he gave a course of forty-five public lectures before the Teachers' Institutes, held in the several counties of that State, instructing in all over three thousand teachers in the science and practice of pedagogy.

In 1849 he became Principal of Topsham Academy, an institution for fitting young men for college, and preparing them to teach the winter sessions of the public schools. With such acceptance had he lectured and taught, that in 1851 he was offered a professorship of mathematics in a New England College, and also the secretaryship of the Board of Education; but with a strong predilection for the legal profession, he declined both, having already entered the office of Hon. William Pitt Fessenden, of Portland, as student of law. In the winter of 1851-2 he attended the lectures of the Law school of Harvard College, and in the summer of the same year visited Europe for an extended tour, to enlarge his horizon of public affairs, and study systems and institutions of education, and the proceedings of judicial tribunals in different countries, and to attend the Law School at Paris. While in London, in the summer of 1853, it was his good fortune, as the attorney of an American firm, to bring a long protracted litigation to a successful issue, by which his first fee (and a large one-$1,000) was earned.

On his return to the United States, on the invitation of the Superintendent of Common Schools (Dr. Barnard), he assisted in conducting three Teachers' Institutes in Connecticut, in the months of October and November, and thus closed his active personal work in the professional education of teachers; and January 2, 1854, he opened his present office at No. 10 Wall street, New York, for the diligent and lucrative practice of law. But he has had the will and has found the time to take an active interest in the affairs of his own church, city, state, and nation, and at the same time enjoy, in a quiet way, all the comforts of domestic life, and give personal attention to the education of his children, two of whom are now (1881) in Harvard, one in Vassar College.

Although debarred, by an accident in his boyhood, from any military aspiration, he assisted, in the war of the Rebellion, in raising two regiments for others to command.

In the agitation of the subject of a national recognition of schools, Mr. Hawkins, through the press, and by personal correspondence with members of Congress, assisted in the establishing at Washington, in 1867, the Department of Education, which, in 1870, was made a Bureau in the Department of the Interior, at the head of which is the Commissioner of Education. Mr. Hawkins' plan and efforts were to make the Commissioner a Cabinet Officer, with administrative

functions extending to all institutions of science and education originated by the Government for its own purposes, or aided by national appropriations, and capable of expansion to meet the exigences of the nation.

In 1869, and in 1871, he entered with his usual earnestness into the public discussion of the policy of the City or the State making appropriations of public property in aid of private, educational, and charitable institutions established by religious bodies for the care and instruction of orphan, poor, and neglected children, and others belonging to parents in connection with such bodies. Mr. Hawkins took decided ground against such appropriations-directing his researches and arguments specially against the large appropriations to Catholic institutions of this class. His pamphlets were widely circulated, and contributed largely to constitutional changes and legislation adopted by New York to limit the amount, and narrow the scope of such appropriations. His principal document was a Report to the Council of Political Reform, entitled, Sectarian Appropriation of Public Moneys and Property, and the Duty of the State to Protect the Free Common Schools by Organic Law."*

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In 1873 the Council of Political Reform took up the grave evil of non-attendance at school, and to this body Mr. Hawkins addressed, in the name of a committee, a report on its extent, and the necessity of a law authorizing School Boards, in each city, town, and incorporated village, to require the attendance at some school, public or private, of all children between the ages of eight and fifteen years, unless for good and sufficient reasons temporarily excused. This report, under the title of "Compulsory School Attendance," and Compulsory Education," has had a very wide circulation as a pamphlet, and has been largely reprinted in newspapers and magazines in this, as well as in other countries. In the State of New York it led to the enactment, in 1874, of a bill drawn up by Mr. Hawkins, entitled an "Act to secure to Children the Benefits of Elementary Education." The same bill in substance has since then, on the strength of his arguments, been enacted in numerous other States and Territories, and will doubtless become the common law of the land.

The principle of compulsion is as old as the school law of Massachusetts in 1642, and of Connecticut in 1650, and in some form exists in most of the school codes of all European States. The impulse given, by Mr. Hawkins' bill, to the renewed discussion, and the more stringent legislation of several States, has already secured a larger and more regular school attendance. But the evil still

*See Barnard's Journal of Education, Vol. XXX, p. 817.

exists, and the problem of neglected children is not solved, and we fear will not be by any number of Truant Officers until a more vigorous and enlightened public sentiment is evoked from the consciences of parents. Our whole system of public instruction must be reconstructed from the foundation, so as to reach children between the ages of three and eight, by the Kindergarten and the Primary School, by which the home and the school shall be brought into direct connection through the warm, coöperating sympathy of parents and teachers. School attendance must be made a habit early in life, and private and parental action must be stimulated to secure this paramount object.

In the problem of reconstruction of the South, Mr. Hawkins, by pen and voice, labored to introduce the factor of the free public school. In March, 1875, he delivered an address in Boston on the subject,. which was printed in a pamphlet of thirty-two pages, bearing the title of "The Educational Problem in the Cotton States." With a convincing array of facts drawn from official sources, he demonstrates the proposition that it is the interest and the duty of these States to provide, by tax on property and other wise legislation, for the free elementary instruction of every child within their borders. He recommends an amendment of the National Constitution empowering the Federal Government, in case of any State neglecting to make this provision, to intervene in the interest of the whole country and perform it. This address was widely circulated, and even the entire pamphlet of thirty-two pages was reprinted in a large number of papers in the States directly interested.

