igno- 
 rance, unless he will consent that they shall be taught such
 
 REPORT FOR 1818. 741 
 
 religious doctrines as he believes will be a peril and a de- 
 struction to their immortal souls, is it not the essence of all 
 tyrannies, of all crimes, and of all baseness, concreted into 
 one? 
 
 Such a system as this stands in the strongest possible con- 
 trast to the Massachusetts system. Will those who call our 
 system un-Christian and anti-Christian adopt and practise this 
 system a's Christian and religious? 
 
 3. As a third method, the government might establish schools 
 by lu\v, and empower each religious sect, whenever and wher- 
 ever it could get a majority, to determine what religious faith 
 should be taught in them. 
 
 Under such a system, each sect would demand that its own 
 faith should be inculcated in all the schools, and this on the 
 clear and simple ground that such faith is the only true one. 
 Each differing faith believed in by all the other sects, must, of 
 course, be excluded from the schools ; and this on the equally 
 clear and simple ground that there can be but one true faith : 
 and which that is has already been determined, and is no 
 longer an open question. Under such a system, it will not 
 suffice to have the Bible in the schools to speak for itself. 
 Each sect will rise up, and virtually say, "Although the Bible 
 from Genesis to Revelation is in the schools, yet its true mean- 
 ing and doctrines are not there : Christianity is not there, unless 
 our commentary, our creed, or our catechism, is there also. A 
 revelation from God is not sufficient. Our commentary or our 
 teacher must go with it to reveal what the revelation means. 
 Our book or our teacher must be superadded to the Bible, as 
 an appendix or an erratum is subjoined at the end of a volume 
 to supply oversights and deficiencies, and to rectify the errors 
 of the text. It is not sufficient that the Holy Ghost has spoken 
 by the mouth of David ; it is not sufficient that God has 
 spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets which have been 
 since the world began ; it is not sufficient that you have the 
 words of one who spoke as never man spake : all this leaves 
 you in fatal ignorance and error, unless you have our
 
 742 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 'addenda' and 'corrigenda,' our things to be supplied, 
 and things to be corrected. Nay, we affirm, that, without our 
 interpretation and explanation of the faith which was once 
 delivered unto the saints, all that the Holy Ghost and God and 
 Christ have promulgated, and taught to men, still leaves your 
 system an uu-Christian and an anti-Christian system. To accept 
 a revelation directly from Jehovah is not enough. His revela- 
 tion must pass through our hands ; his infinite Mind must be 
 measured and squared by our minds : we have sat in council 
 over his law, his promises, and his threatenings, and have 
 decided, definitively, uuappealably, and forever, upon the only 
 true interpretation of them all. Your schools may be like the 
 noble Bereans, searching the Scriptures daily ; but, unless the 
 result of those searchings have our countersign and indorse- 
 ment, those schools are un-Christian and anti-Christian." 
 
 Now, it is almost too obvious to be mentioned, that such a 
 claim as the above reduces society at once to this dilemma : if 
 one religious sect is authorized to advance it for itself, then all 
 other sects are equally authorized to do the same thing for 
 themselves. The right being equal among all the sects, and each 
 sect being equally certain and equally determined, what shall 
 be done? Will not each sect, acting under religious impulses, 
 which are the strongest impulses that ever animate the 
 breast of man, will not each sect do its utmost to establish 
 its supremacy in all the schools? Will not the heats and ani- 
 mosities engendered in families and among neighbors burst 
 forth with a devouring fire in the primary or district school- 
 meetings? and, when the inflammable materials of all the dis- 
 trict-meetings are gathered together in the town-meeting, what 
 can quell or quench the flames till the zealots themselves are 
 consumed in the conflagration they have kindled? Why would 
 not all those machinations and oppressions be resorted to, in 
 order to obtain the ascendency, it' religious proselytism should 
 be legalized in the schools, which would be resorted to, as I 
 have endeavored, in a preceding part of this Report, to explain, 
 if political proselytism were permitted in the schools? Suppose,
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 743 
 
