schools was prepared by Pres. Henry Ruffner, and laid before the Legislature.

Yet a third Convention was held at Richmond on the 9th of December of the same year, during the session of the Legislature. One hundred and twenty-nine delegates were present from thirty-seven counties, besides members of the Assembly who were invited to take part in its proceedings. James M. Garnett was elected President; Gen. Edward Watts, N. E. Venable, R. W. Carter, and J. H. Peyton, Vice-Presidents; R. H. Toler and E. G. Crump, Secretaries. Reports were made by committees, on the University-CollegesMilitary Schools-Academies-and Primary Schools. The latter report was especially elaborate and received the profoundest attention. The report recommended the district free school system, and was drawn up and ably defended by Rev. Benj. J. Smith, of Augusta. The existing system was defended by Rev. Dr. W. S. Plumer, of Kanawha county, who urged the expediency of adhering to it and blending with it the plan of county taxation. The report was adopted and a committee was appointed to present its principles in a memorial to the Legislature. An Address to the People was also prepared by a committee, consisting of Messrs. Thos. Ritchie, B. M. Smith, and R. G. Scott.

So far as legislative action was concerned, the result of these conventions was the referment of the subject to the Committee on Schools and Colleges. A Bill establishing Common Schools was reported, which only reached a second reading. The effect upon the people, however, was not thus wholly negative.

Four years afterwards, a General Convention was again called, which met in Richmond, Dec. 10th, 1845. The attendance was large, there being present two hundred and thirteen delegates from fifty-one counties. Gov. James McDowell was elected President; Judge J. T. Lomax, Judge E. S. Duncan, T. J. Randolph, Spicer Patrick, A. T. Caperton, W. H. Macfarland, J. H. Carson, and Samuel Watts, Vice-Presidents; J. S. Gallagher and R. B. Gooch, Secretaries. The main purpose of this Convention was to devise an improved system of public instruction. Various suggestions and projects were received from Hon. Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, Howard Meeks, Agent for Education in Maryland, C. List, of Pennsylvania, S. A. Jewett, Col. F. H. Smith, P. V. Daniell, Jr., and others. Messrs. S. M. Janney, of Landon county, and D. N. Edgington, of Ohio county, in behalf of a minority of the committee to whom the subject had been referred, presented a plan of a district school system which, after discussion and amendment, was adopted.

This plan was afterwards laid before the Legislature with a memorial praying its adoption. An Act was accordingly passed on the 6th of March, 1846, which made important changes in the school system, creating a larger number of school districts, providing for an enumeration and registration of children, establishing the office of County Superintendent of Schools, and regulating the distribution of the school quota among the districts. This system was partially carried into effect, with favorable results. The census of 1850 showed that of the total number of 413,428 adult whites, 77,005 could not read and write. The census statistics of 1860, which would show more conclusively the result of the educational movements in the State, are not yet accessible.

The Convention of 1845, in order to secure the better success of any measures that might be adopted by the Legislature, appointed a "Central Committee of Education," consisting of Messrs. A. Stevenson, H. L. Brooke, C. F. Osborne, T. H. Ellis, S. Maupin, W. S. Plumer, R. T. Daniel, W. H. Macfarland, James Lyon, P. V. Daniell, Jr., R. B. Gooch, G. W. Munford, and H. W. Moncure, residents mostly of Richmond, whose duties were to watch over and promote the success of the new system, to ascertain its advantages and defects, with a view to its improvement, and to collect and diffuse information upon the subject of popular education. The formation of county and town associations of the friends of education was strongly recommended, but it is not certain that any were ever organized.

In 1856, July 23d and 24th, pursuant to a call through Gov. Wise, a convention of delegates from the principal colleges and academical institutions of Virginia assembled at Richmond, of which Rev. Dr. Smith, of Randolph Macon College, was appointed President, and Rev. Dr. Regland, of Richmond College, Vice-President. The condition of the Literary Fund and its application; the evils of premature admission of students to colleges, and the remedies; the affiliation of the Academies, Colleges, and the University of the State; the qualification of students of professional schools of Law, Medicine, and Theology; the education of girls; a system of Normal Schools and schools of applied Science, were discussed and referred to committees, to report at a future meeting, to be called by the Executive Committee.

The new State of West Virginia has promptly inaugurated an excellent school system, the influence of which will doubtless be speedily seen and felt.

XI. NATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION.*

BY E. E. WHITE,

Commissioner of Common Schools of Ohio.

UNIVERSAL EDUCATION next to universal liberty, is a matter of deep national concern. The one distinctive, exhaustive idea of a democratic government is, that it is a government by the people and for the people-i. e. by the whole people and for the whole people. A democracy is in other words but an organized people— they constitute the state. Its constitution and laws are but their recorded will, and all governmental power emanates from and centers in them.

