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canvass, or carry an election. They must not denounce the whole Southern people as negro-haters or bulldozers, but know and realize that everywhere throughout the South there are thousands of earnest, thoughtful, and patriotic men who spend anxious days and sleepless nights pondering a problem that seems impossible of solution. If the South, writhing like Laocoön in the coils of the serpent, sometimes strikes out wildly, blindly, madly, in vain attempts to extricate herself, it ill becomes those who fastened the monster upon her to deride or denounce her ill-advised and frantic efforts.

She has the right to demand from the people of the North, and especially from the Republican party, sympathy, not obloquy, counsel, not condemnation, and, even for the excesses and misdeeds into which her sufferings may hurry her, the tender compassion which dropped a tear upon the record of Uncle Toby's oath.

H. H. CHALMERS.

THE SUCCESS OF THE FREE-SCHOOL SYSTEM.

THE American system of public schools is doubtless the most characteristic, and is generally considered as the most vitally important of all the institutions which contribute to the well-being of the people. It is well known that this system originated more than two centuries ago with the Puritan colonists of New England, who thus early made ample provision, according to the measure of the times, for education, by establishing elementary schools, high schools, and colleges, upon the principle that it is the right and the duty of government to provide for the instruction of all youth, and that, for this purpose, every man should be held subject to taxation in proportion to his property. This principlethe primitive rock on which the public school is founded-long ago ceased to be peculiar to one section of the country. But by degrees it has at length come to be adopted, in substance, by all the States of the Union.

Up to the time of the Revolution, the advantages of free public schools had not been enjoyed beyond the limits of the colonies in which they originated. During the succeeding period of fifty or sixty years, efforts were made, with more or less success, to establish systems of public instruction in the States of the other sections of the country. These efforts were stimulated and aided by the policy adopted by the general government, whereby the sixteenth section of every township in the new States was reserved for the maintenance of public schools. The cause was also materially promoted by the weighty influence of the most eminent of the founders of the republic. That noble sentiment respecting the importance of the general diffusion of knowledge, to which Washington gave utterance in his farewell address, was at once accepted very generally as an axiom of political philosophy. The liberal provision for education contained in the consti

tution of Massachusetts, which has been of inestimable advantage, not only to that State, but to the country at large, came from the pen of John Adams one hundred years ago. Earlier, by one year, Jefferson took the most advanced position in respect to public instruction by framing an educational code for Virginia, providing for free education of all grades, from the primary school to the college, thus anticipating by a century Huxley's ideal system, which he describes as "a great educational ladder, with one end in the gutter and the other in the university." Although he did not live to see its adoption, he declared his unflagging devotion to the cause in words worthy of the author of the Declaration :

"A system of general education which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so it shall be the latest of all the concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest."

The results attained during this period were scarcely more than beginnings. The foundations of a system were laid, however, in most of the States, and some experiments were made in the way of building upon them. But as yet the organizations were rudimentary, the means of support were sadly deficient, and, indeed, most of the elements of efficiency and success were wanting. Private schools and academies were multiplied, while the public schools were comparatively neglected.

The modern epoch of the system, the epoch of development, of organization, of efficiency, began, rather more than forty years ago, with the inauguration of State supervision, which has been the fruitful source of most of the manifold improvements which have since been introduced. During this last period, and especially within the last twenty-five years, the growth and progress of the system in the States north of the Potomac and Ohio have been scarcely less than marvelous. To be convinced of this, one has only to examine the official reports showing the increase of schools, of teachers, and of expenditures for educational purposes, of normal schools, of teachers' institutes, and of other organizations for raising the qualifications of teachers; describing the improvements in supervision, in school-houses, in text-books, in courses of study, in apparatus, and all the appliances of instruction, in the methods of teaching and discipline, in classification, grading, and attendance; and exhibiting, finally, the multiplication and enlargement of free schools for instruction in the higher branches of knowledge.

Notwithstanding this undeniable progress, so familiar to every school-man, and of which the evidence is abundant and conclusive, attempts are made by its opponents to discredit it and bring it into disfavor with the people. This is no new phenomenon. In every stage of its onward march it has been subjected to adverse criticism, in which ignorance of the topics discussed, unreasoning caprice, self-conceit, and sectarian bigotry have been in turn conspicuous. The most opposite and contradictory faults have been laid to the charge of the schools. Now they are complained of for teaching too much, and educating the pupils out of their proper sphere; then they are pronounced unworthy of confidence, because they fail to teach even the rudiments of education. They are accused of being godless and sectarian at the same time. While one critic is depicting the evils resulting from overworking the pupils, another is dilating on the waste of time in holidays and vacations. But of all the descriptions of fault-finding in which the opponents of public schools indulge, perhaps the most unjust and nonsensical is that which, ignoring altogether the incalculable good they have accomplished, blames them for not yet having succeeded in curing every political and social disease.

No intelligent friend of the public schools pretends that they have yet done all the good of which they are capable, or denies that very many of them urgently need improvement. But it is claimed that the system is sound in its fundamental principles, that its results fully justify the general confidence in its transcendent utility, and more than justify its cost, that it is simply indispensable to the general welfare, and that the only thing to be done with it is to go on improving it indefinitely. But it is obvious that, in a free country like ours, the cause of popular education can be advanced only as the result of a corresponding advancement of public opinion on the subject. This advancement is promoted by all the agencies and means which tend to convey to the people at large a better understanding of the true theory and proper scope of the public-school system, and a fuller knowledge of its capabilities, as well as of the actual benefits derived from it. One of the most effectual of these means is judicious, honest, intelligent, disinterested criticism-a criticism which aims to make things appear as in themselves they really are. Such criticism is to be welcomed as an essential means of progress. But there is another description which has

a tendency to produce the opposite effect. Its influence is obstructive and reactionary. Instead of showing things as they really are, misrepresentation is its characteristic.

A type of this kind of criticism is found in an article published in a recent number of this REVIEW, entitled "The PublicSchool Failure," by Richard Grant White. My purpose in the present paper is to submit, to substantially the same readers, an examination of the facts and arguments by which it is attempted to prove the failure of the public-school system, and to indicate briefly some of the evidences of its success.

This article is selected for analysis because it is the latest attack on the system, over a responsible name, which has fallen under my notice, and from the further consideration that, being the production of a writer of fair standing in the literary world, who has given proof of industry in literary work, it may reasonably be supposed to present the case against the schools in the strongest form of which it is capable. This writer does not pretend that he is pointing out the defects and short-comings of the system with a view to remedying them. In his view the theory of the system is false, its results a failure, and its destruction is to be desired as a public blessing. He does not seem to think knowledge of much account for the generality of mankind. He would even have us believe that the more illiterate communities are in a considerably better condition, in certain respects, than those which have longest enjoyed the advantages of the best public schools. His ideal of public instruction is something very different from the American public school, which is designed to be good enough for the best, and free to all. He is for reviving the old anti-democratic plan, which has generally been so satisfactory to the aristocratic feeling, of providing at the public expense only for instruction in the three R's, and that only for children whose parents are too poor to pay for their schooling.

His indictment of the existing system is comprised in two counts, the first charging failure in results, and the second unsoundness in theory.

I group together here some of his assertions as to failure in results: "There is not one of them [the institutions which are regarded as characteristic of the United States] so unworthy, of either confidence or pride [as the public-school system]; not one which has failed so completely to accomplish the end for which it

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