And now, in conclusion, let us consider what California has done for Public Schools, and what she may reasonably be expected to do for them during the next four years. The total amount of money expended for Public School purposes during the year ending October thirty-first, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, was four hundred and ninetyseven thousand dollars, of which seventy-five thousand dollars was received from the State as interest on the funds derived from the sale of School Bonds, one hundred and forty-two thousand dollars from county taxes, and two hundred and seventy-four thousand dollars from rate-bills and subscriptions.

The total number of children in the State between the ages of four and eighteen is seventy-two thousand eight hundred and twenty-one, so that the State Government makes the munificent provision of one dollar and three mills per scholar for educating the children of California.

In Ohio, the direct State tax alone, apart from the interest of the School Fund, amounts to nearly two dollars for every child.

But it must be borne in mind that this one-dollar-and-three-mill provision is not a free will offering by the State; it is the payment of interest on School Funds derived from the sale of lands reserved by the National Government for School purposes "forever," and from the five hundred thousand acres of land, reserved by the wise forethought of the framers of our State constitution. We owe a debt of gratitude to the men in that Convention who battled so nobly for reserving the five hundred thousand acres donated to the State for internal improvements, for School purposes, without any "proviso," which was only carried by a vote of eighteen to seventeen. From the sale of this land the School Fund has realized four hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars; and the sale of the remainder, at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, will yield, say three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars, making a total fund of eight hundred thousand dollars.

By Act of March third, eighteen hundred and fifty-three, Congress granted to California the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections (one thousand two hundred and eighty acres) in each township, for the support of Schools. This grant would embrace oneeighteenth of the whole area of the State, and would yield a School Fund of five millions of dollars; but the greater portion, amounting to two millions of acres, falls upon mineral lands, and the authorities at Washington have decided that the State cannot select an equivalent in other parts of the State in lieu of the mineral sections. The amount realized from the sales of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections is three hundred and sixty thousand dollars.

It is not probable that the School Fund will be largely increaaed for many years to come; but the number of School children is rapidly increasing, and the only way to meet the pressing and immediate demands of the School Department will be to levy a State tax for the support of Schools.

The total number of children between four and eighteen years of age, by the last School census, was seventy-two thousand; and of this number only thirty-six thousand were reported as in attendance at Public Schools, and seven thousand in Private Schools-leaving twenty-nine thousand children not attending any School. Of the number attending School, about one fourth may be estimated as attending between three and four months, one fourth less than six months, and one half from six to ten months, in the year.

Allowing that a large number between fifteen and eighteen have finished their education, and that many others in the sparsely settled mountain districts cannot attend School, there still remain at least twelve or fifteen thousand children who ought to go to School, and who would attend, if Schools were provided.

The number of children under four years of age is thirty-eight thousand; and as all these must soon be provided for, together with the large numbers immigrating hither, must be evident that the present provision for Schools is wholly inadequate, and that

the State Government is imperatively called upon to provide ways and means for educating these children, else they will grow up like the aborigines of the country.

Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and several other States, assess an annual State tax of two mills on the dollar for School parposes, in addition to the interest on School Funds, and district, and county, and township taxation. Massachusetts raises a State School tax of one mill and sixty-five hundredths on a dollar; and New York, of three fourths of a mill. In Ohio, the direct State tax amounts to one million two Lundred and one thousand dollars. In Illinois, the District School Trustees are required, by law, to assess a district tax sufficient, with the money derived from the State, to continue School at least six months in the year, and the amount derived from this tax, in eighteen hundred and sixty, was more than one million of dollars. Is our State so poor, or so tax-ridden, that she cannot levy any tax on the property of the State to educate her children? Has she done her duty when she pays seven per cent interest on the School Fund, and appropriates six thousand dollars for a Normal School?

Next year a special State tax of half a mill on the dollar ought to be levied for the support of Public Schools. When the State does nothing, the counties and the districts cannot be expected to do everything. I believe the people of the State would pay it cheerfully. The State ought to be able to do one fourth as much as Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. San Francisco has raised, for several years, a School tax of three and a half mills on a dollar; the people have cheerfully paid it; and I have no doubt her excellent Schools have drawn to the city many hundreds of families, and increased the taxable property of the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The lack of Schools in many parts of the State has kept from our shores thousands of families which otherwise would have gladly settled here; and one of the first questions asked by a man with a family, in purchasing property, is, What are the advantages for Schools?"

66

If the School Trustees, School officers, School Teachers, and the men who have faith in Public Schools, will act with earnestness and energy during this year, I am confident that the next Legislature will respond to their appeal for aid.

State tax of half a mill on the dollar has been levied this year for carrying on the work of building up the State Capitol; is it not quite as necessary that the work of building School Houses should not be delayed? Of what use will a magnificent State Capitol be, unless educated legislators are sent there to fill it? The State is to be placed on a military footing. It is equally necessary that it should be placed on an educational footing, for educated and intelligent men are a stronger defence than Monitors, Columbiads, or field batteries. During the darkest hour of our National adversity, the work upon the dome of the Capitol, at Washington, was carried on without cessation, even under the roar of the enemy's cannon-a fitting type of the faith of the people in the permanence of our Government and the stability of our institutions. Our Public Schools are not the dome of the Republic, but the solid and everlasting foundations on which is based the permanence and integrity of the nation.

