ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 Hon. JOSEPH B.CUMMING 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 Georgia Teachers’ Association, 
 
 AT TOCCOA, GA. 
 
 AUGUST 9, 1877. 
 
 Chronicle Job Print, 
 Augusta, Ga. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/addressofhonjoseOOcumm 
 
Such an audience as this, and the occasion which has 
 brought it together, would suggest that no theme for an ad- 
 dress would be appropriate except the profoundly interesting 
 and highly important one of Education. To discuss any other 
 topic than one of the many phases of this subject would seem 
 to fall little short of impertinence. You have assembled here 
 for a definite purpose, and' to exchange views upon a given 
 subject, not to be entertained by essays on miscellaneous 
 themes ; and no one who occupies any portion of your valua- 
 ble time can be excused for introducing any other subject, 
 however attractive. You have come together to reap and 
 glean this particular field, not to wander at will, culling wild 
 flowers along any pleasant path. 
 
 I have felt the pressure of this very proper restriction, and 
 have preferred to prose rather than to transgress. I har r e 
 chosen, therefore, one view of the general theme which en- 
 gages your deliberations. 
 
 One situated as I am incurs this risk: the subject is new 
 to my thoughts, it is. very familiar to yours ; views of it may 
 bear to me the aspect of novelty, while to you they will 
 appear trite ; I may endeavor to establish by labored argu- 
 ment propositions which, to your mind, are Axiomatic. If 
 this turn out to be the case in this instance, then at least I 
 shall have the consolation of knowing that no greater evil 
 can ensue than the loss to you of the time which your cour- 
 tesy has assigned to me. while I discuss, in a plain way, both 
 in the abstract and with reference to Georgia, the relation of 
 the State to Education. 
 
 Georgia, in the last few years, has done much towards 
 shaking off her prejudices and indifference. But while I 
 believe that most of us will live to see the time when our 
 citizens will be divided in their views of the right, the expe- 
 diency and the duty of the State to furnish general education 
 by taxation, no more than they are now divided in their senti- 
 ments as to habeas corpus, yet at present there are thousands 
 in the State who deny, or doubt, or disapprove. Any word 
 which will tend to produce harmony erf sentiment and concert 
 of action on this great subject will be fitly spoken. Anything 
 that is done firmly to establish an enlightened and progressive 
 system of general education as a normal and matter of course 
 part of our economy, is done in season. Whoever contri- 
 butes in any degree to the confirming, improving and per- 
 
 3 
 
fecting such system, will have a share in the magnificent result 
 of increasing the wealth of the State, of enlarging the happi- 
 ness of her people, and even of making her fair face still 
 fairer; for intelligence cannot become general, and now un- 
 seen resources not be discovered ; wealth cannot accumulate, 
 and the uncultivated places not blossom and bloom ; the heart 
 and mind of man cannot be enlightened, and new beauties 
 not spring up around his home and about his path. 
 
 One class of those who deny, or doubt, or disapprove, do 
 so from a common and useful spirit of opposition to every- 
 thing new. They are ultra conservatives. They look on the 
 support of education by the State as a modern invasion of 
 individual rights. I propose, by a few general observations, 
 to show that these objectors are mistaken in fact; that there 
 are few things older than the practice, to some extent., of 
 States educating the citizen or subject. Whenever the State 
 has needed a trained soldier, that State — whether a pure 
 Democracy or an absolute monarch, like Louis XIV. who 
 said of himself, “I am the State!" — has not hesitated to take 
 the public money and educate the soldier; nor has it ever 
 entered the mind of citizen or subject to question State edu- 
 cation in this form ; for, in such a case, the expediency of 
 educating the soldier in the art of war has been apparent — 
 the benefit to be derived by the State obvious and direct. 
 Hence, preceding State schools for instruction in other duties 
 of citizenship, we find military schools established and main- 
 tained by the State and approved by the people. What, too. 
 is an established Church but au institution supported by the 
 State for the eductation of the people? The fact that the 
 instruction imparted by it is mainly religious affects not the 
 principle. Through that part of history which we call the 
 Middle Ages, almost all the intellectual food provided for 
 the masses of Christendom came from the Church : and, dark 
 as those ages were, they would have been overhung by a 
 still blacker pall but for the feeble light which the teachings 
 of the Church imparted to the masses of the people. It is 
 true that the Church drew much of her revenues from the 
 endowments of pious founders, but it may be laid down as a 
 proposition substantially correct, that the Church was sup- 
 ported from the coffers of the State ; and we wander not far 
 from the truth when we say that in this way such education 
 as the people had, the State provided. If we turn back 
 further to those States whose records have come down to us 
 least impaired, and to which the scholar turns most lovingly. 
 
