all who are familiar with the condition of our schools must be satisfied that our system can never accomplish the purpose of its friends, until it is aided by an efficient superintendency. The only plausible plea which can be urged against its immediate adoption, is, that it will be expensive. There can be no doubt, that three months' tuition under the teaching, regulations and improvements provided by an intelligent Superintendent, would be more valuable than six months' teaching with present arrangements. The fact cannot be concealed, that a multitude of parents now regard our common schools as a nuisance, and will not peril the morals and the minds of their children by subjecting them to the influence of the varied irregularities which now exist. It is in consequence of this feeling that there exists such a deplolorable opposition to any increase by taxation, of school funds. This sentiment will magnify until private schools absorb the patronage of many of our citizens, and then, our school funds will become a mere benefice for vagrant, incompetent teachers, who will luxuriate for a few months in each year, upon what to worthier men would be deemed small livings. It is a matter susceptible of the clearest demonstration, that if one half of the compensation which might be allowed to Superintendents were distributed from the common fund of $200,000, that this expenditure would be realized in a short time to be economical policy. It is criminal in the people of Ohio, richly laden as they are with the gifts, and rejoicing in the boundless profusion of the smiles of a kind Providence, to hesitate in giving liberally for such an object. OUR TRUE POLICY. Ohio cannot long maintain her present position on the subject of education. The improvement and enterprise which characterize other movements must soon animate and advance the common school system, or it will sink into ignominy and ruin. No one entertaining the pride proper for a citizen, can abase himself by entertaining the idea that other States, less capable by resources, of high achievement, shall tower above Ohio in all those enduring elements which indicate advanced civilization, and invest human nature with imperishable renown. Our extensive and fertile territory, commercial, agricultural and manufacturing resources, teeming population, and all those advantages and facilities which so pre-eminently distinguish us, will but add momentum to those agencies of vice, misrule, insubordination and terror which abound, unless we are fortified by those enduring and impregnable ramparts-intelligence and virtue. Ohio is pledged to universal education. This is the letter of her charter of rights-this was the spirit manifested in the creation of her present system of education. The cardinal feature of that system is, that all the youth between the ages of 4 and 21 are the children of the State, and that she is bound to educate them. Her decree is, that the right to knowledge is as natural and inalienable as the claim to freedom, and that the whole land must be watered with the streams of intelligence. There are considerations which show that popular education, a distinguishing principle of our institutions, is also our highest policy. Intelligence is the life of successful enterprize. This opens up to the vision those valuable results of labor which cannot be foreseen or calculated by the untaught mind. This quickens genius, and unfolds to the cultivated mind those discoveries and inventions by whose magic and multiplying power one hand becomes as a thousand. This controls the elements as with omnipotent voice, and renders them tributary to human power in the accomplishment of phenomena which constitute a new era in the history of the world. Our own New England alike illustrates the truth and the policy of common school education. There, in an ungenial climate, in a land comparatively barren, and unmarked by those distinguishing advantages and resources which abound in other States, we find a people characterized by their wealth, industry, and thrift-and a State, (Massachusetts,) in proportion to its population, annually producing 50 per cent more property than any other in the Union. What but general intelligence, with its usual accompaniments, has produced this result. It is this which has "covered her sterile hills with pasturage crowded her harbors with fleets-taught every waterfall to labor for her benefit, and carried competence to every family throughout her borders. That these results of general education are not chimerical is strongly evidenced by the intimate connection between ignorance, pauperism, and crime. In the report of the Poor-law commission of England, embracing the statistics of a large section of that country, it is stated that, out of 2,725 paupers, 1,402 could neither read nor write well. The proportion of the totally illiterate, among the paupers of the United States, is less, but from the best data, it is known that they constitute between one-third and one-half. The most striking illustration of this truth is to be found in a comparison of Scotland and England. In Scotland there are but few beggars and no poor rates; in England