The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-09-06
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School Textbooks.


 We have all read of the Persian system of public education, founded on teaching boys to ride, shoot and tell the truth: | in boyhood were blessed with training parallel to this Eastern system, hence the American phenomenon of government among the nations.
 The universal public school of America is antecedent to the age of commerce IL Is the offspring of the agricultural era. the pioneer handmaid of the civilization beneficences of nature. But the commer- cal age has closed its tentacles. so sem sitlve to every opportunity of advantagS;S, school. Parents. the most solicitous and lection of the public school text book School text books without number are made % the order of great publishing 1 corporations and the test of the book is. It's marketable quality.
 The State publishes law books. but only State licensed lawyers are permitted to write them; the State maintains an in- sutution for the education of phy slcians allowed there are written by State Ii. censed physicians and surgeons: Half the burden of State taxation in Alabama
 borne that the pubic ssaoS system g will hardly be denied that the Dean of the Law Department of the State Uni yersity must correct very much Of text the public schools. It is equally certain that after learning to ride and shoot at home, the pupil of the Alabama publ c school must be careful with his text books | if instruction in truth be considered es- sential to love of country and pride of ancestry.
 It is a very long stride in reform of l the public school system, that the State now selects the text books. Patrons and teachers are free to inform themselves on what is taught. In the dawn of scholas- tic education only the greatest men wer. the teachers, self-appointed. The most iilustrious of the early teachers taught sy she nhe tS 5e For it is the political science or faculty which determines what sciences should be learnt, and how far they should be learnt by particular people," (Aristotle).
 The Alabama Text Book Commission has appointed text books for instructing Two of the number may be named here; Peterman on Civil Government" and Ghambers's Higher History of the oir Uni.ed StS states. . It IS unnecessary 10 in are the best of their class available; it is certainly the just due of the Commission | to commend it's desire to have political | science taught in the public schools. It may not have been democratic practice to create a Text Book Commission ex | cluding the laity from membership. al- belt the most able and faithful of teach | CTS fill the places. The public school is | the pride as we'll as the creature of so- ciety. Like jury, the institution so dear | is yet no better than the average virtue | of society. Richard Roe, John Doe and | their associates in the ordinary avocations of life in Alabama, not being recognized | in the personnel of this high Commission, | are necessarily relegated to the columns | of The Advertiser to discuss the compet- | ency of the public school text books and to throw out suggestions to unwary par | ents and teachers, if any such there be. | I propose to present evidence from the volumes themselves, that Peterman on l Civil Government" and Chambers in his Higher History of the United States" contradict each other in their respective | statements of fundamental facts and theories of the history and government of the United States: and that each con- | tradicts himself. newspaper article is necessarily insufficient to greater par | student may stand in need of to encour. age him to demonstrate for himself the interesting allegation of anomaly and par Peterman, for instance. teaches, tpage 9S). "the Government of the United States ds )often called the National Govern ment or Federal GOvernment," and that it is for the good of the entire. country. and it's authority Is over the whole peo- ple." Words are things. as all admit. The author here makes no other or fur | ther use in his text book, devoted pro- fessionally to acuracy of definition in the field of fundamental science, of the | and profuse redundancy he employs the word ''national' in preference. Without any. doubt. he means the pupil with his ment of the United States is, and always | was, national" government. and not | federal government. whatever he may say of States. and the constitutional status of States, is of thought subordi- nate to the theme of domination of the national over the federal theory in the | government.
 When the earnest teacher takes up Chambers, D. 263 he will read an admira- ble narrative. as far as 1t goes. of the original contention in the Convention of l7S over these very descriptive words, federal" and national" Writing the history, in that Chapter of the formation of the Constitution, Chambers says, speaking from Madison's Journal, "a ma jority of the States were opposed to the national idea" In proof of this early fact of opposition to the national idea, he goes on to relate the deliberate and final defeat. of the First Legislative Act of the Convention, the plan of govern ment prepared. at home. by Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia in con- ference with Washington and Madison, founded on the general proposition that "a national government ought to be es- abolished. consisting of a supreme legis- lature. judiciary and executive" The
 Virginia or Randolph plan having been decsiveY and finally defeated at the outset, Chambers proceeds to show from the records how a federal government
 was introduced and accepted by the States SeVeraly.
 Petermans gratuitous assertion is pigmy upon an Alp. No government as defined by him exists on the face of the earth probably will ever exist
 The government of the United States consists of three estates or divisions.
 Neither of the three Is created by the United States or the nation. If that be true, as undoubtedly it is true, the gov ernment cannot be national. The three estates are, CD the legislative. to the for
 nation of which each separate State Cun- tributes its own contingent, uncontrolled in any degree from without except in certain formalities as all States are iden-
 tically controlled; @ the executive, separate State creation; (3) the judiciary, created tv virtue of power lodged in the other two. The government iS federal
 because each uf the three estates that comprise il iS created exclusively by the States or the constituted agents of the States. Massachusetts had no more to do iwth the elc'ti0n of Senator Pettus by the present Legislature of Alabama than
 Pennsylvania had to do with the access
 sion of Edward VII to his throne. No
 majority for Representative Wiley. cast in Alabama, passes over to Georgia or
 elsewhere The vote for Representatives
 in Congress terminates with the Stat"
 from which they enter Congress and | therefore the legislative estate or the gov
 ernment cannot bc national, but must be
 federal. Being the one, it cannot be the other.
 Coming to the second in order, the eX-
 e0utiVc estate. it is pertinent to the pro
 position of federal character in the gov crnmcnt to recount the election of fohN Quincy Adams to the Presidency