The Charlotte Democrat., 1896-06-11

and shall it not be felt tonight that the
great conaervator of the manners, GUS
toms, principles, and character of free
people, is the Public School? Impor-
tant as the school is to any civilized
people, it is especially so to North Caro-
lima. Its function is to IRA late the
minds of the rising generation with
those principles which have made their
fathers foremost as men of war and peace.
The Public School is the principal diges.
tive organ of the body polite. By
means of it the children of the stranger,
and of dissimilar races are In other States
| in one generation assimilated and made
Americans. You are to be congratulated
that scarcely more than 5000 of the pop-
ulation of the State of North Carolina by
the United States census of 1890 are of for
eign birth; a fact which makes North
Carolina unique in America; but, the bet
erogeneous character of the population
of other States is merely prelude to what
| may be expected here with the advent
of more railroads, more factories, more
direct lines OF communication with the
great arteries of the worlds commercial
progress.
The integrity of this State. the preser-
vation of those characteristics which
have been its peculiar possession from its
| earliest beginning, depends under God on
the maintainance, the extension, and the
nurture of public education. know of
| nothing that of later years has stirred my
heart with more pride than the knowi-
edge of the fact that the Bible is present.
ed TO the graduates of schools in North
Carolina We do not claim that religion
must be taught in connection with NOR
| ais on the ground that it affords the only
adequate basis of ethics, but we do claim
that religion alone affords adequate MO
tives to the practice of moral precepts.
President Wolsey, in a paper on the BIZ
BILE in the public schools, said: "We can
| in system of morals, considered in the
abstract, separate religion from it, but in
the practical part even of a book on
ethics, there is an unavoidable necessity
| of bringing the two into connection"
Permit me to add that oft quoted passage
from Washington's farewell address
"Whatever may be conceded to the in
fuence of refinement, education, and
minds of peculiar structure, reason and
experience both forbid us to expect that
national morals can prevail in exclusion
of religious principles"
in North Carolina which is thus founded
on the only adequate basis of moral
character in an irreverent age possess
ing a reverence for sacred things, ia
something worth living and worth dying
for. The most striking defect of young
America is the lack of reverence. The
spirit of independence and senseof equal.
ity are unfriendly to it. Our irreverence
IL SO fnG h. Mak
thew Arnold says: "If there be disci-
pline in which Americans are wanting,
it is the dicipline of awe and respect.
An austere and intense religion imposed
on the Puritan fathers the discipline of
respect" Matthew Arnold did not visit
North Cardinal
The School Commissioner of Rhode
Island speaking of his own State, said:
"The spirit of self assertion, insubordina-
ton, of dislike to all restraint, of open
antagonism TO law,-all this is far more
prevalent to-day than ever before" All
this most vitality concerns the State.
Here is an evil which is great ard pro-
phetic of greater evils. The school is
the place where the State may touch the
young with moulding hand. How
shall our American youth be taught rev-
erence, without which our future is inse-
cure? We are become in the name of
science race of iconoclasts. There has
sprung up in the popular mind sort of
contempt for what is old. We have been
building a nation. We can not build
permanent institutions on mere inteli-
gence, smartness, push and self assertion.
There must be a profound respect for law.
As Schiller says:
"The keystone of the worlds wide arch,
The ones sustaining and sustained by all,
Which if it fall, brings all to ruin down."
As individuals we are of course bound
to respect religious principles however
much they may differ from our own, and
we must be patient with religious pre-.
iudices however blind and bigoted; but if
self preservation be duty as we'll rs a
right, then it is the duty of the state to
teach these fundamental religious truths,
not sectarian dogmas, to its children,
even though the Agnostic parent objects,
exactly as it is the right and duty of the
state to take the boy from the plow, the
mine or the mill, and put him in school,
if need be against the protest of parent.;-
not for the good of the boy, not because
the parent has no rights which we as
individuals are bound to respect, but
Decanee the necesslLleS OF the sLaCe are
superior to individual rights.
The greatest danger now to the public
schools of our country is that, between
the upper and neither milestone of reli-
gious bigotry and secularism, all religion
will be ground out.
/ would say aword in behalf of public
school education tonight in contradis-
tinction to the private education of our
children. The former is the corner stone
of all education in Democracy. Dem.
ocracy necessitates tho public school.
In the first place, an ignorant man is an
enemy and menace to the state. We
may sit in fancied security In our homes
ofelegant comfort and luxury and imagine
that surrounded by all the resources of
education and modern civilization we are
safe from the hydra headed evils that
spring from ignorance and superstition.
Perhaps we deceive ourselves when i'm
agining that there is no vital connection
between the ignorant masses on one
hand and the educated classes on the
other
The daughter of the Prime Minister,
of ENGLAND seoured the services of a