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 construed 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 recognition of this principle is universal. A guardian or trustee may possess lands, 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 preëxistent property begins with the first breath he draws. The new-born infant must have sustenance, and shelter, and care. If the natural parents are removed, or parental ability fails,-in a word, if parents either cannot or will not supply the infant's wants,then society at large, the government,-having assumed to itself 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 which 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 performance of a duty,-but the infliction of a fearful curse. A child has interests far higher than those of mere physical existence. Better that the wants of the natural life should be disregarded 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 preserve 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 newborn 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 property and life, and to invade and pollute the sanctuaries of society. 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 respective obligations attach, corresponds with the periods when the nurture, whether physical or mental, is needed. As the 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 government, 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 further 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, society 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 misrule, in the heart-destroying corruptions of licentiousness and debauchery, and in political profligacy and legalized perfidy,— in all the blended and mutually aggravated crimes of civilization and of barbarism, will be sure to feel the terrible retributions 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.

In obedience to the laws of God and to the laws of all civilized 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 practice 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 extreme penalty of the law, as though he had struck down manhood 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 protect them, and to expand their subsequent existence into usefulness and happiness? As individuals, or as an organized community, we have no natural right; we can derive no authority 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 ignorance, 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 extinguished as soon as it is born, or the means should be provided to save that life from being a curse to its possessor; and, therefore, every state is morally bound to enact a code of laws legalizing and enforcing infanticide, or a code of laws establishing Free Schools!

The three following propositions, then, describe the broad and ever-during foundation on which the Common School system of Massachusetts reposes :

The successive generations of men, taken collectively, constitute one great commonwealth.

The property of this commonwealth is pledged for the education 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.

The successive holders of this property are trustees, bound to the faithful execution of their trust, by the most sacred obligations; and embezzlement and pillage from children and descendants have not less of criminality, and have more of meanness, than the same offences when perpetrated against contemporaries.

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 "the encouragement 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 America," 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 generally 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 orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and mag

istrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the University of Cambridge, Public Schools, and Grammar Schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people." See also Rev. St., ch. 23, § 7.

I now proceed to give an account of existing legal enactments for the organization and administration of the Massachusetts School System. In giving this account, I may have occasion to point out some imperfections; but, on the whole, it is truly surprising that our ancestors, without experience and without precedent, should have devised a system so perfect in its organic principles, so well suited to their own purposes, and, at the same time, so expansive as to be capable of easy adaptation to an advancing state of society.

For more convenient reference, specific provisions and explanations will be numbered as distinct sections.

TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF MASSACHUSETTS, FOR SCHOOL

PURPOSES.

1. Authorities differ in regard to the area of Massachusetts. The extremes, I believe, are 7250 square miles, and 8200.* This area is divided, territorially, into three hundred and fourteen towns or cities. Each town and city is a body politic and corporate, required by law, among many other municipal duties, to provide one or more schools for the free admission and free education of all its children. The towns and cities vary greatly in population and extent of territory. Boston, in 1845, had a population of 114,366; Hull, according to the

The following Table, exhibiting the areas of the several States and Territories of the United States, in square miles and acres, was prepared in the Land Office at Washington, and published in 1849: