great disfranchised class-the pariahs of political and social life—are indeed ignorant, mere inert masses, moved upon and controlled by the intelligent and cultivated aristocracy. Any unrepresented and hopelessly disfranchised class in a government will inevitably be struck with intellectual paralysis. Our late slaves afford a sad illustration.

But among the represented and voting classes of this country, where all are equal before the law, and every man is a political power for good or evil, there is but little of the inertia of ignorance. The alternatives are not education or no education; but shall the power of the citizen be directed aright towards industry, liberty, and patriotism, or, under the baneful influence of false theories and evil influences, shall it lead him continually downward till it ruin both him and the government?

If he is not educated in the school of virtue and integrity he will be educated in the school of vice and iniquity. We are, therefore, afloat on the sweeping current; we must make head against it, or we shall go down with it to the saddest of destinies.

According to the census of 1860 there were 1,218,311 free white inhabitants of the United States over twenty-one years of age who could not read nor write, and 871,418 of those were American-born citizens. One-third of a million of people are being annually thrown upon our shores from the Old World, a large per cent. of whom are uneducated, and the gloomy total has been swelled by the 4,000,000 slaves admitted to citizenship by the events of the war.

Such, Sir, is the immense force which we must now confront by the genius of our institutions and the light of our civilization. How shall it be done? An American citizen can give but one answer. We must pour upon them all the light of our public schools. We must make them intelligent, industrious, patriotic citizens, or they will drag us and our children down to their level. Does not this question rise to the full height of national importance and demand the best efforts of statesmanship to adjust it? Mr. Mann has well said:

"That legislators and rulers are responsible.

"In our country and in our times no man is worthy the honored name of a statesman who does not include the highest practicable education of the people in all of his plans of administration.

"He may have eloquence, he may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy, jurisprudence, and by these he may claim, in other countries, the elevated rank of a statesman, but unless he speaks, plans, labors at all times and in all places for the culture and edification of the whole people, he is not, he cannot be an American statesman."

Gentlemen who have discussed the bill this morning tell us that it will result in great expense to the government. Whether an enterprise is expensive or not is altogether a relative question, to be determined by the importance of its object.

Now, what have we done as a nation in the way of expenses? In 1832 we organized a Coast Survey Bureau, and have expended millions upon it. Its officers have triangulated thousands of miles of our coasts, have made soundings of all our bays and harbors, and carefully mapped the shoals, breakers, and coast lines from our northern boundary on the Atlantic to the extreme northern boundary on the Pacific coast. They have established eight hundred tidal stations to observe the fluctuations of the tides. We have expended vast sums in order perfectly to know the topography of our coasts, lakes and rivers, that we might make navigation more safe. Is it of no consequence that we explore the boundaries of that wonderful intellectual empire which incloses within its domain the fate of succeeding generations, and of this republic? The children of to-day will be the architects of our country's destiny in 1900.

We have established an Astronomical Observatory where the movements of the stars are watched, latitude and longitude calculated, and chronometers regulated for the benefit of navigation. For this Observatory we pay one third of a million per annum. Is it of no consequence that we observe the movements of those intellectual lights which shall, in the time to come, be guiding stars in our national firmament?

We have established a Light-House Board who are employing all the aids of science, to discover the best modes of regulating the beacons upon our shores; they are placing buoys as way-marks to guide ships safely into our harbors. Will you not create a light-house board to set up beacons for the coming generation, not as lights to the eye, but to the mind and heart, that shall lead them safely in the perilous voyage of life, and enable them to transmit the blessings of liberty to those who shall come after them?

We have set on foot a score of expeditions to explore the mountains and valleys, the lakes and rivers of this and other countries. We have expended money without stint to explore the Amazon and the Jordan, Chili and Japan, the gold shores of the Colorado and the copper cliffs of Lake Superior; to gather and publish the great facts of science, and to exhibit the material resources of physical nature. Will you refuse the pitiful sum of $13,000 to collect and record the intellectual resources of this country, the elements that lie behind all material wealth and make it either a curse or a blessing?

We have paid three-quarters of a million dollars for the survey of the route for the Pacific railroad, and have published the results at a great cost in thirteen quarto volumes, with accompanying maps and charts. The money for these purposes was freely expended, and now, when it is proposed to appropriate $13,000 to aid in increasing the intelligence of those who will use that great continental highway when it is completed, we are reminded of our debts, and warned against increasing our expenditures. It is difficult to treat such an objection with the respect that always is due in this hall of legislation.

We have established a Patent Office where are annually accumulated thousands of models of new machinery invented by our people. Will you make no expenditure for the benefit of the intelligence that shall stand behind that machinery and be its controller? Will you bestow all your favors upon the engine, and ignore the engineer? I will not insult the intelligence of this House by waiting to prove that money paid for education is the most economical of all expenditure; that it is cheaper to reduce crime than to build jails; that school houses are less expensive than rebellions. A tenth of our national debt expended in public education fifty years ago would have saved us the blood and treasure of the late war. A far less sum may save our children from a still greater calamity.