 4 
 
we find not a little of State education. It is true we do not. 
 or at least I do not, know much about public schools in 
 Greece or Rome, but it is quite certain that both Athens 
 and Sparta had educational laws ; that in Athens at least the 
 orphans of soldiers killed in battle were educated at the 
 public expense, and that all children in Sparta were taken 
 from their parents and sent to public schools. But there was 
 other education furnished to the people more or less directly 
 at the public expense. Many prisoners brought Caesar and 
 other conquerors home to Rome, whose ransom did the 
 general coffers fill, and much public money acquired in this 
 way, and in others, was at Rome, and in the cites of Greece, 
 laid out in public buildings and in works of art. Was there 
 no education in the masterpieces of statuary and architecture 
 which adorned Athens am 1 D nme? Was there nothing ele- 
 vating in the constant presence of these embodiments of the 
 beautiful and sublime? Who could look at the Acropolis 
 and not feel the stirrings of his better nature? Who could 
 live in the daily presence of the works of the masters — know 
 them as familiarly as the tools of his trade, and not enter 
 somewhat into the spirit of the master, and be lifted some- 
 what near the master? And was there no instruction to 
 be had in the Agora, when Pericles discoursed of high themes 
 there? And did not the masses who crowded the forum to 
 hear Cicero become more enlightened while he philosophised? 
 That this idea is not merely fanciful, let a little reflection on 
 the populace of Rome determine. It was as keen, and 
 sprightly, and quick-witted a people as ever lived — good 
 judges of public men and public measures ; people of ideas and 
 taste withal — some of the commonest of them uttering senti- 
 ments which have come down through the ages. Think 
 how superior they were to their neighbors — neighbors in time 
 and space, in intelligence, in those mental and moral quali- 
 ties which make a State great. How superior we must admit 
 them, in many respects, to the uneducated masses of our own 
 people. Take, for instance, their appreciation of oratory. 
 Imagine a son of old Rome — some Gracchus, or Claudius, or 
 Fabius. or Antony, ascending the rostrum in the forum at 
 the Comitia. and treating this keen,, wide awake, practial 
 Roman audience to such a speech as your average Georgia 
 politician dispenses from the stump. Imagine him, after the 
 manner of our fellow citizen, shouting the whole of his 
 speech from the exordium all through the peroration with 
 the same monotonous vociferation, with sublime contempt for 
 
 5 
 
grammar, ungraceful, awkward, violent in his gesticulation, 
 slovenly in his pronunciation, and commonplace sadly in 
 the matter and manner of his discourse generally. In other 
 words, take our average Georgia “public man,” put him 
 in the forum, array him in a toga, let him talk Latin as 
 badly as he talks' English ; let him bawl as lustily at the 
 Comitia as he does at the barbecue ; let him saw the soft 
 Italian atmosphere as. he does the free air of Georgia; in 
 short, let him make such a speech on the public affairs of 
 Rome as he is ready to favor you with whenever called for : 
 let him give his Georgia manner and style to the inhabitants 
 of the etrnal city, and what fate would your expect for him? 
 I am not accurately informed what treatment was usually 
 accorded by a disgusted Roman audience to an intolerable 
 bore ; but such as it was, be sure our Georgia friend would 
 have received it, full measure, heaped up, pressed down, and 
 running over. Now, what was the cause of this superiority? 
 Is it not to be found, to some degree at least, in the public 
 education furnished, more or less directly, by the State to the 
 Roman citizen — an education that came to him from the pub- 
 lic assemblies, the public buildings, the works of art, which 
 Consuls and Tribunes of the people, out of the public coffers, 
 put before him, on his right hand and on his left? 
 
