The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1858-07-29
TIE PACIFIC
Commercial Advertiser.
THURSDAY. IVY %.

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THs- it is the duty of governments TO provide
the means of education for all-that every human
being that comes into the world has an absolute
right TO an education-is a principle antecedent
TO all human institutions, and incapable of being
ahrOgated by any ordinances of man. On the
ground of political economy and of morality. the
expediency of a system Of public or free schools is
easily advocated. and the shallow selfshness of its
opponents as easily exposed. An educated people
is always an industrious and productive people.
knowledge and abundance go hand in hand, and
sustain to each other the relative positions of
cause and effect. Without intelligence a nation
cannot be wealthy, its valuation will he small,
and the footing up of it's means will be ~insignif-
can't. On the ground of morality, it is demon
strated that vice and crime are not only p~rodigals
and spendthrifts Of their own, but defrauders and
plunderers of the means of others: seizing upon
the gains of honest industry, and exhausting the
bounties of Heaven itself, without s~atiating their
appetite for new means of indulgence.
And vet, Notwithstanding these views have
been presented a thousand times with irrefutable
logic and with an eloquence of truth which it
would seem that nothing but combined stolidity
and depravity could resist, there are found in
every community those who grumble at the taxes
imposed TO support that which makes property
valuable and safe. which protects society from
poverty and vice, and prepares men for the per-
formance of their social and civil duties.
No assertion is more frequently made by the
opponents of free popular education, than that it
does not tend to make the individual morally bet
ter, or TO diminish the amount of crime in a COM
munity. Not long since. Archbishop Hughes
- -. = H. l.. A.
common schools of New York, and he gave them
his archepiscopal blessing in this wise:
1.-THE public schools of New York, under the pre-
tense of besfowing the blessings and benefits OF educa-
ton upon the children of the metropolis, in fact COM
municafes to them the rudiments of knowledge, ac-
companied with just so much intellectual skill and
sagacity rs to enable them 10 prey with more success
and greater impunity upon the community TO become
more finished and accomplished scoundrels, more
ingenious forgers and. counterfeiters, more polished
murderers and assassins. The public school system
was n disgrace to the civilization of the nineteenth
century; and he fondly hoped 10 live to see the day
when the citizens of New York would look back upon
it with shame and horror, that such a gross and
miserable delusion could ever have been suffered to
take possession of the public mind
The following statistics, gathered from the
official records of courts and prisons in Europe
and America, show how rash and fallacious are
such declarations, and establish, positively and
tdI v tilt Vic ann VI titIuC anu VIC L III
most exclusively recruited from the ignorant
classes of the community and that precisely in
proportion as knowledge is disseminated and
education advanced, vice and crime recede. The
most accurate and reliable statistics serve to draw
a clear, distinct, and sharply-defned line be-
tween pauperism and crime upon the one hand,
and uprightness, iptelligence, industry and an
Independent competency on the other:
"Of l, 122 persons. the whole number under con-
viction and punishment for crime, in the State of New
York, during the year 1S47. - only had received n
common education, 10 only a tolerably good educa-
tion,' and 6only were reported as well educated,
OF $40 criminals so returned for the year 1S4S, %
only hada common, Is a ~tolerably good, and 10 only
a good education The whole numter of persons re-
turned to the Office of the Secretary of State ms hav-
ing been convicted of crime in the several counties
and cities of the State during a period Of 9 consecu-
tive years, from 1870 to ls4s, both inclusive, Vas
81. $40; of these 1,1S2 were returned as having re-
ceived n common education;' Ala as having a toll
erably good education.' and 12S only rs 6 we'll edu-
Gated OF the remaining &c ,225, only about one
half were able TO read and write. The residue were
destitute OF any education whatever. OF $50 boys at
present under confinement in the House of Refuge in
the city of New York, for offences against the laws,
2S7, or considerably more than one-half, had attended
school for a period less than six months, and % only
for a period exceeding three years. An examination
of the Auburn State Prison, made n few years since.
gave, out Of pa prisoners, but 80 who could either
read or write, and bat SO who could read we'll. In
the Connecticut State Prison but one-half Of the con-
victs, when committed, knew how TO write. In the
! philadelphia Penitenfiary, out Of 217 prisoners re-
ceived on its organization in 1885, IS only could read
or write. and most Of these could do 20 only in . very
inparhet manner
Il Frsnss, during > period Of seven-yrau. only 9
49, ~