years ago, made the education of all citizens obligatory. In the so-called Holy Roman Empire in the eighth century Charlemagne required the children of all participating in the government to attend school, so that political power might be in cultivated hands.

In the simplest form of government, military despotism, the officers before obtaining commands undergo careful training and discipline, and are even then selected by an authority still more intelligent.

In China the educated alone carry on the government. Confucius and Mencius taught that system, and it seems to have been practiced long before their time. As a consequence, the Chinese have endured longer as an independent nation, govern a larger population, and sustain more human beings to the square mile, than any other people on the globe. The intelligence of a country must and will rule it, even if it requires a radical change of government to bring this about. It is a law of man's nature. Disaster follows the violation of this natural law.

In the face of these examples, could we expect the South, with universal suffrage, fifty-one per cent. of which cannot read, to be an exception to this heretofore universal rule, especially when the situation was not one of their own choosing?

Education and Productive Industry.

The illiterates, white and colored, in the Southern States, as in every other country, are not, as a body, of themselves and uncontrolled, capable of steady industry and economy. They eke out a subsistence, but add little or nothing to the permanent wealth and prosperity of their States. Their wants are few, and

are simply and easily supplied; they are not provident and calcu. lating, and are not urged on to wealth and higher civilization by the spurs of ambition.

Give them education, and their wants multiply as their ideas expand. They at once begin to take thought for the morrow, and are stimulated to labor and to save. Their stolid faces, their rude huts, their tattered garments, their lazy motions, all begin to brighten up and quicken. They take better care of their health, work to more advantage, demand better tools, and cultivate the soil or labor in the mechanic's shop with more success. Common laborers, with such an education as the free common school gives, are found by actual experiment to be worth to the State, as mere producing machines, on an average fifty per cent. more than if illiterate. In other words, the 3,000,000 of illiter

ates in the South would, if they had a common school education, accomplish on the average fifty per cent. more of productive work per year than they now do. This would be equivalent, as a wealthcreating power, to adding a million and a half to the industrial population of the cotton States, and nothing to the cost of sup porting them. Allowing a hundred dollars as the year's production of a laborer, it would add $150,000,000 to the annual product of these States. Some of these States are now repudiating their State debts from alleged inability to pay them. Their whole amount is only some $150,000,000. Were their laborers not illiterate, these very laborers could out of their earnings pay this entire debt in one year, and still have left for their support as much as they now consume.

Education reduces Pauperism and Crime.

The South is oppressed with pauperism and petty crimes. But these are the natural products of its illiteracy. In the three States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois the illiterates furnish thirty times their proportionate share of paupers, and ten times their proportionate share of criminals. Illiterates in the whole country commit ten times their numerical proportion of crimes; in New England, fifty-three times. In the State of New York a single illiterate family, as is shown in a work just published by an emiment investigator, have become in less than a century the progenitors of twelve hundred paupers and criminals. Illiteracy is prolific of public burdens, and contributes little or nothing to the public wealth. Yet it is possible by education to reduce crime in this country ninety per cent. and pauperism ninety-six per cent The Grand Duchy of Baden by universal education in seven years reduced the number of crimes fifty-one per cent., and the number of paupers twenty-five per cent. The South, instead of multiplying crimes on her statute books and increasing the severity of their punishments, should multiply her free schools, and add to the rigor of her laws for compulsory attendance.

She has millions of acres of rich but unoccupied and unsalable land. The land in a State peopled by cultivated citizens is in demand at a high price, while in an illiterate community it can hardly be sold for the taxes. She invites immigration. But the current of immigration cannot be turned to States where fifty-one and a quarter per cent. of the adult population are illiterate, and where the education of children is not provided for at public ex

pense. The industrious and prudent immigrant prefers the treeless plains and bleak winters of Nebraska, with her free common schools, to the tropical abundance of Louisiana, with her 92,105 ragged, idle, illiterate youth.

Conferring the suffrage upon the freedmen has, by a ten years' experiment on a large scale, demonstrated to the American people that a large percentage of ignorant voters in a State is radically destructive of good government and prosperity, both public and private. Hence the persistent and just demand of the Southern States to control their own affairs; and their efforts, however despotic, cruel and unjust to the freedmen, to destroy or neutralize the illiterate colored vote.

There are two remedies for the evils which oppress them. The one, partial and unjust, is to take away the suffrage from all the illiterates, both white and colored. But this is impracticable, and it would change the govermnent to an oli garchy; besides, it would leave the root of the difficulty, illiteracy, like a cancer in their vitals, corrupting and consuming the life-blood of the States. The other, permanent and humane, is to establish and support throughout their borders the free common school within reach of every child, and require him to attend it, or to get an equivalent education elsewhere; and after a certain date, say ten years after the school is provided, admit no illiterate, either white or colored, to the right of suffrage.