 But I cannot dwell on this part of my subject. I meant 
 only to throw out some few observations in opposition to the 
 idea entertained by many that this thing of education, fur- 
 nished at the public expense, is a new invasion by Govern- 
 ment of individual rights. I have endeavored to show, by a 
 few general observations, that in remote times States have 
 more or less directly furnished some sort of education to the 
 people. I rather apprehend that the difference in this respect 
 between the past and present is to be found in the greater 
 regularity and uniformity of operation, and obviousness and 
 directness of connection. Then the raising of money for 
 public purposes was not so much as now a matter of rule. It 
 was not, as now, when if a dollar of public money is spent 
 for any purpose, it must be seen and known of all men. In 
 other words, in these days State education requires an educa- 
 tional tax. and this question is thus thrust upon the notice of 
 every man : “Ought the State to use one man’s money for 
 
 the education of another man’s children?” And the fact is left 
 out of view, that to some extent, with more or less direct- 
 ness. through various ways of spending the public money, 
 civilized States have always dbne this thing. 
 
 6 
 
The exact proposition of the objectors is this: The State 
 has no right to take money from one man to educate another. 
 This objection would be found most naturally with, and 
 would come with most force from, the childless rich. Is it 
 not met and answered, or do I only convince myself by the 
 question — is not one man’s blood spent for the benefit of 
 another? YY'ar lowers upon the confines of the State; does 
 the State hesitate to send any of her citizens to the front? 
 The man taken may have very little at stake. The invading 
 army can do him but little harm. His hut is safe in a 
 sequestered glen of yon rugged 1 mountain. The vine and the 
 fig tree, beneath which his humble life would have passed, 
 smooth and peaceful, would not be wasted by the spoiler. 
 The scanty acres, sufficient for his frugal wants, would not be 
 coveted by the conqueror. It is the waving fields of the rich 
 that will be trampled. It is those abodes of wealth and 
 luxury that will attract the plunderer. It is yon defenceless 
 cities of the plain that will feel the shot and shell, and will 
 vanish in fire and smoke ; and he might witness their over- 
 throw in the same security and with more indifference than 
 Lot, looking from the mountain at the destruction of Sodom 
 and Gomorrah. Successful invasion might sweep the land, 
 one government be overthrown and another succeed, tribunes 
 be cast down and a throne set up, and the even current of his 
 life How undisturbed, and the contented domestic circle be 
 unbroken. But the State summons him to the frontier, and 
 that the weatlh of the land may be spared, there he must 
 bleed and die. Shall the State have all the blood of this man 
 to defend the property of the rich, and not have a pittance of 
 the property of the rich to enlighten this man? But there 
 are no wars. The commercial intercourse of the country oc- 
 cupies chief attention. High roads for travel and trade must 
 be constructed and kept in order. AYho is most interested in 
 this subject, the poor man who has neither time nor money 
 for travel, who goes not to market because he has no surplus 
 to sell, and no money to buy withal ; or the rich, who has 
 his surplus crops or his merchandise to transport. And yet 
 Georgia, at least, has always required the labor of every man 
 alike for this purpose. 
 
 Leaving out of view for the present the great blessings she 
 derives to herself from educating her citizens, and putting the 
 question upon the lower ground of returning service for ser- 
 vice, the State, or society — for under our system these are 
 convertible terms — owes something to every citizen. She 
 extracts everything of every one that her normal wants or 
 
 7 
 
pressing emergencies demand. She is content with his sweat 
 and his money, if they suffice ; she will have his blood, if it 
 is needed. 
 
 What will she give him in return? All are agreed that she 
 owes him something- — at least food and raiment, shelter and 
 burial, if his own efforts cannot provide them. Witness our 
 poor houses and potters’ fields. Upon what principle does 
 she owe these? Will it ’be said that humanity demands this 
 much? Most true, humanity does demand this much. But 
 upon what principle do the claims of humanity, if the State 
 can respond to them at all, stop with the care of the body 
 and leave the mind’ and soul to starve? 
 
