sity. The aim of this legislation, as I understand it, is to secure the adoption of such divorce laws in each State as would insure the interstate recognition of its decrees. And, as the rules regulating this interstate recognition are substantially the same as the rules of international law applied by our courts, it seems certain that conflicts of jurisdiction as to divorce would thus become exceedingly rare, and that the intolerable evil of people being considered as married on one side of the line and unmarried on the other would tend to disappear.

At first sight it might seem as if the process of unification could take place more easily in Canada than in the United States, since with us marriage and divorce are subjects for Dominion legislation, whereas in your case uniformity can be attained only by the concurrent action of all the different State legislatures. But the practical difficulties appear to be as serious with us as with you. Efforts were made in 1870, 1875, 1879, and 1888 to introduce legislation on the subject of divorce, but without success. Parliamentary leaders have generally opposed the creation of a divorce court on the alleged ground that the number of applications would greatly increase, and they have expressed a preference for the legislative system which offers considerable impediments to the granting of divorces. Then a large proportion of the Canadian legislators, being Roman Catholics, are opposed on religious grounds to dissolving the marriage tie for any cause whatsoever. As it is, the members professing the Roman Catholic religion habitually abstain from voting on divorce bills, only a few adverse votes being recorded, so that it may appear that the measure was passed on a division. But these legislators would undoubtedly make a serious opposition to any general legislation upon the subject of divorce, as this would open the divorce courts to their coreligionists. The only private divorce bill which was ever introduced to dissolve the marriage of two Roman Catholics met with the most strenuous opposition in both houses, and was ultimately passed by a very narrow majority.

Assuming, however, that a reasonable degree of internal uniformity may be obtained in both countries by legislative action, it is possible to reduce still further the conflicts which may even then arise between our respective systems of law. This could be effected by means of international treaties regulating questions of conflict. France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Belgium, all furnish us with examples of conventions with neighboring States

for the settlement of conflicts of law or jurisdiction; and it is surprising that, in spite of the incessant intercourse between the United States and Canada, no attempt should have been made to imitate this good example. Let me close by expressing the hope that this subject may occupy the attention of our respective commissioners in some future international conferences following upon that which has so auspiciously begun in Quebec for the furtherance of lasting peace and amity between the two nations.

4. OBLIGATIONS OF THE STATE TO PUBLIC

EDUCATION.

BY HON. CHARLES BULKLEY HUBBELL, A.M., OF NEW YORK CITY.

[Read Thursday morning, September 1.]

I am not certain but that what I have to say on this occasion might have been presented more appropriately, and perhaps more acceptably, if it had been included among the papers read in the educational division of this Association; but the thought that I might enlist the sympathy of my brethren of the law in the cause for which I plead is my excuse for invading the field of jurisprudence at this time.

The concern of the State hitherto in connection with the education of its youth has proceeded from and related to varying interests. First, it was the establishment of ecclesiastical supremacy and the benefits which were believed to accompany it. This primary object was superseded by political and dynastic influences, having for their object the perpetuation of parties or persons in power. France, Sweden, and some other foreign countries, with distinguishing arts and manufactures, have made industrial development their chief concern in connection with public education.

From the earliest days, when the little red school-houses dotted the hills of New England, and extended like a cordon of fortresses to the boundaries of the Carolinas, where they were maintained for the purpose of preventing any permanent occupation by the hordes of ignorance, the principal object of public education in free America has been to make men and good Americans of its native and foreign born youth, and fit them to discharge the duties and to respond to the obligations of intelligent citizenship. In other words, the chief concern of the State with us in public education is, and has been heretofore, social in its character. In no other way can a republic be perpetuated, and its free institutions successfully maintained. In order to realize all that is required from the benefits of public education, it is most essential that the State should realize its obligation to the youth who will one day

be its upholders. This it has done, and is doing most generously and nobly in this country; and it is a matter of pride to those who hail from the Empire State to recall that nowhere has that policy been more generous and progressive than in our own great Commonwealth.

De Witt Clinton said, in his inaugural address, "In the dissemination of intelligence and in the extension of the benefits of education there can be no such thing as prodigality in the expenditure of the public treasure." Millions of dollars are cheerfully expended by the people every year in providing free education for all those who are capable of receiving its benefits.

During the first years that followed the settlement of this country, the importance of the development of character in the children of the community through the influence and methods of the schools was ever present in the minds of our Puritan Fathers, as the first requisite of the best education. The schoolmaster was frequently the village minister, ripe in scholarship, athletic and vigorous in body, by reason of the outdoor life made necessary by the conditions under which he lived. He realized that a sound mind in a sound body, and both under the undisputed sway of a stalwart character, was the condition that must prevail if the best results of education were to be achieved.

The war of the Revolution closed some of the colleges and many of the schools. "The schoolmaster was abroad" with a musket, and the young idea was compelled to shoot in the air for a considerable period. Soon after that glorious struggle the condition of unrest incident to success in revolution took possession of the people. This was followed later by the era of development of our vast areas, when those great waves of immigration washed in upon us from the shores of Europe. Thoughtful men realized that the only way to absorb and Americanize such vast, and in some cases doubtful, contributions to our population was by means of common-school education, which should be free to all. We must make these people intelligent, they said; for freedom with ignorance soon degenerates into license, and license has no regards for the rights of others. Under such conditions, anarchy develops, and republics disappear. How well our free schools have done their work, you all know. That it has been far from a perfect work, you likewise know; but the marvel is that it has been done so well.

In some of our cities there are public schools in which, at the

opening of the year, 90 per cent. of all in attendance are the children of foreign-born parents, with no knowledge of our institutions or the conditions that are necessary for their maintenance. In some instances, 70 per cent. of the children coming into our schools for the first time, do not even speak the English language, although it has been observed that these children, when carefully taught, speak better English than many of the children brought up in English-speaking families, where little or no care is given to forms of expression. Yet so sensitive is this period of youth to the lessons that are taught, and so responsive are these youth to the influences that are brought to bear, that it requires little more than a year to teach every ten-year-old boy and girl to reverence the flag that is unfurled every morning in their presence, when they pledge allegiance to the country so recently adopted as their own. When that pledg of allegiance is understood, the first lesson in good citizenship has been learned, and when the duties of citizenship are understood, with the accompanying rights and obligations, the great object of education with us has been achieved. The mistake often made with us is that the first object of education is made purely commercial, and not social in its development. Oftentimes the parent, in his haste to see his child equipped so that he can make a living, loses sight of the danger that lurks in a system of education not concerned with the development of the body and the character.

Persons high in authority even insist that the A, B, C's, are all that the State should concern itself with in its relation to the schools, that the kindergarten serves no better purpose than to make children expert in tiddledy-winks, assert that physical culture only serves the ends of pugilism, and that the daily inspection of children with reference to contagious diseases in our schools is an invasion of the line of parental duties. As a matter of fact, it has been found that in one large Western city, where ten years ago there were over one thousand arrests of youthful delinquents under the age of eleven years in a single year, six years after the introduction of the kindergarten system in the public schools of that city, there were only three such arrests in a similar period, and one of these juvenile victims of the law was found to be innocent of the charge that brought him into court. It has been demonstrated that physical culture in our schools is widening the chests, increasing the stature, and making healthier and sounder men and women of thousands of our American youth.