culty that even their meaning can, in all cases, be ascertained." Franklin Sawyer, Jr., succeeded Mr. Pierce as Superintendent of Public Instruction. In his report, as such, in 1842, he makes this comment: "A law is hardly known in many districts before it is repealed or amended, and it not unfrequently happens that while the original law governs the official acts of one portion of a township, amendments to it, or even amendments to the amendments, regulate the conduct of another portion of the same township." Reference has been made to the first superintendent (Mr. Pierce), and to his fitness for the position. No less can be said of his successor, Mr. Sawyer. He was a New England man, and by profession a lawyer, although his tastes inclined more to the literary than to the legal field. The educational system was fortunate in being thus ably represented in the days of its infancy. There have been seventeen Superintendents of Public Instruction. Under the first Constitution they were appointed by the Governor and Legislature. Since 1851 they have been elected, except where appointments were made to fill vacancies. Ira Mayhew was appointed in 1845, serving until 1849. He was subsequently elected for two terms under the Republican regime (1854 and 1856), giving a total service of eight years. John M. Gregory served three terms, 1859-65, and Ornamel Hosford four terms, 1865-73. Su perintendents, other than those mentioned, have been: Oliver C. Comstock, 1843-45; Francis W. Shearman, 1849-54; Daniel B. Briggs, 1873-77; Horace S. Tarbell, 187779; Cornelius A. Gower, 1878-81; Varnum B. Cochran, 1881-83; Herschel R. Goss, 1883-85; Theodore Nelson, 1885-86; Joseph Estabrook, 1887-91; Ferris S. Fitch, 189192; Henry R. Pattengill, 1893-96. Jason E. Hammond is the present superintendent, having been first elected in 1896 and re-elected in 1898. Mere current statistics are of little value in a work designed for the future as well as for the present. For the purposes of reference and investigation they are the more readily found in the annual reports. But as showing the comparative progress in the matters covered by the data below, the annexed figures are given: THE TRUST FUNDS. Origin of the Trust Funds-First Loaned to Private and Local Interests-Absorbed Into the State Treasury-Constitutional Provision-Tabular Exhibits-Are the Trust Funds a Debt? The messages of the Governors of the State usually contain a reference to the "trust funds." The reports of the State Treasurer and the Auditor-General exhibit the state of the accounts current between the State and the trust funds. The trust funds have accrued from the sales of lands granted to the State for educational purposes. Reference is made to the land grants and the conditions attached to them under the heads respectively of "Educational" and "Government Land Grants." In accepting the grants under the conditions attached, the State became a party to a contract. The covenant on the part of the State was that the income from the grants should be devoted in good faith to the several purposes for which the grants were made. The State thus became a trustee, but neces as the lands are sold. The primary school interest fund is made up from interest on the principal sum, from interest received on account of part paid lands, and from specific taxes, and is apportioned semi-annually to the counties, and through the counties to the townships and school districts, according to their population of school age. Section 1, article 14, of the Constitution, provides: "All specific State taxes, except those received from the mining companies of the Upper Peninsula, shall be applied in paying the interest upon the primary school, University and other educational funds, and the interest and principal of the State debt, in the order herein recited, until the extinguishment of the State debt, other than the amounts due to educational funds, when such specific taxes shall be added to, and constitute a part of the primary school interest. fund." A table in the Auditor-General's report for 1898, page 100, shows the amount of specific taxes received during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1898, to have been $1,028,This sum was apportioned as fol sarily with a wide discretion as to the manner in which the trust should be administered. The plan of leasing the lands and relying upon the rental as income, which was at first proposed, was soon abandoned. The next most feasible plan was to sell the lands and invest the proceeds, applying the interest to the purpose for which the grant was made. This plan was adopted in 1837, and the sale of the lands placed in charge of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The proceeds were to be loaned to supposed responsible parties upon adequate security, and in some instances loans were made to counties. But ordinary business sagacity soon discovered what it should have seen beforehand, that this was a very cumbrous, uncertain and unsafe way of administering a great trust, and one opening a vast field for fraud and jobbery. Whether any of these results followed the experiment, is immaterial. In 1844 the plan was abandoned. The sale of the lands was placed in the hands of the Commissioner of the Land Office, and the proceeds turned into the State treasury. The proceeds from the sales constituted an accumulating fund, on which the State agreed to pay, and has ever since continued to pay, interest at the rate of seven per cent. per annum. Two objects were thus secured: The State treasury was replenished by so much, and the people to that extent relieved from taxation in their then impoverished condition, and the fund was relieved from the uncertainty and insecurity of being loaned in small sums to Tom, Dick and Harry. The lands were sold, and are being sold, on part payments, the sums paid going into the treasury and being cred-gether with $309,518.52 to the credit of the ited up to the proper fund, thus adding to the principal indebtedness on which annual interest is paid, while the interest on the unpaid portion is credited up to the interest fund, which is drawn upon in behalf of the beneficiary and a balance struck each year. There are thus two accounts kept, as, for example, with the primary school fund. The primary school fund proper never suffers any diminution, but is steadily being added to, 832.40. lows: Interest on Normal School Fund. Surplus to credit of Primary School interest fund $ 3.957 59 41,234 84 37,139 45 309,518 52 391,849 90 636,982 50 $ $1,028,832 40 It thus appears that the receipts from specific taxes pay the entire interest on the several trust funds, and also leave a munificent surplus to the credit of the primary school interest fund. This surplus ($636,982.50), to fund as interest, gives a total dividend to the primary schools of the State $946,501.02 for the year, equaling in the year 1897 $1.44 per capita of the children of school age. The apportionment is made semi-annually, in May and November. In the following exhibit the first column shows the total amount paid from the State treasury as interest on the several trust funds since the organization of the system up to June 30, 1898, and the second column shows the receipts by the several funds from interest on part paid lands: Int. pt. pd. Lands. 512,771 57 67,537 36 231,724 77 The amounts to the credit of the several funds on which interest is payable at the close of the fiscal year, June 30, 1898, was: ways. If the funds had been loaned out as was first proposed, there would certainly be a debt due from the borrowers to somebody. But the State used the money, and does it owe somebody for it? As regards the State$2,075,982 90 supported institutions, the question answers itself, because if there were no revenue from an endowment fund, it is presumed that the State would increase its appropriations to an extent to equal the sums-total required. But with the primary school fund it is different. If the districts received no dividend from the State, they might or might not add to the local tax voted by them for the support of their schools each year the $1.44 per capita now received by them from the State. So it seems clear that this fund is a debt due from the State to the districts in an amount at least equal to an equitable annual interest on say $4,000,000, more or less. On the other hand, it may be held that the whole matter is merged by the Constitutional provision. But the Constitution may be changed, and yet the obligation would remain. $3,859,738 52 833,612 96 66,125 12 $5,917,824 39 There will be no substantial increase in the University fund, as only forty acres of the lands remain unsold, as shown elsewhere, and the same is relatively true of the Normal School fund. The other funds, however, will be considerably increased by further sales. The question has been raised, are the trust funds a debt? This may be answered both RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN STATE SCHOOLS. Early Sentiment on the Subject-The Historical to the University-Views of President Angell, In view of an agitation comparatively recent, growing out of the introduction into the public schools of Detroit of a text book known as the "Select Bible Readings," and the decision of the Supreme Court in a case brought thereon, an historical reference to the subject of religious teaching in the State schools will be read with interest. In the early schools of In the early schools of the country the teaching of religion was an essential function. It may be said, in fact, to have been the primary object. In Great Britain, from which our earlier population and manners and customs sprang, the church and the state were one. As the State was. founded upon religion, as represented by an established or state church, the support of religion became of the first importance, as giving strength to the state. While, in our governmental structures, there was a formal divorcement of church and state, the thought and belief of the dependence of the one upon the other remained. Hence religious teaching in the schools was either ordained by the early statutes or established by custom. The same sentiment, unquestionably, inspired the ambiguous language of the ordinance of 1787, which declares that "Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." This has been construed by some as pledging the States formed from the Northwest Territory to the encouragement of some form of religious worship or belief, by means of teaching through State-established schools; or if not some one form, then of all forms—the latter, of course, not presumable. This claim, however, seems inconsistent with a prior declaration of the same ordinance. After prescribAfter prescribing the method of civil administration in the ceded territory, the ordinance lays down certain "fundamental principles," of what may be termed civil ethics, beginning as follows: "And for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, their laws, and constitutions, are erected," etc.., "the following articles shall be considered as articles of compact between the original States, and the people and the States in the said territory." Religious liberty could not well be maintained under a State where some form. of religion was established, or encouraged, to the disfavoring of other forms. Possibly a compromise construction may be reached by interpreting the ordinance to mean that in a State in which knowledge is disseminated by means of schools, the people, in the broadest exercise of their "religous liberty," will be naturally led to embrace that form of religion most conducive to "good government." The preceding was written before the opinion of Judge Carpenter (referred to later on) was rendered, or had come under the eye of the writer. In this opinion the same view is expressed in the following language: "It is an expression of the faith that I was taught as a child, and that I, in common with many others, still hold, that, as you increase the efficiency of schools and other means of education, religion, morality and knowledge will prosper." In the year 1787 a purchase of a million and a half acres of land, including what is now the city of Cincinnati, was made (or at least negotiated for), by Judge John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, on behalf of a company. It was stipulated that the tract should be surveyed under the government system, and that section 16 of each township should be set apart for educational, and section 29 for religious, purposes. This would seem to have been a stipulation in behalf of a com pany, rather than a covenant which the government would have interested itself in enforcing. It was most likely an enterprise on the part of some religious society. One of the topics on which information was asked for from school districts, by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, in 1841, was "the religious instruction" imparted in the schools, and the answers were summarized by the words "that sectarianism was not taught, while a certain amount of religious instruction was encouraged." The first Superintendent of Public Instruction, in outlining the plan of the University, says: "It is not to be expected that the study of theology, as a profession, can ever be made a separate department of the University. There is no connection, and it is devoutly to be hoped there never will be, between church and state, under our government. We have, therefore, no establishment, and consequently no ministry to provide for it. But *** the basis on which Christianity has reared its stupendous fabric, and founds its claims to the confidence and affection of the world, would be fruitful topics for the predilections of such a professorship as is proposed to be established. Besides, it will be found to be essential to the prosperity of the University. Without something of the kind it would be abandoned by all religious denominations." The religious character of the University (having reference more specifically to the system of religion represented by the Christian cult), has been dwelt upon and emphasized by chairs in the University, notably by Presi dent Angell, in his inaugural address. It may be said to have been authoritatively stated by Prof. Frieze, who was designated to give the leading address at the University semi-centennial, June 26-30, 1887, his theme being "The University in Its Relation to Religion." The following extract from the address is given: "In its future it (the University) must be expected to maintain the same position as heretofore. Until Michigan shall cease to be a Christian State, its University cannot cease to be a Christian school of learning, for it is governed and controlled by the people through regents of their own choosing; and, therefore, its teachers must in general represent the religious opinions of the people as a whole. But to believe that Christianity is ever to lose its grounds in the State is to throw up our faith in its Divine Author. On the contrary, His word cannot fail; His good work must go on and prosper; the people must become more and more imbued with His spirit, and make that spirit to be more and more manifest in the character and working of their institutions. And we have in this a sure promise that the University will never cease in the future to maintain that reasonable and strong position, as a Christian institution, of a Christian commonwealth, which, as a historical fact, it has held throughout the half century this day completed.” Dr. Tappan, the first president of the University, in an address before the Christian Library Association, June 22, 1858, used language strongly implying that no system of religion should be taught or represented, as by authority, in a State institution. A few of his sentences are appended: "But egregiously do those mistake the character and ends of this institution who imagine that because it belongs to no sect or party in particular, it therefore belongs to all sects and parties conjointly, and of equal right. It not only does not belong to any sect or party in particular; it belongs to no sect or party at all. It is a purely literary and scientific institution; it is in no sense ecclesiastical. It is designed for a single purpose-advancing knowledge and promoting education. The State is not composed of religious sects, but of the people. And the institutions of the State do not belong to the sects into which the people may chance to be divided by their opinions and practices, but to the people considered as the body politic, irrespective of all such divisions. The right of prescription, interference, or of any control conceded to one religious body, would involve a concession of the same to all similar bodies. What is con ceded to the Protestants, the Catholics may equally claim. What is conceded to Methodists or Presbyterians, all other Protestant sects may equally claim. Nay, what is conceded to religious sects must be conceded also to those who belong to no sect. The only practical alternative is that of committing an institution of learning to one sect, or to none at all. State institutions, of course, are committed to none at all." A liberal view would certainly not object to the teaching in the State schools of the history and tenets of all religions, as matter of information, without teaching any one of them ex-cathedra, leaving it to the intelligent student to determine in his own mind which is the right one is the right one or the preferable one. A study of this character, however, would not be adapted to the primary schools, and it is here that the greatest friction has arisen. The Roman Catholics, more especially, have claimed that religious instruction should be concurrent with that of a secular character. The same view is held by many of the Protestants, but in view of the difficulty of introducing any religious teaching without offending persons of some one or more sects or of no sect, there has been a general concurrence in the propriety of omitting religious instruction from the public schools. A case involving the right of the Board of Education of Detroit to introduce the so-called "Select Bible Readings" into the schools of that city was decided by the Supreme Court of the State, December 6, 1898, (Pfeiffer vs. Board of Education of Detroit). This case was before the court for many months before a decision was handed down, showing the extreme care exercised by the judges before reaching a decision. The contention of the relator, Pfeiffer, was that the Select Bible Readings, being a religious book and intended for religious instruction, their use in the schools was violative of sections 39, 40 and 41, article 4, of the State Constitution, as follows: Sec. 39. The Legislature shall pass no law to prevent any person from worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of his own conscience, |