NEWELL said: I will merely say that the best way in which a superintendent can advance the interests of education will depend upon what kind of man the superintendent is. We are not all elegant scholars and profound philosophers, and therefore we cannot all present such admirable discourses as Dr. Higbee has given us to-day. But some of us may have capabilities in other directions, and our business as State superintendents is for each to use his best energies in his own line. One of us may be a politician, who knows how to log-roll and pull wires, quietly, respectably, but effectually. Now, the best thing he can do is to be a politician on behalf of public education. But a man may be unacquainted with politics, either in the fine or in the rough, and he may be a stump speaker-I suppose we have such among us. Let him go into the highways, bring the people around him and tell them what he knows about the public schools; tell them his experiences as an educator and how the advantages of superior education can be brought to the lowest as well as to the highest in the land by an efficient administration of our unrivalled public school system. But, on the other hand, a State superintendent may not be a politician; he may not be a stump speaker; he may be like your humble servant, nothing but a poor teacher, or even schoolmaster. If he knows how to teach let him go before the public and tell them what he knows about teaching. Let him talk about the topics of the day, about "corporal punishment" or "moral suasion;" about "recess" or "no recess;" but let him speak as one who knows, one who can speak from personal knowledge derived from experience. Let him go before the people, then, as a teacher, if he is a teacher. But it may happen that a man may not be a politician; that a man may not be a stump speaker; that he may not be a teacher; that he may be nothing but a State superintendent. In that case let him do nothing; it is the best service he can render to the country. In short, the best service any man can render as State superintendent is the best service he can render as a man. It is the man that ennobles the office, not the office the man.

Messrs. Speer and Akers, who were announced to take part in the discussion, had not arrived in Washington. Upon motion the meeting then adjourned.

SECOND SESSION-WEDNESDAY EVENING.

WASHINGTON, February 13, 1884. The members of the Department and their friends assembled in the hall of the high school at 8 o'clock P. M. The president called the meeting to order and introduced the first speaker, Dr. J. W. DICKINSON, who spoke as follows:

NATIONAL AID FOR THE SUPPORT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

The term education is used in many senses. Some use the words education and knowledge as equivalent terms. In this sense a person

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is educated in proportion to the amount of knowledge he possesses. Some consider education to be skill in the use of knowledge. In this sense one is educated who can realize his knowledge in some objective form. Others mean by education something back of knowledge and of activity. They use the term to signify a state of the mind in which it has the ability and the inclination to produce the most and the best results it is within the sphere of the human faculties to attain.

If this is the legitimate signification of the term education, then we may consider the thing signified to be a constituent element of the mind itself, an element which the mind may be constantly adding to itself by its own activity.

When the mind of the child begins to act it has no facility in the exercise of its powers, nor has it any inclination to act in a particular way, for it has not yet formed habits, it has no education. But as soon as the world without the child begins to hold a relation to the world within him his mind will move itself in producing the mental states of thinking, feeling, and choosing which external things are adapted to occasion. The activity thus excited will leave its impression on the mind that acts, and the educating process has commenced. This process will continue until the character of the child's mind is formed and his destiny is fixed. From this we may infer that it is education chiefly that gives to every man his place in life. Not that edu cation alone which school exercises are adapted to occasion, but that which is occasioned by whatever awakens the mind to activity from without or by whatever moves it from within.

History and reason both testify to the fact that whatever we would have appear in the citizen or in the nation we must first put into the schools. Indeed, a nation is possible only so far as citizens can be trained in the schools to think alike and act alike. The nations of antiquity organized their schools with especial reference to cultivating the national spirit. It was not until after the birth of the Greek and Roman republics that children were trained as ends to themselves. National education, existing to the exclusion of individual, will make quiet subjects of arbitrary power; but if there be added to national education that which develops the individual, the foundation is made for free institutions and for communities governed by self imposed rules.

No general and systematic education can be produced except by well organized schools. No systematic education containing the two elements national and individual development can be produced except in the schools of the people, and public schools can never be established or sustained except by public authority and by public funds. It is folly for a people to organize themselves into a free state and attempt to promote or to perpetuate its institutions without providing by law for universal education, which shall be at the same time compulsory and free. The government of a free state, that it may exist and be able to

exercise its own proper functions, must provide those institutions which shall educate the people into harmony with itself.

Does our National Government hold such a relation to the people that, in accordance with its Constitution and laws, it can justly and legally aid the people in organizing and supporting a system of public schools? This question may be answered by showing, in the first place, what a republican state or nation is and for what it may properly exist, and by showing, in the second place, the relation that the enumerated powers granted by the Constitution hold to the incidental or implied powers.

A republican state is a community of persons living within well defined limits of territory and under a permanent organization, governed by self imposed rules for the purpose of securing to themselves the enjoyment of the objects of their natural rights and the means of personal and social development.

