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maining moiety, the amount of which should be specified, to some person to be designated therein. The person in whose favor the order is drawn will present it to the comptroller, with the certified copy of the resolution, and of the State Superintendent, that the officer has complied with the instructions of the department, and has made the annual report required by law; and that officer will draw his warrant on the treasurer, who will pay the amount, on the receipt of the person presenting the order.

It is believed that under the provision allowing compensation "for the days necessarily spent in the discharge of their duties," the Superintendents will have a right to charge for the time employed by them in visiting the schools and districts, in licensing teachers, in annulling their certificates, in collecting the materials for their reports, in visiting the academies in which departments are established for the instruction of teachers, in preparing the reports required of them, and copying those made by the commissioners of towns.

As the pay of the County Superintendents cannot exceed $500 in each year, which will only cover 250 days, and as in the counties generally, more than that number of days will be required for inspections and preparing reports, there will be little occasion for very minute inquiries respecting the services entitled to compensation.

9. County Visitors.-The authority to appoint these visitors given by the act of 1839, (No. 3,) remains in full force, and the gentlemen heretofore selected retain the powers conferred by their appointment and the statute. Although the same exigency for their services does not exist, yet they can still be eminently useful in awakening public attention and concentrating public opinion on the subject of primary education, by co-operating with the County Superintendents. They are, therefore, to be encouraged and assisted in any efforts they may make to visit the schools and improve their condition.

A review of the several heads of these instructions will impress the County Superintendents with the extent, variety and importance of the duties they have assumed. They will perceive that their stations will not be sinecures; and that upon the faithful and conscientious discharge of their obligations will depend the success or

failure of what is believed to be the greatest improvement in our system of common school instruction that has been made since its establishment.

It can scarcely be necessary to say that all the aid in the power of the department of common schools will be cheerfully rendered to facilitate the performance of duties, to which the hopes and expectations of the friends of education are so anxiously directed, and from which so much is expected.

In this country, no systems, however perfect, no enactments, however enlightened, and no authority, however constituted, can attain to the full accomplishment of their object, however praiseworthy and laudable, without the hearty and efficient co-operation of public sentiment. Aided by this co-operation, the most important results may be anticipated from the most simple organization. The repeated and solemn recognition by the representatives of the people, of the interests of popular education and public instruction; the nearly unanimous adoption of a system, commended to the public favor as well by practical experience, as by the concurring testimony of the most enlightened minds of our own and other countries; and the simplification of much of the complicated machinery which served only to encumber and impede the operation of that system; these indications afford the most conclusive evidence not only of the importance which the great mass of our fellow citizens attach to the promotion of sound intellectual and moral instruction, but of their determination to place our common schools, where this instruction is chiefly dispensed to the children of the state, upon a footing which shall enable them most effectually to accomplish the great objects of their institution.

It is upon the extent and permanency of this feeling, that the friends of education rely; and this spirit to which they appeal, in looking forward to the just appreciation and judicious improvement of those means of moral and mental enlightenment which the beneficent policy of the state has placed at the disposal of the inhabitants of the several districts. The renovation of our common schools, distributed as they are, over every section of our entire territory, their elevation and expansion to meet the constantly increasing requirements of science and mental

progress, and their capability of laying broad and deep the foundations of character and usefulness, must depend upon the intelligent and fostering culture which they shall receive at the hands of those to whose immediate charge they are committed. There is no institution within the range of civilization, upon which so much, for good or for evil, depends-upon which hang so many and such important issues to the future well being of individuals and communities, as the common district school. It is through that alembic that the lessons of the nursery and the family fire-side, the earliest instructions in pure morality, and the precepts and examples of the social circle are distilled; and from it, those lessons are destined to assume that tinge and hue which are permanently to be incorporated into the character and the life. Is it too much then, to ask or to expect of parents, that laying aside all minor considerations, abandoning all controversies and dissensions among themselves in reference to local, partisan and purely selfish objects, or postponing them at least, until the interests of their children are placed beyond the influence of these irritating topics, they will consecrate their undivided energies to the advancement and improvement of these beneficent institutions. Resting as it does upon their support, indebted to them for all its means of usefulness, and dependent for its continued existence upon their discriminating favor and efficient sanction, the practical superiority of the existing system of public instruction, its comprehensiveness and simplicity-its abundant and unfailing resources-and its adaptation to the educational wants of every class of community, will prove of little avail without the invigorating influences of a sound and enlightened public sentiment, emanating from and pervading the entire social system. The now neglected and deserted district school must become the central interest of the citizen and the parent, the clergyman, the lawyer, the physician, the merchant, the manufacturer and the agriculturist. Each must realise that there, under more or less favoring auspices, as they themselves shall determine, developments are in progress which are destined, at no distant day, to exert a controlling influence over the institutions, habits, modes of thought and action of soci ety in all its complicated phases; and that the primary

responsibility for the results which may be thus worked out, for good or for evil, rests with them. By the removal of every obstacle to the progressive and harmonious action of the system of popular education, so carefully organized and amply endowed by the state, by a constant, and methodical and intelligent co-operation with its authorized agents, in the elevation and advancement of that system in all its parts, and especially by an infusion into its entire course of discipline and instruction of that high moral culture which can alone adequately realize the idea of sound education, results of inconceivable magnitude and importance to individual, social, and moral well being may confidently be anticipated. These results can only be attained by an enlightened appreciation and judicious cultivation of the means of elementary instruction. They demand and will amply repay the consecration of the highest intellectual and moral energies, the most comprehensive benevolence, and the best affections of our common nature.

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