guage which may occasion legal controversy, yet it will be to
me, and all friends of popular education, a subject of heart-
felt congratulation if a better plan can be devised by which
greater good can be accomplished for the children who soon
will be either the active citizens of the commonwealth or the
mothers in our households, upon whose virtue and intelli-
gence will depend the progress of the State and the position
she will hold upon the roll of national wealth and honor.

The labor, responsibility and anxiety connected with so
important and extended a work as putting into operation
plans for the moral and mental training of nearly one hun-
dred, thousand children have been great, but with the bless-
ing of uninterrupted health, the guidance of the State Board
of Education and the co-operation of the able and zealous
presidents of the County School Boards and the District
Commissioners, the work has been done. It now presents its
record of diligent effort to give our children the very best
opportunities for education, at the least practicable cost to the
property of the State.

It in this report there is no direct discussion of the abstract
question of popular education as the grandest work of an
American State—it is because that question is considered to
be settled. Our policy being fixed, there need be no debate
except upon modes of administration. We have endorsed
the sentiment of Washington "in proportion as the structure
of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that
public opinion should be enlightened " We believe the edu-
cation of the people to be the only permanent basis of nation-
al prosperity and national safety. We recognize, in its most
liberal construction, the principle that every child has a right
to education—that the property of the State is morally as
well as legally pledged to secure that moral and mental
training which will make citizens virtuous, intelligent, in-
dustrious. We advocate free education, not as a charity, but
as a part of the freedom of the State, to which every child has
the same claim as it has to life, and the means necessary to
sustain it.

But supposing these higher [principles not to be recog-
nised, granting that no such natural right exists, antecedent
to and controlling all acts of assembly, we can urge the very
lowest grade of utilitarian logic, and prove that property
has an interest in universal education. It will make dollars
weigh heavier and shillings move more nimbly. There is no
farm, no bank, no mill, no shop, unless it be a grog shop,
which is not more valuable and more profitable because of
the school house. Homes are more pleasant, if located
among a well educated, than if surrounded by an ignorant
population. Thus, weighed in the balance of selfish interest,
it becomes a duty which property owes to itself to provide
education for all. Adding the arguments of the utilitarian to