ate and unconditional abandonment. I consider the teacher who employs this method of enforcement, as well as the scholar on whom it is inflicted, the victim of a bad system. If the authorities commend the practice, they must leave to the teacher the discretionary power to decide as to the time, the occasion, and the degree of severity. And I am not sure but that, in a Puritanic mind, the more conscientious the teacher, the more frequent would seem the necessity for such punishment, which for the same reason might be more severe. But in such case the injury to the moral nature of both parties would be all the greater. So, I would have the whole thing swept away, as a barbarism too horrible for the civilization of to-day, as we abolish the thumbscrew, the tread-mill, and the underground dungeon, in our treatment of criminals. I could not say to a child,

"Let love through all your actions run,

And all your words be mild,”—

and then beat him for offending or disobeying me.

It needs no gift of prophecy to foresee that this thorough training in moral science would very soon manifest itself in the intercourse of its students in all the incidents of their daily lives. Girls and boys

so taught would, in the majority of cases, give early promise' of a higher and nobler manhood and womanhood than we find ourselves a part of to-day. As they entered upon the active duties of life, a better sentiment of justice, of honesty, of self-control, of purity, would prevail among them, ennobling and purifying society, trade, politics, and religion. The men and women so educated would be better husbands and wives, better fathers and mothers, better neighbors and friends. As time went on, and another generation came upon the stage, crime would become less frequent; drunkenness, almost unknown; vice in all its forms would be greatly diminished; the laws of health would be obeyed; our penal and charitable institutions would be changed into hospitals and schools; our streets would be safe thoroughfares for all healthful, industrial, and beneficent exercise, exchange, and transportation, where our sons and our daughters could walk unmolested and unharmed, and where official restraint, violence, or assistance, would seldom be required. Citizenship would be elevated to an unselfish endeavor to secure the best welfare of the whole people. Our office-holders and lawmakers would be men and women chosen for their exceptional fitness. to devise and prosecute measures for the elevation and continual advancement of all the inhabitants of the State and Nation; and the people, morally, mentally, and physically sound, would be correspondingly virtuous, prosperous, and happy.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

BY BEN BLEWETT, A. M., MISSOURI.

The question of compulsory education is an intricate one; and each community in settling it will have to consider a great many details peculiar to its own circumstances. But the question has two points of general interest, viz.: (1) Can compulsory education be justified by any theory consistent with a democratic government? (2) Has it ever been successfully tried by any community? This paper touches these points.

False ideas often obtain on the most important subjects of social science because people will persist in looking at but one side of many-sided topics. The question of public schools has not been fortunate enough to escape this danger; but, on the contrary, has probably carried more than its share of the burden. A man, who with becoming modesty will acknowledge his ignorance as to the relative value of a double or a single standard in money, will, in most cases, think himself competent to give worthy opinions on the public. schools, though he may not have devoted half the time to the study of the latter subject as to the former. However wrong this may be, it is very natural. Scarcely a citizen but daily comes in contact with some of the detail workings of the schools; he becomes familiar with them, feels himself to be, and is, competent to pass upon these details. The fault lies in not seeing and comprehending the great" wherefore" in which all these details are lost. In our hurry to get on, we have no comprehensive view of the whole. It is constantly worth while for us to stop and take a perspective view of the public school among social institutions, that we may get a proper idea of it by seeing it in its relations to its surroundings.

Nothing, I believe, comes by chance; and nothing, I believe, comes but by some slow, steady progression, step by step in its advance. In order that we may see the full force of an institution, it is necessary that we grasp the essentials in the formation of the crudest. society and trace them in their growth through the developing states. Man in his original condition was limited only by the laws of his physical surroundings; his will was his rule of action. Under such circumstances it would not be long ere the individual wills would clash; then some one individual will would become preeminent; there would be some particular hunter, or fisher, or fighter more

bold and more successful than his neighbors. He would become the hero, the god, of his family, of his tribe, of a community of tribes. His love of self makes him a tyrant; their fear makes his people his servants, rendering to him a treacherous submission, such as a pack of famishing wolves gives to its leader,-a submission that would not hesitate to devour him should no other victim be found. In him, as brute master of brute qualities, lies the germ of the State. The range of his functions is most narrow, but within those limits his power is most unmitigatedly absolute. And in the growth of government through the successive stages of patriarchal, military despotism, absolute monarchy, monarchy, on to the republic, we see it assuming a broader and broader range of functions, and at the same time becoming in the exercise of these functions more and more subservient to popular will. Or looking at the other side of the picture, the individual is constantly surrendering more and more of his peculiar prerogatives, and is constantly gaining stronger and stronger power in the control of State workings. The man, in surrendering more of his powers, is making a less absolute surrender, for his will conflicts. less with the universal will. From the apparent cramping of the individual comes enlarged individuality; the State, by closing up those channels in which the individualities would clash, tends to throw all action into the courses where the harmonious confluence makes a mightier power, in whose strength each particle participates. And thus in the growth of the State, the man becomes more and more a responsible agent in its actions.

