influence the education of the citizens of the
State has upon its natural wealth, I think
they overlook the fact that more substantial
increase comes to a State, in manufactories,
in commerce, in trade, in agriculture, in every
department of labor by the application to those
departments of labor of intelligence, than
from any other single thing or institution that
the State can possess.
The whole object of your committee was to
necessitate that the very next session of your
legislature after the adoption of this constitu-
tion, should in spite of the legislature, give
you a uniform system of free common schools.
I ask you, gentlemen, to look at the past and
say if your legislature has ever yet given you
such a system. I ask you to take a lesson
from the past, and by its light read the pro-
bable results of the future. I ask you what
probability there is that in any ordinary ses-
sion of your legislature you will find a uni-
form system of free public education passed
through ?
I think it merely resolves itself with the
question, whether this convention does desire
for the citizens of this State, poor and rich, a
system of free common school education. I
think it resolves itself simply into the ques-
tion if they do believe that the prosperity of
this State requires it; and if they believe that
this, when the State has cast off the trammel
that has bound it for many years, is the aus-
picious time to inaugurate a new era in our
State.
It has come into the mind of some mem-
bers, by what process I know not, that all
power in this report is given to one man. It
is simply made obligatory upon your legis-
lature that at its first session it shall provide
a uniform system of free public education.
That you might have reiterated in the ears
of this legislature until the judgment trump
should sound, without any effect. Therefore
your committee did not stop there, but pro-
ceeded to say that in case of a failure upon
the part of the genera] assembly so to pro-
vide, the system reported to it—under the
first section which you have passed—by the
State superintendent should become a law and
have full effect as. if enacted by the general
assembly. Is that one-man power? If your
general assembly do not provide another sys-
tem of free common school education it
takes the responsibility before the people of
accepting the one offered. It leaves on re-
cord that it found in that report of the State
superintendent no single provision with
which it could disagree, and that the report
of the State superintendent, in every partic-
ular, met the requirements of the representa-
tives of the people of Maryland through the
legislature. That is all it does.
It is not likely that there will be found no
man in all that legislature with enough interest
in the whole subject of common school edu-
cation to attempt to improve and perfect the |
system, and in case the legislature do not
touch it, it is the same as saying to the peo-
ple of the State that upon consideration they
are perfectly content with the system pre-
sented by the State superintendent.
That is all. Yet that one thing secures to
the State of Maryland at its next session of the
legislature a uniform system or 'public In-
struction. It becomes a law like any other
law of the general assembly of Maryland,
subject to modification at subsequent sessions
of the legislature to meet the wants of the
community. Therefore, to the amendment
of my colleague of Baltimore city, I had not
the slightest objection. I did not suppose it
became indeed a law, but was to have full
effect as if enacted by the general assembly ;
and I thought it would be manifest to every
member of the convention that the system
would be subject to such alteration and
amendment and modification at subsequent
sessions of the legislature as may seem expe-
dient to that, body. Your committee be-
lieved that a general outline would both
guide the State superintendent and the legis-
lature; that it would be well to leave to the
State superintendent the duty of reporting
to the legislature a skeleton system; and let
the legislature take the responsibility of either
accepting the system presented by the super-
intendent or improving it.
Tills question was fully discussed in the
committee. They did not adopt the board of
education, of one from each election dis-
trict, because experience has shown that
upon such boards the work lo done by two
or three only of the boards of school com-
missioners in the various counties. Nay,
more; I have been told that in some coun-
ties in many cases their full board of school
commissioners met together would not be
competent by a majority vote to decide upon
the qualifications of a teacher, and that the
whole work is done by two or three men ;
and in case the other business of these gen-
tlemen does not permit them to attend, the
work is not done at all.
The board of education was constituted by
the committee and reported to the convention
in the hope of talking away this whole school
question from the sphere of politics—in the
hope that appointments made under it might
not be decided by the question whether a
man is a democrat or a whig, but whether
he was capable of performing the duties for
which be was appointed. If five good school
commissioners can be found in one election
district, take them all from the one, and ie
them examine the teachers of the various
districts to see if they are competent, Let
us not, as we have had in some cases, have
persons to examine the teachers under a sys-
tem of common school education that have
not known how to read or write. The whole
detail of the system is left to the legislature—
* of the salary and the duties of the assistant |
