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VI. DUTIES OF TRUSTEES IN REFERENCE TO THE

DISTRICT LIBRARY.

The trustees of each school district are constituted by law the trustees of the library. They are responsible for its preservation and care; and the librarian is subject to their direction, and may at any time be removed by them from office for wilful disobedience of such directions, or for any wilful neglect of duty, or even when they have reason to apprehend the loss of any books, or their injury or destruction by his misconduct. In case of such removal, or of a vacancy occurring from any cause, they are to supply such vacancy by appointment, until the next annual meeting of the district. They are personally liable to their successors for any neglect or omission in relation to the care and superintendence of the library, by which any books therein are lost or injured, to the full amount of such loss or injury, and their action in reference to its management, may be at any time controled by the department, on appeal.

By the 4th section of chap. 237, of the Laws of 1838, the sum of $55,000 from the annual revenue of the U. S. Deposit Fund, was required to be annually distributed "to the support of common schools, in like manner and upon the like conditions as the school moneys now are or shall hereafter be distributed, except that the trustees of the several districts shall appropriate the sum received to the purchase of a district library for the term of three years, (afterwards by § 6 of chap. 177, Laws of 1839, extended to five years,) and by the act of 1843, indefinitely, with the modifications therein expressed.

Trustees are, by this provision authorized to make the selection of the books for the library, as the application of the money is to be made by them.

The object of the law for procuring district libraries is to diffuse information, not only, or even chiefly, among children or minors, but among adults and those who have finished common school education. The books, therefore, should be such as will be useful for circulation among the inhabitants generally. They should not be children's books, or of a juvenile character merely, or light and frivolous tales and romances, but works conveying solid information which will excite a thirst for knowledge, and also gratify it, as far as such a library can. Works imbued with party politics, and those of a sectarian character, or hostility to the Christian religion, should on no account be admitted; and if any are accidentally received they should be immediately removed. Still less can any district be permitted to purchase school books, such as spelling books, grammars, or any others of the description used as text book in schools. Such an application of the public money would be an utter violation of the law. If any case of improper selection of books should come before the Superintendent, by appeal from any inhabitant, such selection would be set aside; and if it appeared

from the reports, which according to these regulations must be made that such books had been purchased, the Town Superintendent will be bound to withhold the next year's library money from such district. These penalties and provisions will be rigidly enforced; for upon a faithful administration of the law the usefulness and the continuance of the system will depend. If the public munificence be abused it will unquestionably cease.

The selection of books for the district library, is devolved by law exclusively upon the trustees; and when the importance of this most beneficent and enlightened provision for the intellectual and moral improvement of the inhabitants of the several districts, of both sexes and all conditions, is duly estimated, the trust here confided is one of no ordinary responsibility. In reference to such selections, but two prominent sources of embarrassment have been experienced. The one has arisen from the necessity of excluding from the libraries all works having directly or remotely, a sectarian tendency, and the other, from that of recommending the exclusion of novels, romances and other fictitious creations of the imagination, including a large proportion of the lighter literature of the day. The propriety of a peremptory and uncompromising exclusion of those catch-penny, but revolting publications which cultivate the taste for the marvellous, the tragic, the horrible, and the supernatural-the lives and exploits of pirates, banditti and desperadoes of every description-is too obvious to every reflecting mind, to require the slightest argument. Unless parents desire that their children should pursue the shortest and surest road to ignominy, shame and destruction-should become the ready and apt imitators on a circumscribed scale, of the pernicious models which they are permitted and encouraged to study-they will frown indignantly on every attempt to place before their immature minds, works, whose invariable and only tendency is disastrous, both to the intellect and the heart.

The exclusion of works imbued to any perceptible extent with sectarianism, rests upon the great conservative principles which are at the foundation of our free institutions. Its propriety is readily conceded when applied to publications, setting forth, defending, or illustrating the peculiar tenets which distinguish any one of the numerous religious denominations of the day from the others. On this ground no controversy exists as to the line of duty. But it has been strongly argued that those "standard" theological publications which, avoiding all controverted ground, contain general expositions of Christianity-which assume only those doctrines and principles upon which all "evangelical" denominations of Christians are agreed, are not obnoxious to any reasonable censure, and ought not, upon any just principles, to be excluded from the school district library. There are two answers to this argument, either of which is conclusive. The one is, that the works in question, however exalted may be their merit, and however free from just censure, on the ground of sectarianism, are strictly theological,

doctrinal or metaphysical; and therefore no more entitled to a place in the district library than works devoted to the professional elucidation of law, medicine, or any other learned professions. Their appropriate place is in the family, church or Sunday school library. The other answer is, that in every portion of our country are to be found conscientious dissenters from the most approved theological tenets of these commentators on Christianity; individuals who claim the right, either of rejecting Christianity altogether, (as the Jews,) or of so interpreting its fundamental doctrines, as to place them beyond the utmost verge of "evangelical" liberality; and this too, without, in any degree, subjecting themselves to any well-founded imputations upon their moral character as citizens and as men. The state, in the dispensation of its bounty, has no right to trample upon the honest convictions and settled belief of this or of any other class of its citizens against whose demeanor, in the various relations of society, no accusation can be brought; nor can it rightfully sanction the application of any portion of those funds to which they, in common with others, have contributed, to the enforcement of theological tenets to which they cannot conscientiously subscribe. Any work, therefore, which, departing from the inculcation of those great, enduring and cardinal elements of religion and morality which are impressed upon humanity as a part of its birth-right-acknowledged by all upon whom its stamp is affixed, however departed from in practice, and incorporated into the very essence of Christianity as its pre-eminent and distinctive principle-shall descend to a controversy respecting the subordinate or collateral details of theology, however ably sustained and numerously sanctioned, has no legitimate claim to a place in the school district library, nor can its admission be countenanced consistently with sound policy or enlightened reason.

