The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1870-11-26
'MtShe Gettl Ms'1his
ELkTON, NOVEMBER &c, 1870.
ElucatiOn.

LuuSutiVus
In our Peninsular column will be found
an account of the destruction of a new
Colored School House at Berlin, by fire, on
the 18th instant, together with all its books,
maps, and other furniture. There having
been no fire about the premises during the
day, the very natural conclusion was that
the fire was the work of an incendiary.-
The school house had been built by the
colored people from their scanty means,
and material furnished by the Freedman's
Bureau. This is no new thing, however, in
parts Of this State, and further South,
remote from civilization; and is some of
the legitimate fruit of the teaching Of the
Democratic party.
That party as a party, is opposed to all
Public Schools, for its roots draw the main
sustenance which supports the stock, from
the soil of ignorance and prejudice. The
Public School Law of the State has been
we'll nigh ruined by that party in the Leg
islature, where many of the leaders made
strenuous efforts to have the system entire
ly abolished.
The Public School question entered
largely into their canvass the present Fall,
and much stress was laid on the question
of admitting colored children to the schools
in common with the whites; and this
argument-if the word is allowable in such
connection-was used with powerful effect
by their speakers to influence the ignorant.
&c
whether children of the colored people
among us, growing up to fill the place of
men and women, shall be educated at the
same schools with white children, but
whether they shall be educated at all. The
subject of Common Schools is matter of
taxation altogether. Shall there be taxes
sufficient to build separate school houses
and employ teachers to educate the colored
children, or admit them to the district
schools. The former is certainly prefera-
BILE under the present state of feeling to
all parties. The colored people are as
decided in their preference for separate
schools as the whites. Forty years ago
colored children in this county attended
the same weekday and Sunday schools
with the whites, and no one thought or
said aught against the practice. But that
was before slavery had begun to plst the
destruction of the government and sow its
seeds of strife and bitterness.
The question as we have said, is: Shall
education be general? Shall the rising
generation all be clothed in the moral gar
ments of education and made more useful,
more virtuous, more respectable, and better
in every way9 Or shall a large per cent.
of the people which are almost exclusively
of the labering class, be still cast down
and doomed to plod in ignorance, degrad-
ing the society and people whom they are
among, though not Of? If ignorance is an
expense to the State, as political economy
has clearly demonstrated, even avarice calls
for the education of all classes of people.
IF ignorance is a loathing moral disease,
to be excluded and expelled from our midst
as contagious epidemic, then the gospel
teachings which flow from every pulpit in
the land on the Sabbath morning, demand
that all the children of the land shall
have their minds opened to the truths of
Christianity, and the beauties of our higher
civilization by the power of school training.
But how shall it be done? is the question.
The colored people are generally poor and
of the laboring class, unable to pay for a
proper education of their children. They
are making commendable efforts to provide
for them what they can, which, with all their
efforts must prove comparatively scanty
without assistance from the State. And
even those limited provisions are often
destroyed by white incendaries.
In this day of Public Schools and free
education, we hold it to be self evident
that no party can be tru, ted to manage the
affairs of State that excludes education
from any class of its citizens by not pro-
viding means for its proper advancement.
The colored children are entitled to an
education as well rs the whites, as forming
part of the population of the State. sl.all
a system of separate schools be established
for them, or shall they be admitted to the
schools with the whites? is the question the
Democratic party at present stands face to
face with. If the former course is deter
mined upon, an increase of the School
tax will have to be made; if the latter,
they do as they have SO often done before
in this State, adopt policy they have so
loudly and bitterly denounced as Radical
measure. One or the other of these things
the party in power must do, Or proclaim
fn NIL, oil, aud
drag Maryland a while longer in the COM
plny Of States whose institutions repel
thrift, enterprise, emigration and capital
from abroad. Give her public education,
and in the next generation her material
interests and solid wealth will double
But with education, thrift and enterprise
comes Republican domination and here is
the rock Democracy fears and strains every
nerveto avoid, with its policy of shifts, subter-
fuges and incendiary appeals to the lower
passions of the human heart Its princi-
pies are wholly factious opposition, and
all its aims-plunder.
PROTECTION OF THE WEsT-The intel
ligent people of the Northwest cannot be
gulled by New York importers and British
manufacturers. They do not believe that
grain and other farm produce would rise
and manufactured fabrics fall, if foreign
made goods, the cheap product of European
pauper labor, had leave to enter our mar
kets free of duty. They know that the
freight on the bulky products of the farm
to the ports of Europe would consume
nearly tho prico Srcb p;oJ,o+s would coll