If this is the true definition of a free state, it follows that the state and the people are one, that the state exists for the good of the individuals which constitute it, and that the state may justly do anything which is necessary to be done to secure the protection and development of its citizens which the citizens cannot do each acting for himself alone. It may be shown that the degree of protection a state can afford its citizens will always be equal to the right development of their minds. One must be trained to think, that he may become an intelligent, conscientious subject of just laws. His faculties must be properly trained that he may have intelligence to discover what are the rights of men and what are the obligations arising from them, that he may know the relations which individuals hold to society and be able and inclined to perform all his public duties. The state, that it may become the successful guardian of the rights of the people, must become the founder and supporter of public educational institutions.

"A nation," said John Milton, "ought to be as one huge christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look, what the ground and causes are of happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state." "The state," says Lieber, "is a form and faculty of mankind to lead the species toward greater perfection."

Civil constitutions and civil laws are simply rules of conduct. If they are wisely made and justly executed by the governing power of a free state, there must be implied in these acts the existence of intelligence and the power of self control generally diffused among the people; for, as has already been said, the governing power is the people themselves. As knowledge and self control are the products of education, or rather as one is the product and the other is education itself, it would seem absurd for the governing power of a republican state to establish a constitution or enact laws which should neither expressly nor by implication grant the right to itself to give national aid to the

people in support of their public schools; for withholding from itself this right would be equivalent to forbidding what may be necessary to its own existence. "The authority to educate is a constituent part of the right of self preservation which the nation may exercise as well as any individual citizen." "As every natural person may take due measures for his own improvement, so every artificial or corporate person may do the same."

From what has been said, the justice and wisdom of granting aid in the support of public educational institutions, by a national tax, if necessary, can hardly be questioned. But still it may be said that the fundamental idea of our national Constitution is that the people are sovran and that as a nation they can do only what the Constitution which they have established permits. "This must be admitted to be true, and yet there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which excludes incidental or implied powers." "The Articles of Confederation gave nothing to the United States but what was expressly granted, but the new Constitution dropped the word expressly, and left the question whether a particular power was granted to depend on a fair construction of the whole instrument. No constitution can contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of its powers, and of all the means by which they might be carried into execution." "Its nature requires that only the great outlines should be marked, and its important objects designated, and all the minor ingredients left to be deduced from the nature of these objects. The sword and the purse, all the external relations, and no inconsiderable portion of the industry of the nation. were intrusted to the General Government; and a Government intrusted with such ample powers, on the due execution of which the happiness and prosperity of the nation vitally depended, must also be intrusted with ample means for their execution." "The Constitution has not left the right of Congress to employ the necessary means for the execution of its powers to general reasoning." Article I, section 8, of the Constitution expressly confers on Congress the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry into execution the foregoing powers." "Congress may employ such means and pass such laws as it may deem necessary to carry into execution the great powers granted by the Constitution." "The powers of the Government were given for the welfare of the nation. They were intended to endure for ages to come, and to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." "If the end be legitimate and within the scope of the Constitution, all means which are appropriate and plainly adapted to this end, and which are not prohibited, are lawful."

This opinion of Chancellor Kent is entitled to great weight, not only as authority, but as in accordance with the highest reason and an inevitable deduction from necessary truths.

It is admitted that every government, whether national, State, or town, must be vested with incidental powers, that it may exercise in a

free, intelligent, and efficient manner powers expressly granted. It should be admitted also that incidental and enumerated powers bear a relation to each other, the nature and extent of the latter always determining the nature and extent of the former. Examples illustrating this truth may be readily given.

The constitution of the United States guarantees to every State a republican form of government. The history of the race and the nature of man both teach us that this is impossible except the people are trained together in the public schools. Therefore the obligation to establish republican institutions implies the power to establish educational institutions adapted to create the republican spirit. Again, power is expressly granted to provide for the general welfare of the people. But without a general diffusion of knowledge and a right training of the minds of the people, their general welfare cannot be provided for. Therefore the express power to provide for the general welfare implies the power and the duty to provide common schools as the necessary means by which this great end is to be accomplished.

To fail to educate the people is to fail to guarantee to them a republican form of government or to provide for their general welfare. The founders of the Government of the United States never intended to frame a constitution which should forbid the governing power of the nation to make education compulsory, if necessary, and if necessary to grant aid in the support of public schools. This truth may be derived from a just analysis of the Constitution itself and from the history of our national legislature during the constitutional period of our Government.

Appropriations of public money have been made by the National Government to establish and support agricultural colleges, the Smithsonian Institution, Indian schools, and the Bureau of Education. In earlier times the principle of granting national aid to educational institutions was accepted by the Congress of the Confederation in the acts which devoted one-sixteenth of the public lands of the nation to the support of public schools in the new States. This amount was afterward doubled, and through all the subsequent history of our constitutional government it has been the policy of the nation to grant national aid in support of public schools.

Although the education of the whole people is necessary for the continued existence of the Republic and notwithstanding the supreme law of the land may sanction that legislation which contributes of the resources of the nation to the support of public educational institutions, still, if the individual States and yet smaller political units can do this work of education for themselves, then the National Government may well leave it in their hands.

But what are the facts bearing on this point of ability of the States to educate each its own people as they must be educated that they may become safe and efficient citizens of a free commonwealth? This is a