It has also been quite as unanimously decreed by the sovereign authority in the respective States that this education shall be provided for every child within its jurisdiction, at the expense, solely or chiefly, of the State itself or its several municipalities, by means of public funds specifically or generally appropriated to this object; or, in conjunction with such funds, by local or general taxation upon the real and personal estate of every citizen, in the same manner as all other general or local taxes are imposed. Every citizen, therefore, is called upon to contribute his proportional share of the expense incurred in educating all the children of the community in which he resides, and in turn is entitled to share in its benefits, in the education of his own or such as may be placed in his guardianship and charge. This education includes full instruction in all the elementary branches of learning, and in such advanced studies as are ordinarily pursued in common schools, and in academical and even collegiate institutions, where included within the scope of different systems of public instruction. It does not, however, embrace professional PERHAPS upon no other subject has the civilization, and well-being of the compublic mind in every section of the Uni-munity. ted States attained to greater unanimity, within the past few years, than that of the necessity and desirability of UNIVERSAL and FREE EDUCATION. The New England States were the first to recognize and carry into practical effect this great principle. Their example was followed by the Middle and Western States; and since the rebellion, all, or nearly all, the Southern States have ingrafted it upon their Constitutions and fundamental laws. It rests upon the broad foundation of a representative Democracy. Every citizen, high or low, rich or poor, being a constituent element of the Government, upon his education, character and general intelligence, capacity and integrity, depends the aggregate of public wisdom and public opinion, which, in its turn, reacts upon the practical administration of the Government. Ignorance is the fertile source of crime, poverty, and degradation; intelligence, of wealth, order, productiveness, and happiness. Ignorance necessitates the police, the penitentiary, the criminal court, the prison, and the gallows; education and intelligence not only insure order, quiet, and peace, but add immeasurably to the material wealth, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by CHARLES SCRIBNER & Co., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. VOL. XI.-1 or artistic culture in any of its branchesthe law, medicine, theology, merchandise, agriculture, military or naval science, painting, sculpture, or any other technical art or science. It provides only general instruction in all those branches of learning which may enable their recipients to follow out the principles thus inculcated, and the methods thus furnished, in any profession or calling, art or science, to which they may elect to devote themselves in after-life. It lays the broad foundations for all future culture, furnishes the elementary principles at the basis of all science and art, and so disciplines and trains the various mental faculties as to afford every requisite facility for mastering all the details and principles of every profession and calling. Instead of dealing with all the intricacies of international, common, statute, and municipal law, it inculcates the broad principles at the foundation of all law and all government, with a general knowledge of the Constitutions and fundamental laws of the nation and State in which the pupil resides. Instead of medical therapeutics and the details of medical and surgical science, it teaches physiology, chemistry, and their kindred branches; instead of military and naval science, the higher mathematics; instead of the various manufacturing branches, a general knowledge of technology and natural philosophy; and instead of the mysteries of exchange and merchandise, political economy and a thorough knowledge of arithmetic. Instead of a complete course of theology, including the distinctive religious faith, forms, and practice of a hundred different and conflicting sects, it inculcates that morality and those teachings, of both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, recognized in common by all religious creeds, with few and inconsiderable exceptions. Within these limitations and restrictions the various systems of public instruction, organized and established through out the Union, have accomplished, and are accomplishing, an immense amount of good. Recently, however, in different sections, strong efforts have been made, and are now in progress, for the introduction of a new and alien element. Each separate religious denomination, it is contended, shall be authorized to establish its own schools, in which, in addition to the ordinary common school studies, shall be taught the special doctrines and dogmas of its own special faith, and to receive its proportionate share of school money according to the number of children so educated. In the lower branch of the Missouri Legislature such an act has already been passed, the. inevitable effect of which, if adopted by the Senate, it seems to be conceded, would be the destruction of the common school system. In New York City a similar movement has been initiated, and is strongly urged by the Roman Catholics, the success of which would be equally fatal to the magnificent public school system of our me tropolis. Its adoption would, of course, lead to the general establishment of sectarian schools of every denomination, and the consequent abandoument of those now in existence. It may be worth while to trace the origin and progress of this latter movement, with the view of exposing its utter fallacy, and its inevitable consequences in the deterioration of scholarship and the demoralization of those to whom its interests are committed. On the organization of the common school system of the State, in 1813, that portion of the school fund applicable to the city of New York was directed to be apportioned and distributed to the trustees of the Public School Society, the Orphan Asylum Society, the African Free School, "and of such incorporated religi ous societies as supported or should establish charity schools, who might apply for the same, in proportion to the number of its pupils on register." Under these provisions, most of the religious societies established parochial schools, and received their proportionate share of the public money. They were also authorized to apply any surplus in their possession, after paying teachers, to the erection of new buildings. After the expiration of ten years, it was discovered that several of the church schools thus organized and endowed had not only induced great numbers of the pupils of the public schools to leave their own schools and join theirs, but had employed incompetent and unqualified teachers, at nominal salaries, and from the avails of the public funds erected churches, the basement stories of which only dark, gloomy, and ill-ventilatedhad been used for school purposes. On a representation of these facts, the Legislature, on the unanimous recommendation