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or their vario us positions, endeavoring inevery reasonable way
to render the system popular, by making it do a good work
for all the people, it will live to scatter its blessings upon the
generation, which will ere long rise up and call those blessed
who provided the Free Schools in which every child can be
taught. The words of an eminent and zealous supporter of
Free Education are true : "In our time and in our country,
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 eloquence, he
may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy and juris-
prudence, and by these he might claim in other countries the
elevated rank of statesman; but unless he speaks, plans and
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."

Baniel Webster congratulated himself " that his first
speech in entering public life was in behalf of public educa-
tion. Education, said he, to accomplish the ends of good
government, should be universally diffused. Let no man
have the excuse of poverty for not educating his offspring.
Place the means of education within his reach, and if they
remain in ignorance, be it his own reproach."

Speaking of the noble mission of education, the same emi-
nent man said: "If we work upon marble, it will perish;
If we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples,
they, will crumble into dust; but if we work on men's im-
mortal minds, if we imbue them with high principles, with
the just fear of God and their fellow men, we engrave oa
those tablets something which no time can efface, but which
shall brighten and brighten to all eternity."

L. VAN BOKKELEN,
State Superintendent of Public Instruction.