 at last, that different sects should obtain predominance in dif- 
 ferent schools, just as is done by different religions in the 
 different nations in Europe ; so that, in one school, one sys- 
 tem of doctrines should be taught to the children under the 
 sanctions of law as eternal truth ; and, in the neighboring 
 schools, other and opposite systems should also be taught as 
 eternal truth. Under such circumstances, perhaps it is not too 
 much to suppose, that although some of the weaker sects 
 might be crushed out of existence at once, yet that all the 
 leading denominations, with their divisions and subdivisions, 
 would have their representative schools. Into these, their 
 respective catechisms or articles of faith would be introduced. 
 And though the Bible itself might accompany them, yet, if we 
 may judge from the history of all the religious struggles by 
 which the world has been afflicted, the Bible would become the 
 incident, and the catechism or articles the principal. And if 
 these various catechisms or articles do declare, as is averred 
 by each party, what the Bible means, and what the Christian 
 religion is, then what a piebald, heterogeneous, and self-con- 
 tradictory system does Christianity become ! Suppose these 
 schools to be brought nearer together, within hearing dis- 
 tance of each other, how discordant are the sounds they 
 utter ! Bring them under the same roof, remove partition, or 
 other architectural barrier, so that they may occupy the same 
 apartment, so that the classes may sit side by side ; and does 
 the spectacle which they now exhibit illustrate the one indivisi- 
 ble, all-glorious system of Christianity? or is it the return of 
 Babel? Would such a system as this be called Christian by 
 those who denounce our system as anti-Christian? 
 
 Is there not, on the contrary, an unspeakable value in the 
 fact, that, under the Massachusetts system, the Bible is allowed 
 to speak for itself? Under a system opposite to ours, this right 
 of speaking for itself would never be vouchsafed to it. And 
 how narrow is the distance between those who would never 
 allow the Bible to be read by the people at all, and those who 
 will allow it to be read only in the presence of a government
 
 744 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 interpreter ! If government and teachers really believe the 
 Bible to be the word of God, as strictly and literally given 
 by his inspiration as the tables of the law which Moses 
 brought down from the mount were written by his finger, 
 then they cannot deny, that, when the Bible is read, God 
 speaks, just as literally and truly as an orator or a poet 
 speaks when his oration or his poem is rehearsed. With this 
 belief, it is no figure of speech to say, when the lids of the 
 Bible are opened in school that its oracles may be uttered, that 
 the lips of Jehovah are opened that he may commune with all 
 his children, of whatever faith, who may be there assembled. 
 Is that a time and an occasion for a worm of the dust, a crea- 
 ture of yesterday, to rush in and close the book, and silence the 
 Eternal One, that he may substitute some form of faith of his 
 own, some form, either received from tradition, or reasoned 
 out or guessed out by his fallible faculties, and impose it 
 upon the children as the plainer and better word of God? 
 Or when the allotted hour for religious instruction comes, or 
 the desire arises in the teacher's mind that the children of the 
 school should hold communion with their heavenly Father, 
 suppose that Father, instead of the medium of the Bible, should 
 send an angel from his throne to make known to them his 
 commands and his benedictions by living lips and in celestial 
 words. Would that be a time for the chiefs of twenty differ- 
 ent sects to rush in with their twenty different catechisms, and 
 thrust the heavenly messenger aside, and struggle to see which 
 could out-vociferate the rest in proclaiming what the visitant 
 from on high was about to declare? 
 
 I hold it, then, to be one of the excellences, one of the moral 
 beauties, of the Massachusetts system, that there is one place 
 in the land where the children of all the different denomina- 
 tions are brought together for instruction, where the Bible is 
 allowed to speak for itself; one place where the children can 
 kneel at a common altar, uud feel that they have a common 
 Father, and where the services of religion tend to create 
 brothers, aud not Ishmaelites. If this be so, then it does vio-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 745 
 
 lence to truth to call our system anti-Christian or un-Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 Thus far, under this head, I have supposed that the different 
 sects, in their contests for supremacy, would keep the peace. 
 But every page in the history of polemic struggles shows such 
 a supposition to be delusive. In the contests for victory, suc- 
 cess would lead to haughtiness, and defeat to revenge. Affini- 
 ties and repulsions would gather men into bodies : these bodies 
 would become battalions, and would set themselves in hostile 
 array against each other. Weakness of argument would re-en- 
 force itself by strength of arm ; and the hostile parties would 
 appeal from the tribunal of reason to the arbitrameut of war. 
 But after cities had been burned, and men slaughtered by 
 thousands, and every diabolical passion in the human breast 
 satiated, and the combatants were forced, from mere exhaus- 
 tion, to rest upon their arms, it would be found, on a re-exami- 
 nation of the controverted grounds, that not a rule of interpre- 
 tation had been altered, not the tense of a single verb in any 
 disputed text had been changed, not a Hebrew point nor a 
 Greek article had been added or taken away, but that every 
 subject of dispute remained as unsettled and uncertain as be- 
 fore. Is any system, which, by the law of the human passions, 
 leads to such results, either Christian or religious ? 
 
