heroic, Puritan mould; how different in the eye of a righteous Heaven, how different in the estimation of the wise and good of all contemporary nations, how different in the fortunes of that vast procession of the generations which are yet to rise up over all those wide expanses, and to follow each other to the end of time; as we reflect upon these things, it seems almost pious to repine at the ways of Providence; resignation becomes laborious, and we are forced to choke down our murmurings at the will of Heaven! Is it the solution of this deep mystery, that our ancestors did as much in their time, as it is ever given to one generation of men to accomplish, and have left to us and to our descendants the completion of the glorious work they began?

The alleged ground upon which the founders of our Free School system proceeded, when adopting it, did not embrace the whole argument by which it may be defended. Their insight was better than their reason. They assumed a ground, indeed, satisfactory and convincing to Protestants; but, at that time, only a small portion of Christendom was Protestant, and even now only a minority of it is so. The very ground on which our Free Schools were founded, therefore, if it were the only one, would be a reason with half of Christendom, at the present time, for their immediate abolition.

In later times, and since the achievement of American Independence, the universal and ever-repeated argument in favor of Free Schools has been, that the general intelligence which they are capable of diffusing, and which can be imparted by no other human instrumentality, is indispensable to the continuance of a republican government. This argument, it is obvious, assumes, as a postulatum, the superiority of a republican over all other forms of government; and, as a people, we religiously believe in the soundness, both of the assumption, and of the argument founded upon it. But if this be all, then a sincere monarchist, a defender of arbitrary power, or a believer in the divine right of kings, would oppose Free Schools, for the identical reasons we offer in their behalf. A perfect demonstration of our doctrine, that Free Schools are the only basis of republican institutions, would be the perfection of reasoning to his mind, that they should be immediately exterminated.

Admitting, nay claiming for ourselves, the substantial justness and soundness of the general grounds on which our system was originally established, and has since been been maintained; yet it is most obvious that, unless some broader and more comprehensive principle can be found, the system of Free Schools will be repudiated by whole nations as impolitic and dangerous; and, even among ourselves, all who deny our premises will, of course, set at nought the conclusions to which they lead.

Again; the expediency of Free Schools is sometimes advocated on grounds of Political Economy. An educated people is a more industrious and productive people. Knowledge and abundance sustain to each other the relation of cause and effect. Intelligence is a primary ingredient in the Wealth of Nations. Where this does

not stand at the head of the inventory, the items in a nation's valuation will be few, and the sum at the foot of the column insignificant.

The moralist, too, takes up the argument of the economist. He demonstrates that vice and crime are not only prodigals and spendthrifts of their own, but defrauders and plunderers of the means of others; that they would seize upon all the gains of honest industry, and exhaust the bounties of Heaven itself, without satiating their rapacity for new means of indulgence; and that often, in the history of the world, whole generations might have been trained to industry and virtue by the wealth which one enemy to his race has destroyed.

And yet, notwithstanding these views have been presented a thousand times, with irrefutable logic, and with a divine eloquence of truth which it would seem that nothing but combined stolidity and depravity could resist, there is not at the present time, with the exception of New England, and a few small localities elsewhere, a State or a community in Christendom, which maintains a system of Free Schools for the education of its children. Even in the State of New York, with all its noble endowments, the Schools are not Free.

I believe that this amazing dereliction from duty, especially in our own country, originates more in the false notions which men entertain respecting the nature of their right to property, than in any thing else. In the district school meeting, in the town meeting, in legislative halls, everywhere, the advocates for a more generous education, could carry their respective audiences with them in behalf of increased privileges for our children, were it not instinctively foreseen that increased privileges must be followed by increased taxation. Against this obstacle argument falls dead. The rich man, who has no children, declares it to be an invasion of his rights of property to exact a contribution from him to educate the children of his neighbor. The man who has reared and educated a family of children, denounces it as a double tax, when he is called upon to assist in educating the children of others also; or, if he has reared his own children, without educating them, he thinks it peculiarly oppressive to be obliged to do for others, what he refrained from doing even for himself. Another, having children, but disdaining to educate them with the common mass, withdraws them from the Public School, puts them under what he calls "selecter influences," and then thinks it a grievance to be obliged to support a school which he contemns. Or if these different parties so far yield to the force of traditionary sentiment and usage, and to the public opinion around them, as to consent to do something for the cause, they soon reach the limit of expense where their admitted obligation, or their alleged charity, terminates.

