and sundry documents in the first and second volumes on popular education in the United States.

We cannot take leave of this subject, without recording our admiration of that singular disinterestedness which crowns Mr. Barnard's other good qualities. For his services he receives three dollars per day, and his expenses are paid; but it appears that he has expended for various purposes, in aid of the cause of education, an amount equal to the whole of his salary, and has consequently, in point of fact, devoted his whole time, gratuitously, for the last three years, to this interest. We record this fact with pride and pleasure, in the thought, that, in this age of loud profession and restless selfseeking, an individual has been found, with the magnanimity to enter upon, and the resolution to persevere in, this modest course of self-sacrificing usefulness. Let the State of Connecticut look to it, that she pays to such conduct its proper meed of gratitude and respect. One such man is worth a score of flatulent speechmakers and selfish politicians. We learn from an unobtrusive editorial notice, that he has suffered on account of the injustice done to his motives in assuming his office. To this he must make up his mind. It is the common lot. The privilege of abusing the men who serve us in public trusts is one of the last luxuries to be surrendered. Whether we do this as a sort of safety-valve for the escape of the ill-temper, that would otherwise find no lawful vent, or whether we think that the holding of a public office is a privilege so vast, a station so high, that the head would be turned without the wholesome medicine of carping and fault-finding, and we therefore apply it with that stern sense of duty with which a loving father corrects a froward child, we are not prepared to say. In either alternative, the victims will find appropriate consolation.

We turn from Mr. Barnard, and his excellent services to Common-School Education in Connecticut, to say a few words of the condition of the same great interest in a sister State. We have, at different times, spoken at large of the indefatigable labors of Mr. Mann, Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts, and propose nothing more at present, than to lay before our readers a few facts, drawn from his Fifth Annual Report," presented to the Legislature of that Commonwealth, at its recent session. The following statements are undoubtedly of the most satisfactory character;

"It is now four years since I prepared the Abstract of the School Returns for 1837, and made my First Annual Report to the Board.

"Since that time, the amount of appropriations made by the towns for the wages and board of the teachers, and fuel for the Schools, has increased more than one hundred thousand dollars.

"During the same time, the schools have been lengthened, on an average, almost three weeks each, which, for three thousand one hundred and three, (the number of public schools kept last year in the State,) amounts in the whole to more than one hundred and seventy-five years.

"The average wages of male teachers, for the same period, have advanced thirty-three per cent. ; those of females, a little more than twelve and a half per cent. I am satisfied, that the value of the services of both sexes has increased in a much greater ratio than that of their compensation.

"There were one hundred and eighty-five more public schools last year, than in 1837, which is rather less than the ratio of increase in the number of children between the ages of four and sixteen years. This favorable result is owing to the union of small districts. The number of male teachers has increased one hundred and twenty-one; that of females, five hundred and twenty-one, which shows the growing and most beneficial practice of employing female teachers for small schools, and female assistants in large ones.

"Many towns in the State, during the last year, completed the renovation of all the school-houses within their respective limits.

"From a perusal of the school committees' reports for the last year, it appears that the number of schools broken up by the insubordination of the scholars, was not more than one tenth part of what it was for the preceding year. This gain to the honor of the schools, or rather this exemption from disgrace, is to be attributed to the combined causes of better modes of government by the teachers, more faithful supervision by the committees, a more extended personal acquaintance on the part of parents, and especially to the practice of making a report to the towns of the condition of the schools, and the conduct of the scholars. Few boys between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one years are so depraved and shameless as not to recoil at the idea of being reported for misconduct, in open town meeting, and of having an attested record of their disgrace transmitted to the seat of government, with the chance, should they persist in their incorrigibleness for two or three years, of finding themselves historically known to other coun

tries and times, through the medium of the school abstracts. The cases of schools brought to a violent termination, during the last year, by the insubordination of the scholars, happened almost invariably in those towns and sections of counties in the State, where I have found the least sympathy and coöperation in my labors " pp. 23-25.

There is, however, a different side of the picture, presenting a subject for anxious reflection.