 4. One other system, if it may be so called, is supposable ; 
 and this exhausts the number of those which stand in direct 
 conflict with ours. It is this : Government might expressly 
 disclaim and refuse all interference with the education of the 
 young, abandoning the whole work to the hazards of private 
 enterprise, or to parental will, ability, or caprice. 
 
 The first effect of this course would be the abandonment of 
 a large portion of the children of every community to hopeless 
 and inevitable ignorance. Even with all the aids, incitements, 
 and bounties now bestowed upon education by the most en- 
 lightened States in this Union, there exists a perilous and a 
 growing body of ignorance, animated by the soul of vice. 
 Were government systems to be abolished, and all government
 
 746 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 aids to be withdrawn, the number of American children, who, 
 in the next generation, would be doomed to all the wants and 
 woes that can come in the train of ignorance and error, would 
 be counted by millions. This abandoned portion of the com- 
 munity would be left, without any of the restraints of educa- 
 tion, to work cut the infinite possibilities of human depravity. 
 In the more favored parts of the country, the rich might edu- 
 cate their own children ; although it is well known, even now, 
 that, throughout extensive regions of the South and West, the 
 best education which wealth can procure is meagre and stinted, 
 and alloyed with much error. The " parochial " or " secta- 
 rian " system might effect something in populous places ; but 
 what could it do in rural districts, where so vast a proportion 
 of all the inhabitants of this country reside ? In speaking of 
 the difficulties of establishing schools at the West, Miss Beecher 
 gives an account of a single village which she found there, con- 
 sisting of only four hundred inhabitants, where there were 
 fourteen different denominations. " Of the most numerous 
 portions of these," she says, " each was jealous lest another 
 should start a church first, and draw in the rest. The result 
 was, neither church nor Sunday school of any kind was in 
 existence." Of another place she says, " I found two of the 
 most influential citizens arrayed against each other, and sup- 
 ported by contending partisans, so that whatever school one 
 portion patronized the other would oppose. The result, was, 
 no school could be raised large enough to support any teacher." 
 And again : " In another large town, I was informed by one 
 of the clergymen that no less than twenty different teachers 
 opened schools and gave them up in about six months." 
 
 In a population of four hundred, there would be about one 
 hundred children who ought to attend school ; although this 
 proportion, on an average of the whole country, is nearly three*- 
 fold the number of actual attendants. One hundred children 
 would furnish the materials for a good school, but, divided 
 between fourteen different schools, would give only seven chil- 
 dren and one-seventh of a child to each school. How impossi-
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 747 
 
 ble to sustain schools on such a basis ! The more numerous 
 sects, it is true, would have a larger proportion ; but just so 
 much less would be the proportion of the smaller sects, and 
 doubtless there would be some who would be fully represented 
 by the above-mentioned fraction of one-seventh of a child. But 
 let us take the case of Massachusetts, where the population has 
 a density of five times the average of the other States in the 
 Union, and let us see how insane and suicidal would be such 
 a course of policy even with us. Leaving out all the cities, 
 there are three hundred and five towns, in Massachusetts ; and 
 these comprise most of the rural and sparsely-populated portion 
 of the State. These three hundred and five towns have an 
 average of eleven schools (wanting a very small fraction) for 
 each. Two hundred and twenty-six of these three hundred 
 and five towns have a population, according to the last census, 
 of less than twenty-two hundred each. If there are twenty-two 
 hundred inhabitants and eleven schools in a town, each school 
 represents an average of two hundred inhabitants. Including 
 every child who was found in all our public schools last year, 
 for any part either of the summer or winter terms, they would 
 make a mean average for those terms of only forty-eight to a 
 school. Now, suppose these forty-eight scholars to be divided, 
 not between "fourteen," but only between fo ur different denom- 
 inations, there would be but twelve to a school. Connect this 
 result with the fact that Massachusetts has a population five 
 times as dense as the average of the residue of the Union, and 
 it will be seen, by intuition, that only in a few favored locali- 
 ties could the system of " sectarian " schools be maintained. 
 This obstacle might be partially overcome by a union of two or 
 more sects, between whom the repellency resulting from some 
 punctilios in matters of form or ceremonial observance would 
 not overcome the argument from availability ; but this union, 
 having been purchased by the sacrifice of a portion of what 
 each holds to be absolute truth, why, when any one of the 
 allies should become sufficiently powerful to stand alone, would 
 it not dissolve the alliance, set up for itself, and abandon its 
 confederates to their fate?
 