It seems not irrelevant, therefore, in this connection, to inquire into the nature of a man's right to the property he possesses, and to satisfy ourselves respecting the question, whether any man has such an indefeasible title to his estates, or such an absolute owner ship of them, as renders it unjust in the government to assess upon

him his share of the expenses of educating the children of the community, up to such a point as the nature of the institutions under which he lives, and the well-being of society require.

I believe in the existence of a great, immutable principle of natural law, or natural ethics-a principle antecedent to all human institutions, and incapable of being abrogated by any ordinances of man-a principle of divine origin, clearly legible in the ways of Providence as those ways are manifested in the order of nature, and in the history of the race-which proves the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world, to an education; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all.

In regard to the application of this principle of natural law-that is, in regard to the extent of the education to be provided for all, at the public expense-some differences of opinion may fairly exist, under different political organizations; but under a republican government, it seems clear that the minimum of this education can never be less than such as is sufficient to qualify each citizen for the civil and social duties he will be called to discharge; such an education as teaches the individual the great laws of bodily health; as qualifies for the fulfilment of parental duties; as is indispensable for the civil functions of a witness or a juror; as is necessary for the voter in municipal affairs; and, finally, for the faithful and conscientious discharge of all those duties which devolve upon the inheritor of a portion of the sovereignty of this great republic.

The will of God, as conspicuously manifested in the order of nature, and in the relations which he has established among men, places the right of every child that is born into the world to such a degree of education as will enable him, and, as far as possible, will predispose him, to perform all domestic, social, civil and moral duties, upon the same clear ground of natural law and equity, as it places a child's right, upon his first coming into the world, to distend his lungs with a portion of the common air, or to open his eyes to the common light, or to receive that shelter, protection and nourishment, which are necessary to the continuance of his bodily existence. And so far is it from being a wrong or a hardship, to demand of the possessors of property their respective shares for the prosecution of this divinely-ordained work, that they themselves are guilty of the most far-reaching injustice, who seek to resist or to evade the contribution. The complainers are the wrong-doers. The cry, "Stop thief," comes from the thief himself.

To any one who looks beyond the mere surface of things, it is obvious, that the primary and natural elements or ingredients of all property, consist in the riches of the soil, in the treasures of the sea, in the light and warmth of the sun, in the fertilizing clouds and streams and dews, in the winds, and in the chemical and vegetative agencies of nature. In the majority of cases, all that we call property, all that makes up the valuation or inventory of a nation's ital, was prepared at the creation, and was laid up of old in the capacious store-houses of nature. For every unit that a man earns

cap

by his own toil or skill, he receives hundreds and thousands, without cost and without recompense, from the All-bountiful Giver. A proud mortal, standing in the midst of his luxuriant wheat-fields or cotton-plantations, may arrogantly call them his own; yet what barren wastes would they be, did not heaven send down upon them its dews and its rains, its warmth and its light; and sustain, for their growth and ripening, the grateful vicissitude of the seasons? It is said, that from eighty to ninety per cent. of the very substance of some of the great staples of agriculture are not taken from the earth, but are absorbed from the air; so that these productions may more properly be called fruits of the atmosphere than of the soil. Who prepares this elemental wealth; who scatters it, like a sower, through all. the regions of the atmosphere, and sends the richlyfreighted winds, as His messengers, to bear to each leaf in the forest, and to each blade in the cultivated field, the nourishment which their infinitely-varied needs demand? Aided by machinery, a single manufacturer performs the labor of hundreds of men. Yet what could he accomplish without the weight of the waters which God causes ceaselessly to flow; or without those gigantic forces which He has given to steam? And how would the commerce of the world be carried on, were it not for those great laws of nature-of electricity, of condensation and of rarefaction-that give birth to the winds, which, in conformity to the will of Heaven, and not in obedience to any power of man, forever traverse the earth, and offer themselves as an unchartered medium for interchanging the products of all the zones? These few references show how vast a proportion of all the wealth which men presumptuously call their own, because they claim to have earned it, is poured into their lap, unasked and unthanked for, by the Being, so infinitely gracious in his physical, as well as in his moral bestowments.