 1 only seek, in this dull, labored way, to advance a little 
 from well established positions. These established positions 
 I understand to be, that the State, or society, claims ordinary 
 or extraordinary services from the citizen, even to his life, 
 according to her exigencies;; that the State, or society, has 
 long admitted some counter claim on the part of the citizen, 
 and has provided for the preservation and burial of the body. 
 The position to which I move in advance of these established 
 propositions is this: That no principle of law, of political 
 ethics, or private rights, or of humanity, limits the action of 
 the State to these admitted obligations; that the obligation 
 to give what she does give is not in the nature of thing more 
 binding than the obligation to give more ; that her right to 
 tax for those things for which she habitually taxes is not in 
 principle' better established than her right to tax for other 
 things ; that whether the State will sustain a liberal system 
 of public instruction by taxation, is a question not of right, 
 but of expediency, to be dealt with like any other matter pf 
 established right. This is a safe committal of the subject to 
 the forum of enlightened expediency. Our people is an emi- 
 nently safe people. They are calm, reasonable, conservative: 
 they will deal with this question in practical wisdom ; con- 
 tests will be waged: over it, as over every interesting subject 
 of public policy. There will be your enthusiast, unable to see 
 any proper appropriation of the public money except for edu- 
 cational ’purposes — who will believe in his heart that a liberal 
 school system will be a panacea for all ills, political, social, 
 financial ; he will be at one end of the list. At the other 
 will be your constitutional grumbler, who would neither give 
 millions for defence nor a farthing for tribute — who conceives 
 himself robbed whenever he pays his poll tax — who hates 
 new things — who loves, if he loves anything, the abuses of 
 
 8 
 
the past — who (that I may sum up in one sentence his depth 
 of darkness on this subject), if he had to be taxed at all for 
 education, would return to the old Inferior Court poor school 
 system, of which more anon. But neither of these extremists 
 will prevail. The people of 'Georgia have never failed in the 
 long run to deal in wise moderation with every problem of 
 State policy, and this one they will settle with due regard 
 both to the progress of the age and the sacredness of private 
 rights. 
 
 So much for the relation in the abstract of the State to 
 education. What has been her relation historically to this 
 subject? She has never been, since her independence of the 
 crown, wholly apathetic and indifferent. What she has done 
 or attempted may be considered under the two heads of the 
 common schools and the University. I adopt the names 
 which the laws gave them. lEbth these designations were in- 
 appropriate. There were no common schools until recently ; 
 there has never been a University. 
 
 First of the schools: In 1785 the Legislature, in a flaming 
 preamble to one of its acts, set forth the importance of edu- 
 cation. In 1820 it exempted real estate of academies from 
 taxation. In 1821 it passed an act for the permanent endow- 
 ment of academies and common schools. This act set apart 
 $500,000 of bank, stock owned by the State and appropriated 
 the dividents of it to free schools and academies. The yield 
 from this source, if the stock remained intact, could not have 
 been more than $40,000 per annum. From that time until 
 1843. while hardly a session of the Legislature passed without 
 some legislation on this subject, it was nothing but tinkering 
 and botching a wretched and wholly inadequate system. The 
 scope and purpose of such legislation was ordinarily to alter 
 some trifling detail of a bad 1 plan, such as to prescribe who 
 should take the census of the children, whether the Jus- 
 tices of the Peace or some other person ; what amount of 
 bond should be given by the treasurer of the poor little fund : 
 what form of oath should be taken by the half paid teachers, 
 as it such changes could transform an extremely faulty sys- 
 tem into a perfect one. Such were the efforts of the State 
 until 1843. The act of 1843 codified, as it were, all the pre- 
 vious legislation on the subject. In the meantime, part of 
 the bank stock — that of the Bank of Darien — had disap- 
 peared : and this act of December 27, 1843, set apart about 
 $260,000 of stock of the State Bank and of the Bank of 
 Augusta. The yield from this source was about $20,000 per 
 
 9 
 
 v 
 
annum. These dividends,, and such additional fund as the 
 Justices of the Inferior Courts might levy by taxation on the 
 recommendation of the grand juries of their respective coun- 
 ties, composed the educational fund. Most of us i can remem- 
 ber how reluctantly such a tax was laid, how small it was, 
 how little it swelled the pittance derived from the State, how 
 contemptible was the aggregate amount. 
 