In September, 1877, Mr. Hawkins delivered before the American Social Science Association, at the annual meeting at Saratoga, an address on "Education, the Need of the South," bristling with the statistics of illiteracy among both whites and blacks, and demonstrating by solid arguments the inevitable results of such ignorance on society, business, and politics. The remedy pointed out was-wise State Legislation, aided by immediate and liberal coöperation of the National Government in the appropriation, for a term of years for free common schools, of the proceeds of the sales of the public land, and their distribution among the States, according to the number of illiterates in each. This address was widely copied in the public press of the South, and in the discussion which it aroused has helped largely to shape public sentiment for some decided action of Congress in this direction. A bill to this effect passed the Senate in December, 1880.

In 1871 a paper prepared by him at the request of Dr. Peck

(now Bishop Peck), on the "Extravagance of the Tammany Ring," was published in the New York Times, June 30th of that year, and by its wide republication in other papers helped to arrest the attention of the whole country to the astounding fact that in twenty-eight months an addition of over fifty millions had been made, without the knowledge of the people, to the debt of the City of New York. It lead to the speedy overthrow of the ring.

The overthrow of the now "infamous Tweed Ring" led to the exposure of many devices by which politicians contrive to keep the people blinded to their movements by subsidizing the public press, aud thus securing silence, or apologies, or open advocacy of measures of insidious and even flagrant enormity. When the scrutiny and approval of bills against the City Treasurer was transferred from a corrupt official to a man of Spartan integrity and firmness, Andrew H. Green, it was discovered that these infamous politicians had virtually in their pay in the city of New York twenty-eight daily and sixty weekly papers-eighty-nine organs by which the popular intelligence and public opinion were in a great measure formed. For five years over a million of dollars a year-the sum of five million dollars in five years, had been incurred under the guise of advertising for the city government. The Controller refused to pay these bills until the claims of each item was adjusted. Three millions had already been paid, and to override the decision of the Controller the claimants or their agents applied to the Legislature at Albany for a law compelling the city to pay. Many prominent lawyers, invited to appear for the city before the committee having these and other bills to deplete the public treasury, refused for want of time or adequate compensation, or unwillingness to incur the abuse of the parties exposed or defeated. Mr. Hawkins, on the application of the Controller, spent several months at Albany in the interests of the city. He showed that some of those bills had been already paid, and that the city held their receipts in full, but as a portion of the money had been divided with the "Ring," the papers wished to be paid again; other bills were shown to be charged at many a fair price, and had already been paid more than was just; other claims were shown to be pure frauds,-a sheet of advertisements had been bought for a trifling sum, on which a newspaper heading had been printed, and then the whole page charged at forty cents a line; in another a whole file for a daily paper for six months had been manufactured out of a single issue contained in a page of city advertisements, by simply running the date in the heading back day by day for half a year, thus making the charge more than one hun

times

dred and fifiy times what it should be. In the face of these exposures several of these claims were withdrawn, and the Legislature threw out the whole bill designed for a public act. Since this exposure the city advertising has cost just one-seventh of the sum paid under the Tammany Ring.

In 1873. in a pamphlet, entitled, "Donations of Public Property to Private Corporations and the Illegal Exemptions of the same from Taxation," Mr. Hawkins shows that upwards of ten millions of public property in the City of New York had been given to private corporations, and that more than half of this vast sum escaped taxation. This exposure of the abuses of municipal legislation and administration led not only to local reform, but to an amendment of the State Constitution prohibiting the donation of public property to private corporations.

In 1879, within twenty-four hours after the publication of Governor Robinson's annual message to the Legislature, in which the Chief Magistrate had assailed for a second time the common school system of the State for going beyond the requirements of the old curriculum of reading, writing, and cyphering, and trying to provide teachers beyond the old district school standard-Mr. Hawkins addressed an open "letter to the Governor of the Empire State," the purport of which neither Governor Robinson or the State will soon forget. In this letter Mr. Hawkins exposes in clear, logical, and forcible language, the sophistical statements of the opponents of a graded system of public schools in all cities and populous districts; and shows the necessity of a higher grade for the older and more advanced pupils, in order to secure the instruction demanded by the duties of American citizenship, and the claims of intelligent and skilled labor, and at the same time give efficiency to the grades below. In our system of public (not charity) schools, the children of the poor and laboring classes must have equal advantages of education for citizenship as the children of the rich and professional classes; and to have good public schools, their teachers must be properly trained and adequately paid.

In 1873 Mr. Hawkins published a literary gem-"Traditions of Overlook Mountain,” and in 1875 delivered the annual address before the Syracuse University "On the Anglo Saxon Race-its History, Character, and Destiny," which was printed both as a pamphlet and in the Methodist Quarterly Review. In 1880 he prepared a pamphlet on "The Roman Catholic Church in New York City and the Public Land and Public Money," which assails any further grants to religious bodies. It is published by the Tract Society.