We, of this generation, fall back upon the sword and the bayonet to sustain the laws; but if we expect our children to be capable of self-government, if we have not utterly lost our faith in representative institutions, let us not stultify ourselves by failing to educate our children. It is not true that we are doing as much for Schools as other States. Why, the City of Boston last year expended a hundred thousand dollars more for Schools than the whole State of California.

The total amount of money raised in the State by tax and rate bills last year was six dollars and ninety cents to every child between four and eighteen years of age; the little sandy island of Nantucket raised nine dollars and seventy-four cents for every child between three and fifteen years of age within her seagirt shores.

Neither is it just to measure California by the new States of the northwest. We sprang at once into a high degree of civilization; our mines yield immediate and rich

returns for labor, and we are unworthy the fairest inheritance the sun shines upon if we do not provide a system of Free Schools which shall furnish the means of education to every child as liberally as Nature has bestowed her mineral wealth upon our land. Shall California, just entering on a renewed career of prosperity from the recent discoveries of fabulous mineral wealth, contribute less for Schools than the States where ice and granite take the place of silver and gold? Is the table of ten mills one centten cents one dime-ten dimes one dollar-ten dollars one eagle-the only ten commandments our children shall be taught? Is the national ensign of the Republic, like the calf of molton gold the children of Israel worshipped in the wilderness, to be made a great golden buzzard? Is metal to be valued more than mind, and "feet" more than the little brain engines that fill the School houses?

Shall we pay thousands of dollars annually for blooded stock, and let the children run wild, like Spanish cattle? Shall we sink costly artesian wells through all our valleys, and keep the living well-springs of knowledge sealed to the thirsty children? Shall we send to Europe for choice foreign vines, and leave the children to grow up like the wild mustard which covers our fertile lands with its rank.growth?

The effect of our abundant wealth, unless its possessors shall be educated and trained to use it in intellectual pleasures and refined enjoyments, will be to sweep us into the rankest and grossest forms of materialism.

The real wealth of the State must ever be her educated men and intelligent laborers. Educated mind has made the world rich by its creative power. The intelligent minds which invented the steamship, the cotton gin, and the spinning jenny, created for the world a wealth greater than the products of the gold mines of Australia and California together. How many millions of dollars is Ericsson's invention of the Monitor worth to the nation? How much the invention of the electric telegraph? How much the, hundreds of labor saving machines in every department of industry? Ignorance invents none of these. What influence, tell me, is so mighty in developing the intellect of society as the Common School? One single great mind, inspired in the Public School with a love for learning-without which it might have slumbered forever-may prove of more value to the State than the entire cost of Schools for half a century.

Our population is drawn from all nations, and from all parts of the globe. The next generation will be a composite one-made up of the heterogeneous atoms of all nationalities. Nothing can Americanize these and breathe into them the spirit of our institutions but the Public Schools. No other agency under Heaven can crystalize these inharmonious elements into the form and beauty of the highest civilization.

The Legislature just adjourned passed a Revised School Law, but failed to make any provision for increasing the School Fund; and any laws which fail to legislate money for the support of Schools will accomplish but little.

Still, the new law has some good features. It compels the Superintendent of Public Instruction to travel, lecture, and conduct Institutes, at least three months in each year, and appropriates one thousand dollars to pay his travelling expenses. The old law liberally provided " that all necessary expenses incurred in the discharge of his official duties should be paid out of any Fund not otherwise appropriated;" but by some singular combination of circumstances, there never happened to be any Fund "not otherwise appropriated," except the Swamp Land Fund, and that usually was "otherwise appropriated."

But the law undoubtedly did allow the Superintendent to travel at his own expense, and in this respect was very much like the Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club, which unanimously adopted the following resolution:

Resolved, That this association cordially recognizes the principle of every member of the Corresponding Society defraying his own expenses, and that it sees no objection

whatever to the members of the said society pursuing their inquiries for any length of time they please, upon the same terms.

With equal "Pickwickian" liberality, a few years ago the law made the following excellent provisions :

The Superintendent of Public Instruction may annually call a State Convention of Teachers and Officers of Common Schools, and such Convention may discuss and recommend improvements in teaching and the management of Schools, and a series of School books throughout the State, and may consider other subjects pertaining to public instruction; provided, the State shall incur no expense from such Convention.

The new law provides that the State shall furnish a School Register to each School District, for the purpose of securing more accurate returns of School statistics from Teachers.

It authorizes the State Board of Education to adopt, and to require to be used, a uniform series of text books in the State. The old law, another Pickwickian humbug, gave them only the power of recommending-a privilege in common with all the world and the rest of mankind."

It appropriates one hundred and fifty dollars from the County General Fund to aid the different County Teachers' Institutes, which may be called a most excellent provision, as the County Institutes must be the most efficient means of improving instruction in the Schools.

