Let all, therefore, who would sustain the character of the philosopher or philanthropist sustain this law. Those who would add thereto the glory of the hero can acquire it here; for, in the present state of feeling in Pennsylvania, I am willing to admit that but little less dangerous to the public man is the war-club and battle-ax of savage ignorance than to the lion-hearted Richard was the keen scimiter of the Saracen. He who would oppose it, either through inability to comprehend the advantages of general education or from unwillingness to bestow them on all his fellow-citizens, even to the lowest and the poorest, or from dread of popular vengeance, seems to want either the head of the philosopher, the heart of the philanthropist, or the nerve of the hero.

He has lived long enough to see this law, which he helped to found in 1834, and more than any other man was instrumental in saving from repeal in 1835, expanded and consolidated into a noble system of public instruction. Twelve thousand schools have been built by the voluntary taxation of the people, to the amount, for school. houses alone, of nearly ten million dollars. Many millions of children have been educated in these schools. More than seven hundred thousand attended the public schools of Pennsylvania in 1864-65, and their annual cost, provided by voluntary taxation in the year 1864, was nearly three million dollars, giving employment to sixteen thousand teachers.

It is glory enough for one man to have connected his name so honorably with the original establishment and effective defense of such a system.

But it is said that the thirst for knowledge among the young; the pride and ambition of parents for their children, are agencies powerful enough to establish and maintain thorough and comprehensive systems of education.

This suggestion is answered by the unanimous voice of publicists and political economists. They all admit that the doctrine of "demand and supply" does not apply to educational wants. Even the most extreme advocates of the principle of laissez faire as a sound maxim of political philosophy admit that governments must interfere in aid of education. We must not wait for the wants of the rising generation to be expressed in a demand for means of education. We must ourselves discover and supply their needs, before the time for supplying them has forever passed. John Stuart Mill says:

But there are other things of the worth of which the demand of the market is by no means a test; things of which the utility does not consist in ministering to inclinations, nor in serving the daily uses of life, and the want of which is least felt where the need is greatest. This is peculiarly true of those things which are chiefly useful as tending to raise the character of human beings. The uncultivated cannot be judges of cultivation.

Those who most need to be made wiser and better usually desire it least, and, if they desired it, would be incapable of finding the way to it by their own lights. It will continually happen on the voluntary system that, the end not being desired, the means will not be provided at all, or that, the persons requiring improvement having an imperfect or altogether erroneous conception of what they want, the supply called forth by the demand of the market will be anything but what is really required. Now, any well-intentioned and tolerably civilized government may think, without presumption, that it does, or ought to, possess a degree of cultivation above the average of the community which it rules, and that it should, therefore, be capable of offering better education and better instruction to the people than the greater number of them would spontaneously select.

Education, therefore, is one of those things which it is admissible in principle that the government should provide for the people. The case is one to which the reasons of the non-interference principle do not necessarily or universally extend.

With regard to elementary education, the exception to ordinary rules may, I conceive, justifiably be carried still farther. There are certain primary elements and means of knowledge which it is in the highest degree desirable that all human beings born into the community should acquire during childhood. If their parents, or those on whom they depend, have the power of obtaining for them this instruction, and fail to do it, they commit a double breach of duty: toward the children themselves, and toward the members of the community generally, who are all liable to suffer seriously from the consequences of ignorance and want of edu cation in their fellow-citizens. It is, therefore, an allowable exercise of government to impose on parents the legal obligation of giving elementary instruction to children. This, however, cannot fairly be done without taking measures to insure that such instruction shall always be accessible to them, either gratuitously or at a trifling expense.

This is the testimony of economic science. I trust the statesmen of this Congress will not think the subject of education too humble a theme for their most serious consideration. It has engaged the earnest attention of the best men of ancient and modern times, especially of modern statesmen and philanthropists.

I will fortify myself in the positions I have taken by quoting the authority of a few men who are justly regarded as teachers of the human race. If I keep in their company, I cannot wander far from the truth. I cannot greatly err while I am guided by their counsel.

