Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1856-01-31


geny of that prolific monster which greeted
Satan on his arrival at the great He'll, which
-seemed to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many scaly fold
Voluminous and vast serpent arm'd
With mortal sting about her middle round
A cry Of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and many
hideous peal; yet when they list would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise into her womb,
And kennel there yet there still barked and howled
Within unseen.
But worst of all their abominations-be
cause, when once installed, it becomes the hot
bed propagation of all-is the modern system
of free schools. We forget who it is that
has charged and proved that the New Eng
land system of free schools hes been the
cause and prolific source of all the legions of
horrible inhdelites and treasons that have
turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs,
and her fair land into the common nesting,
place Of bowling bedlamites. We abominate
the system because the schools are free; and
because they make that which ought to be
the reward of toll, and earnest, ardent and
almost superhuman individual effort, cheap,
commonplace, priceless and uninviting. AS
there is no royal road to learning, so there
ought to be no mob road to learning.
A "littlc learning" is dangerous thing
to the individual to society, to learning it.
SELF 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
brm with incendiarisms, heresies and all the
explosive elements which uproot and rend and
desolate society.
Free schools are only another pane for
Government schools and both natural and
revealed law make it the duty of the parent
to educated his children aud not the duty of
government. 1t is as much the business of
| the father TO instruct the mind of the child
as to fill its belly; and it is no more the duty
of government to furnish free education for
children than free buttermik or free bonny-
clabber-no more its duty to furnish COVER
nesses and pedagogues than grannies, wet
nurses and baby.jumpers. 1t is the duty of
parents to support and nurture their chill
dren and if the task is burden to them,
they are apt to lorego the having of children
at all, which is much better than having chill
dren to be bundled off upon tho cold charities
of the public for nurture and instruction. 1t
is alike their duty to educate their children
in the rudiments of knowledge; and if they
feel themselves unequal to the burden, in this
case, too, they will be apt to iorego the hav-
ing of children. This responsibility of pa
rants for their children is the well.spring of
parental happiness, and every effort to divest
them Of it, dries up the home Affections un-
dermines the institution of the family, fills
society with reprobrate ruffians, and approx
mates the nature of the human species to
that of the brutal and callous 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 merces of the elements.
Care and anxiety are the sources of affec-
ton; and as you divest parents of these for
their children, you cut the tie by which God
has bound together the home circle. 1t is