 748 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 In making the above computation, which gives an average of 
 forty-eight scholars to each school, it will be observed that all 
 the schools in the State are included, the numerously-attended 
 schools of the cities as well as the small ones of the country. 
 And although the number of districts in the two hundred and 
 twenty-six towns whose population is less than twenty-two 
 hundred each may be somewhat less than in the remaining 
 seventy-nine towns, yet the fact unquestionably is, that an 
 allowance of forty-eight scholars to a school is much too large 
 an average for the schools in these two hundred and twenty-six, 
 of the three hundred and five towns in the State. Of course, 
 twelve scholars to a school would be much too large an average, 
 if the schools were divided only between four different sects. 
 Nor has any mention been made of the large numbers who con- 
 nect themselves with no religious sect, and who, therefore, if 
 united at all, would be united on the principle of opposition to 
 sect. Surely the very statement of the case supersedes argu- 
 ment in regard to the possibility of maintaining schools for 
 any considerable portion of the children of the country on such 
 a basis. 
 
 The calamities necessarily resulting from so partial and lim- 
 ited a system as the one now under consideration would in- 
 flict retributive loss and weakness upon all classes in the com- 
 munity ; but upon the children of the poor, the ignorant, and 
 the unfortunate, would the blow fall with terrible severity. 
 And what class of children ought we most assiduously to care 
 for? Christ came to save that which would otherwise be lost. 
 All good men, and all governments, so far as they imitate the 
 example of Christ, strive to succor the distressed, and to re- 
 claim the guilty ; in an intellectual and in a moral sense, to 
 feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and the 
 imprisoned ; amid the priceless wealth of character, to find 
 the lost piece of silver ; and, amid the wanderings from the fold 
 of truth, to recover the lambs. Before Heaven, it is now, to- 
 day, the first duty of every government in Christendom to 
 bring forward those unfortunate classes of the people, who, in
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 749 
 
 the inarch of civilization, have been left in the rear. Though 
 the van of society should stand still for a century, the rear 
 ought to be brought up. The exterminating decree of Herod 
 was parental aud beneficent compared with the cruel sway of 
 those rulers who dig the pit-falls of temptation along the path- 
 way of children, and suffer them to fall, unwarned and unas- 
 sisted, into the abysses of ruin. What, then, shall be said of 
 that opposition to our system, which, should it prevail, would 
 doom to remediless ignorance and vice a great majority of all 
 the children in this land? Is such a system, as contradistin- 
 guished from our free system, Christian and religious? 
 
 It is a very surprising fact, but one which is authenticated by 
 a report, made in the month of July last, by a committee of 
 the Boston primary-schools, that, of the ten thousand one hun- 
 dred and sixty-two children belonging to said schools, five thou- 
 sand one hundred and fifty-four were of foreign parentage. 
 Let sectarianism be introduced into the Boston schools, or 
 rather let it be understood that the schools are to be carried 
 on for the avowed purpose of building up any one of the New- 
 England denominations, and what a vast proportion of these 
 five thousand one hundred and fifty-four children would be im- 
 mediately withdrawn from the schools ! Their parents would 
 as soon permit them to go to a lazar-house as to such schools ; 
 aud this, too, from the sincerest of motives. The same thing 
 would prove relatively true in regard to no inconsiderable num- 
 ber of the less populous cities, and of the most populous towns, 
 in the State. Now, what would be the condition of such chil- 
 dren at the end of twenty years ? aud what the condition of 
 the communities which had thus cruelly closed the school- 
 house-doors upon them? Would not these communities be 
 morally responsible for all the degradation, the miseries, the 
 vices, and the crimes consequent upon such expulsion from 
 the school ? Aud would such a result be one of the fruits of a 
 Christian and a religious system? 
 
