Smart of Indiana were appointed a committee to consider the subject of the National Bureau of Education, its museum, and a national education fund. The executive committee reported the following programme for the remainder of the session: Tuesday evening, at 7.30, a paper by General John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, on "What has been done by the General Government in aid of education," to be followed by a general discussion. Wednesday morning, at 10 o'clock, a paper by Hon. Dr. Loring, of Massachusetts, on "The object of American education," to be followed by a discussion; in the evening, a lecture by Dr. Runkle, of Boston, on "Industrial education with reference to public schools." The Department then adjourned to meet in the evening at 7.30. SECOND SESSION-TUESDAY EVENING. WASHINGTON, D. C., February 4, 1879. The Department was called to order by the President at 7.30 P. M. The executive committee announced that the President of the United States would receive the members of the Department to-morrow immediately after the adjournment of the morning session at 12.30 P. M.; after the reception, the members would visit the Corcoran Art Gallery and then pay their respects to Hon. Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior. At 2 P. M. the teachers of the District of Columbia would meet in the audience room of the church and be addressed by Hon. John W. Dickinson, of Massachusetts, and Hon. E. A. Apgar, of New Jersey. It was further announced that President Hayes would be present at the session to be held to-morrow evening; and that on Thursday morning at 10 o'clock the subject of " Education in the South" would be taken up, and the discussion opened by Hon. Gustavus J. Orr, State school commissioner of Georgia. NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION. The United States Commissioner of Education read a paper on "What has been done by the General Government in aid of education," which is as follows: OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS. Mr. President: Belief in the importance of education was not a mere Fourth of July sentiment with the fathers of the Republic. Washington, in his first annual message, observed: "Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the meas In collecting the facts contained in this paper I have been aided by Capt. Rafael A. Bayley, of the Treasury Department, and also especially by Maj. S. N. Clark, for some time an assistant in this Office. The foot notes to the following paper were not read on this occasion; about three pages of statistical items reprinted here originally appeared in the annual Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1876.. ures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours, it is proportionably essential;" and he proceeded specifically to define its benefits and importance. Again, in his eighth annual message, he recommended the establishment of a national university and of a national military academy; and in his farewell address occur those memorable words, familiar to every American: Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. His opinions he sustained by his final action in his will, making be quests to the academy in Alexandria, and to Liberty Hall Academy, also in Virginia, and by bequeathing a sum for the establishment of a national university in a central part of the United States. In a private letter of September 1, 1796, to Hamilton, after mentioning his favorite scheme of a university at the capital of the nation, he alludes to the proposed gift to him of river improvement stock by the State of Virginia. Refusing to accept the stock as a gift to himself, he received it as a trust only, and conveyed it in his will for this cherished purpose in the following words: I have not the slightest doubt that this donation (when the navigation is in complete operation, which it certainly will be in less than two years) will amount to £1200 or £1500 sterling a year, and become a rapidly increasing fund. The proprietors of the Federal City have talked of doing something handsome towards it likewise; and if Congress would appropriate some of the western lands to the same uses, funds sufficient and of the most permanent and increasing sort might be so established as to invite the ablest professors of Europe to conduct it. The writings of John Adams, the second President, are pervaded with expressions of his appreciation of education; in his last days, "when," as he said, "blind and paralytic, I am incapable of research or search," he wrote to the committee in Kentucky as follows: The wisdom and generosity of your legislature in making liberal appropriations in money for the benefit of schools, academies, colleges, and the university, is an equal honor to them and their constituents; a proof of their veneration for literature and science, and a portent of great and lasting good to North and South America and to the world. Great is truth, great is liberty, and great is humanity, and they must and will prevail. Informing them that he would commend their desires to others, he proceeded to state his views of the beneficial results of the action of Massachusetts in behalf of education. Jefferson, in his sixth annual message, advocating the continuance of the tax on imports, observed that Patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, and canals. Again, in his eighth annual message, calling attention to the surplus revenue in the Treasury, he asked: Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults? Shall the revenue be reduced? Or shall it not rather be appropriated to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, educa tion, and other great foundations of prosperity and union, under the powers which Congress may already possess, or such amendment of the Constitution as may be approved by the States? Mr. Jefferson's scheme of education for Virginia comprehended in his own words: 1st. Elementary schools, for all children generally, rich and poor. 2d. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the common purposes of life, and such as would be desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. And 3d, an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally and in their highest degree. Only the university part of this scheme succeeded. His plan for elementary and secondary education was too far in advance of public sentiment in the State, and therefore failed. He continued, however, to press most earnestly his ideas upon leading minds. In a letter to Mr. Cabell, dated November 28, 1820, lamenting the low state of education in Virginia,1 he wrote that more money from the people was not needed, but that the money raised for education "should be employed understandingly and for the greatest good." He continued: That good requires that, while they are instructed in general competently to the common business of life, others should employ their genius with necessary information to the useful arts, to inventions for saving labor and increasing our comforts, to nourishing our health, to civil government, military science, &c. 2 Would it not have a good effect for the friends of this university to take the lead in proposing and effecting a practical scheme of elementary schools, to assume the character of the friends rather than the opponents of that object? In a letter to Governor Nicholas, dated April 2, 1816, in which he outlined his scheme of education,' he said of elementary education: My partiality for that division is not founded in views of education solely, but infinitely more as the means of a better administration of our government and the eternal preservation of its republican principles.3 * 1 Jefferson's Works, xvii, 187. In the same letter Jefferson said: "Surely Governor Clinton's display of the gigantic efforts of New York towards the education of her citizens will stimulate the pride as well as the patriotism of our legislature, to look to the reputation and safety of their own country, to rescue it from the degradation of becoming the Barbary of the Union and of falling into the ranks of our own negroes. To that condition it is fast sinking. The present plan [of public education] has appropriated to primary schools forty-five thousand dollars for three years, making one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. I should be glad to know if this sum has educated one hundred and thirty-five poor children? I doubt it much. And if it has, they have cost us one thousand dollars apiece for what might have been done for thirty dollars." The University of Virginia. 