 Inadequate as it was, it was administered honestly but not 
 wisely. The stewards of it were the Justices of the Inferior 
 Court. That respestable magistracy was in their time over- 
 whelmed with gratuitous services to the public. They were 
 Pontifices Maximi, or chief bridge builders; they managed 
 the roads, the finances, the public buildings, the jail, the 
 poor. They were a Court of Common Law, and the Court 
 of Ordinary, and a Criminal Court, for the trial of felonies 
 among negroes. A more patriotic set of men no country 
 could show, but there were not selected ordinarily with ref- 
 erence 'to any special enlightment on the subject of educa- 
 tion. They meant well, doubtless, and they managed the 
 educational interests of their counties not much worse than 
 they tried law cases, but a good deal worse than they made 
 roads and bridges. 
 
 The fund thus administered by these respectable gentle- 
 men, was from the time of its creation, in 1821. until 1840. 
 known indifferently to the law as the free school fund, the 
 common school fund, and the poor school fund. There never 
 was any appropriateness in the name of common school — the 
 schools which, by its feeble aid, “languishing did live,” were 
 not common to the children of the State. In 1840, some legis- 
 lator, with an eye to the eternal fitness of things, had the name 
 made to conform to the thing, and thenceforward by law it 
 was. what it had always been in fact, in more senses than 
 one, the “Poor School Fund.” This sapient legislator would 
 have done well to disregard absolute symmetry in this respect. 
 He dealt a serious blow to the already sickly system. With- 
 out this name, it had already too many distasteful features 
 for the poor. In fact, under this system, education — which, 
 in its own right, is associated 'with ideas of dignity and 
 ennoblement- — presented itself to those to be benefitted by it 
 it the guise of social inferiority. The act of December 22. 
 1828, in so many words, made “extreme indigence" the quali- 
 fication of admission to these schools. It had for the parent 
 or the child of spirit, the objection of charity given almost 
 contemptuously. It was presented as one of the branches of 
 
 10 
 
pauperism ; it stood in the minds of men on the same footing 
 with the poor house; it smelt of broken victuals. Education 
 acquired in this way was at too great a cost to natural and 
 respectable feelings of the human heart, and doubtless many 
 a parent preferred for his child, and many a child preferred 
 for himself, perhaps with false but insurmountable pride, 
 ignorance and equality, rather than “the three R’s” with 
 social inferiority. The teachers themselves did not wholly 
 escape the shabbiness of the system. They were miserably 
 compensated, and the pittance they received was paid them 
 only after their oath that they had done their simple duty. 
 The whole system was a poor one, based upon fundamental 
 errors. As much was done as could be, by giving it degrad- 
 ing names, and throwing around it an atmosphere of con- 
 tempt and meanness, to make it as unattractive as possible, it 
 is not strange that it accomplished little or no good. The 
 best that can be said' of it is that it showed that the great 
 heart of our mother was burdened with solicitude for her 
 children and could not rest. She must be doing something 
 for them, albeit ineffectually and foolishly. 
 
 In 1850 the benefits of the system, thitherto confined to 
 the poor, were extended in theory to all alike ; practically, the 
 poor children had the preference. This was an important 
 step in the right direction. It was at least a partial recogni- 
 tion by the State of her duty to supply education to all her 
 children. This change of theory, and the addition, under 
 certain restrictions, of the net earnings of the State Road to 
 the educational fund, brings the school system down to what 
 I shall call its Modern History, that history commencing with 
 the Constitution of 1868. 
 
 Let us now turn to the “University." The act of 1785. 
 before referred to, was “An act for the more full and com- 
 plete establishment of a public seat of learning in this State." 
 The language of the preamble is so full of grand expectations 
 that I recite it, and let it speak for itself : 
 
 “As it is the distinguishing happiness of free government 
 that civil order should be the result of choice and not neces- 
 sity, and the common wishes of the people become the laws 
 of the land, their public prosperity, and even existence, 
 very much depends upon suitably forming the minds and 
 morals of their citizens. When the minds of the pepole in 
 general are viciously disposed and unprincipled, and their 
 conduct disorderly, a free government will be attended with 
 greater confusions, and evils more horrid than the wild, mi- 
 
 ll 
 
cultivated state of nature. It can only be happy where the 
 public principles and opinions are properly directed, and their 
 manners regulated. This is an influence beyond the stretch 
 of laws and punishments, and can be claimed only by religion 
 and education. It should, therefore, be among the first ob- 
 jects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to en- 
 courage and support the principles of religion and morality, 
 and early to place the youth under the forming hand of 
 society, that by instruction they may be moulded to the love 
 if virtue and good order. Sending them abroad to other 
 countries for their education will not answer these purposes, 
 is too humiliating an acknowledgement of the ignorance or 
 inferiority of our own, and will always be the cause of so 
 great foreign attachments, that upon principles of policy it is 
 inadmissible. 
 