every tenth man is a pauper, and the poor rates for forty years have consumed, annually, 5 or 6,000,000 pounds sterling. In Scotland the wages of labor maintain the laboring classes; in England they are totally inadequate. What has caused this difference? In Scotland, funds are provided for education, in parochial and other schools, for all classes; in England a majority of the children are doomed to the deepest ignorance, by a destitution of all facilities and means for intellectual improvement. Criminal statistics strongly exhibit the same truth. Out of 23,612 commitments in England and Wales, as returned to the Home Department in 1837, only 2,234 could read and write. In the State prisons of New York it is ascertained that three-fourths of the convicts have received no education, or a very imperfect one. It has also been recently ascertained, by investigation, that of the 491 convicts in the Ohio Penitentiary, only 140 can read and write. What effect an increase of general intelligence would have in diminishing pauperism and crime, is exhibited in the history of Prussia, where, after their school system, as perfected in 1819, had been in operation fourteen years, although the population had increased 3 per cent., the proportion of paupers and criminals had decreased 38 per cent. Can any one hesitate, in view of such facts, as to the policy of extending the boon of education to every child? Is it important that a thorough, practical, abiding sense of the duties, relations, obligations and responsibilities, which are due to God and man, should be possessed by every citizen?-This must be communicated in the infancy of life, become incorporated with the very elements of the mental and moral constitution, and repose in the heart, as the Shechinah between the cherubim and seraphim, hallowing all by its presence and power. A spirit so imbued and penetrated, will be "Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled; How suicidal that legislative policy, which, from considerations of supposed economy, withholds from the rising, and soon to be the acting generation, that education which gives life, direction and efficiency to industry, steadfastness and integrity to principle, and honor to aim; and how certainly will it meet, as it has ever met, a fearful retribution, as squalid pauperism and ghastly crime stalk with terror over the land, and levy their heavy contributions upon public wealth! What an instructive lesson is taught us upon this subject by the condition of England. "For years the upper house of parliament have perseveringly and successfully resisted all measures for national education; and as a legitimate consequence of the infraction of the great law which teaches us to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us, thousands have been thundering at her palace gates, and the motto on their banner was "Bread or Blood." How are those men of wealth, who loudly murmur at taxes for the support of common schools, and who contemplate, without a sigh of sympathy, the moral and mental debasement of their species, smitten with sore judgment in the heavy burdens of human wretchedness, which they gather in exactions upon their possessions; and still more grievously punished as they qauke in view of that deep, dark swell of human passion which moves in terror before their eyes, and threatens ruin to liberty and property. But the influence which general intelligence exerts in strengthening and perpetuating our free institutions, ought to attach us, above all others, to the wisest and most enlarged means for diffusing, among all classes, the benefits of Common School education. "Knowledge, (said a distinguished statesman of our land,) is the cause, as well as the effect, of good government." Here, we are all sovereigns; and it is indispensable that there should be intelligence, to guide aright the high powers vested in every freeman. We ridicule, as a burlesque upon common sense, the idea of a man's inheriting the right to be a king or peer, and, as the climax of absurdities, that a nation abounding with intelligence, should recognize a young miss of 16 or 18 as the legitimate governess of millions; and, yet, where is our higher eminence and safety, if our sovereigns are clothed with powers and duties which they cannot discern, appreciate, or discharge? A blind man is as well qualified to survey a road through a wilderness, as are those, who are morally and intellectually blind, to decide the destinies of millions. It is the cardinal doctrine of every honest lover of his kind, that the capability for self-government is written by the finger of Heaven upon the moral and intellectual elements of every rational being. This is as cherished a truth, as that man was made in the image of God. As that image may, by a holy cultivation, shine with the lustre of its original, or, for the want of it, assume the horrid features of a fiend; so that capacity for the station of a freeman may, by education, be developed in the noblest feelings, loftiest attributes, and sublimest actions with which human nature can be adorned; or, for the want of this culture, it may sink into the lowest depths of