San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1881-03-10
EDUCATION AXATIoNAL CONCERN.

/ Senator Browns speech on the Cd
ucational fund contains an array Of
facts calculated TO open the eyes OF
the Northern people, and is besides an
effort which, by its wealth Of ideas,
breadth of view and logical force,
promises him q high place in the lists
of true American craftsmanship. Cast
ing sentimentality to the wind, he
plants his feet upon the solid basis Of
facts and axiomatic principles, and
the principle which he elaboratos es-
pecially is that the stability Of Amer
lean institutions can only be assured
by the education of the whole Amer.
lean people.
From this standpoint Senator
Brown argues that the Republic has
u right to have the intellect OF the
entire country developed out of the to-
tai mass of the country 8 wealth. This
is sound reasoning. As the public
safety requires that the whole intel.
lect of the people shall be cultivated
for the purpose Of building up and
conserving society, the burden Of the
labor should devolve upon the public
at large and in entirety, and not up
on any division or subdivision of the
community. II ten million ignorant
people should be acquired by the
United States through accretion OF
territory, and invested with the right
OF suffrage, the duty of expanding
their intellectual capacity for the pro-
lection of society and the reclamation
of their country could not be safely
left to that mass of ignorance. What
holds in this supposable instance
should apply where, from the poverty
of the people of any section, they are
unable to furnish a complete and un-
iversal system of public instruction.
In this connection Senator Brown
called Northern craftsmanship to task
for its indifference to the intellectual
status of the colored people whom it
incorporated in the voting body OF
the country.
Apart from any humanitarian con-
sideration, when the colored people
were made in the fullest sense free
and self governing, citizens the true
policy was to make out of them the
best citizens possible by education.
But how was that to be done? The
white people of the South were hard
ly in u condition to educate their own
children, and tho additional burden
of enlightening four million Ignorant
blacks was an almost insuperable bar
rier to the proper development of the
intellectual powers of either race.
Impoverished as the South was by
the waste and destruction of war, and
returning to the Union to bear it's
proportion of the debt contracted by
the victors, the dominant party rep
resenting the North, with a knowl-
edge of the facts, by imposing the ed.
ucation of the lately emancipated
slaves almost wholly upon the South
ern whites showed far less interest in
the cause of selfgovernment than the
Gar of Russia, who dictated some
provision for the education Of the serf
after emancipating him.
Apart from this unwise policy and
gross injustice, however, the question
of the education of the masses is one
of supreme National concern. In a
republic based on universal suffrage
it is as necessary, in order to avoid
fatal error and final anarchy, that the
fountains of power should flow from
springs of knowledge as to the nature
and value Of self-government, as it is
that a traveller should know something
of the geographical divisions, laws
and manners of q country which he is
about entering, and the necessity
for this becomes the more pressing
as the population of our Union be-
comes more crowded and its interests
more complex and more sensitive to
Legislative action and political agita-
tom Galveston News.