feeling the sovereign sentiment of duty as plainly as we feel the earth beneath our feet-will hurry us forward into regions populous with every form of evil" After a masterly analysis and discussion of thoз3 "innate organic dispositions," after showing that these dispositions are necessary to existence and therefore ineradicable, and showing also "the means and stimulants our institutions have provided for the use of the mighty powers and passions they have unloosed," the facilities furnished wicked men for all departments of wickedness, and the "community of power" established by universal suffrage, he asks, "has it been sufficiently considered that all which has been said-and truly said—of the excellence of our institutions, if administered by an upright poople, must be reversed and read backwards, if administered by a corrupt one?" "From this view of the subject it is obvious that we may become just as much worse than any other nation that ever existed, as the founders of our institutions hoped we should be better. If the propensities are to prevail, then speculation will supersede industry; violence will usurp the prerogatives of the law; the witness will be perjured upon the stand, and the guilty will be rescued by forsworn jurors; the grand council halls of the nation will be converted from an Areopagus of wise and reverend men, into a gladiatorial ring; the depositories of public and private trusts will administer them for personal ends; not only individuals but States will become reckless of their obligations; elections will be decided by bribery and corruption; and the newspaper press, which scatters its sheets over the country, thick as snow flakes in a wintry storm, will justify whatever is wrong on one side, and vilify whatever is right on the other, until nothing that is right will be left on either."

After showing that no sufficient controlling forces exist among us to save the nation from these terrible propensities except reason, conscience, and a sense of responsibility to God, and that these can be elevated into predominant power and control only during the teachable years of childhood-this great writer and statesman concludes, "In our country, and in our

times,no man is worthy the honored name of statesman, who does not include the highest practicable education of the people in all his plans of administration. He may have cloquence, he may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy, jurisprudence; and by these he might claim in other countries, the elevated rank of a statosman; but unless he speaks, plans, labors at all times and in all places, for the culture and edification of the whole people, he is not, he cannot be an American statesman."

I have ventured on this long array of the opinions of the great publicists and statesmen of our country, because the tremendous dangers through which we are passing bid us look well to the foundations on which our liberties rest; and because I have found in former legislatures a greater readiness to confess these great truths in theory than to follow them in practico. Just as if these solemnly asserted principles were mere "glittering generalities" made to grace governors' messages, but meaningless in actual affairs! Heaven forbid that we shall demonstrate their practical truthfulness by our downfall under their slighted force! Whether my voice shall be heeded or not, I cannot close my official labors without declaring plainly the conviction that weighs painfully upon me, that our school system is not yet equal to the emergencies of our country and our times. The evident increase of public corruptions and the too palpable lapse of political integrity, warn us that we must rouse into higher and stronger action the conscience and reason of the nation. With a fourth of the people in rebellion, and thousands of others showing undisguised sympathy with the rebels, we may well ask, are our schools doing their work well?

AMENDMENT OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM.

I have repeatedly urged several important and much needed reforms in the school system of the State. Why these reforms have not been made it is difficult to see. Demanded in many casos by the voice of the people, approved by all sound educa tional authorities, tested and found valuable in other States, ably urged with sound and unanswered arguments, they have

been rejected by our Legislature without one sound objection being urged against them, and sometimes on pretenses as fri olous as they were foreign.

Each succeeding year has made these reforms more necessary and important, and I here declare my earnest belief that this Legislature is bound by all the highest considerations of public safety and well being to make at once these long sought and much needed changes in our school system.

1. A thorough and efficient system of supervision of the school interests by a body of county superintendents. It is needless to add arguments to those advanced in former reports for this change. It is a shame for us to adhere to the almost useless and farcical system of township inspectors, while our sister States all around us are rejoicing in the new and wonderful impulse given to their school systems by the adoption of this wiser and better plan of county supervision.

2. The inauguration of a township school system in place of the district system. Let me refer again to former reports for the explanation and argumentation of this system. He must be indeed a timid man who would fear to venture on the experiment of this change after its marked and triumphant success in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and half a dozen other States; and he is a very prejudicial man who can doubt or deny its superiority after the testimony and arguments of such men as Horace Mann, Gov. Boutwell, and the other eminent school officers and educators, who have given it their cordial approbation.

3. The wise apportionment of the proceeds of the two will tax so as to afford an equal support to all the schools in the township, in case the district system is retained. If the township system is adopted the difficulty of apportionment all disappears.

4. The provision of additional facilities for the education of teachers, by the establishment of Normal classes in our high schools and colleges, under the strict control and supervision of the State Board of Education and the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

5. A regular and sufficient provision for the maintenance and

increase of the district libraries. I frankly confess that had I foreseen the simultaneous withdrawal of all stated and regular appropriations for the libraries, I should never have advocated the change from the township to the district system. If they were to be left to melt away without any replenishment, as far too many of them have been, the township library would doubtless take the longest time to disappear. But without a single misgiving as to the correctness of my opinion of the superior usefulness of district libraries, notwithstanding the complaints of some unreflecting minds-and without any abatement of my faith in the vast utility, and indeed the vital need to our educational system of these libraries, notwithstanding the seeming popular indifference to them, I do most confidently re-urge that legislative provision be made for their support. That the libraries are abundantly read is sufficiently proved by the rapid wear of the books: that these books are so reluctantly replaced is evidence only that our people are not yet fully awake to the importance of education, nor fully aware of the necessary means for its successful promotion. The testimony of the few districts that have thoroughly tested the value of a well supplied and wisely managed library, must certainly weigh more than that of a thousand districts that have given these libraries no such trial. The arguments of my former reports have never been questioned or refuted.

I firmly believe that all these changes might be safely adopted at once, and that, if adopted, they would give to our educational interests an impulse that would carry them to a hight of prosperity never yet reached by them. Nay, more: I affirm that the very life of our school system demands that these changes be made at once to save our schools from decay, and to reinspire that public zeal which has done much more to give success to our school system than all the fancied excellence of the system itself. The Legislature owes it to the people whose education, as has been shown, is so linked with their political salvation, to make without any further delay, these amendments which have

been patiently asked for through so many years.

Doubtless timid men will shrink from doing so much at one session; but they should recollect that a thorough renovation of a faulty machinery is wiser than a succession of partial repairs. Others who have possessed themselves with exaggerated notions of the perfectness of the school system, will now as heretofore, oppose any changes as sacreligious meddling with that which is too good to be improved. It might cure them of this senseless idolatry, if they would but pass over the lines into each and every State in the North, and hear men of their own type, as they certainly would, lauding with indiscriminate praise their respective school systems as the best in the world. Let every excellency of our system be retained by all means; but let its obvious defects be remedied without hesitation and without delay. Too much time has already been lost, and our schools have suffered already too much for the lack of a needful and long sought reform. Our school system, once among the best, is in danger of becoming the poorest of all, if, while our sister States continue to adopt every improvement that experience suggests, we stubbornly refuse to make any changes or reforms.

In the appendix immediately following this report, are reprinted, for the use of the present Legislature, some of the arguments urged in former reports, in behalf of several of these reforms.

OTHER REFORMS.

It is not pretended that mere legal reforms will of themselves give full and final success to our school system. Public senti ment needs to be roused and directed to the work of education. Popular objections and fallacies need to be answered and removed, and the great popular heart quickened to a deeper feeling of the vital necessity of giving a right culture to the rising generation. In many of our more advanced communities, a high public regard for education already exists; as iş evidenced by the taxes so generously voted, and by the magni fcent school buildings that have been so freely provided; bub