We expend hundreds of thousands annually to promote the agricultural interests of the country; to introduce the best methods in husbandry. Is it not of more consequence to do something for the farmer of the future than for the farm of to-day?

As man is more precious than soil, as the immortal spirit is nobler than the clod it animates, so is the object of this bill more important than any mere pecuniary interest.

The genius of our government does not allow us to establish a compulsory system of education, as is done in some of the countries of Europe. There are States in this Union, however, which have a lopted a compulsory system, and perhaps that is well. It is for each State to determine. A distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island told me lately that it is now the law in that State that every child within its borders shall attend school, and that every vagrant child shall be taken in charge by the authorities and sent to school. It may be well for other States to pursue the same course; but probably the general government can do nothing of the sort. Whether it has the right of compulsory control or not, we propose none in this bill. But we do propose to use that power, so effective in this country, of letting in light on subjects, and holding them up to the verdict of

public opinion. If it could be published annually from this capitol, through every school district of the United States, that there are States in the Union that have no system of common schools; and if their records could be placed beside the records of such States as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other States that have a common school system, the mere statement of the fact would rouse their energies, and compel them for shame to educate their children. It would shame out of their delinquency all the delinquent States.

Mr. Speaker, if I were called upon to-day to point to that in my own State of which I am most proud, I would not point to any of the flaming lines of her military record, to the heroic men and the brilliant officers she gave to the late contest: I would not point to any of her leading men of the past or the present; but I would point to her common schools; I would point to the honorable fact that in the great struggle of five years through which we have just passed, she has expended $12,000,000 for the support of her public schools. I do not include in that amount the sums expended upon our higher institutions of learning. I would point to the fact that fifty-two per cent of the taxation of Ohio for the last five years, aside from the war tax and the tax for the payment of her public debt, has been for the support of her schools. I would point to the schools of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, and other cities of the State, if I desired a stranger to see the glory of Ohio. I would point to the thirteen thousand school houses and the seven hundred thousand pupils in the schools of Ohio. I would point to the $3,000,000 she has paid for schools during the last year alone. This, in my judgment, is the proper gauge by which to measure the progress and glory of States.

Gentlemen tell us there is no need of this bill-the States are doing well enough now. Do they know through what a struggle every State has come up, that has secured a good system of common schools. Let me illustrate this by the example of Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding the early declaration of William Penn

"That which makes a good constitution must keep it, namely, men of wisdom and virtue; qualities that because they descend not with worldly inheritance must be carefully propagated by a virtuous education of youth, for which spare no cost, for by such parsimony all that is saved is lost,"

notwithstanding that wise master builder incorporated this sentiment in his "framework of government" and made it the duty of the governor and council" to establish and support public schools;" notwithstanding Benjamin Franklin, from the first hour he became a

citizen of Pennsylvania, inculcated the value of useful knowledge to every human being in every walk of life, and by his personal and pecuniary effort did establish schools and a college for Philadelphia; notwithstanding the constitution of Pennsylvania made it obligatory upon the Legislature to foster the education of the citizens; notwithstanding all this, it was not till 1833-34 that a system of common schools, supported in part by taxation of property of the State, for the common benefit of all the children of the State, was established by law; and although the law was passed by an almost unanimous vote of both branches of the Legislature, so foreign was the idea of public schools to the habits of the people, so odious was the idea of taxation for this purpose, that even the poor who were to be specially benefited, were so deluded by political demagogues as to clamor for its repeal.

Many members who voted for the law lost their nominations, and others, although nominated, lost their election. Some were weak enough to pledge themselves to a repeal of the law; and in the session of 1835 there was an almost certain prospect of its repeal and the adoption in its place of an odious and limited provision for educating the children of the poor by themselves. In the darkest hour of the debate, when the hearts of the original friends of the system were failing from fear, there rose on the floor of the House one of its early champions, one who, though not a native of the State, felt the disgrace which the repeal of this law would inflict, like a knife in his bosom; one who, though no kith or kin of his would be benefited by the operations of the system, and though he should share its burdens, he would only partake with every citizen in its blessings; one who had voted for the orginal law although introduced by his political opponents, and who had defended and gloried in his vote before an angry and unwilling constituency; this man, then in the beginning of his public career, threw himself into the conflict, and by his earnest and brave eloquence saved the law, and gave a noble system of common schools to Pennsylvania.

I doubt if, at this hour, after the thirty years crowded full of successful labors at the bar, before the people, and in halls of legislation, the venerable and distinguished member [Mr. STEVENS], who now represents a portion of the same State in this House, can recall any speech of his life with half the pleasure he does that, for no measure with which his name has been connected is so fraught with blessings to hundreds of thousands of children, and to homes innumerable. I hold in my hand a copy of his brave speech, and I ask the clerk to read the passages I have marked: