free schools of extortion are now recollected.

Perhaps the legal test, "children of the poor," v shut out every individual of this 40,290 persons, v fully used and consumed, within twelve months, in Ph more than half a million of the people's hard ear every cent of which has been extracted from them a

There is no legislative vote, or order of any Cou or Board of County Commissioners, assessors comptrollers or directors of schools-no affectations lence or religion, that can sanction this flagrant dis violation of law.

It is not authorized upon the ground of a gener legislate for the public good; for their authority as not left open, but restrained by the express words o stitution.

The notion that if this is not law, it should be, a end justifies the means, is a hypothesis as fallacio audacious and false.

And the position may be fairly put and maintai common school, such as is now established in Penns in direct violation of the constitution of that State, first elements of the free institutions of the United that if any of the constitutions of the other States cont clauses for their establishment, such as is in the P statutes, they are void.

The States have all pledged themselves for the and inviolable toleration of religion. The constitu United States directs that "Congress shall make no ing an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the f thereof."

Congress has ruled that under this restriction it ha to stop the Sunday Mails; and it necessarily follow compulsory instruction, for improving or mending whether it be in school houses or meeting houses, is and that there is no authority in the United States to upon the people for the support of a common church mon school, or any other place designed for moral

They may have an implied power to protect and I

the car, unuci pitici i taning int

They cannot compel any one to go to a they cannot force any one to listen to, of moral or religious; nor can they force the "establishment."

There must be free toleration for both i and no authority exists, by direct or indi one cent from any man, for any purpose spect, except for the promotion of "the art inaries," and "the schooling of the poor involves or embraces the abuse referred to

It is therefore clear that there is no cons where given to tax the people for a comm individual from five to twenty-one years purpose of improving their minds, withou verty, and to be used as the common scho the schooling of all persons indiscriminatel

The health of the body is of as much i the improvement of the mind. If a law for the establishment, at the public exper conservatories for the accommodation of e individual, between the ages of five and t may apply for admission, without any test o as reasonable and just as this common s be no less in open contempt of the first el compact.

Both are agrarian, and both demand fro is necessary. This is all that the public is owe each other necessary support and pro That which is not necessary is a luxury, not bound to pay for. Too much of this the people in other countrics, and in tho have resolutely repudiated these oppressio

If it is proposed by schools, not named poor, up to thirteen or fourteen years of change the heart; if the real intention is

The people of the United States have unanimously lutely declared that they will not be forced to pay o moral or religious instruction, in any form or shape; this whole matter, in all its aspects and bearings, rest God and the conscience, with which man has no con shall not in any wise interfere or meddle.

The efforts for legislative inquiry into the moral of universal education, it is seen, have failed. Chi Tilghman, who was a wise judge, and a pious Christ case referred to (7 Sergeant & Rawle's Reports), said twenty-two years after the experiment had been fairl Philadelphia upon more than twenty thousand childr thirteen and fourteen years of age, that "great sums expended" for the schools, "without producing the was expected."

In 1821 there were two thousand nine hundred nine, in 1849, forty thousand, and in 1850, fifty children in the free schools of Philadelphia. More a million have had this light profusely shed upon the cost of many millions of the hard earnings of the p this time facts and irrefragable statistics demonstratin utility ought to be produced.

It was hoped that this National Convention, co bishops, congressmen, and philanthropists, men of age, and wisdom, would have given the public this information without being asked for it.

They sat four days, no reports were made, but the everything suggested to committees who have not b from.

Why did they omit to notice uncontradicted publi great interest and magnitude? Should a National C shrink from research and scrutiny, and can it be cre this body of men might not have raised a committee, v days could have examined into, and made a full re the alleged advantages of this novel system of unive tion?

They might have found in the " Boston Recorder,”

this uncontradicted publication of facts..

risen from 89 to 3,884;-forty-three fold twenty-five times faster than the populati

"That this prodigious increase has occ of almost unbroken peace, amid great imp legislation, and prison discipline too, and paralleled efforts to diffuse education and blem of no easy solution.

"It is stated also, that the prevalence is fourteen times greater than in Fran criminals are to the uneducated as two to demand thorough investigation: and stro mind to reflection and prayer."

Is it possible that this warning was u that they considered it wholly unnecess and appropriate police regulations, which in all times for discipline and education; recognize this wholesome and controlling nile delinquency is effectually cut up by minor shall be without custody, guardia and no adult without constant employm torch-light processions, dram-shops, broth wholly stopped?

Instead of invoking these legitimate an police power and duty, acknowledging the and constituting them as the groundwor which all plans for education should rest to define, explain, and improve them; wasted in popular professions of phi schemes for national display, and for coa from the street into the shades of scien not a word of wholesome restraint and labor, trades, diligence, industry, perso provision for children and old age.

And although they were called on thr to answer the following queries, not a v

as to

nents of I purity, m, upon an effort

ime was coretical gabonds poetry; ecessary ice, and

ic press,

is made,

auvantages

2. "Whether, if education has produced mental imp it has not failed to improve the moral sense;-and parting knowledge, it does not create or substitute c craft, in place of ignorance and impulsive depravity, ] no regeneration, but only changing the open perpeti crime to covert and fashionable subtilty.

3. "Whether free-school education has diminishe ism, or convictions for crime !!"

Whatever future conventions in this respect may mote the true cause of education, it cannot be denied convention was composed of persons who are the special of the present scheme of universal free-schooling, up of twenty-one years, in place of the other essential br education and instruction; and that their zeal for the aid of national power, in measures exclusively for supervision and local expense, is officious and uncalle

There were a few sincere and pious men amongst there always will be in every convocation professing public weal; and there were a few such to the end, a frauds that signalized the black and diabolical care chartered monopolies of 1836 and '40; in which m was committed than has been perpetrated by all the in the United States since the Revolution.

It is said that man is born in sin, and brought for quity; that his moral conversion is as much a wo Almighty, as his first creation;-that the secret ex the heart are exclusively between the conscience and that man's wisdom tempts him to pride and vain-glory invention of substitutes for the true causes of creatio there is any kind of education that will humble his spirit, it is religious instruction, which appeals to his a that the wise men of this world have not been ex purity, and that millions have been regenerated under excitement, whose intellectual capacities were too we ceive or retain the rudiments of human knowledge; education, with all its best appointments, does not c heart, much less its natural propensities.

Who has forgotten the beautiful odo

In