debasement, and be but a nucleus around which shall gather all the deformities that can pollute the man who breathes the tainted air of the darkest despo tism. What guardian power in the ballot box for human liberty, if those who increase the elective franchise are not elevated by education to that position where they can scan the bearings and consequences of doctrine and of practice-scrutinize alike the motives of the honest and unprincipled, and contemplate the claims of country as paramount to considerations of party or expediency? Where the sacredness of the right of trial by jury, if those who are arbiters of life and liberty are ignorant of the obligations and responsibilities of so commanding a trust? Where those elevated social feelings, cultivated sensibilities and generous sympathies which impart to home, kindred and country, all that is dear and delightful, unless the youthful mind is early and fully baptized with the consecrating influences of wisdom and virtue ? In view of these considerations, it is not difficult to decide the policy and wisdom of general education. "The experience of the ages that are past the hopes of the ages that are yet to comethey implore us to think more of the character of our people, than of its numbers; to look upon our vast natural resources, not as tempters to ostentation and pride, but as means to be converted by the refining aichemy of education, into mental and spiritual treasures; they supplicate us to seek for whatever complacency we are disposed to indulge, not in the extent of our territory, or in the products of our soil, but in the expansion and perpetuation of the means of human happiness. For these ends they enjoin upon us a more earnest, a more extended, a more religious devotion of our exertions and resources to the culture of the youthful mind and heart of the State. Their gathered voices assert the eternal truth, that, IN a Republic, IGNORANCE IS A CRIME; AND THAT PRIVATE IMMORALITY IS NOT LESS AN OPPROBRIUM TO THE STATE, THAN IT IS GUILT IN THE PERPETRATOR." Respectfully, SAML. GALLOWAY. been in operation fourteen years, although the population had increased 3 per cent., the proportion of paupers and criminals had decreased 38 per cent. Can any one hesitate, in view of such facts, as to the policy of extending the boon of education to every child? Is it important that a thorough, practical, abiding sense of the duties, relations, obligations and responsibilities, which are due to God and man, should be possessed by every citizen ?-This must be communicated in the infancy of life, become incorporated with the very elements of the mental and moral constitution, and repose in the heart, as the Shechinah between the cherubim and seraphim, hallowing all by its presence and power. A spirit so imbued and penetrated, will be "Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled; How suicidal that legislative policy, which, from considerations of supposed economy, withholds from the rising, and soon to be the acting generation, that education which gives life, direction and efficiency to industry, steadfastness and integrity to principle, and honor to aim; and how certainly will it meet, as it has ever met, a fearful retribution, as squalid pauperism and ghastly crime stalk with terror over the land, and levy their heavy contributions upon public wealth! What an instructive lesson is taught us upon this subject by the condition of England. For years the upper house of parliament have perseveringly and successfully resisted all measures for national education; and as a legitimate consequence of the infraction of the great law which teaches us to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us, thousands have been thundering at her palace gates, and the motto on their banner was “Bread or Blood." How are those men of wealth, who loudly murmur at taxes for the support of common schools, and who contemplate, without a sigh of sympathy, the moral and mental debasement of their species, smitten with sore judgment in the heavy burdens of human wretchedness, which they gather in exactions upon their possessions; and still more grievously punished as they qauke in view of that deep, dark swell of human passion which moves in terror before their eyes, and threatens ruin to liberty and property. But the influence which general intelligence exerts in strengthening and perpetuating our free institutions, ought to attach us, above all others, to the wisest and most enlarged means for diffusing, among all classes, the benefits of Common School education. "Knowledge, (said a distinguished statesman of our land,) is the cause, as well as the effect, of good government." Here, we are all sovereigns; and it is indispensable that there should be intelligence, to guide aright the high powers vested in every freeman. We ridicule, as a burlesque upon common sense, the idea of a man's inheriting the right to be a king or peer, and, as the climax of absurdities, that a nation abounding with intelligence, should recognize a young miss of 16 or 18 as the legitimate governess of millions; and, yet, where is our higher eminence and safety, if our sovereigns are |