 But there would be another inseparable accompaniment of 
 such a system. In Massachusetts, the average compensation
 
 750 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 paid to male teachers is veiy much larger than that which is 
 paid in any other State in the Union. It is nearly double what 
 is given in most of the States ; and yet, even with us, the great 
 body of ambitious and aspiring young men pass by the pro- 
 fession of teaching, and betake themselves to some other em- 
 ployment, known to be more lucrative, and falsely supposed to 
 be more honorable. How degrading, then, must be the effect 
 upon the general character and competency of teachers as a 
 profession, when, on the abolition of the public schools, and 
 the substitution of private and sectarian schools in their stead, 
 the wages of teachers, for the poorer classes, shall be reduced 
 to a pittance, and the collection of even this pittance shall be 
 precarious ! What will be the social rank and standing of 
 teachers, when their customary income encourages no previous 
 preparation for their work, doles out only a niggardly subsist- 
 ence even while they are engaged in the service, and leaves no 
 surplus for the probable wants of sickness, or the certain ones 
 of age? And among whom shall the teacher seek his asso- 
 ciates, when he is shunned by the learned for his want of cul- 
 ture, and ridiculed for his poverty by the devotees of wealth? 
 Even in England, where the population is so dense that hardly 
 a spot can be selected as a centre, which will not embrace, with- 
 in a circumference of convenient distance, a sufficient number 
 of children for a school, even there, the voluntary and secta- 
 rian system leaves at least two-thirds of the agricultural and 
 manufacturing classes in a state of the most deplorable igno- 
 rance ; supplying them with teachers, so far as it supplies 
 them with teachers at all, who fulfil the double oifice of per- 
 petuating errors in school, and degrading the character of the 
 profession out of it. 
 
 There is another fact of fearful significance, which no one 
 who has any regard for the common interests of society can 
 be pardoned for forgetting. It is known to all, that, in many 
 parts of the Union, the population is so sparse, and can com- 
 mand so little of ready means for paying salaries, that no resi- 
 dent clergyman of any denomination is to be found throughout
 
 REPORT FOR 1848- 751 
 
 wide districts of country ; and many of those who do devote 
 themselves to the spiritual welfare of their fellow-men are most 
 scantily provided for. If unmarried, they can barely live ; if 
 they have a family, there is, oftentimes, a real scantiness of 
 the comforts and necessaries of life. They have neither books 
 to peruse ; nor leisure to read, even if they had books. They 
 may be a pious, but they cannot be a learned clergy. At least 
 in one respect, they are compelled to imitate St. Paul ; for as 
 he wrought at his own " craft " for a subsistence, so must they. 
 And now, if existing means are too scanty to give a respectable 
 support even to the ministry, how disastrous must be the 
 effect of dividing these scanty means betwi/i-u the institution of 
 the gospel and the institution of the school ! Will not the 
 vineyard of the Lord be overgrown with weeds, will not its 
 hedges be broken down, and the wild beasts of the forest make 
 their lair therein, if the servants who are set to tend and to 
 dress it are so few in number, and so miserably provided for? 
 Is not this another criterion by which to determine whether our 
 present system is not as Christian and as religious as that 
 which would supplant it? 
 
 I know of but one argument, having the semblance of plausi- 
 bility, that can be urged against this feature of our system. It 
 may be said, that if questions of doctrinal religion are left to be 
 decided by men for themselves, or by parents for their children, 
 numerous and grievous errors will be mingled with the instruc- 
 tion. Doubtless the fact is so. If truth be one, and if many 
 contradictory dogmas are taught as truth, then it is mathemati- 
 cally certain that all the alleged truths but one is a falsity. 
 But, though the statement is correct, the inference which is 
 drawn from it in favor of a government standard of faith is 
 not legitimate ; for all the religious errors which are believed iu 
 by the free mind of man, or which are taught by free parents 
 to their children, are tolerable and covetable, compared with 
 those which the patronage and the seductions of government 
 can suborn men to adopt, and which the terrors of government 
 can compel them to perpetuate. The errors of free minds are
 
 752 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 so numerous and so various, that they prevent any monster- 
 error from acquiring the ascendency, and therefore truth has a 
 chance to struggle forward amid the strifes of the combatants ; 
 but if the monster-error can usurp the throne of the civil power, 
 fortify itself by prescription, defend its infallibility with all the 
 forces of the State, sanctify its enormities under sacred names, 
 and plead the express command of God for all its atrocities, 
 against such an antagonist, Truth must struggle for centuries, 
 bleed at every pore, be wounded in every vital part, and can 
 triumph at last, only after thousands and tens of thousands of 
 her holiest disciples shall have fallen in the conflict. 
 