In permitting this participation in its functions, the State must, of course, demand that the individual have the qualifications requisite to keep his power from detracting from the public welfare; if the people are to be the rulers, they must be made worthy of the place, -they must be educated. Draper, in summing up his study of the Intellectual Development of Europe, gives the following pertinent question and answer: "What, then, is the conclusion inculcated by these doctrines as regards the social progress of great communities? It is that all political institutions, imperceptibly or visibly, spontaneously or purposely, should tend to the improvement and organization of the national intellect." The only possible way of accomplishing this result is the establishment by the State of suitable schools which all may attend, and which all who do not or cannot get the requisite. knowledge from other sources must attend. Here we must draw sharply the position of the whole and that of the part.

It is the function of the State to provide for the individual whatever may be necessary for him to have, that the commonweal may

be secured. The individual has no right to demand anything from the State other than the right to obtain whatever may not interfere with the commonweal. In the animus of the public schools there is not the first shadow of pauperism clad in the sentimental garb of inalienable right inherited from some mystic source; for, by my proposition, they have been formed by the State for its own protection and assistance, and if not accepted by individuals, should be forced upon them, unless the required culture is obtained in other ways. So the doors of the public schools are thrown open to even the poorest not by charity, but by the sovereign might of the State, which demands that no one shall stand in the way of the progress of the whole. And while the individual must know that this is forced upon him by a mightier power than his own, he should, at the same time, take pride in the consciousness that he has contributed to that power his little mite of money, or muscle, or brain, or soul. The inflated man of wealth, demanding that his indulged child be handled with gloved hands, or the conceited loafer swelling ridiculously with the idea of being a free voter in a glorious state of liberty, and protesting that such important individuals as himself and progeny should of moral necessity be most carefully nursed,-both of these have to learn the most important fact of political science,-that the individual, merely as such, is insignificant and only attains importance when, in combination with his fellows in submission to law, he acquires as his own the combined strength of the community into which the units are assimilated.

The principle lying at the foundation of the public schools is, then, preservation of the civilized State, and the first and most characteristic feature we see from this point of view is the right of compulsory attendance. There are a great many sentimental objections to compulsion; and even a person without the least trace of sentimentality, and at all familiar with the vast machinery and expense possibly necessary to enforce successfully a law for compulsory education, will go cautiously and examine before he advocates such a law. The old maxim, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead," is, no doubt, a sound one; but it is very natural, if there is possible danger in advance, to inquire what has been the fortune of others placed in similar circumstances; and if perchance we find that they have been successful, our previous consciousness of our own rectitude of judgment is apt to be increased. There is nothing so establishes our faith in a theory as seeing it shape itself in pleasing figures. It was as late as 1870 before anything like an organized effort in the direction of popular elementary education was made in Great Britain, yet the history of that effort

for the last twelve years is replete with most astonishing results. The following facts I get from the report of William Jack, A.M., LL.D., one of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools:

"In the English education acts of 1870 the government for the first time sanctioned the principle that wherever the school board of a locality believe that children ought to be compelled to attend schools, parents may be compelled to send them under penalty of fine or imprisonment, under such bylaws as the school board may enact." . . . "In the new education act of 1876, England has adopted the principle of universal compulsion, creating a school-attendance committee where there is no school board, and enjoining that committee or the school board of the parish to make and enforce by-laws, and otherwise carry out the provisions of the act."

"Its provisions are briefly these, viz. :

"1. It is declared to be the duty of every parent to see to the elementary education of his child above five and below fourteen years of age.

"2. No employer is permitted to employ (a) any child under ten years of age, with certain exceptions; or (b) any child over ten and up to fourteen without a certificate either of education or previous attendance of due amount."

"The parent is liable for his child, and he may be fined or his child taken from him and sent either to a certified industrial school or to a new kind of certified day industrial school which will give meals,—probably in most cases midday meals,—but not lodging."

Under this act the several cities have elected boards under whose inspection are thrown all the schools within their respective municipal limits, whether these schools be supported by private enterprise, by the Church, or by the Government. The standards or grades of scholarship established by the boards are thus recognized in all the efficient certified schools; and parents may send to the Board or Church schools, as they choose. By-laws of more or less sternness have been adopted, but most generally the committees have made strong appeals to the better-nature of parents before calling in the aid of the magistrate.

From the report of the Glasgow Board I take this extract, showing how the work was begun there:

"As a preliminary to the operations, the officers were instructed to make a house-to-house visitation of every family in the city." . . "The inquiry extended from September, 1873, till the close of 1875." "The result showed that after making careful allowance,-for all for whom it should be made,—there was found a gross amount of more than 20,000 defaulters." .. "A large portion of these defaulters were disposed of in a satisfactory manner, about seventy-five per cent. of them having