Common Schools and you will never be in danger of taxation from a foreign power-you will need less taxation for the support of pauperism, and the punishment of crime. Look to your school-houses. See that they are convenient of access, that they are comfortable, that they are neat and tasteful. Look to the teachers. See that they are taught themselves, and apt to teach; men that fear God, and love their country. See that they are well accommodated, well treated, well remunerated. Respect them and they will respect themselves, and your children will respect them. Look to the scholars. Have them much in your eye, and always in your heart. Remember you are to grow old among them. Remember you are to die, and leave your country in their hands.

"Good Common Schools," says Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, "are the basis of every wise system of popular education." This is precisely what they are, the basis of a system; but the basis only. Let us now lay their broad foundations deep and strongfoundations that will stand themselves and bear the noble structure which our children and our children's children, as we trust, will rear upon them. We are the citizens of a small State. We can not, by our votes, control the electoral college. We can not, by our political influence, aspire to be the empire State of the confederacy. But there is a nobler empire, whose dominion does not come by numbers or by physical power. We may aspire, if we are just to ourselves and to our opportunities, to wield the suffrages of mind. The men of Athens were but few, their territory small, their soil indifferent. Yet did Athenian arms prevail against the myriads of the East; and to Athenian letters and Athenian arts admiring nations still award the palm. In the same noble lists let us engage; and make the mastery of intellect the prize of our ambition. Let ns devote ourselves and consecrate the State to the great work of education. Let us lay hold in earnest of the remarkable advantages which we possess in this respect, in our accessible position, our temperate climate, our freedom from absorbing interests, the moderate habits, and the simple manners of our people. Let us sustain our present seats of learning; and let kindred institutions in every varied form be multiplied about us. Let us collect the children of the land and on their minds make the mark which shall go down to latest generations. Let other States excel in commerce, or in agriculture, or in manufacturies. But let the staple of our State be mind; the products of our soil, with God to bless the culture, knowledge, and patriotism, and virtue; our highest object and our noblest aim to be the State of Common Schools, Academies, and Colleges, the educating State, the nursery of freemen.

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That which makes a good Constitution must keep it, viz: men of wisdom and virtue: qualities that, because they descend not with worldly inheritance, must be carefully propagated by a virtuous education of youth, for which spare no cost, for by such parsimony, all that is saved is lost. WILLIAM PENN. Instructions to Council.

Promote, 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. Farewell Address.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

The wisdom and generosity of the Legislature in making liberal appropriations in money for the benefit of schools, academies and colleges, is an equal honor to them and their constituents, a proof of their veneration for letters 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— great is humanity—and they must and will prevail.

JOHN ADAMS. Inaugural.

I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resources most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man. And I do hope, in the present spirit of extending to the great mass of mankind the blessings of instruction, I see a prospect of great advancement in the happiness of the human race, and this may proceed to an indefinite, although not an infinite degree. A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so it shall be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest. Give it to us, in any shape, and receive for the inestimable boon the thanks of the young, and the blessings of the old, who are past all other services but prayers for the prosperity of their country, and blessings to those who promote it. THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Learned institutions ought to be the favorite objects with every free people; they throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty. They multiply the educated individuals, from among whom the people may elect a due portion of their public agents of every description, more especially of those who are to frame the laws: by the perspicuity, the consistency, and the stability, as well as by the justice and equal spirit of which, the great social purposes are to be answered.

JAMES MADISON.

Moral, political, and intellectual improvement, are duties assigned by the author of our existence to social, no less than to individual man. For the fulfillment of these duties, governments are invested with power, and to the attainment of these ends, the exercise of this power is a duty sacred and indispensable. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

For the purpose of promoting the happiness of the State, it is absolutely necessary that our Government, which unites into one all the minds of the State, should possess in an eminent degree not only the understanding, the passions, and the will, but above all, the moral faculty and the conscience of an individual. Nothing can be politically right that is morally wrong; and no necessity can ever sanctify a law that is contrary to equity. Virtue is the soul of a Republic. To promote this, laws for the suppression of vice and immorality will be as ineffectual as the increase and enlargement of goals. There is but one method of preventing crime and of rendering a republican form of government durable; and that is, by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the State, by means of proper modes and places of educa tion; and this can be done effectually only by the interference and aid of the legislature. I am so deeply impressed with this opinion, that were this the last evening of my life, I would not only say to the asylum of my ancestors and my beloved native country, with the patriot of Venice, “Esto perpetua,” but I would add, as the best proof of my affection for her, my parting advice to the guardians of her liberties, establish and support PUBLIC SCHOOLS in every part of the State. BENJAMIN RUSH.

There is one object which I earnestly recommend to your notice and patronage; I mean our institutions for the education of youth. The importance of common schools is best estimated by the good effects of them where they most abound, and are best regulated. Our ancestors have transmitted to us many excellent institutions, matured by the wisdom and experience of ages. Let them descend to posterity, accompanied with others, which by promoting useful knowledge, and multiplying the blessings of social order, diffusing the influence of moral obligations, may be reputable to us, and beneficial to them. JOHN JAY.