 If, then, a government would recognize and protect the rights 
 of religious freedom, it must abstain from subjugating the ca- 
 pacities of its children to any legal standard of religious faith 
 with as great fidelity as it abstains from controlling the opin- 
 ions of men. It must meet the unquestionable fact, that the 
 old spirit of religious domination is adopting new measures to 
 accomplish its work, measures which, if successful, will be 
 as fatal to the liberties of mankind as those which were prac- 
 tised in by-gone days of violence and terror. These new meas- 
 ures are aimed at children instead of men. They propose to 
 supersede the necessity of subduing free thought in the mind 
 of the adult, by forestalling the development of any capacity 
 of free thought in the mind of the child. They expect to find 
 it easier to subdue the free agency of children by binding them 
 in fetters of bigotry than to subdue the free agency of men by 
 binding them in fetters of iron. For this purpose, some are 
 attempting to deprive children of their right to labor, and, of 
 course, of their daily bread, unless they will attend a govern- 
 ment school, and receive its sectarian instruction. Some are 
 attempting to withhold all means even of secular education 
 from the poor, and thus punish them with ignorance, unless, 
 with the secular knowledge which they desire, they will accept 
 theological knowledge which they condemn. Others still are 
 striving to break down all free public-school systems where 
 they exist, and to prevent their establishment where they do
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 753 
 
 not exist, in the hope, that, on the downfall of these, their sys- 
 tem will succeed. The sovereign antidote against these machi- 
 nations is free schools for all, and the right of every parent to 
 determine the religious education of his children. 
 
 This topic invites far more extended exposition ; but this 
 must suffice. In bidding an official farewell to a system 
 with which I have been so long connected, to which I have 
 devoted my means, my strength, my health, twelve years of 
 time, and, doubtless, twice that number of years from what 
 might otherwise have been my term of life, I have felt bound 
 to submit these brief views in its defence. In justice to my 
 own name and memory ; in justice to the Board of which I was 
 originally a member, and from which I have always sought 
 counsel and guidance ; aud in justice to thousands of the most 
 wise, upright, and religious-minded men in Massachusetts, 
 who have been my fellow-laborers in advancing the great cause 
 of popular education, under the auspices of this system, I 
 have felt bound to vindicate it from the aspersions cast upon it, 
 and to show its consonance with the eternal principles of equity 
 and justice. I have felt bound to show, that so far from its 
 being an irreligious, an anti-Christian, or an un-Christian system, 
 it is a system which recognizes religious obligations in their 
 fullest extent ; that it is a system which invokes a religious 
 spirit, and can never be fitly administered without such a 
 spirit ; that it inculcates the great commands upon which hang 
 all the law and the prophets ; that it welcomes the Bible, and 
 therefore welcomes all the doctrines which the Bible really 
 contains ; and that it listens to these doctrines so reverently, 
 that, for the time being, it will not suffer any rash mortal to 
 thrust in his interpolations of their meaning, or overlay the text 
 with any of the " many inventions " which the heart of man 
 has sought out. It is a system, however, which leaves open 
 all other means of instruction, the pulpits, the Sunday 
 schools, the Bible classes, the catechisms, of all denominations, 
 to be employed according to the preferences of individual 
 parents. It is a system which restrains itself from teaching 
 
 48
 
 754 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 that what it does teach is all that needs to be taught, or that 
 should be taught ; but leaves this to be decided by each man 
 for himself, according to the light of his reason and conscience, 
 and on his responsibility to that Great Being, who, in holding 
 him to an account for the things done in the body, will hold 
 him to the strictest account for the manner in which he has 
 " trained up " his children. 
 
