Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-10-11

ia ignorance without consulting it, welfare
| or caring for Tia fa:e? You would not send
a man on the water without plank under
him, or put him in desert unprovided with
food and water. Would you send him
up among the inc Z tricable windings of noun
| taius without guide 10 lead him or
map to guide him? If 10 do 70 would be
cruel, what is il to send one OF Code &C.
c3untable creatures to pursue the journey Of
life among the evil and the good, through
| trouble and Joy, amid the allUTemenis OF
pleasure and the lustings OF the senses?
SHARES pitfalls, deceptions, besetnents and
dangers. and The faculties given by the Crea-
tor as helps and gusrds all left dark and
useless, imprisoned in the thick darkness oil
ignorancel The parents clam OF a right TO
say "no" when the State offers to educate his
child il therefore claim TO have the right
TO do wrong, 10 have the right 10 refuse TO
the child the glorious light OF knowledge.
1t is a claim to a right 10 send the child into
the world unable TO maintain itself, except
by toIliDg ss hardly and unintelligently as
the mule or the OK. Would the reader say
that a man has the right to cut an arm or
leg from the body of his child? If man
may not blind his child by putting out its
eyes, may he keep it mentally blind by pre-
venting the light of knowledge TO 1T it for
walking 10 the paths of life, so that it shall
stumble over every obstacle that lies before
it, and fall into the fret pit il approaches?
Has a man right TO devote his boy 10 the
miseries that the records of courts AMI
penitentiaries show 10 attend on ignorance?
Has a man the right 10 doom his daughter
to ignorance, to leave her defenseless against
the Wiles of the seducer, to condemn her to
inlsmy-to the degradation that ever sieels
the heart of her sister woman sgainst her
and robs her Of the scant mantle OF human
charity? In view of all these considera-
tions, when the parent asks, "Shall my child
be sent TO school whether ] please or not 70
he not regard the question as really being,
"Shal l not be allowed right 10 make nv
child lifelong sufferer, and a torment TO
society, by sending it into the world lame,
and deaf, and blind, because the God given
intellect, by my decision, was never cult
waited? France, in her progress toward lib
erty, has found it absolutely necessary 10 in
sist with all the force of law that every son
and daughter born on her soil shall receive
an education, and the State provides educa-
tion for every family that chooses 10 accep' |
it at its hands. France under the Bourbons |
endured slavery and misery; under the
revolution il was visited by crime |
and wholesale murderings; under Napoleon |
her children were led to perish on hundred |
battlefelds that heartless tyrant might |
obtain the hattery earth always sccords to |
successful oppressors All this was the result
of ignorance, and, as France wants no more
Bourbon tyranny, no more squirting of hu-
man blood from the guiloline, no more
wholesale slaughters on the field, she insists,
with the force of law, that every one OF her
SONS aud daughters shall be educated. This
very week the new law to that effect GENES
into force. The brutal, the besotted, the
greedy who want to make money by setting
the little ones 10 tasks above their strength,
all these object TO the new law, and the
church, we blush TO say, mutters curses, but
France wills that every child of the country
hall be educated, and it will require obedi-
.nce to its will. The time may come when
we also, like France, may have TO insist On
he right of the State to Danish ignorance
rom our borders.