In his eloquent essay entitled Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, John Milton said:

To make the people fittest to choose, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to mend our corrupt and faulty education, to teach the people faith, not without virtue, temperance, modesty, sobriety, economy, justice; not to admire wealth or honor; to hate turbulence and ambition; to place everyone his private welfare and happiness in the public peace, liberty, and safety.

England's most venerable living statesman, Lord Brougham, enforced the same truth in these noble words:

Lawgivers of England! I charge ye, have a care! Be well assured that the contempt lavished upon the cabals of Constantinople, when the council disputed on a text, while the enemy, the derider of all their texts, was thundering at the gate, will be a token of respect compared with the loud shout of universal scorn which all mankind in all ages will send up against you, if you stand still and suffer a far deadlier foe than the Turcoman; suffer the parent of all evil, all falsehood, all hypocrisy, all discharity, all self-seeking him who covers over with pretexts of conscience the pitfalls that he digs for the souls on which he preys-to stalk about the fold and lay waste its inmates; stand still and make no head against him, upon the vain pretext to soothe your indolence, that your action is obstructed by religious cabals-upon the far more guilty speculation that by playing a party game you can turn the hatred of conflicting professors to your selfish purposes !

Let the soldier be abroad, if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad, a person less imposing - in the eye of some insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full uniform array.

Lord Brougham gloried in the title of schoolmaster, and contrasted his work with that of the military conqueror in these words:

The conqueror stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of war," banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded and the lamentations for the slain. Not thus the schoolmaster in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers around him those who are to further their execution; he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won.

The learned and brilliant Guizot, who regarded his work in the office of minister of public instruction, in the government of France, the noblest and most valuable work of his life, has left us this valuable testimony:

Universal education is henceforth one of the guarantees of liberty and social stability. As every principle of our government is founded on justice and reason, to diffuse education among the people, to 'develop their understandings and enlighten their minds, is to strengthen their constitutional government and secure its stability.

In his farewell address Washington wrote these words of wise counsel:

Promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

In his inaugural message, when first taking the presidential chair, the elder Adams said:

The wisdom and generosity of the legislature in making liberal appropriations in money for the benefit of schools, academies, and colleges, is an equal honor to them and to their constituents, a proof of their veneration for letters and science, and a portent of great and lasting good to North and South America and to the world. Great is truth-great is liberty-great is humanity—and they must and will prevail. Chancellor Kent used this decided language:

The parent who sends his son into the world uneducated defrauds the community of a lawful citizen, and bequeaths to it a nuisance.

I shall conclude this citation of opinions with the stirring words of Edward Everett : I know not to what we can better liken the strong appetence of the mind for improvement than to a hunger and thirst after knowledge and truth, nor how can we better describe the province of education than to

say it does that for the intellect which is done for the body, when it receives the care and nourishment which are necessary for its growth, health, and strength?

From this comparison, I think, I derive new views of the importance of education. It is now a solemn duty, a tender, sacred trust,

What! feed a child's body and let his soul hunger! pamper his limbs and starve his faculties!

Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding places in the sea, and. spread out your wheat fields across the plains in order to supply the wants of that body, which will soon be as cold and senseless as their poorest clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, Iwith all its glorious capacities for improvement, languish and pine! What! build factories, turn in rivers upon the waterwheels, unchain the imprisoned spirits of steam, to weave a garment for the body, and let the soul remain unadorned and naked!

What! send out your vessels to the farthest ocean, and make battle with the monsters of the deep, in order to obtain the means of lighting up your dwellings and workshops, and prolonging the hours of labor for the meat that perisheth, and permit that vital spark, which God has kindled, which he has intrusted to our care to be fanned into a bright and heavenly flame; permit it, I say, to languish and go out!

It is remarkable that so many good things have been said, and so few things done, by our national statesmen in favor of education. If we inquire what has been done by the governments of other countries to support and advance public education, we are compelled to confess with shame that every government in Christendom has given a more intelligent and effective support to schools than has our own.