"Much has been, and much still continues to be, both said and written respecting that equality in the laws, and equality under the laws, which constitutes the distinctive feature of a Republican government. By abolishing the right of primogeniture and entails, by the extension of the elective franchise, and in other ways, much has been done towards realizing the two grand conceptions of the founders of our government, viz. that political advantages should be equal, and then that celebrity or obscurity, wealth or poverty, should depend on individual merit. But the most influential and decisive measure for equalizing the original opportunities of men, that is, equality in the means of education, has not been adopted. In this respect, therefore, the most striking and painful disparities now exist. One source of this difference, indeed, is to be found in the almost unlimited freedom of action exercised by the different towns in regard to their liberality or parsimony, in appropriating money for the support of schools, and their fidelity or remissness in the supervision of this great trust. In this respect, the towns resemble individuals. One parent will make all sacrifices, he will economize in his pleasures, dress, shelter, and even in his food, to save the means of educating his children; while another, perhaps his nearest neighbour, will sell the services of his children for a few pence a day, through the whole year, that he may hoard their earnings, or spend them in dissipation. The towns have been left, substantially, to the exercise of the same free will. It is true, that the law, from time to time, has imposed certain obligations upon them; but these obligations they have generally obeyed or neglected, at their option. Indictments against them for nonobservance of the law, have been very few, though their omissions to obey it have been many. The judicial records of the State will show a hundred prosecutions against towns for the defective condition of their roads or bridges, for one complaint on account of omissions or transgressions of the school laws. Some towns, through the influence of a few public-spirited and enlightened individuals, have not only observed, but gone far beyond, the requisitions of the law; while, in other towns,

where a few men of an opposite character have gained a preponderating influence, the schools have fallen far below its minimum requirements. On a broad survey of the State, and an inquiry into the causes which have led to the superior intelligence and respectability of some towns, as compared with others, it will almost uniformly be discovered, that the foundations of their prosperity were laid by a few individuals, — in some cases, by a single individual, in elevating the condition of their common schools.

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Under these different circumstances, the most striking inequalities have grown up. According to the Graduated Tables, inserted at the end of the school abstract, it appears that, in regard to the amount of money appropriated for the support of schools, the difference between the foremost and the hindmost towns in the State, is more than seven to one!

"There were five towns which appropriated, for the last year, more than five dollars for the education of each child within their limits, between the ages of four and sixteen years. "11 other towns appropriated more than $4 for each child within the same years.

"The average of appropriations for the whole State, was two dollars and seventy-one cents, for each child between the abovementioned ages. No town, in the counties of Berkshire or Barnstable, came up to the average of the State, and in the county of Bristol, only one town (New Bedford) equalled it.

"If any one will take a map of the Commonwealth, on which the several towns are delineated, and, with a pencil, enter the amount appropriated by each for the support of schools, he will be astonished at the difference between towns situated in the vicinity of each other; and, oftentimes, at that between contiguous towns. Let the county tables be referred to, and it will be seen that towns standing at or near the head of the column, and those, which could stand at the head only on condition that the order of precedence should be reversed, are towns which, geographically, lie side by side, or in the near vicinity of each other, and in regard to whose natural resources, or eligibility of location, there is but little difference. In taking the single step which carries us across the ideal line separating one town from another, we pass through an immense moral distance. We pass, as it were, from the fertility of the tropical zone to the sterility of the frozen, without any intermedial temperate. It is a common device of geographers, for

illustrating the different degrees of civilization or barbarism existing in different parts of the globe, to variegate the surface of a map with different colors and shades, from the whiteness which represents the furthest advances in civilization and Christianity, to the blackness denoting the lowest stages of barbarism. A similar map has been prepared, representing the educational differences between the different departments in the kingdom of France. A map of the different towns of Massachusetts, drawn and colored after such a model, would exhibit edifying, though humiliating contrasts. It would show that, during the last half century, the most efficient cause of social inequality has been left to grow up amongst us unobserved; and it would furnish data for the prediction, to a great extent, of the future fortunes of the rising generation, in the respective towns. If all that has been said by the wise and good men of past times, respecting the efficiency of our common schools to fit children for the high and various relationships of life, be not a delusion, then, the most instructive lessons concerning the future may be drawn from a comparison of present educational conditions.

No other fact has ever exhibited so fully the extent of obligation which some towns are under to a few individuals, who have had the forecast and the energy, in the midst of difficulties and opposition, to sustain their schools. I have met many individuals, who, having failed to obtain any improvement in the means of education in their respective places of residence, have removed to towns whose schools were good, believing the sacrifice of a hundred, or even of several hundred dollars, to be nothing, in comparison with the value of the school privileges secured for their children by such removal. Still more frequently, when other circumstances have rendered a change of domicil expedient, has this principle of selection governed in choosing a residence. I doubt not there are towns, where parsimonious considerations relative to the schools have obtained the ascendency, which have actually lost more, in dollars and cents, by a reduction of taxable property and polls, than, in their short-sightedness, they supposed they had gained by their scanty appropriations, besides inflicting a sort of banishment upon some of their most worthy and estimable citizens." pp. 70-73.

But what we have read in this Report with a surprise, which we ought rather perhaps to be surprised at feeling, is a collection of most interesting facts showing how the capacity of profitable manual labor is improved by the education afforded at these schools. Mr. Mann, from unquestionable data, has