The following general principles have been laid down in a special report on common school libraries, prepared under the direction of the department by HENRY S. RANDALL, Esq., County Superintendent of common schools of Cortland county, and may be regarded as the settled principles of the department in reference to this class of books:

"1. No works written professedly to uphold or attack any sect or creed in our country, claiming to be a religious one, shall be tolerated in the school libraries.

"2. Standard works on other topics shall not be excluded, because they incidentally and indirectly betray the religious opinions of their authors.

"3. Works avowedly on other topics which abound in direct and unreserved attacks on, or defences of, the character of any religious sect; or those which hold up any religious body to contempt or execration, by singling out or bringing together only the darker parts of its history or character, shall be excluded from the school libraries.

"Is it said that under the above rules, heresy and error are put on the same footing with true religion-that Protestant and Catholic, orthodox and unorthodox, Universalist, Unitarian, Jew, and even Mormon, derive the same immunity? The fact is conceded; and it is averred that each is equally entitled to it, in a government whose very Constitution avows the principle of a full and indiscriminate religious toleration.

"He who thinks it hard that he shall not be allowed to combat, through the medium of the school libraries, beliefs, the sin and error of which are as clear to him as is the light in Heaven, will bear in mind that the library at least leaves him and his religious beliefs, in as good a condition as it found him. If it will not propagate his tenets, it will leave them unattacked. If he is not allowed to use other men's money to purchase books to assault their religious faiths, he is not estopped from expending his own as sees fit, in his private, or in his Sunday-school library-nor is he debarred from placing these books in the hands of all who are willing to receive them. His power of morally persuading his fellow men is left unimpaired; nor will he, if he has any confidence in the recuperative energies of truth-if he believes his God will ultimately give victory to truth-ask more. In asking, or condescending to accept the support of an earthly "government, he admits the weakness of his cause, the feebleness of his faith. He leans on another arm than that which every page in the Bible declares all-sufficient. In what age of the world has any church entered into meretricious connexion with temporal governments, and escaped unsullied from the contact? Any approximation to such connexion, even in the minutest particular -any exclusive right or immunity given to one religious sect or another in the school library or elsewhere, is not only anti-religious, but anti-republican. As men we have the right to adopt religious creeds, and to attempt to influence others to adopt them; but as Americans, as legislators or officials dispensing privileges or immunities among American citizens, we have no right to know one religion from another. The persecuted and wandering Israelite comes here, and he finds no bar in our naturalization laws. The members of the Roman, Greek, or English church equally become citizens. Those adopting every hue of religious faith-every phase of heresy, take their place equally under the banner of the Republic-and no ecclesiastical power can snatch even the least of these' from under its glorious folds. Not an hour of confinement, not the amercement of a farthing, not the deprivation of a right or liberty weighing 'in the estimation of a hair can any such power impose on any American citizen, without his own full an entire acquiescence."

With reference to the admission of novels, romances, and other works of the imagination, usually comprehended under the term "light reading," the proper course to be adopted cannot be better illustrated than by the following extracts from a report of the ma

jority of a committee appointed by the Board of Commissioners of common schools of the city of Utica, understood to be from the pen of WILLIAM J. BACON, Esq., to examine the books in the school district library of the city, and to report, among other things, as to the character and tendency of any objectionable works they might discover therein.

"The importance of applying the funds provided by the state, with rigid regard to their appropriate object, is so weighty-and the temptations to misapply them, in consequence of a present prevailing fondness for light and equivocal literature, are so strong, that your committee deem it proper to enter somewhat into an examination of the principles which should govern those to whom is entrusted the responsible duty of making selections for school district libraries.

"A library for instruction is a very different thing from a library for amusement. The circulating library of a place of public resort for invalids or persons in pursuit of ease and pleasure, is essentially of a trifling character: the library of a college, or eminent public institute, is composed of graver and more elevated productions. While the book shelves of a light young man are filled with frivolous and amusing works, those of a student display the treasures of standard literature. School district libraries should not fall below the dignity of usefulness; in proportion as they do, they fail of fulfilling the true design of their institution.

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"A consideration of the object of instituting these libraries will enable us to judge pretty correctly of the general character of books which should compose them; it is obviously, the information and improvement of the body of the people who can read, without reference to parties, sects, classes, callings, or professions. "The primary object of their institution,' says the Superintendent who recommended it, was to disseminate works suited to the intellectual improvement of the great body of the people, rather than to throw into school districts for the use of young persons, works of a merely juvenile character.' It was, in the language of a succeeding Superintendent, 'to diffuse information-not only, or even chiefly, among children or minors-but among adults and those who have finished their common school education.' It was, in short, to provide a supplemental source of instruction to those on whom the common school has exhausted its more limited means.

"Improvement and information, then, form the main object of these libraries. It is only thus that they become the proper subjects of public munificence. Entertainment, simply as entertainment,is not to be regarded in making selections for the school district library. It is no part of our public policy to provide amusements for the people. In this particular we have improved not only on antiquity, but on many modern governments, by substituting, in the place of vain and wasteful public shows and frivolities, those more substantial and elevating subjects of public bounty, which

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