expense, to guide the mariner engaged in private enterprises of commerce over the perilous deep to and from his destined harbor, that could not be assailed with equal justice, and upon the same ground, as the laws for the support of high schools and other institutions of superior education, by equal taxation, or by an appropriation of the public funds.

We have seen that the same articles of the State constitutions which authorize and enjoin upon legislatures the duty of encouraging and promoting trade, commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, also demand that they shall at all times encourage and promote education, and all seminaries thereof.

Under authority derived from one of these constitutional provisions, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has expended nearly or quite $18,000,000 to build four or five miles of railroad under and through one of the mountains on her western border, which had thrown its huge and obstructive mass directly across the track of trade between the boundless fields of the West and the metropolis of New England. Shall it be said that a State which has the power and can afford to lavish its millions on such a gigantic scheme for promoting trade, may not and cannot, without injustice, raise money by taxation to support high schools, without, at the same time, requiring that those who have wealth shall, in addition to their taxes, pay a further sum of forty or fifty dollars before their sons and daughters can be admitted to the privileges of the school; and that the children of the poor, endowed with some genius, can only approach these stately and exclusive temples of knowledge, and humbly petition for a free ticket of admission?

This, as it seems to me, is a wholly un-American doctrine, and at war with the very genius of our institu

tions, and will never be adopted here until the people are prepared to reverse and repudiate the declaration of principles which lie at the foundation of our system of government; and, moreover, its practical adoption would work an entire change in the character of our high schools, and in the end destroy them altogether as a part of the public-school system. Parents contributing their full share toward all the public burdens will never consent to pay, in addition thereto, a discriminating tax before their children can be admitted to the privileges of the public schools, and the children of the poor will never consent to enter these institutions upon conditions so humiliating to freemen and equals.

And why, in the language of Madison, should we here, in the realm of knowledge, or in the public provision for the education of all, divide society into classes upon the ever-vanishing line of rich and poor.

The poor, it is said, are always to be with us, but this is a condition of the race. The individuals who are poor, and the individuals who are rich, are constantly changing places.

The primitive rocks are sometimes, by the action of internal forces, thrown up into mountain heights, and from this elevation among the clouds look down upon and dominate all the subject plain; so talent and genius among the poor will, by their own inherent power, force their way up through all the incumbent weight of poverty, obscurity, and neglect, into positions of influence and power; and they have, at least, the right to ask that the government, whose affairs in after years they will come to administer, shall not, in its public schools. and at the very start of life, treat them as objects of a degrading charity. The poor son of a poor New Hampshire farmer and the man who sat for many years in

the Senate of the United States without an intellectual peer, was the same person. And will the lesson never be learned that rights are not purchased by money alone? The citizen who has served, or is liable to be called on to serve his country in the time of its peril, has earned the right to have his children enter every public institution of learning upon terms of absolute equality. This matter of providing free seats in our public schools for "the meritorious poor," is a wholly different affair from that of providing free scholarships in colleges and universities, as might easily be shown did time permit, or the exigence of the argument require it. But I dismiss the topic, in the confident belief that we are not yet quite prepared to forsake the wisdom and example of our fathers, and to found our schools of learning, not upon the permanent and enduring qualities of character and rights, but upon the accidental and ever-shifting distinctions arising from external possessions. And I trust the time is not far distant when the revenues and credit of the State will not be so exclusively directed to the increase of material wealth as a direct object, but that this vast power of public credit may be more liberally used to supply the intellectual wants of the present and succeeding generations.

The line of railway connected with the portion upon which I stated a few moments since the State of Massachusetts had expended so many millions, runs, near its termination at the sea, under the classic shades of Harvard; in its middle course it passes within sight of the towers of Amherst; and after emerging from the mountain on its western course, it enters and skirts the beautiful valley where stand the modest but historic halls of Williams. Would it not have been a more judicious

expenditure of the public money had a part of the vast amount, expended on this one enterprise of opening a new avenue for travel and traffic from the interior to the seaboard, been granted to these honored institutions of learning? I am sure it would have done more to exalt the character of the State, and, in the end, would have made more sure and permanent the material prosperity of the people.

The right to make these public grants to promote the intellectual progress of the Commonwealth is beyond question, and if the intelligent friends of education would combine, as do the sons of trade when they have resolved upon an enterprise too great for individual wealth and effort, the light of science would not be so often dimmed, or hidden altogether, even in her chosen seats, for the want of oil in her lamps. The objection that these grants to schools cannot be justified, for the reason that they would not be equally beneficial to all, might with as much propriety be made against other acts; indeed, against the operation of whole departments of government, as has already been shown by examples of the unequal operation of particular laws, and which illustrations could have been indefinitely multiplied. Every righteous human government is like an encompassing providence, extending its protection over all, and dispensing its blessings with an impartial hand; but those blessings are not the same to all, either in character or in the time and manner of their dispensation; as well might men complain of the clouds of heaven, because every April shower that happens to fall upon their neighbor's fields does not also send its refreshing rains upon their own, as to charge with injustice every law or policy of government that does not confer equal benefits upon all.

It seems like trifling with a great subject thus to select portions of a majestic whole for special and adverse criticism. Human governments, like the Divine, when comprehensively studied, will be found pervaded by the great law of compensation, and the parts can never be rightly understood except when viewed in their proper relations to the whole. Before finally dismissing this part of the discussion, let me say, what is entirely true, that the public support of high schools and technical schools, wherein the youth of the land may be taught the arts of peace and the duties of civil life, is based on the same principle and justified by the same course of argument, as the governmental support of the two technical schools at West Point and Annapolis, in which a few selected young men are instructed in the art and discipline of war. Every community of men organized under any form of government needs, and must have, individuals educated and competent to administer its civil as well as its military affairs. And this is eminently true under such a government as ours, -"a government of the people, by the people, and for the people," where every State, county, city, town, and school-district in the land requires educated men to assume important places of trust and responsibility, and to conduct with intelligence the infinitely complicated affairs of such a popular government. And shall it be said that a government thus needing for its own existence and successful administration educated men, cannot lawfully, and without injustice, provide schools for the necessary education and training of such men? Again, I may remind you of another truth, almost too trite for remark, that every high school, or other school for secondary education, excites a beneficial and elevating influence upon all schools of lower grade in the town