Year: 1879




the French Chamber of Deputies by vote
proposed to exclude from service in educa
tional establishments all members of re-
ligious orders was lost by 3S1 to 7S. In that
Chamber, therefore, which gave for Ferrys
bill 352 votes there are only IS members
who believe that an ordinary educa-
tion should be separated from the
direct operation of religious inhu-
ences only that number would ex-
clude priests, nuns or other members Of
religious societies from the avocation
of teachers. But. on the contrary, there are
3S1 members who. directly challenged on
that issue, are against such exc clusion, and
refuse their consent to declare an absolute
Inconsistency between the duties OF
teacher and those Of service in a religious
order. But of these 3S1 352 vote for the ex-
clusion of those particular members of
orders designated in the bill This vote Is
a complete answer to the pretence that the
bill makes war on religion and on the priest
hood, since not only all those who voted for
it, but more have shown their readiness to
vote against bill which involved that sort
! of war.


These are indisputable facts, in the train
of modern ideas of government and the
body polite. that society must furnish to
every individual the opportunity to obtain
an education, and that it aust require that
every person who claims political rights
shall be educated at least in suoh degree
as to comprehend the simple relations and
importance of the rights he claims. Other
wise society opens an arsenal to people
who do not understand the use Of firearms.
1t distributes gunpowder to people who
cannot comprehend the explosive quality
Of that dangerous dust. In all countries
where political progress has reached
the extremity of universal suffrage the gov
ernment that fails to provide for the educa-
ton of the people neglects supremely
important duty. All our histories are filled
with elaborate accounts of the gymnastic
institutions Of Greece, and there are few
schoolboys who do not know all the details
of the dietetic observances and the train
ing of Spartan. And the object of all
that system of athIetics-what was it but to
prepare every Spartan to perform his duties
in defending his country? But in the
changed conditions Of the world the citizen
of modern State has to defend his country
ten times with the use of his reason where
he is called upon once for his muscles;
and shall modern States in the nineteenth
century make less provision toward pre-
pairing the people for the actual strifes of
life in which the welfare of the country is
at stake than was made by the institutions
of that ancient, crude and semi-barbarous
people? No! AS the Spartan system pro-
vided that the muscles Of every man should
be at their best when upon him, in the line
of battle, might rest the freedom of his
country, SO the modern system. which
makes q citizens vote the pivot of all
changes, must equally provide that that
vote shall be guided by an instructed intel.
ligence


In all countries this theory is part of the
modern political fabric; in not one country
in the world is it acted upon with an
adequate conception of the Importance of
the subject. Our own country is perhaps
worse served in this particular than almost
any other. At one period in our history it
was apparently true that we were more ex-
tensively and satisfactorily instructed than
the people of other countries. Americans
were very generally a we'll taught, intelli-
gent and nationally capable breed Of men,
and the contrast between them and the
men of other countries who drifted to
this side the sea was notable in respect
to instruction. But our position in
that respect is certainly no longer what it
was. Few persons, for instance, can be
more ignorant Of all that it is really desirable
to know in the world than q person who
has gone completely through the poll par
rot system of one of our New York public
schools; no person can know less or be so
confident that they know all that the world
has to teach them as boy or girl upon
whose education our people have spent the
whole sum of money demanded by the cur
riculum of Mr.. Kiddle and the absolutely
incapable persons Of whom we construct
our boards of education. Is the whole
United States in the same condition in this
particular as our city?


But our enemy is at least not the same
as the enemy that has stood in the way of
the performance of this function in France.
Political corruption and personal iavorit-
ism are the abuses Of our system, and to-
Rether they are bad enough, but the re-
ligious issues raised in France have made
the subject especially difficult to deal with
in that country. 1t was desirable there as
everywhere to give the citizen q simple
education, not handicapped with this or
that religious or ecclesiastical theory of life
or politics, yet it was scarcely possible to
do this without giving some show
of justice to the clamor that the
State prosecuted religion; that it
sought to establish political institutions