diminished; and, as for the modesty of our young men, and even of our young women, they do not even blush that they have lost it. This is the condition in which we are after more than half a century of experience of our public-school system, the only justification for whose existence is that it was asserted and believed to be a panacea for the cure of social and political disease. Nor is the case of that system at all bettered by the quite untenable assumption that all this would have been without its influence; for its only justification, the very reason of its being, is the other assumption, that by it all this would have been prevented.

Moreover, there is evidence on record, evidence furnished quite independently of any investigation of this subject, which proves the case against the public-school system as clearly and as undeniably as the truth of Newton's theory of gravitation is proved by the calculations which enable astronomers to declare the motions and to weigh the substance of the planets. For the census returns show that crime, immorality, and insanity are greater in proportion to population in those communities which have been long under the influence of the public-school system than they are in those which have been without it. The system, be it remembered, is of New England origin, and the New England States have been longest under its influence. The States south of the Potomac are those which were longest without it; and, indeed, in them it has hardly yet obtained favor or foothold. Let us compare the statistics of population, of literacy and illiteracy, and of crime in these two classes of States, carefully eliminating from our calculation the influence of foreign immigration upon the criminal record of the Northern States, which the particularity of the census returns enables us to do. The comparison is between the native white populations of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island on the one hand, and the same population of Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia on the other. These are all original States of the Union, Maine excepted; but Maine was always a part of New England. They are commonwealths founded at about the same time, by people of the same race and the same religion. In 1860 secession and consequent civil war caused in the Southern States an upturning of all the elements of society, which makes it proper that the examination of their social condition should be limited by the census of that year.

The census of 1860 shows that the New England States had a

native white population 2,665,945 in number, and of these there were but 8,543 adults who could not read and write. The six Southern States mentioned above had 3,181,969 native white inhabitants, among whom there were 262,802 adults who could not read and write. In the New England States, therefore, the native whites who could not read and write were in the proportion of one to 312, while in the six Southern States the proportion of wholly illiterate whites was one to 12. Now, if ignorance is the mother of vice, of crime, of wretchedness, and of all that goes to make bad citizens, the excess of the criminal classes in the Southern States should have been in something like the proportion of 312 to 12. But it was not so. On the contrary, the proportional excess of crime, of pauperism, of suicide, and of insanity (and among the native white inhabitants, be it remembered) was very much greater in the New England States; for in 1860 they had in their prisons 2,459 criminals, while the six Southern States had but 477. New England society, formed under the public-school system, produced one native white criminal to every 1,084 inhabitants; while the Southern States, which had been almost entirely without that system, produced only one to every 6,670—a disproportion of more than six to one!* The New England States had one publicly supported pauper to every 178 inhabitants, while the six Southern, which were without public schools, had but one to every 345. Of suicides, there were in the New England States one to every 13,285 of the entire population; but the others had only one to every 56,584. The census of 1860 has no record of insanity; but that of 1870 shows in New England one insane person of those born and living in the several States to every 800 native-born inhabitants; but in the six Southern States in question only one to every 1,682 native inhabitants. Strange to say, foremost in this sad record stand Massachusetts and Connecticut, which have had common schools since 1647 and 1650 respectively, as was remarked in the beginning of this article; the former pro

The well-known fact that homicide is more common in the Southern States than in the Northern is of no importance in the consideration of these statistics. It merely shows that to the mass of crime in the one case homicide bears a large proportion, and to the mass of crime in the other a very small one. And it is to be remarked that of the homicides in the Southern States a very large proportion, springing as they do from an antiquated perversion of the sense of honor, semi-savage as they often are, are generally less base and vicious in motive than the comparatively few murders in the Northern.

ducing one native white criminal to every 649 native white inhabitants; the latter, one to every 845.*

The significance of these facts and figures can not be mistaken or explained away. Does it therefore follow that knowledge is incompatible with virtue, thrift, good citizenship, and happiness, and that education is per se an evil? Not at all. But it does follow that ignorance is not the mother of vice; that ignorance has no necessary connection with vice. It does follow that the publicschool system is not the reformatory agent which it has honestly been supposed to be; that its influence is not to make men good and thrifty and happy; that it is not adapted to produce the best government of the people.

In 1870 the cost of the system which coexisted with the condition of society indicated by these figures, and which has been previously described in this article, was more than sixty-four million dollars!

The remedy? A remedy must be found. It can not be set forth in detail at the end of an article like this, which has already exceeded the limits assigned to it. But it may be briefly indicated as a discontinuation of any other education at the public cost than that which is strictly elementary-reading, spelling, writing, and the common rules of practical arithmetic; and in the remission of all education higher than this to parents, the natural guardians and earthly providence of their children. And those children only should be thus educated at public cost whose parents are too poor to give them even an elementary education themselves. Supplementary to this simple system of elementary education, there might be some jealously guarded provision for the higher education of pupils who have exceptional ability and show special aptitude and taste for science or literature.

Moreover, if Government is to assume a parental and formative function, and to attempt the making of good citizens, it may with much more reason and propriety establish public farms and public workshops, and train in them its future citizens to get their own

* My attention was directed to these facts by a pamphlet on the system of antiparental education, by the Hon. Zachary Montgomery, of California, which I received on the 23d of October last, after the publication of my articles on the public schools, in the "New York Times." Mr. Montgomery's trenchant pamphlet contains very elaborate tables made up from the United States census reports. I have verified them by those reports, and find them essentially accurate and trustworthy.

living honestly and respectably, than it may establish and com attendance upon schools on a system the result of which, accordi to the experience of half a century, is deterioration in purity morals, in decency of life, in thrift, and in all that goes to ma good citizens, accompanied by a steadily increasing failure in t acquirement of the very elements of useful knowledge.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

THE VALIDITY OF THE EMANCIPATION EDICT.

As a contribution to American literature, the paper of President James C. Welling, in the February number of the "Review," is deeply interesting. As a chapter in American history at a period the most perilous in our existence as a republic, it is an addition not without instruction. As an argument, produced nearly twenty years after the promulgation by President Lincoln of that greatest of all state papers-the Emancipation Proclamation-and after the American people have begun to wonder how human slavery ever came and continued to exist in a civilized country-as an argument impeaching the validity of that proclamation, this paper by President Welling is, in the light of the present, exceedingly ingenious and remarkable. With great apparent attention to detail, evidenced by quotations from sources varied and numerous, the writer invites his reader along after the manner of a plausible advocate who is determined to gain his case before the testimony has been heard. And by this there is no intention to charge misquotation or anything of the sort, for such does not appear. But it is charged that the historic sketch does not give a fair estimate of the history of the Emancipation Proclamation, or of the relation thereto of its sublime author.

In the first place, it is true that President Lincoln took the oath of office with the profoundest feelings of awe respecting the sacredness of the Constitution which he was sworn to defend and support. It is probable that no man ever lived who had a keener sense of his obligations to his Creator and his fellow-men, and who discharged those obligations more conscientiously, than did Abraham Lincoln. Necessarily, then, is it true that he did not rush headlong into any measure or action. And, when once convinced that a path opened before him designed for his footsteps as the President of his country, he walked therein with unfaltering courage and unwavering devotion, pressing toward the mark ever kept in view-"to save