A greater interest, a greater pride will be taken by all and everyone who has the means will be anxious to do something for schools. Many, too, may seek popularity by a liberality towards this great object, and even though their motives may not always be as pure as they ought to be, still they will do much more good by such means than by the lavish expenditures often thrown away upon elections.

We look upon the future excellence of our common schools as of the greatest possible importance, and we hope all will agree with us that they should be made as excellent as our abilities will allow. The fund from the school lands is a large one itself, if it is only taken that care of that men would take of their own property. One thirty-sixth, of all Wisconsin is set apart for schools, and surely if we take care of that it will form a very large fund. We all remember, though, that this same proportion has been wasted elsewhere, and we should be jealous lest a single acre of it here be thrown away. It was given for a great and holy purpose. Let it never be said that the people of Wisconsin have diverted the smallest portion of it from the object for which it was intended. That object, in our opinion, was common schools.

We hold to common schools, and common schools aloneno academies, no colleges out of this fund. It was set apart for the education of all the people-not a select few. You may have as many higher institutions of learning as you please, but let them not be paid for out of this fund. The fund is large but not too much, and you have no right to use it for anything but common schools in any event. Make the common schools as good as possible, let the sciences be introduced among them if they can afford it. Let your schoolmaster be paid as high a salary as his talents deserve. Spend your money freely, liberally upon common schools, but do not fritter it away among institutions that cannot be brought into general use. The fund was intended for schools, for schools for the people generally, or in other words for common schools, and to them let it be restricted, for to them it belongs alone and the diversion of it is dishonesty.

Begin to teach as you ought; begin at the rudiments, and when you find that the whole people have the means to obtain a good, scientific, English education, you may then raise your common schools to a higher point, introducing French, Spanish, German, and the dead languages if you choose. "But," many will exclaim, "this is impossible; ten times the fund would not do all this." Very well, then, do not divert it, let it be our common school fund, let it belong to the people, not to a few, and let it make the schools as excellent as it will, and then be sure they will keep improving until your select schools will have to give way to them and the children of the whole state will commence their educations together.

Colleges you may have-as many as you choose--but not out of our common school fund. They are not, and cannot be, of course, much benefit to the many, to the poor; and the rich can afford to institute them by their own means and in their own way. If you once see that men are well grounded in a common school education they will find the means to procure such other knowledge as they desire. Colleges are doubtless an assistance but they assist only a few, whereas common schools well digested, well taught, give to all that desire for learning that alone will teach the way to do it. The rudiments are the most difficult part, the first steps the most desirable, and it is to direct these that our efforts should be mainly used. When we have men well grounded, they can assist themselves with comparative ease.

But the constitution should see to the perfect safety of the fund in any event, taking care that all waste should be repaired by immediate tax, making the whole state liable for the integrity of the fund and directing the state on subdivision to make the districts subdivided liable in the same way. In this manner a sure fund will be provided to meet the wants of the community and to increase those wants. Increase the wants of education by increasing the desire for it, and you make men avaricious of the only property a legislature should desire to increase to excess, the riches of a well educated mind.

BIENNIAL SESSIONS

[June 30, 1846]

We observe that this measure is attracting considerable attention throughout those states which are about to revise their constitutions. In New York there is a strong party in favor of holding sessions of the legislature every other year only, and if with the great business of that state such an interim between legislative sessions could be allowed surely it might be done in those states that have not so much general business, and no heavy system of internal improvements to fill the legislative halls with petitions and politics.

We should certainly prefer biennial sessions and we believe that almost all would also prefer them could they be convinced that the country would not suffer for want of legislative action; and of that we think there can be no danger if we discard from our legislative halls those abuses that have been creeping in year after year, from the increasing disposition of legislatures to interfere with all private contracts and to give to certain individuals and certain corporations privileges that may be denied to others. In the very act of incorporation of a city or village there is constant lobbying, constant additive powers given, and almost always powers are vested in these bodies that are at variance with the feelings of the people, and often with the pure principles of justice. Property is taken from individuals in a most summary method, and they are almost as often assessed as heavily for an injury inflicted as for a benefit conferred. This is wrong, and we do not think there is any good reason why such corporations should not all be embodied in a general law so that, under certain restrictions, these communities that chose might enjoy them, and all might be upon an equal footing. Property should never be taken unless for the general good, and then of course it could not be enjoyed by one more than another and all would feel the necessity

and submit willingly to a deprivation for which they would be fairly compensated.

The business of legislation can be made infinitely less than it has been for years past and then biennial sessions will be preferable to annual ones, but in order that this shall be done it must be made of no pecuniary advantage to legislators to protract their sessions. A suggestion in the Democratic Review that legislators shall be paid a certain salary quarterly during the term for which they are elected, without reference to the time of service, not to be diminished either in illness or on account of resignation, strikes us as the best proposition we have seen. This would induce men to labor during the session that it might prove a short one, to discountenance party resolutions that always consume time and engender bitterness of feeling, to pass laws that should be invariably general, and would prevent a multiplication of useless statutes-in short, to do their work as if they were sent there by the people and not merely to gain a little ephemeral distinction for themselves.

Another suggestion from the same periodical seems to us all important. It is that no law shall be passed remunerating an individual for accidents or misfortunes that have happened to him while fulfilling a contract for the state. Individuals do not do so in their private transactions and the agents of the state ought to be quite as particular. This might in some cases prove a hardship but when the practice is indulged in, as it has been among all the old states, it proves constantly a hardship to the whole people and opens a door for the most extensive corruption and favoritism. Nor are the hardships of these cases done away with for although many may be saved from loss yet there are many more, and generally the most meritorious, who, after dancing attendance upon the legislature for years, not only find their first loss confirmed but have added to it a loss as serious of time and of temper, and have also become disgusted with the government under which they live.

Throughout the United States there is at the present moment a strong disposition to reduce all legislative proceedings to a greater simplicity than has obtained for many years past. Men have seen the internal improvements of states almost destroying their energies and their integrity, and they are beginning to think that the best plan is never to force upon a country those improvements that must come of themselves when they are wanted. Where capital can be profitably employed there it will come, and although the action of the legislature may hasten the advent of some extensive system of improvements, it can very rarely do any good, and must almost always lead to the ruinous consequences we have seen in Michigan, in Illinois, and elsewhere.

Wisconsin must ever be an agricultural state, with the addition of a strong mining interest. It wants no state protection for any of its interests. It wants no laws to build up vast bodies corporate, whose interests shall be diametrically opposed to the body of the people in their employ. It wants few laws, but wants those to be readily understood and rigidly enforced. It wants but few state officers, and those elected by the people. It wants no central appointing power to rule by corruption that will gradually creep in. It wants no useless offices, no idle officers, and above all none of those situations that call forth crowds of office-seekers, who wish only to secure to themselves either large salaries or opportunities to enrich themselves by means inconsistent with the welfare of the state and often with common honesty.

With a strictly defined constitution, and one that shall prevent the passage of useless laws and the creation at the pleasure of the legislature of useless offices, biennial sessions would be sufficient for all our purposes, and they would also be short. The people would be spared the constant search after good men to represent them, and the constant mortification of finding the men they had chosen were more bent on personal aggrandizement than on the performance of their duties. Without such restrictions it would be useless trying to avoid the annual long sessions of other states, and use