 Such, then, in a religious point of view, is the Massachusetts 
 system of common schools. Reverently it recognizes and af- 
 firms the sovereign rights of -the Creator, sedulously and sa- 
 credly it guards the religious rights of the creature ; while it 
 seeks to remove all hinderances, and to supply all furtherances, 
 to a filial and paternal communion between man and his Maker. 
 In a social and political sense, it is a free school-system. It 
 knows no distinction of rich and poor, of bond and free, or be- 
 tween those, who, in the imperfect light of this world, are seek- 
 ing, through different avenues, to reach the gate of heaven. 
 Without money and without price, it throws open its doors, 
 and spreads the table of its bounty, for all the children of the 
 State. Like the sun, it shines not only upon the good, but 
 upon the evil, that they may become good ; and, like the rain, 
 its blessings descend not only upon the just, but upon the un- 
 just, that their injustice may depart from them, and be known 
 no more. 
 
 To the great founders of this system we look back with 
 filial reverence and love. Amid the barrenness of the land, 
 and in utter destitution of wealth, they coined the rude com- 
 forts, and even the necessaries, of life, into means for its gener- 
 ous support. Though, as laborers by day, they subdued the 
 wilderness, and, as sentinels by night, they guarded the camp, 
 yet they found time for the vigilant aclmini.-tratiou and over- 
 sight of the schools in the day of their infancy and weakness. 
 But for this single institution, into which they transfused so 
 much of their means and of their strength, and of which they 
 have made us the inheritors, how different would our lot and 
 our life have been ! Upon us its accumulated blessings have
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 755 
 
 descended. It has saved us from innumerable pains and perils 
 that would otherwise have been our fate, from the physical 
 wretchedness that is impotent to work out its own relief, from 
 the darkness of the intellect whose wanderings , after light so 
 often plunge it into deeper gloom, and from the moral debase- 
 ment whose pleasures are vices and crimes. It has surrounded 
 us with a profusion of comforts and blessings of which the 
 most poetic imagination would never otherwise have conceived. 
 It has found, not mythologic goddesses, but gigantic and tire- 
 less laborers, in every stream ; not evil and vindictive spirits, 
 but beneficent and helping ones, in all the elements ; and, by a 
 profouuder alchemy than the schoolmen ever dreamed of, it 
 transmutes quarries and ice-fields into gold. It has given cun- 
 ning to the hand of the mechanic, keenness to the artisan's eye, 
 and made a sterile soil grow grateful beneath the skill of the 
 husbandman. Hence the absence of poverty among our na- 
 tive population ; hence a competency for the whole people, the 
 means for mental and moral improvement, and for giving em- 
 bellishment and dignity to life, such as the world has never 
 known before, and such as nowhere else can be found upon 
 the face of the earth. 
 
 How divinely wise were our Pilgrim Fathers when they 
 foresaw, that, if they could give knowledge and virtue to their 
 children, they gave them all things ! Wonder and admiration 
 seize us as we reflect upon the vastness of the results which 
 their wisdom wrought out from the scantiest of resources. 
 They have taught us the great lesson, how the fiercest elements 
 obey, and how the most obdurate and intractable of Nature's 
 substances bend and melt before the power of knowledge, and 
 the fervors of a saintly heroism. Their deeds have taught us, 
 not only that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the 
 strong, but they have taught us that the swiftness which shall 
 win the honors of the goal, and the strength that shall triumph 
 in the strife, are to be found in the soul, and not in the limbs, 
 of man. But though, to this untitled yet noblest ancestry, we 
 are bound to pay the homage of our gratitude, and to accept
 
 756 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 their benefactions with a filial love, yet neither the compla- 
 cency of enjoyment, nor that of retrospection, is the frame of 
 mind that best befits us. We have our futurity as they had 
 theirs, a futurity rapidly hastening upon us, a futurity 
 now fluid, ready, as clay in the hands of the potter, to be 
 moulded into every form of beauty and excellence ; but so 
 soon as it reaches our hands, so soon as it receives the impress 
 of our plastic touch, whether this touch be for good or for evil, 
 it is to be struck into the adamant of the unchanging and un- 
 changeable past. Into whose form and likeness shall we fash- 
 ion this flowing futurity, of Mammon, of Moloch, or of 
 Jesus? Clear, and more clear, out of the dimness of coming 
 time, emerge to the vision of faith the myriad hosts of the 
 generations that shall succeed us. These generations are to 
 stand in our places, to be called by our names, and to accept 
 the heritage of joy or of woe which we shall bequeath them. 
 Shall they look back upon us with veneration for our wisdom 
 and beneficent forecast, or with shame at our selfishness and 
 degeneracy? Our ancestors were noble examples to us ; shall 
 we be ignoble examples to our posterity? They gave from 
 their penury, and shall we withhold from our abundance ? Let 
 us not dishonor our lineage. Let us remember that gener- 
 osity is not to be measured by the largeness of the sum which 
 a man may give, but by the smalmess of the sum which re- 
 mains to him after his gift. Let us remember that the fortunes 
 of our children, and of their descendants, hang upon our fidelity, 
 just as our fortunes were suspended upon the fidelity of our 
 fathers. Deeds survive the doers. In the highest and most 
 philosophic sense, the asserted brevity of human life is a fiction. 
 The act remains, though the hand that wrought it may have 
 perished. And when our spirits shall have gone to their ac- 
 count, and the dust of our bodies shall be blown about by the 
 winds, or mingled with the waves, the force which our life shall 
 have impressed upon the machinery of things will continue its 
 momentum, and work out its destiny upon the character and 
 happiness of our descendants.
 
