tion of a higher sort, the great mass of the people are not to be trusted. And those who advocate a system of free education in High Schools put the matter where we have put the rights of property and liberty, where we put the institutions of law and religion,-upon the public judgment. And we will stand there. And if the public will not maintain institutions of learning, then, I say, let institutions of learning go down. [Applause.] If I belong to a State which cannot be moved from its extremities to its centre, and from its centre to its extremities, for the maintenance of a system of public instruction, then, in that respect, I disown that State; and if there be one State in this Union whose people cannot be aroused to maintain a system of public instruction, then they are false to the great leading idea of American principles, and of civil, political, and religious liberty. [Renewed applause.]

Now we might specially enumerate the advantages of a system of public education, and the evils, I say evils,— of endowed academies, whether free or charging payment for tuition. Endowed academies are not, in all respects, under all circumstances and everywhere, to be condemned. If I were to discuss this subject at length, it would be well enough for me to state the view which I have as to the proper position of endowed academies. They have a place in the educational wants of this age. But I regard private schools which do the work usually done in public schools as temporary, their necessity as ephemeral, and think that under a proper public sentiment they will soon pass away. They cannot stand, such has been the ex

perience in Massachusetts, they cannot stand by the side of a good system of public education. Yet where the population is sparse, where there is not property sufficient to enable the people to establish a High School, then an endowed school may properly come in to make up the

deficiency, to supply the means of education to which the public wealth, at the present moment, is unequal. Endowed institutions very properly, also, take upon them the business of giving a professional education to the people. At this moment we cannot look to the public to give that education which is purely professional. But what we do look to the public for is this: to furnish the means of education to the children of the whole people, without any reference to social, pecuniary, political, or religious distinctions, so that every individual may have that primary preliminary education which shall fit him for the ordinary business of life.

It is said that the means of education are better in an endowed academy or in an endowed free school than they can be in a public school. What is meant by means of education? I understand that first and chiefly, as extraneous means of education, we must look to a correct public sentiment, which shall animate and influence the teacher, which shall give direction to the school, which shall furnish the necessary public funds. Now I say that an endowed free academy can have none of these things permanently. Take, for example, the free school established at Norwich by the liberality of thirty or forty individuals contributing $90,000. What security is there that fifty years hence, when the educational wants of the people shall be changed, when the population of Norwich shall be double or treble what it is now, when science shall make greater demands, when these forty contributors shall have passed away, this institution will answer the wants of that generation? According to what we know of the history of this country, it will be entirely inadequate; and though none of us may live to see the prediction fulfilled or falsified, I do not hesitate to say that it will ultimately prove a failure, because it is founded on a mistake.

Then look and see what would have been the state of things, if there had been public spirit invoked to establish a public High School, and if the means for its support had been raised by taxation of all the people, so that the system of education would have expanded according to the growth of the city, and year by year would have accommodated itself to the public wants and public zeal in the cause. But now, though these means look ample, they will by and by be found too limited. The school at Norwich is encumbered with regulations; and so every endowed institution is likely to be, because the right of a man to appropriate his property to a particular object carries with it, in the principles of common law, and in the administration of the law, in all free governments, the right to declare, to a certain extent, how that property shall be applied. Rules have been established, very proper and judicious rules for to-day. But who knows that a hundred years hence they will be proper or acceptable at all? They have also established a Board of Trustees, ultimately to be reduced to twenty-five. These trustees have power to perpetuate themselves. Who does not see that you have severed this institution from the public sentiment of the city of Norwich, and that ultimately that city will seek for itself what it needs, and that, a hundred years hence, it will not consent to live according to the civilization of that time, under the regulations which forty men have now established, however wise those regulations may at the present moment be?

One hundred and fifty years ago, Thomas Hollis, of London, made a bequest to the university at Cambridge, with a proviso that on every Thursday, a Professor should sit in his chair to answer questions in polemic theology. All well enough then; but the public sentiment of to-day will not carry it out.

So it may be with the school at Norwich a hundred years hence. That man or that State which sacrifices the living public judgment to the opinion of a dead man, or a dead generation, makes a great mistake. We should never substitute beyond the power of revisal, the opinion of a past generation for the opinion of a living generation. I trust to the living men of to-day as to what is necessary to meet our existing wants, rather than to the wisest men who lived in Greece or Rome. And if I would not trust the wise men of Greece and Rome, I do not know why the people, a hundred years hence, should trust the wise men of our own time.

And then look further, and see how, under a system of public instruction, you can build up, from year to year, in the growth of the child, a system according to his want. A system of private instruction can do no such thing. What do we do where we have a correct system? A child goes into a Primary School. He is not to go out when he reaches a certain age: he might as well go out when he reaches a certain height; there would be as much merit in one case as in the other. But he is advanced when he has made certain attainments. Who does not see that the child is incited and encouraged and stimulated by every sentiment to which you should appeal? And then, when he has gone up to the Grammar School, we say to him, you are to go into the High School when you have made certain attainments. And who is to judge of those attainments? A committee appointed by the people, over whom the people have some ultimate control. And in that control, they have a security for two things: first, that they shall not be suspected of partiality; and second, that they shall not be actually guilty of partiality. And in the same manner, there is security for the proper connec. tion between the High School and the schools below. But

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in the school at Norwich, of which I speak because it is now prominent,-you have a board of twenty-five men, irresponsible to the people. They select a committee of nine that committee determines what candidates shall be transferred from the Grammar Schools to the High School. May there not be suspicion of partiality? If a boy or girl is rejected, you look for some social, political or religious influence which has produced the difference, and the parent and child complain. Here is a great evil; for the real and apparent justice of the examination and decision by which pupils are transferred from one school to another, is vital to the success of the system.

At this point Mr. B. gave way and took his seat; but the Institute demanded that he should go on so peremptorily, that Mr. B. said that though he thought he had better not, yet as he was an advocate for the public judgment, he would yield to it here. He therefore proceeded to say: There is another advantage in the system of public High Schools, which I imagine the people do not always at first appreciate. It is, that the private school, with the same teachers, the same apparatus, and the same means, cannot give the education which may be, and usually is, furnished in the public schools. This may seem a statement which requires some considerable support. We must look at facts as they are. Some people are poor,—I am sorry for them; some people are rich, and I congratulate them upon their good fortune. But it is not so much of a benefit, after all, as many think. It is worth something in this world, no doubt, to be rich; but what is the result of that condition upon the family first, the school afterwards, and society finally? It is, that some learn the lesson of life a little earlier than others; and that lesson is the lesson of self-reliance, which is worth more than, - I will not say, a knowledge of the English language, but worth