 "This country, in the times of our common danger and 
 distress, found such security in the principles and abilities 
 which wise regulations had before established in the minds of 
 our countrymen, that our present happiness, joined to the 
 pleasing prospects, should conspire to make us feel ourselves 
 under the strongest obligation to form the youth, the rising 
 hope of our land, to render the like glorious and essential ser- 
 vices. to our country. 
 
 “And whereas, for the great purpose of internal education, 
 divers allotments of land have at different times been made, 
 particularly by the Legislature at their session in July, 1783, 
 and February, 1784, all of which may be comprehended and 
 made the basis of one general and complete establishment: 
 Therefore enacted." 
 
 What rolling sentences J What magnificent expectations ! 
 What immense superiority over all foreign institutions of 
 learning is foreshadowed ! As Ave read Ave begin to feel 
 almost sorry for the departing glories of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge waning before this one general and complete estab- 
 lishment. All this magniloquence of the preamble rolling in 
 our ears conjures up before us nothing less than Salamanca, 
 Avith its 12,000 students, and Bologna, with its 13,000. The 
 lame and impotent conclusion Avas Franklin College. FoIIoav- 
 ing this tremendous flourish there was, through a long series 
 of years, any quantity of legislation in reference to the 
 “University." but it Avas all petty and barren of good results. 
 It Avas mainly, from time to time, to increase or diminish the 
 number of trustees, to prescribe the time of meeting of the 
 Senatus Academicus, to perfect titles of purchasers of the 
 
 12 
 
University lands. There was enough of this patching and 
 tinkering to keep the Legislature in rememberance that they 
 had a University, so-called; but it did not advance that insti- 
 tution one step nearer the position arrogated to it by its high 
 sounding name. Silver and gold for this beggar, sitting at the 
 beautiful gate of learning, the State had none, but such as she 
 had — trustees — freely gave she unto it. To look through the 
 legislation of this subject of the “University,” one could 
 hardly escape the conviction that the Legislature thought — 
 its views fluctuating between giving and taking away — that 
 Franklin College was to be made what the preamble to the 
 act of 1785 contemplated, “the one general and complete 
 establishment” of learning, by the addition and subtraction of 
 trustees, and that the cause of advanced learning was fixed on 
 a firm foundation when the trustees assembled in august 
 senatus academicus. Little had this legislation to do with 
 that, without which there could be no improvement — money. 
 When it could spare time enough from making and unmaking 
 trustees, the Legislature, on two occasions, loaned the “Uni- 
 versity" $5,000 and $10,000, having good care to secure the 
 repayment. The permanent endowment became in 1821 
 $8,000 per annum, less than one-third of the sum now raised 
 annually by Richmond county to suppliment the State aid to 
 her common schools. Not much could be expected, of 
 course, from such an institution. It was in vain that it had 
 honorable and learned and zealous professors. Dependent 
 for his support upon private tuition, it had to debase its cur- 
 riculum and lower its standard so far that none inclined to 
 apply should be rejected, and none ever admitted should 
 thereafter be cast out. The consequence was inevitable. 
 The instruction it imparted was that of a tolerable academy, 
 and the degree -it conferred alike on the proficient and the 
 unlearned had neither value nor honor. I do not mean to 
 say that there are not many ripe scholars among the alumni ; 
 but I do say that its curriculum and its standard were not 
 calculated to make scholars. It would be more agreeable to 
 myself, and doubtless more popular among my hearers, to 
 speak of the “University” in different terms. But w r e are 
 dealing with this subject as men seeking to improve. We 
 shall not improve while we make that which is unworthy the 
 subject of commendation. But I do not speak of the Frank- 
 lin College of the present hour. I confess my ignorance of 
 its actual condition. I trust that there have been improve- 
 ments of which I have not heard. 
 