 REPORT FOR 1848. 757 
 
 But not the fortunes of our children alone, or of our chil- 
 dren's children, are dependent upon us. The influences of our 
 conduct extend outward in space as well as onward in time. 
 We are part of a mighty nation, which has just embarked upon 
 the grandest experiment ever yet attempted upon earth, the 
 experiment of the capacity of mankind for the wise and right- 
 eous government of themselves. Fearful are the issues which 
 hang upon the trial, but few and simple the conditions that 
 predestine its result. The firmament, though pillared upon 
 rottenness, shall be upheld, and the light of day shall continue 
 to revisit the earth, though the sun be blotted out, sooner than 
 a republic shall stand which has not knowledge and virtue for 
 its foundations. Yet are we not braving the results of this ex- 
 periment, in impious defiance of the conditions on which Heaven 
 has decreed that the trial shall turn ? Within a brief period of 
 time, our population has spread itself westward from the Atlan- 
 tic, through more than twenty degrees of longitude. It has 
 erected thirty States, and given to each a republican frame of 
 government. Yet, in more than one-half of these States, no 
 provision worthy of the name is made for replenishing the 
 common mind with knowledge, or for training the common 
 heart to virtue. Surely, to the people of these States, a dif- 
 ferent mental and moral culture must come speedily, or it will 
 come too late ; and the sower who would scatter the elements 
 of knowledge and virtue amongst them must press forward 
 with gigantic strides, and cast his seed with a gigantic arm. 
 
 Nor is this all. Beyoud our western frontier, another and 
 a wider realm spreads out, as yet unorganized into govern- 
 ments, and uninhabited by civilized man. The western is 
 still broader than the eastern expanse. It stretches through 
 thirty degrees of longitude, one-twelfth part of the circum- 
 ference of the globe. Half the population of Continental Europe 
 might be transplanted to it, find subsistence on it, and leave 
 room to spare. It is now a waste more dreary than desolation 
 itself; for it is filled only with savage life. Yet soon will 
 every rood of its surface be explored by the centrifugal force of
 
 758 ANNUAL REPORTS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the Saxon soul ; and whatever of vegetable wealth is spread 
 upon it, or of mineral wealth is garnered beneath it, will be 
 appropriated by the vehemence of Saxon enterprise. Shall 
 this new empire, wider than that of the Ptolemies, and almost 
 as extensive as that of the Caesars, be reclaimed to humanity, 
 to a Christian life, and a Christian history? or shall it be a 
 receptacle where the avarice, the profligacy, and the licentious- 
 ness of a corrupt civilization shall cast its criminals and breed 
 its monsters? If it is ever to be saved from such a perdition, 
 tiie mother States of this Union, those States where the insti- 
 tutions of learning and religion are now honored and cher- ( 
 ished, must send out their hallowing influences to redeem it. 
 And if, in the benignant providence of God, the tree of Para- 
 dise is ever to be planted and to flourish in this new realm ; if 
 its branches are to spread, and its leaves to be scattered for 
 the healing of the people, will not the heart of every true son 
 of Massachusetts palpitate with desire not a low and vain- 
 glorious ambition, but such a high and holy aspiration as 
 angels might feel that her name may be engraved upon its 
 youthful trunk, there to deepen and expand with its immortal 
 growth ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Prew of Geo. C. Rand * Avery, Cornhill, Boston.
 
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