The first duty of government, and the surest evidence of good government, is the encouragement of education. A general diffusion of knowledge is the precursor and protector of republican institutions, and in it we must confide as the conservative power that will watch over our liberties and guard them against fraud, intrigue, corruption and violence. I consider the system of our Common Schools as the palladium of our freedom, for no reasonable apprehension can be entertained of its subversion, as long as the great body of the people are enlightened by education. To increase the funds, to extend the benefits, and to remedy the defects of this excellent system, is worthy of your most deliberate attention. I can not recommend, in terms too strong and impressive, as munificent appropriations as the faculties of the State will authorize for all establishments connected with the interests of education, the exaltation of literature and science, and the improvement of the human mind.

DE WITT CLINTON. Message as Governor.

The parent who sends his son into the world uneducated, defrauds the community of a lawful citizen, and bequeathes to it a nuisance.

CHANCELLOR KENT.

I know not to what else we can better liken the strong appetence of the mind for improvement, than to a hunger and thirst after knowledge and truth; nor how we can better describe the province of education, than to say, it does that for the intellect, which is done for the body, when it receives the care and nourishment which are necessary for its growth, health and strength. From this comparison, I think I derive new views of the importance of education. It is now a solemn duty, a tender, sacred trust. What! sir, feed a child's body, and let his soul hunger! pamper his limbs, and starve his faculties! Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding places in the sea, and spread out your wheat fields across the plain, in order to supply the wants of that body, which will soon be as cold and as senseless as their poorest clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious capacities for improvement, languish and pine! What! build factories, turn in rivers upon the waterwheels, unchain the imprisoned spirits of steam, to weave a garment for the body, and let the soul remain unadorned and naked! What! send out your vessels to the farthest ocean, and make battle with the monsters of the deep, in order to obtain the means of lighting up your dwellings and workshops, and prolonging the hours of labor for the meat that perisheth, and permit that vital spark, which God has kindled, which He has intrusted to our care, to be fanned into a bright and heavenly flame; permit it, I say, to languish and go out!

EDWARD EVERETT.

If I were asked by an intelligent stranger to point out to him our most valued possessions, I would show to him-not our railroads, our warehouses filled with the wealth of all the earth, our ships, our busy wharves and marts, where the car of commerce is ever "thundering loud with her ten thousand wheels;" but I would carry him to one of our public schools, would show him its happy and intelligent children, hushed into reverent silence at their teacher's word, or humming over their tasks with a sound like that of bees in June. I would tell him that here was the foundation on which our material prosperity was reared, that here were the elements from which we constructed the State. Here are the fountains from which flow those streams which make glad our land. The schools of Boston are dear to my heart. Though I can have no personal and immediate interest in them; though no child on earth calls me father; yet most gladly do I contribute to their support, according to my substance; and when I see a father's eye filled with pleasant tears as he hears the music of his child's voice linked to some strain of poetry or burst of eloquence, I can sympathize in the feeling in which I can not share. May the blessing of Heaven rest upon our schools. They are an object worthy of all efforts and sacrifices. We should leave nothing undone which may tend to make them more excellent and more useful. For this we should gather into our own stores all the harvests of experience which have been reaped from other soils.

GEORGE S. HILLARD.

In 1647, when a few scattered and feeble settlements, almost buried in the depths of the forest, were all that constituted the Colony of Massachusetts; when the entire population consisted of twenty-one thousand souls; when the external means of the people were small, their dwellings humble, and their raiment and subsist ence scanty and homely; when the whole valuation of all the colonial estates, both public and private, would hardly equal the inventory of many a private individual at the present day; when the fierce eye of the savage was nightly seen glaring from the edge of the surrounding wilderness, and no defense or suecor was at hand; it was then, amid all these privations and dangers, that the Pilgrim Fathers conceived the magnificent idea of a Free* and Universal Education for the People; and, amid all their poverty, they stinted themselves to a still scantier pittance; amid all their toils they imposed upon themselves still more burdensome labors; amid all their perils they braved still greater dangers, that they might find the time and the means to reduce their grand conception to practice. Two divine ideas filled their great hearts-their duty to God and to posterity. For the one they built the church; for the other they opened the school. Religion and Knowledge-two attributes of the same glorious and eternal truth-and that truth the only one on which immortal or mortal happiness can be securely founded.

As an innovation upon all preëxisting policy and usages, the establishment of Free Schools was the boldest ever promulgated since the commencement of the Christian era. As a theory, it could have been refuted and silenced by a more formidable array of argument and experience than was ever marshaled against any other opinion of human origin. But time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries now proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, as beneficent as it was disinterested. It was one of those grand mental and moral experiments whose effects can not be determined in a single generation. But now, according to the manner in which human life is computed, we are the sixth generation from its founders, and have we not reason to be grateful both to God and man for its unnumbered blessings? The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by our efforts to perpetuate and improve what they established. The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering. HORACE MANN. Tenth Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.

* Was the Public School of Massachusetrs at first free? Was Massachusetts the first to estab lish such a system as is ordained in the law of 16471-Ed. of Amer. Jour. of Education.