This will cost money, but it will in one generation eradicate the evil of ignorant suffrage, insure the perpetuity of the republic, and put the Southern States on a basis of enduring and solid prosperity that can be attained in no other way. Till this is done a republic there, in the sense in which Jefferson understood it, is impossible. Like Rome under the Consuls, or like Venice under the Council of Ten, they may retain the name of free government, but not the substance.

Ignorant men in large bodies can only be ruled by intelligent force; and statesmen in all countries know it. To educate the people is the plain duty of the State, and one that is fast being recognized and fulfilled by all enlightened countries. The property within a State is under obligation to educate the children, however poor, of every inhabitant. This is a law of modern civilization. It is greatly to the advantage of the property-holders to recognize and carry into effect this law.

Republican Switzerland, imperial Germany, and monarchical

England are obeying this law, greatly to their domestic peace and profit. It removes from society one of its greatest dangers, namely, masses of ignorant, unreasoning, and prejudiced laborers. It adds from fifty to one hundred per cent. to the productive power of a people in time of peace, and doubles its objective force in time of war. Pennsylvania has suffered more damage in one year from her 67,000 illiterate adult laborers than it would have cost her to have secured in the last ten years the education of every one of them. She will continue to be punished periodically by such outbreaks till, by compulsory education, she changes her ignorant and brutal coal and iron miners to intelligent and reasonable beings.

The valuation of the Southern States for taxation is about the same as that of the State of New York-in round numbers, $2,000,000,000. They pay annually for free public education, in round numbers, $7,000,000, while the State of New York pays $12,000,000. In other words, they tax themselves for free public education only seven-twelfths as much as we tax ourselves. They are equal members of the Republic with us, possess equal rights and privileges, and it is not unreasonable in us to ask them to tax themselves as heavily for free schools as we do. This will enable them to increase their free educational facilities seventy per cent.; and when they have provided the schools they should be asked to make laws, as we have, requiring the children to attend them regularly for some definite and reasonable proportion of the year.

When this is accomplished they will still be giving their children only about one-third the advantages of education that we give ours, for their school population is 5,000,000, while that of the State of New York is only a little more than 1,500,000. They are now spending on the average only about one dollar and fifty cents per year on each child for free public instruction, while we expend eight dollars; and when they raise their annual expenditure to $12,000,000, it will be only about two dollars and a half to each child of the school age.

DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.

While they are doing this, what, as members of the same government, neighbors and well-wishers, is our duty to them? A large portion of their population is illiterate, and their assessed property chiefly real estate; hence they cannot collect money by taxation with the facility that we can. From the invention of the cotton gin to the year 1860 they ground out wealth from the face of the

ignorant colored man; and we, as manufacturers and merchants transacting their business, took a share of it.

Suppose, now, in some form we return to them a part of that wealth to enable them to educate these same colored men or their children. Their school funds were dissipated during the Rebellion. But all the States north and west of the Ohio have received a princely school fund from the general Government: namely, the proceeds of one section of land in each township, and since 1848 the proceeds of two sections. A large part of this land east of the Mississippi came as a free gift to the National Government in 1780 from the State of Virginia, and, happily, with a clause inserted in the gift by a member of Congress from Massachusetts requiring the devotion of a part of it to a school fund for the States to be created out of it. Let us from all parts of the Union urge our members of Congress and Senators to perfect, preserve, and perpetuate our free institutions and our capacity for self gov ernment, by enacting such laws, organic and statute, as shall secure for all future time to all children within the borders of each State the benefits at least of a good elementary education.

The new States were never at any time in so great need of educational help as the South is now; for they from their first settlement had an intelligent population, while it will require generations of free schools and millions of money to bring the Southern illiterates up to the level of the Western pioneers.

Public Land for Public Instruction.

The National Government receives from the sale of public lands from one to three millions a year. Let us appropriate this money for free common schools, and, say for ten years, distribute it to the respective States according to their population of illiterates, and require them to use it, under the supervision of the National Commissioner of Education, for free common schools, and to train teachers for these schools, both white and colored, according to the ratio of the two classes of illiterates. This would be putting the money emphatically where it would do the most good, and it would be paying back to the colored people some small part of the money that we, both North and South, have ground out of them; and, by lifting up the poor whites, compensate them in part for the damage resulting from slavery. It would do more to restore the South to enduring peace and prosperity than hundreds of millions spent there in levees and railroads, and other mere