It provides that School Trustees shall be elected for three years, instead of one, as formerly; and though Trustees, under the present long term, may possibly fail to get rich, they cannot fail to learn the routine of official duty.

State Teachers' certificates of different grades are granted, by the State Board of Examination, for the terms of six, four, and two years, thereby conforming to the action of other enlightened States. County certificates are made valid for two years. Under the old law, a Teacher in the Public Schools, though he might have added to the finest natural abilities for teaching, a complete professional training in the best Normal Schools in the United States-though he might have grown gray in the service— might be crowned with the well-earned honors of many successful Schools, be revered by thousands of grateful pupils-though he had graduated from a University-yet he could not apply for the smallest District School in the remotest corner of the State without "passing an examination ;" and, if he wished to teach another year, he must travel twenty or thirty miles, to satisfy the State that he was “fit to keep a Common School!" And, further, if he wished to remove to another county, he must be examined by another Board, to ascertain his fitness to teach a Common School! If examination imparts fitness to teach, some of the Teachers in this State ought to be well fitted for their occupation.

It provides stringent laws for the collection of district taxes and rate bills; the old law being defective, and generally allowing the heavy property holders to escape the tax whenever they chose to resist its collection.

The Legislature also made an appropriation of six thousand dollars for the State Normal School; not a large appropriation, yet one which met with very decided opposition. Massachusetts has expended for Normal Schools since their first organization, two hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars. New Jersey, in founding her Normal School, made an appropriation of ten thousand dollars a year, for five years.

And last, but not least, the Legislature allowed the Department of Public Instruction a Contingent Fund of fifty dollars, for the purchase of maps, charts, and new educational works; for purchasing the entire set of Barnard's Journal of Education; for subscribing to all the educational journals of the different States; for making additions to the musty library of antique Spellers and Readers, accumulated by the liberality of publishers and booksellers; for taking a newspaper; and for such other

general purposes for the advancement of education as the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education may deem advisable and necessary and the State Board of Examiners may allow.

I feel that I cannot better close this address than by quoting from the reports of the State Superintendents of the various loyal States a few extracts relating to the prosperity of the Schools and the patriotism of the people.

The State Superintendent of Kentucky says:

It is a fact, which ought to be noted with pride by every one in whose breast genuine patriotism has not been supplanted by sectional prejudices and Secession allurements, that, of the Southern States, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri-the three which have done and are now doing most for Common Schools-are the most unalterably devoted to the Constitution and Union of our country.

May we not trust that one of the main results of the present war will be an additional proof of the transcendent value of popular education? Systems which pass comparatively unscathed through the fires of revolution, are apt to be noble ones indeed. My hopes for the permanence of our present form of National Government rest upon the conviction that its excellence and beauty are such that Secession, which is but a synonym of anarchy, will be found, after a fair trial, to furnish but a flimsy substitute for it. The people-like those who of old brought back the Ark of the Covenant-will restore the Constitution of their fathers.

Those great interests which give employment to all the people of a country like ours, and embrace every pursuit of human life, will require EDUCATED LABOR hereafter even more than now, let the present struggle for and against the Union terminate as it may. The doors of none of those tens of thousands of primary and higher Schools throughout our land should be closed either in peace or war. Knowledge, from her myriad sources-those Common Schools throughout our land-is welling up her perennial streams, and bidding all the sons and daughters of a great people "Come hither," and without money and without price, drink of their crystal waters. Contrast such a policy with that of the "Seceded" States, where, if there remains as much as one efficient School system in existence, it is more than I am aware of. Arkansas, about a year since, was maturing a plan of popular education. One of her most influenial citizens

lost his election for Governor because he was understood to be opposed to it. Where is it now? Texas had but a little while ago one of the most magnificent School Funds on the continent. If reports be true, that Fund is now being frittered away in support of rebellion. These facts suggest their own impressive moral. To rivet links of ignorance for posterity, has been one of the works of that self-appointed Oligarchy which is now endeavoring to destroy the Government.

The State Superintendent of Maine says:

The newly aroused spirit of patriotism seems to have awakened new interest in those institutions which constitute the highest objects of our Northern pride, and which are known to be the objects of special hatred among the aristocratic citizens of the Rebel States. We owe it to ourselves to defend what they would otherwise overthrow-our system of free labor, free schools, and free men.

The State Superintendent of New York says:

I have travelled extensively through the State, and have everywhere found the manifestation of a deep and active interest in education; an interest not content with the existence and support of Schools, but earnestly desiring to increase their efficiency and usefulness. The universal sentiment is, that whatever else we may have to forego in the defence of the Government and the preservation of the Union, our Common Schools must suffer no neglect. These are justly regarded as the nurseries of that patriotism and loyalty which pervade the masses of the North; and we should be blind and infatuated indeed, if, in this hour, when the influence of our Schools in moulding the popular sentiment and inspiring the popular heart is so strikingly manifest, we could neglect to foster with jealous care and maintain with heroic pride these institutions which alone are the guarantee of our country's permanent peace.

The State Superintendent of Wisconsin says:

All who love their

In some respects the war has awakened an interest in education. country with an intelligent love, know and feel that our liberties are cherished and pre