Nashville daily patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1855-1857, 1856-01-19

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Free schools an Accumulation.
The free school system of this country
has been a great stumbling block" in the
path of the Roman Catholic Church. The
newspapers which have espoused the doc
trines of this Church, the priesthood, and
all of those ia authority, regard them as so
many openings to perdition, and avail them
selves of every opportunity to denounce
them as such All who have paid any at
tention to the subject must have been
struck with the regularity and persistency Of
the opposition from this quarter to these
institutions, which are by others regarded
as the bulwarks Of our liberty. The Ro-
man Catholic knows that wherever free
schools flourish, wherever the education of
the masses is left unbiased by the restraints
and tutelage of Mother Church, there is
little chance for its doctrines to take root
and grow ,uxuriantly. lie has, therefore,
some excuse for his opposition to unfettered
education. But, what excuse has any
Protestant for opposing Free Schools /?
Protestants of all others, should be the
warmest and most active advocates and
supporters of free schools, and they have
been But in these latter days, since for
eigniSm and Roman Catholicism have be-
come potential influences in the State, and
the Democracy seek to use them for the
promotion of their party schemes, strange
doctrines are occasionally enuncated by
some of their teachers. One of the ableSt
and boldest expounders of the Democratic
faith is the Richmond Examiner. 1t seems
to have as great dislike for free schools as
the most subtle and designing instrument
of Rome. In its impression Of the, 28th Of
December last, it gave expression to its
views as follows =
ave have got to hating everything with the
prefix ffee-from free negroes down and up,
through the whole catalogue of denominations,
and demagogueries, lusts, PHILOSOPHERS, fanatl-
cism and follies, free farms, free labor, free
niggers, free society, free will, free thinking,
free love, free wives, free children and free
schools, all belonging to the same brood of
damnable sms whose mother is Sin and whose
daddy is the Deyil-are all the progeny of that
prolific monster which greeted Satan on his
arrival at the gates of hell, which,
-seemed woman to the waist and fair
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
VoiuminOus and vast a serpeuts arm
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry OF hel-hounds never Ceasing barkd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and many
hideous peal yet when they list would creep,
II aught disturbed their noise, into her womb
And kennel there yet there still parked and hoWled
Within unseen.
But the worst of all these denominations
because, when once installed, it becomes the
hot-bed propagation of all-is the modern sys-
TEN of free schools. We forget who 1t is that
has charged and proved that the New England
system of free schools has been the cause and
prolific source of all the legions of horrible in
facilities and Ureasons that have turned her
cities into SodOms and Gomorrahs, and her
fair land into the common nesting place OF
bowling bedlamites. We abOminate the sys-
TEN because the schools are free, and because
they make that which ought to be the reward
of Toll, and earnest, ardent, and almost super
human individual effort, cheap, commonplace,
priceless and uninviting. As there is no royal
road TO learning so there ought to be no moi
road to learning.
A ''ttle learning" is a dangerous thing to
the individual, TO society, to learning itself, to
all conservatism of thought and all stability IN
general affairs. The sole function of the free
school is to supply that "little learning;" and
thus it is charged TO the brim with incendla-
risms, heresies, and all the explosive elements
which uprOOt and rend and desolate society.
Free schools are only another name for Coo
erameRt schools; and both natural and re-
vealed law make it the duty of the parent to
educate his children, and not the duty OF Gov
eminent. Ii is as much the business of the
father to instruct the mind Of the child as TO
FL its belly; and it is no more the duty of
Government to furnish free education for chill
dren than free soup, free bnttermilk or free
bonnycabber-nO more its duty TO furnish
governesses and pedagogues, than grannies.
wet-nurses and by-jumpers. II is the duty
of parents to support and nurture their chill
dren and II the task Is a burden 10 them thew
are apt to fOregO the having of children at all
which is much better than having children 10
be bundled off upon the cold charities of the
public for nurture and instruction. IL is alike
their duty TO educate their children in the
rndiments of knowledge, and if they feel them
selves unequal 10 the burden, in this case too
they viii be apt to forego the having of chill
dren. This responsibility of parents for their
children is the well-sprng of parental happi-
ness, aud every effort to divest them of il dries
up the home affections undermines the inst-
tuition Of the family, fills society with repro
bate rnthans and approximates the nature of
the human species 10 that of the brutal aud
Gallons crocodile, which deposits its eggs upon
the sand, leaves them to be Matched by the sun
and the brood to be reared by the tender mer-
cIes of the elements. Care and anxiety are
the sources of affection; and rs you divest pa
rents of these for their children, Won cut the
tie by which God has bound together the
homecrc 1t is the duty of the parent to
nurture and instruct his children, and it is the
duty of the government 10 make the parent
do this, as much for the parents as the chld's
good. When You destroy the recollectious of
the child, the youth or the man, for mother
and for father upon what an awful abyss Of
RIGHTEOUSNESS and crime do Jon not launch
himl Shall the State, in the name of benevo-
lence or any other name under heaven, with
iron grasp, tear the infant from home, father
aud mother without mourning the vengeance
OF outraged Nature. Whom God has Joined
together let 30 man put asunder."
The Examiners remarks have one recon-
mcndation, that of honesty. Pity it is that
all of its colleagues in the war upon Ameri-
can principles are not equally candid. Ig-
norance, dark as midnight, such as that
which envelones the minds of hundreds of