 13 
 
So much for history. We are now confronted with the 
 immediate present. What shall we do? Fortunately, we 
 have not now to commence in this consideration with first 
 principles. The Constitution of the State, the course of 
 legislation under it, and, more important still, public opinion, 
 recognize the fact that the State must foster a system of gen- 
 eral and advanced education. It is no longer an answer to 
 the advocacy of such measures that they require taxation. So 
 do Courts and the administration of civil and criminal law ; 
 but no one dreams of closing the Courts on this account. 
 Public opinion is prepared to recognize that the sustaining a 
 liberal system of education is a legitimate and desirable exer- 
 cise of the powers of government. How shall this power be 
 exercised in Georgia? At your invitation. I give my crude 
 views for what they are worth. 
 
 I would say: First, The State should furnish directly a 
 
 system of primary schools, as free and as universal as wide 
 air. The sum necessary for this branch of the system should 
 be appropriated directly from the Treasury of the State. The 
 primary schools should be recognized as one of the prime 
 necessities of the State — neither subject to the apathy or 
 prejudices of local interests, nor dependent upon the fluc- 
 tuations of particular funds. Right here I would say that 
 I would divorce the fortunes of education from those of 
 circuses and the retail of liquor, which are now wedded by 
 our law. It is a most unnatural alliance. I am assailing 
 neither the retail of liquor nor the exhibitions of the circus 
 and of negro minstrels ; but it is rather a fantastic result of 
 our legislation, that its direct tendency is to make the friends 
 of education desire the spread of bar-rooms and welcome the 
 coming of a clown as a great boon. 
 
 By commont consent, it seems to be agreed that the stud- 
 ies in these primary schools shall be reading, writing and 
 arithmetic : but, as I shall presently show. I would have this 
 matter regulated by the University — the University of the 
 future. But, university or no university. I would have as a 
 part of this primary instruction, presentation in simple narra- 
 tives of the characters of great and good 1 men and women. 
 This primary department is the only part of the system sure 
 to reach every child; and I would give him. before he goes 
 out into this common-place world, a higher ideal of humanity 
 than he will be apt to encounter in his actual experience — not 
 omitting from my sketches those glorious old heathens who, 
 however much theologians may be puzzled to locate their 
 
 14 
 
departed spirits, played here in the flesh grand roles of virtue 
 and true greatness. In this way ingenuous youth might be 
 led to lift his eyes to better models than the small men, to 
 whom it is the disgusting practice of the times to accord cheap 
 apotheosis. 
 
 The practical qualification of the beneficiaries of this part 
 of the system would be a minimum age. Xo better can be 
 devised. As a rule, children reaching a certain age are capa- 
 ble of receiving corresponding instruction. In the interest of 
 the little things, I would not have the minimum age too low. 
 Between the universal primary schools at one extreme of the 
 system and the University at the other. I would have too 
 other grades of schools, the admission to each grade to be 
 restricted by examination and by a minimum of age — lack of 
 proficiency or lack of age to exclude. I would have this 
 minimum of age so low that no bright child should' run the 
 risk of staying out of school altogether, or in a lower depart- 
 ment, which he had already mastered. These two interme- 
 diate grades, also, like every part of the system, I would have 
 supported by the State, but these two by that portion of the 
 political State which acts through the counties. The primary 
 department is universal ; the census determines the number of 
 its beneficiaries. The second and third grades will each grow 
 smaller than the preceding, and their numbers will not be so 
 easily ascertainable in large areas. By the time the second 
 grade is reached many will have dropped out from various 
 causes. X’ot least among them will be the discovery, among 
 the children of the rich and poor alike, that many have taken 
 in all that their minds can hold. In the condition of the poor 
 — the inequality of which is of God's ordinance, and which 
 human institutions cannot wholly remove — many a bright 
 little scholar, having received his quantum of the rudiments, 
 must come even now to the work of life. His services are 
 needed to take care of the little brothers and sisters, or his 
 puny efforts may be valuable in weeding the small garden or 
 in tending yon scanty flock. This general cause of depletion 
 of the schools will operate more forcibly in each higher 
 grade. The workshop, the store, and the farm will make 
 inroads upon the ranks of scholars, and the particular effects 
 of these causes can be best measured and provided for by 
 local authorities. As. too, these higher grades are less a 
 matter of necessity than the primary, I would leave the 
 system as to them more flexible and more dependent upon 
 the fluctuations of local prosperity. 
 
