The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1867-06-07


a Curious Document ReaurrectGdl-..
The style OF an Orthodox Richmond
Paper Ten Years Ago.
The following article is from the
Richmond Examiner of the 18th of De.
cember, 1856. We wonder if the author
of it is still alive! If he is, he must
feel like Old Mortality among the
tombs. Little did he reck what was to
follow so soon. He could not have i'm
agined that in his own generation his
article would be actually resurrected
and started on its ronnds through the
newspaper press as curious relic of a
mi-barbarous regime. Yet so 1t is.
Twenty years from now, the following
words will be read almost with in
credulity. Our children will ask
whether it was really possible that such
sentiments were advocated and held
throughout nearly one.half of our
country:
We have got to hating everything
with the prefix Jree-from free negroes
down and up, through the whole cata-
logue OF denominations, demagogueries,
Iusts, PHILOSOPHERS, fanaticisms, and
ioliieS; free farms, free labor, free mig
gers, free society, free will, free think
ing, free love, free wives, free children
and free schools, all belong to the same
brood of damnable isms whose mother
is Sin and whose daddy is the Devil
are all the progeny of that prolific
monster which greeted Satan on his ar
rival at the gates of hell, which,
woman, IN ha op5 fate
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting; about her middle round
A cry OF hell-hounds never ceaSing bark'd
With wide CeT6erean mouths fun loud, and
many
A hideous peal; yet when they list would
II aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and
howled
Within unseen.
But the worst of these denominations
because when once installed, it be-
comes the hotbed propagation of all-is
the modern system of free schools. We
forget who it is that has charged and
proved that the New England system of
free schools has been the cause and pro"
life source of all the legions of horrible
| intidelitieS and treaSonS that have turn
| ed her cities into Sodoms aud Gomor-
rains, and her fair land into the COM
mon nesting place of bowling bedlam
| ties. We abominate the system because
| the schools are free, and because they
make that which ought 10 be the reward
| of toll, and earnest, ardent, and almost
superhuman individual effort, cheap,
| commonplace, priceless and uninviting.
As there is no royal road 10 learning,
| so there ought to be no mob road to
| learning.
A little learning" is a dangerous
| thing-to the individual, to society, to
| learning itself, to all conservatism of
thought and stability in general af-
fairs. The sole function of the free
school is to supply that little learn
ing" and thus it is charged to the brim
with incendiarisms, heresies and all the
explosive elements which upIoot and
rend and desolate society.
Free schools are only another name
for Government schools; and both ma
tural and revealed law make il the du-
ty of the parent to educate the children
and not the duty of Government. It 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 soup, free butter
milk or free bonnyclauber-nom more its
| duty to furnish governesses and peda-
| gogues, than grannies, wet-nurSes and
baby jumpers. 1t is the duty of par
ents to support and nurture their chill
dren; and if the task is burden to
them they are apt to torgo the having
of children at all-which is much better
than having children to be bundled off
upon the cold charities of the public
for nurture and instruction. 1t is alike
their duty to educate their children in
the rudiments of knowledge, and il
! thew feel themselves uneO0al to the
burden, in this case too, ..they will be
apt to forego the having of children.
This responsibility of parents for their
children is the we'll spring of parental
happiness, and every effort to divest
them of it dries up the home affections,
undermine5 the institution of the
family, and fills society with reptiles
that spawn their venomous brood in
our midst.