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formation of free public libraries before the public, that it might recommend itself to universal adoption as an important supplement to the common schools, academies, and colleges, in the subsequent and lifelong education of the public." Manchester and Liverpool, not to speak of other cities, have each a free library. The outlays on the English libraries and museums have been immense. When American travellers visit these institutions, they are filled with wonder at the vastness of their treasures. It may here be noticed, that, even in Japan, there are many public libraries. With the exception of the aid which the United States gives to the Congressional Library and to the very fine medical library of the surgeon-general of the army, it does little, compared to what it might do, to promote the establishment of libraries in the land,-institutions in which should be garnered the world's treasures of wisdom.

In what way can citizens best promote the establishment of free schools and libraries throughout the length and breadth of the country, is a question well deserving the earnest consideration of lovers of their country and of the human race.

There is a class of statesmen who believe that the people of the United States, united by the strong bonds of education, of trade, and of innumerable interests, will be at the second Centennial the greatest and most prosperous, the happiest and most favored, nation in the world. Americans, however, should remember that there is reason to fear that there are at least five States in the Union in which

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the majority of the voters are illiterate; that in the Northern States alone, at the taking of the census of 1870, there were 665,000 foreign-born 1 illiterates, not to speak of those who were native-born; and that, in all sections of the country, many citizens do not make the exertions that they ought to make the common-school systems of the States efficient; while, as is sadly well known, some enemies of the public schools and of the dearest liberties of the nation are trying to prejudice one class of citizens against the humble but useful free schools of the land; that the evils which have overtaken the sister republic of Mexico, and the sorrows under which lovers of liberty in all nations in which the people have been illiterate have groaned, threaten to come upon the citizens of the United States; and that it is possible that the second Centennial, to those who see it, will be a day of sorrow, instead of joy.

If the belief of the American statesmen whose names were mentioned in the first part of this essay be true, that an acquaintance with letters is indispen

1 At the taking of the census of 1870, there were about 1,585,000 men, native and foreign, who could not write their names: there were of women (twenty-one years old and over) unable to write, about 2,052,000. (See Report of John Eaton, jun., United-States Commissioner of Education, 1871-72, pp. 68, 69.) For a brief notice of the state of education in the United States, see paper by M. Phelps, president of the National Educational Association in Baltimore, in Deputy-Minister George Hogins's Special Report to the Honorable the Minister of Education on the Ontario Educational Exhibit, and the Educational Features of the International Exhibition at Philadelphia, 1876. The Report contains descriptions of the exhibits of all the nations represented at the Centennial Exhibition.

2 See Appendix F.

sable to liberty, and indeed to all the best interests of man, - then those who labor to secure to the people public schools, and thus enable them to appreci ate and to defend their own liberties, and, in addition, to enjoy untold blessings1 of knowledge, deserve to be classed among the benefactors of the human race. If Wilberforce, a man who received a part of his education at a free grammar-school, pleading in Parliament, notwithstanding all opposition, for long years against the slave-trade, until his efforts were crowned with such magnificent success that he received three cheers in Parliament, as the man who could lay his head upon his pillow, and say, that under God, through his exertions, there were no slaves suffering on any ship bearing the English flag, not dazzled by his success, yet struggling on in the cause of human liberty until Parliament sweetened his. dying-hour by granting twenty million pounds sterling to pay for the freedom of every slave in the English colonies, if this heroic statesman is justly looked upon as one of the noblest and most useful men of his age, then those who labor, by establishing a good working school-system, to protect their countrymen from the awful bondage into which, as has been shown in this essay, illiterate nations have fallen, deserve the thanks of the world.

In the United States the trial of constitutional civil and religious liberty is in progress. Dangers beset the best features of the system of government cherished in the United States,-dangers which are

1 See Appendix N.

believed by many well-informed statesmen to be terrible. If the people wish to transmit freedom instead of degradation to their children and to unborn millions of foreigners, they must guard with sacred care the cause of universal education. The eyes of the groaning world are turned towards the people of the United States. It devolves upon them to make their free-school system more efficient and more wide-spread than it ever yet has been. The blessing of school-instruction should be secured to all the future sovereigns of the great republic of the world.

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