The state chronicle., 1892-04-05
STATE EDUCATION AND RAOIcAllsM

gestive of universal enlightenment,
culture, progress and social and public |
virtue; the other, tried and proved by
its acts, the very antipodes, the herald
of mental darkness, the nurse OF ig-
norance and debauchery, the patron OF
vice and wanton extravaganza. And
the relation in which they stand to
each other is the relation in which the
two parties stood to each other in the
past, and may, by untoward conditions,
again stand to each other. For it is
indisputably true that the Democratic
party, by intuitiye recognition of the
inestimable value of education to the
perfection of the civic virtues and use
fulness of its citizens, has always
been the strenuous advocate of
liberal and enlightened sys-
tenn of :: public education. The
Radical party, by charitable euphem-
ism, now styled the Republican party,
ON the other hand being the enemy Of
such public enlightenment, reaching its
ends by hook or by crook, what it
could not steal, it could deny; what it
was by constitutional or Legislative au-
thority honestly compelled to appro-
pirate to special educational uses, it
could dishonesty divert to other pur-
poses, and leave the robbed and beg
CARED children of the State to protest
in vain against the wrong. The crimes
of 1868, when the legislative orgies of
that period, exhausting all legitimate
sources of supply, supplemented ex-
penses by absorption Of the public
school fund, goes down to posterity as
the greatest ever committed by po.
litical party. 1t was not wrong done
to the adult, able to contend for bis
rights, and prompt to resent encroach-
ment upon them. 1t was a wrong
done to the tender young, at that spe.
cial period of youth and training when
provision cannot be withheld except
at the cost of permanent injury
and future lasting mental darkness. Yet
these Radicals, in the hey-day Of thei1
new prosperity, needed nothing but the
Ihilarity of the hour, the 5oyousness O
a present extravaganza, the triumph
of a short lived splendor. 1t was :
madness, but it was madness with :
method. For radicalism and enlight
enment are incompatible. Darknes
| flies from the light of education, an
every lesson learned was fatal bean
within the realms of that obscurity il
which radicalism so long concealed an
entrenched itself. The large new ele
ment, thrown with that party by tn
liberation Of the slaves, was added to
blind, ignorant and submissive. T
i. enlighten it was to iberate it from it
| submissiveness. Therefore, to contr(
it, it must be kept in the dark. Bu
legislation, or more properly, part
dishonesty, must be impartial; an
therefore the white children must
involved in the same calamity.
1t is fearful reflection to conside
what the educational condition of th
; State would have been if radical polio
had prevailed. Incomplete and insu
! ficient as we still admit it to be, ou
q children bask in an educational SUI
shine glorious in comparison wit
the darkness to which they were col
demned. 1t is the glory of the Dem
/. cratic party, that it obeyed tt
mandates of the constitution the Rad
+ Gals had framed, and upon which tt
!. Radicals had trampled. The Dem
>. Gratis at once proceeded to their du
. as citizens and statesmen, and ma,
A that provision for education the
u responsibilities had laid upon the1
% provision for higher education, al
" lower education, for the Universit
Of for colleges, for normal schools,
i rich and poor, for white and blar
r with generous impartiality to t
to needs and rights of all.
III All this the Radicals would ha
II denied, did deny, and as far as in th
~ power lay, left the children of t
III State to grow up in ignorance, t
a legitimate offspring and adherents
!" the Radical party.
n Parties do not readily die. In t
tn very worst of them principles survi
H. which only await their opportunity