 15 
 
As I would have the broad base, the primary schools, sup- 
 ported directly by the State, so also with the apex, the Uni- 
 versity. I would have a University in its true sense, with its 
 college of literature and its colleges of law, medicine and 
 philosophy, meaning by the last the sciences ; should have it 
 not only a University, but one of a high order, if good pro- 
 fessors, selected without favoritism and fairly paid, could 
 make it so. It should be the fountain of instruction, from 
 which streams should flow all through the educational system. 
 It should license the teachers; it should prescribe the cur- 
 riculum of the schools. This latter duty was, under our old 
 system, performed by the Justices of the Inferior Court. This 
 was ludicrously absurd. Is it much better when it is left as 
 it now is, in many instances, to county officers, selected with- 
 out reference to fitness for this thing? The weakness of the 
 system, apart from its poverty, has been in the past, that it 
 expected the performance of a special act as an incident of 
 offices having no reference to it, whereas it is a high and 
 difficult specialty, to be performed, if at all well, by those 
 whose specialty it is. 
 
 The State of Georgia is a great country. I know that love 
 of country is a sentiment most apt to mislead. Not least 
 among its provisions for human happiness, Providence has 
 ordered that to each man that land on which his eyes have 
 first opened, and upon which ordinarily the} - will last close, 
 shall be to him the happiest and best of earth. 
 
 "The shuddering tenant of the frozen zone 
 Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own ; 
 
 Extols the treasures of his stormy seas. 
 
 And his long nights of revelry and ease. 
 
 The naked negro, panting at the Line, 
 
 Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine ; 
 
 Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave. 
 
 And thanks his gods for all the good the}" gave. 
 
 Such is the patriot’s boast, where'er we roam. 
 
 His first best country is at home." 
 
 There is on the West coast of Iceland, about ten miles 
 from it, a group of islands called the Westman Isles. They 
 rise goo feet of perpendicular rock out of the stormiest sea 
 that rolls. The only inhabitated one of the group — Heimaey — 
 does not contain ten square miles. Not a tree can rear its 
 head from the barren rock, or could withstand the unceasing 
 
 16 
 
gale. No verdure is there no nourish flock or herd. The 
 food of the inhabitants is fish and the flesh and eggs of sea 
 birds. This unwholesome diet slays their little ones with a 
 slaughter almost as general as King Herod’s. No harbor 
 indents that iron-bound coast save the narrow crater of an 
 extinct volcano. Not more than twice a year can any craft 
 leave or approach those storm-swept cliffs. There the few 
 inhabitants live and die in almost absolute isolation, in a 
 dreary waste of rocks and waters, a desolation of wind and 
 storm ; and yet, to them, it is "that happiest spot on earth." 
 In 1627 one of the few calm days vouchsafed to that stormy 
 coast came fraught with dire disaster to those poor islanders. 
 A vessel of Algerine pirates, cruising these seas, swept away 
 all the inhabitants of Heimaey. Most of them died in cap- 
 tivity. The survivors, few in number, ransomed by the King 
 of Denmark, having the whole world to choose from, im- 
 pelled by that universal feeling, love of country, preferred 
 their desolate rock to all other parts of the earth, and thither 
 they returned. 
 
 Notwithstanding such warning as this against the blind- 
 ing effect of love of home, I think I may reasonably say that 
 Georgians have a heaven-favored land. In extent, an em- 
 pire ; in natural qharacterists of endless variety ; in capa- 
 bilities for the future of boundless promise. One can within 
 her borders breathe the bracing atmosphere of the mountains, 
 and be fanned by the soft airs coming up from the not distant 
 tropics. Great rivers flow through her wide territory, and 
 the boundless ocean receives them at her own doors. Her 
 fertile plains wave with plentiful harvests; her hills are cov- 
 ered with priceless timber, and the sides of her mountains 
 barely conceal the rich mines they hold. What may we not 
 expect from such a land when universal enlightment shall 
 cover it as with a mantle, and the mind of knowledge shall 
 inform, the eye of science scrutinize, and the hand of taste 
 adorn ? 
 
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