In such a government, in its pure form, sovereignty is a universal right to be exercised by all for the happiness and well-being of all. It is a right that can neither be denied nor restricted except by usurpation, and this is true whether the usurping power is one man or twenty millions of men. The right of sovereignty may be forfeited by crime or by its treasonable exercise, but it is in no sense an accident of birth or condition.

When the exercise of sovereignty by the people is both universal and for the welfare of all, a democracy is the perfection of human government. But to the extent that such right is withheld from the people or is wrongfully exercised by them, just to that extent are democratic institutions imperfect and a failure. Hence the capability of the people to exercise sovereignty for the general welfare, is a fundamental and vital condition of republican institutions. When such capability does not exist, to the extent it is wanting, is the universal exercise of sovereignty a condition of national weakness, if not of peril. I am thus led to inquire what this capability includes, and what are the essential conditions of its existence?

It clearly requires the necessary intelligence to determine what will best subserve the interests of all; and the degree of this intelligence must not only be sufficient for self-government on the part of individuals and individual communities, but the people, as a whole,

A paper read before the National Association of School Superintendents, at Washington, D. C., February 7, 1866.

must be able to weigh and decide upon questions which involve national interests. Hence the higher the civilization embodied, the wider the extent of territory embraced, and the more various the pursuits and physical conditions of the people, the higher the degree of intelligence required for the right exercise of sovereignty.

But intelligence is not enough. Sovereignty is to be exercised for the happiness and well-being of all; and this involves the moral capacity to act in accordance with the dictates of intelligence. The second great law of civil liberty as well as of religion, is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Wherever the moral sense of the people is too feeble to impel the public will to regard the general welfare, democracy becomes the livery of despotism. To general intelligence we must, therefore, add public virtue as one of the essential conditions of the right exercise of sovereignty by the people.

In his Centennial Address at Plymouth, in 1820, Webster assigned three fundamental conditions as essential for the maintenance of republican institutions, namely: universal education, religious training, and the general division of landed property. The same conditions are laid down by De Tocqueville and other writers upon democratic governments.

If we turn to the pages of history we shall find abundant confirmation of these views. We shall certainly search in vain for a single example where an ignorant and corrupt people have exercised sovereign power wisely and justly, or have even retained such power for any length of time. In all the past, wherever the intellectual and moral condition of the people has been low, there civil liberty has been lost. Universal liberty without universal intelligence has ever been the sport of civil tempests. Stolid ignorance and moral degradation tread above the grave of civil liberty, all along the shores of the Mediterranean; but free government still abides with the intelligent and virtuous descendents of Tell, among the mountains of Switzerland-that diamond of liberty, set by a Divine hand in the very center of European despotism! Passing to the New World, I need only point to Mexico, where civil liberty lies prostrate and helpless beneath the crossed bayonets of two European despotisms. In a word, both reason and history compel the conclusion that republican institutions can rest upon no other basis than intelligence and virtue, and that these must pervade all heads and all hearts.

But general intelligence and public virtue are not the spontaneous fruits of civil liberty, although it is favorable to their development. As a necessary condition of their existence, they must be assid

A

uously cultivated and diffused among the people. No human agency but the common school is capable of accomplishing this great work. Aided and vitalized by religion, it is the only sure foundation of the sovereignty of the people-the strength and shield of liberty.

This great fact was well understood by the founders of the American Republic. They sought to found free institutions, not upon the quicksands of human instinct and passion, but upon the abiding rock of universal education and religious training. This was the grandest of all their innovations upon the moss-grown ideas of the Old World.

But the idea that education must be co-extensive with sovereignty, was not original with our fathers. This has been the favorite doctrine of aristocracy the world over. Wherever the heel of despotism rests upon the neck of humanity, the ignorance of the oppressed has been urged as the justification of the oppressor. Despotism clamors for a restricted education, because she maintains a restricted sovereignty. The former is made just as wide as the latter.

Nor is the idea of universal sovereignty distinctively and originally American. Democracy had drawn her sword to give the people political power, long before the Mayflower cradled the new Republic; and had won the prize, too, but only to see it turn to ashes in their hands. The grand, distinctive, original idea of the American Republic is the union of these two principles, by making the one the basis of the other. With matchless wisdom our fathers joined liberty and learning in a perpetual and holy alliance, binding the latter to bless every child with instruction which the former invests with the rights and duties of citizenship. They made education and sovereignty co-extensive by making both universal. Here is the grandest conception of civil history, the hope and strength of civil liberty. And yet how few the successive steps by which our fathers passed from a conception of this idea to its practical embodiment. Truly they must have builded better than they knew.

Who can measure the results which the union of these two principles has already accomplished? When the sources of the nation's wonderful vitality and power during the great civil conflict through which it has just passed, shall be determined, then first and foremost will stand the common school. The rebellion, which was a gigantic conspiracy against democratic institutions, found a people trained to a comprehension of their duties and interests, with hearts to dare and hands to strike in their defense. The flame of civil liberty now burns with increasing brightness and new splendor, because our fathers, like the wise virgins, put into the lamp of free government the exhaustless oil of Universal Education.