3 Jefferson's Works, vi, 566. Jefferson neglected no opportunity to press the claims of education on the attention of members of the Virginia legislature. In a letter to Colonel Yancey, dated January 6, 1816, he said: "I recommend to your patronage our Central College. I look to it as a germ from which a great tree may spread itself." Further on in the same letter he reverted to the subject of education as follows: "The literary fund is a solid provision, unless lost in the impending bankruptcy. If the legislature would add to that a perpetual tax of a cent a head on the population of the State, it would set a-going at once and forever maintain a system of primary or ward President Madison, in his inaugural address March 4, 1809, enumerating and formulating the principles which he considered necessary for the preservation of the public welfare and by which he pledged himself to be governed, specifies this: "To favor in like manner the advancement of science and the diffusion of information as the best aliment to true liberty." In his second annual message he again and again enforced the importance of general education and of the establishment of a national university.' Mr. Monroe, in his inaugural address, March 4, 1817, observed: * # * Had the people of the United States been educated in different principles; had they been less intelligent, less independent, or less virtuous, can it be believed that we should have maintained the same steady and consistent career or been blest with the same success? While, then, the constituent body retains its present sound and healthful state everything will be safe. It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they become incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is an easy attainment and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us look to the great cause and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties. In his first annual message to Congress, John Quincy Adams called attention to the recommendations of his predecessors in regard to edu * * * schools and an uni versity where might be taught in its highest degree every branch of science useful in our time and country. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”—(Works, 517.) 1 He said: "Whilst it is universally admitted that a well instructed people alone can be permanently a free people, and whilst it is evident that the means of diffusing and improving useful knowledge form so small a proportion of the expenditures for national purposes, I cannot presume it to be unreasonable to invite your attention to the advantages of superadding to the means of education provided by the several States a seminary of learning instituted by the national legislature, within the limits of their exclusive jurisdiction, the expense of which might be defrayed or reimbursed out of the vacant grounds which have accrued to the nation within those limits." Mr. Madison's sentiments regarding the importance of public education are often expressed in his letters. Writing to W. T. Barry, of Kentucky, under date of August 4, 1822, he said: "The liberal appropriations made by the legislature of Kentucky for a general system of education cannot be too much applauded. A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy, or perhaps to both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."-(Works of Madison, iii, 276.) Again, March 29, 1826, writing to Littleton Dennis Teackle, of Maryland, congratulating him on the enactment of a law providing for primary schools in that State, he says: "The best service that can be rendered to a country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation and the enjoyment of the blessing." (Works, 523.) cation and alluded approvingly to the Military Academy at West Point. And again, after enumerating most of the specific powers of the General Government under the Constitution, he continued: If these powers and others enumerated in the Constitution may be effectually brought into action by laws promoting the improvement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the cultivation of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profoundto refrain from exercising them for the benefit of the people themselves would be to hide in the earth the talent committed to our charge, would be treachery to the most sacred of trusts. GENERAL APPROPRIATIONS OF PUBLIC LANDS. We have not the full expression of sentiment on this point in the Congresses that antedated the Constitution, but the framers of that instru ment illustrated their views in favor of education by the most practical measures. It is well known that in different colonies a policy had been carried out, in the organization of counties and towns, of setting apart certain amounts of land for education. In 1784 Georgia adopted regulations for the survey of lands in the western part of the State, requiring that in each county 20,000 acres of land of the best quality, in separate tracts of 5,000 acres each, should be set apart for the endowment of a collegiate seminary of learning. In the Congress of the Confederation Mr. Jefferson, in May, 1784, as chairman of the committee on the organization of the western territory, made a report which provided "that there shall be reserved the central section of every township for the maintenance of public schools, and the section immediately adjoining the same for the support of religion.” After debate, the provision for setting apart the section for the support of religion was stricken out. And, as finally adopted on May 20, 1785, the ordinance provided that "there shall be reserved lot No. 16 of every tos p for the maintenance of public schools." So far as can be judged from the meagre record that has been preserved, the opposition was to the grant of land in aid of religion, and there was substantial unanimity in favor of the grant for education. This ordinance was finally incorporated in the ordinance of 1787. In his first speech on Mr. Foote's resolution relative to the public lands, January 20, 1830, Daniel Webster observed: We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787. It fixed forever the character of the popula * tion in the vast regions northwest of the Ohio by excluding from them involuntary servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to sustain any other than free men. It laid the interdict against personal servitude in original compact, not only deeper than all local law, but deeper also than all local constitutions. Under the circumstances then existing, I look upon this original and seasonable provision as a real good attained. We see its consequences |