The free cities of Germany organized the earliest school systems after the separation of church and state. The present schools of Hamburg have existed more than one thousand years. The earliest school codes were framed in the duchy of Würtemberg in 1565, and in the electorate of Saxony in 1580. Under these codes were established systems of schools, more perfect, it is claimed, than the school system of any state of the American union. Their systems embraced the gymnasium and the university, and were designed, as their laws expressed it, "to carry youth from the elements to the degree of culture demanded for offices in church and state."

The educational institutions of Prussia are too well known to need a comment. It is a sufficient index of their aim and high character that a late Prussian school officer said of his official duties:

I promised God that I would look upon every Prussian peasant child as a being who could complain of me before God if I did not provide for him the best education as a man and a Christian which it was possible for me to provide.

France did not think herself dishonored by learning from a nation which she had ately conquered; for when, in 1831, she began to provide more fully for the education of her people, she sent the philosopher Cousin to Holland and Prussia, to study and report upon the schools of those states. Guizot was made minister of public instruction, and held the office from 1832 to 1837. In 1833 the report of Cousin was published, and the educational system of France was established on the Prussian model.

No portion of his brilliant career reflects more honor upon Guizot than his five years' work for the schools of France. The fruits of his labors were not lost in the revolutions that followed. The present emperor is giving his best efforts to the perfection and maintenance of schools, and is endeavoring to make the profession of the teacher more honorable and desirable than it has been hitherto.

Through the courtesy of the secretary of state, I have obtained the last annual report of the minister of public instruction in France, which exhibits the present state of education in that empire.

At the last enumeration there were in France, in the colleges and lyceums, 65,832 pupils; in the secondary schools, 200,000; and in the primary or common schools, 4,720,234.

Besides the large amount raised by local taxation, the imperial government appropriated, during the year 1865, 2,349,051 francs for the support of primary schools.

Teaching is one of the regular professions in France, and the government offers prizes, and bestows honors upon the successful instructor of children. During the year 1865, 1,154 prizes were distributed to teachers in primary schools.

An order of honor, and a medal worth 250 francs, is awarded to the best teacher in each commune.

After a long and faithful service in his profession, the teacher is retired on half pay, and, if broken down in health, is pensioned for life. In 1865 there were 4,245 teachers on the pension list of France. The minister says in his report: "The statesmen of France have determined to show that the country knows how to honor those who serve her even in obscurity."

Since 1862, 10,243 libraries for the use of common schools have been established, and they now contain 1,117,352 volumes, more than a third of which have been furnished by the imperial government. Half a million text-books are furnished for the use of children who are too poor to buy them. It is the policy of France to afford the means of education to every child in the empire.

When we compare the conduct of other governments with our own, we cannot accuse ourselves so much of illiberality as of reckless folly in the application of our liberality to the support of schools. No government has expended so much to so little purpose. To fourteen states alone we have given, for the support of schools, 83,000 square miles of land; or an amount of territory nearly equal to two such states as Ohio. But how has this bountiful appropriation been applied? This chapter in our history has never been written. No member of this House or the Senate, no executive officer of the government, now knows, and no man ever did know, what disposition has been made of this immense bounty. This bill requires the Commissioner of Education to report to Con gress what lands have been given to schools, and how the proceeds have been applied. If we are not willing to follow the example of our fathers in giving, let us, at least, perpetuate the record of their liberality, and preserve its beneficent results.

Mr. Speaker: I have thus hurriedly and imperfectly exhibited the magnitude of the interests involved in the education of American youth; the peculiar condition of affairs which demands at this time an increase of our educational forces; the failure of a majority of the states to establish school systems; the long struggles through which others have passed in achieving success; and the humiliating contrast between the action of our government and those of other nations in reference to education; but I cannot close without referring to the bearing of this measure upon the peculiar work of this Congress.

When the history of the Thirty-ninth Congress is written, it will be recorded that two great purposes inspired it, and made their impress upon all its efforts, viz.: to build up free states on the ruins of slavery, and to extend to every inhabitant of the United States the rights and privileges of citizenship.

Before the divine Architect builded order out of chaos, he said: “Let there be light." Shall we commit the fatal mistake of building up free states without expelling the darkness in which slavery shrouded them? Shall we enlarge the boundaries of citizenship and make no provision to increase the intelligence of the citizen?