But, for whose subsistence and benefit, were these exhaustless treasuries of wealth created? Surely not for any one man, nor for any one generation; but for the subsistence and benefit of the whole race, from the beginning to the end of time. They were not created for Adam alone, nor for Noah alone, nor for the first discoverers or colonists who may have found or have peopled any part of the earth's ample domain. No! They were created for the race, collectively, but to be possessed and enjoyed in succession, as the generations, one after another, should come into existence; equal rights, with a successive enjoyment of them! If we consider the earth and the fulness thereof, as one great habitation or domain, then each generation, subject to certain modifications for the encouragement of industry and frugality-which modifications it is not necessary here to specify-has only a life-lease in them. There are certain reasonable regulations in regard to the out-going and the incoming tenants-regulation which allow to the out-going generations a brief control over their property after they are called upon to leave it, and which also allow the incoming generations to anticipate a little their full right of possession. But, subject to these regulations, nature ordains a perpetual entail and transfer, from one generation to

another, of all property in the great, substantive, enduring elements of wealth-in the soil; in metals and minerals; in precious stones, and in more precious coal, and iron, and granite; in the waters and winds and sun; and no one man, nor any one generation of men, has any such title to, or ownership in, these ingredients and substantials of all wealth, that his right is invaded when a portion of them is taken for the benefit of posterity.

This great principle of natural law, may be illustrated by a ref erence to some of the unstable elements, in regard to which the property of each individual is strongly qualified in relation to his contemporaries, even while he has the acknowledged right of possession. Take the streams of water, or the wind, for example. A stream, as it descends from its sources to its mouth, is succesively the property of all those through whose land it passes. My neighbor who lives above me owned it yesterday, while it was passing through his lands; I own it to-day, while it is descending through mine, and the contiguous proprietor below will own it to-morrow, while it is flowing through his, as it passes onward to the next. But the rights of the successive owners are not absolute and unqualified. They are limited by the rights of those who are entitled to the subsequent possession and use. While a stream is passing through my lands, I may not corrupt it, so that it shall be offensive or valueless to the adjoining proprietor below. I may not stop it in its downward course, nor divert it into any other direction so that it shall leave his channel dry. I may lawfully use it for various purposes, for agriculture, as in irrigating lands or watering cattle; for manufactures, as in turning wheels, &c.; but, in all my uses of it, I must pay regard to the rights of my neighbors lower down. So no two proprietors, nor any half dozen proprietors, by conspiring together, can deprive an owner who lives below them all, of the ultimate right which he has to the use of the stream in its descending course. We see here, therefore, that a man has certain qualified rights, rights of which he cannot be divested without his own consent, in a stream of water, before it reaches the limits of his own estate; at which latter point, he may, somewhat more emphatically, call it his own. And, in this sense, a man who lives at the outlet of a river, on the margin of the ocean, has certain incipient rights in the fountains that well up from the earth, at the distance of thousands of miles.

So it is with the ever-moving winds. No man has a permanent interest in the breezes that blow by him, and bring healing and refreshment on their wings. Each man has a temporary interest in them. From whatever quarter of the compass they may come, I have a right to use them as they are passing by me; yet that use must always be regulated by the rights of those other participants and co-owners whom they are moving forward to bless. It is not lawful, therefore, for me to corrupt them, to load them with noxious gases or vapors, by which they will prove valueless or detrimental to him, whoever he may be, towards whom they are moving.