juvenile crime, and stopping the growth of an ignorant and dangerous class to law and order.

That the State has a right to force the education of its subjects, there can be no reasonable doubt. Compulsory education is certainly the right of the State, as much as conscription or compulsory service is the right of the State in time of war. Of the latter no one questions the right of the State for a moment; why should they question the former? Would it be harder to parents for the State to compel their children to attend school, than to compel their sons to bear arms in the defense of our country? If the common school is the mightiest fortification of the commonwealth, there can be no reason why the children should not be compelled to attend.

The secret of the enormous power, energy and enterprise of Prussia, as developed in her present conflict with France, is undoubtedly in a great measure to be attributed to the superior intelligence of her people. This is owing to her comprehensive plan of popular education. This system is compulsory, by which every child between the ages of seven and fourteen, who is not an invalid or idiot, is compelled by law to attend school. The vast superiority of the Germans over the French, who have no such system, is a sufficient comment upon the advantages of general compulsory education.

"I should not be candid," says Mr. Mundella, in his Cooper Institute speech, "if I did not frankly tell you that North Germany and Switzerland excel you in the thoroughness and the universality of their systems; and this, I believe, is entirely owing to the fact, that, in those countries, the parent has not the right to deprive the child of the excellent training which the State has provided. When the parent fails in his duty, the State stands in loco parentis; and this is what you chiefly need to perfect your educational system."

We are no longer the most generally educated people in the world. Others are outstripping us in this respect in consequence of having adopted the compulsory plan. This has prepared the way for the rapid strides of Prussia to the leadership of Europe. And if we would act wisely we must adopt the same system, otherwise we must fall in the rear of more vigorous and enterprising nations.

That a compulsory system of education is necessary in these United States, is made abundantly evident by the recently published statistics on education by the General government. From this document it appears that in twentytwo States where there were 5,695,916 children enrolled in the schools, there was but an average attendance of 3,377,069. At the same time there is a total average absence in these twentytwo States from the public schools of the enormous number of 4,843,568 children of school

age. This is truly alarming, and calls loudly for enforced education throughout the land.

Now who does not believe that compulsory education would be an improvement upon our present system? At all events, let there be no steps taken backward upon this question. Let there be no hesitation upon the part of Protestants, as to whether our public school system shall be maintained, and intelligence made the basis of our government, or whether we shall get down upon our knees in the dust to the Romish hierarchy, and tamely submit to the destruction of these schools, and the enthronement of their system of ignorance, superstition, and despotism.

CHAPTER IX.

A Moral Element of Instruction is Essential to the Success of our Public School System and the Welfare of the Nation.

In the education of children two very dissimilar systems of school training have been adopted at various times and in different countries. One is that in which the moral faculties are altogether neglected; where the mind is merely crowded with facts, theories, and speculations, without any reference to their higher and philosophical relations to the Supreme Being. other is that in which the moral nature of the child is recognized as an essential element of his very existence, and which must be especially cared for in the training process.

The

The former, which aims only to secure bare intellectual culture, can never be accepted by a Christian nation as a suitable system of education without self-stultification and peril. Such an institution overlooks the most important part of man's nature. Children are endowed with moral faculties as well as adults, and these can never be neglected by the State with impunity. As the moral nature is higher than the physical or intellectual, its culture and development are

of paramount consideration. The system that fails to impress the mind with moral truths and reflections, however well it may succeed in imparting whatever is embraced in a common school education, or even in the higher grades of literature, so as to make its pupils familiar with the entire round of classical and mathematical training, would leave its work but half completed. A knowledge of exponents and coefficients, of angles and parallaxes, of sines and co-sines, of tangents and secants, etc., can never be made to supply the place of moral culture. A man may be distinguished for his literary attainments, the profundity of his knowledge, and his metaphysical acuteness, and still be a villain at heart, a monster in crime.

Bourne has very fitly said; "The foundation of character is laid in the moral nature. The heart is exercised while the mind is yet just unfolding its earliest power. The child loves before he reasons, and exhibits anger before he has learned to utter his first monosyllables. His moral powers are in action long before his judgment has begun to discriminate between right and wrong. It is only when the mind, by years of education and a force of character developed out of the moral nature, has learned to act in certain directions, that the man may be at all claimed as the subject of simply intellectual convictions. In truth, it may be asserted that