of the Common Council, transferred to the latter body the apportionment of that portion of the school moneys due to the city, "deeming that the school fund of the State was purely of a civil character, designed for civil purposes, and that the intrusting it to religious or ecclesiastical bodies was a violation of an elementary principle in the politics of the State and country," and prohibiting its distribution to any institution other than the public schools and orphan asylums. On this basis the question was suffered to rest for upwards of a quarter of a century, until, in 1840, the Roman Catholics, under the lead of the celebrated Archbishop Hughes, applied to the Common Council for a proportionate share of the common school fund, in behalf of the charity schools supported by their organization, and in which their peculiar religious tenets were taught. After a full hearing on both sides of the question, in which the highest talent and ability of the city were enlisted, Archbishop Hughes in person conducting the argument in behalf of the application, and Hiram Ketchum leading the opposition, the Common Council unanimously rejected the petition, and declared their intention to adhere to the principles settled by the Legislature of 1824. The theatre of controversy was then transferred to the Legislature. Governor Seward, in his message of 1840, recommended the establishment of schools in which "the children of foreigners found in great numbers in our populous cities and in the vicinity of our public works might be instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves and professing the same faith." In 1841 he reiterated the same sentiments, disavowing, however, any design to recommend the inculcation of any particular religious faith in the public schools. The various petitions and memorials were referred by the Legislature to the Secretary of State and Superintendent of Common Schools, the Hon. John C. Spencer, who reported adversely to the application, but recommended the organization of ward schools, in addition to the public schools, to be conducted, however, upon the same principles, and expressly prohibiting the payment of any portion of the public money to any school in which "the religious doctrines or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect should be taught, inculcated, or practised, or in which any book or books containing composition favorable or prejudicial to the particular doctrines or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect, or which shall teach the doctrines or tenets of any other religious sect." This recommendation was adopted by the Legislature, with the additional proviso that nothing in the act contained should "authorize the exclusion of the HOLY SCRIPTURES, without note or comment, or any selections therefrom." The principle of this act is still the recognized law and policy of the State; nor has it ever been infringed until the appropriation at the last session of the Legislature of a sum equal to $200,000 annually to sectarian schools and private institutions. This appropriation, although nominally not affecting the public school fund, in reality does so, by increasing the annual taxation for the support of the public schools. The exclusion of the Bible, "without note or comment," from the public schools, wherever it has been introduced, can only be effected by the repeal of the express provision of law which has been in force for the past thirty-five years. It is not demanded, either by public opinion or by the conflicting sects for whose benefit the appropriation referred to has been made. What the Catholics require is not the exclusion of the Bible-for in all or nearly all the schools chiefly occupied by Catholic children and teachers, and under the control of Catholic trustees, the Douay edition of the Bible is regularly read without objection—but the permission to teach the peculiar religious tenets of their sect as a part of the regular course of instruction. And so with every other sect participating in this movement. The legitimate consequence would be the general substitution of sectarian schools, under the exclusive charge of sectarian officers, for our present excellent public school system, in which every child is furnished with a sound and thorough practical education for all the ordinary purposes of life, including the essential elements of the Christian religion from the purest source, leaving all theological distinctions and sectarian differences of interpretation to be adjusted in the family or the church, where they properly belong. Which of these two systems is most in accordance with sound reason and the spirit of the institutions under which we live- - universal education, free from every taint of sectarianism, or a cramped development of the mental and moral faculties under a hundred distinct systems of religious faith? How has the latter system worked in England, Scot land, Ireland, and on the Continent? How has it worked here, whenever it has been temporarily adopted? On the other hand, what are the records of the public school system? Nearly one million of children annually preparing themselves, in our own State alone, for future usefulness, honor, and happiness;-one hundred thousand in daily attendance in the public schools of the city of New York, including fourteen or fifteen of the largest schools in which more than four-fifths of the pupils and all the teachers and trustees are Roman Catholics or Jews. To us it would seem either madness or folly to make the change. We trust, therefore, that the Legislature, in accordance with the petitions loading down its tables, will see the importance of at once repealing every provision for the encouragement of sectarian schools of every description, confining its bestowments of public money exclusively to institutions for the care of orphans, the deaf, dumb, blind, insane, and idiotic, and leaving the education of every other class of children to those institutions, profusely scattered over every portion of our territory, organized and endowed for this special purpose. STRANGE WANDERERS. IV. INSECTS. "Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings."-WM. CULLEN BRYANT. THE unceasing life of our Mother Earth produces and requires motion, not only in the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the larger animals of field and forest, but even in the smallest created beings. Currents of air carry myriads of vegetable seeds, and with them countless eggs of insects and infusoria, all over the world. To settle this formerly disputed fact, a German naturalist, Unger, placed several plates of glass, carefully cleaned, between the almost air-tight double sashes with which he protected his study against Six the rigors of Northern winters. months later he took them out, and examined the dust that had fallen on them, through imperceptible cracks and crevices, with the microscope. The result was, that he discovered in this dust the pollen of eight distinct plants, the spores of eleven varieties of fungus, the eggs of four higher infusoria, and living individuals of at least one kind! Minute and almost invisible as insects are, they never seem to be too small not to wander over the earth after the manner |