I share most fully in the aspirations of this Congress, and give my most cordial support to its policy; but I believe its work will prove a disastrous failure unless it makes the schoolmaster its ally, and aids him in preparing the children of the United States to perfect the work now begun.

The stork is a sacred bird in Holland, and is protected by public law, because it destroys those insects which would undermine the dikes and let the sea again overwhelm the rich fields of the Netherlands. Shall this government do nothing to foster and strengthen those educational agencies which alone can shield the coming generation from ignorance and vice, and make it the impregnable bulwark of liberty and law?

I know that this measure presents few attractions to those whose chief work is to watch the political movements which relate only to nominating conventions and elections. The mere politician will see in it nothing valuable, for the millions of children to be benefited by it can give him no votes. But I appeal to those who care more for the

safety and glory of this nation than for any mere temporary advantage, to aid in giving to education the public recognition and active support of the federal government.

The final action of the House on the bill was not reached till June 19, when, the question being taken by yeas and nays, it was passed by a vote of 80 yeas to 44 nays, with the following title and provisions:

AN ACT TO ESTABLISH A DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be established, at the city of Washington, a Department of Education for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several states and territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of schools and school systems, and methods of teaching, as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That there shall be appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, a Commissioner of Education, who shall be intrusted with the management of the department herein established, and who shall receive a salary of four thousand dollars per annum, and who shall have authority to appoint one chief clerk of his department, who shall receive a salary of two thousand dollars per annum, one clerk who shall receive a salary of eighteen hundred dollars per annum, and one clerk who shall receive a salary of sixteen hundred dollars per annum, which said clerks shall be subject to the appointing and removing power of the Commissioner of Education.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the Commissioner of Education to present annually to Congress a report embodying the results of his investigations and labors, together with a statement of such facts and recommendations as will, in his judgment, subserve the purpose for which this department is established. In the first report made by the Commissioner of Education under this act there shall be presented a statement of the several grants of land made by Congress to promote education, and the manner in which these several trusts have been managed, the amount of funds arising therefrom, and the annual proceeds of the same, as far as the same can be determined.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That the commissioner of public buildings is hereby authorized and directed to furnish proper offices for the use of the department herein established.

The bill, in the Senate, was referred to the standing committee on the judiciary, who recommended its passage without amendment; and, after a debate on February 26, 1867, on a motion to substitute Bureau for Department, was passed without division on March 1, and signed by the president March 2. On March 11 Henry Barnard was nominated by President Johnson, on March 16 was confirmed by the unanimous vote of the Senate, and on March 17 entered on the duties of Commissioner of Education.

APPENDIX H

(Dr. Barnard's plan of a central agency for the United States to advance education (Vol. XXI.)) The following plan for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge," of education, and especially of popular education, and plans for its improvement through the Smithsonian Institution, or the American Association for the Advancement of Education, was submitted to the association by Hon. Henry Barnard :

The institution (or association) to appoint a secretary or agent, with a salary, and to furnish a room for an officer and depository of educational documents and apparatus, and beyond this not to be liable for any expense.

Again by the secretary or agent:

1. To devote himself exclusively to the "increase and diffusion of knowledge" on the subject of education, and especially of the condition and means of improving popular education, and particularly

2. To answer all personal or written inquiries on the subject, and collect and make available for use information as to all advances made in the theory and practice of education in any one state or country.

3. To attend, so far as may be consistent with other requisitions on his time, and without charge to the funds of the institution (or association), educational conventions of a national and state character, for the purpose of collecting and disseminating information.

4. To edit a publication to be entitled the American Journal and Library of Education, on the plan set forth in the accompanying paper (A).

5. To collect:

(a) Plans and models of schoolhouses and furniture.

(b) Specimens of maps and other material aids of education.

(c) Educational reports and documents from other states and countries.

6. To institute a system of educational exchange between literary institutions in this and other countries.

7. To make arrangements, and effect, if practicable, at least one meeting or conference of the friends of educational improvement in Washington (or elsewhere) every year.

8. To submit annually a report in which shall be given a summary of the progress of education n each state, and, as far as practicable, in every country.