driven into low and debasing crime. He has resources within
himself, which are a counterpoise to the incitements of his animal
nature. His awakened intellect and conscience also make him understand
more clearly the danger and guilt of a life of crime. Many of the deeds
which swell the records of our criminal courts spring from poverty, as
every criminal lawyer well knows, and there is no remedy against extreme
poverty so sure as education. The old adage says that knowledge is
power. It is also wealth. A man with even an ordinary, common school
education, can turn himself in a hundred ways, where a mere ignorant
boor would be utterly helpless. The faculties are developed, ingenuity
is quickened, the man's resources are enlarged. An educated man may be
tempted to crime, but he is not driven into it, as hundreds are daily,
by mere poverty, or by an intolerable hunger of the mind for enjoyment
of some kind.

Schools, then, especially schools in which moral and religious truth is
inculcated, are the most powerful means of lessening crime, and of
lessening the costly and frightful apparatus of criminal administration.
As schoolhouses and churches increase in the land, jails and prisons
diminish. As knowledge is diffused, property becomes secure, and rises
in value. A community, therefore, is bound to see that its members are
properly educated, if for no other reason, in mere self-defence. The
many must be educated, in order that the many may be protected. A great
city is just as sacredly bound to provide for its teeming population the
light of knowledge, as it is to provide material light for its streets.
The one kind of illumination, equally with the other, is an essential
part of its police. No matter what the cost, the dark holes and alleys
must be flooded with the light of truth, before which the owls and bats
and vampyres of society will be scattered to the winds. A great city
without schools would be a hell,--a seething caldron of vice, impurity,
and crime. No man of sound mind would choose such a place for the
residence of himself and family, who had the means of living in any
other place. If we could suppose two cities entirely equal in other
respects, but in one of them a superior and costly system of free
schools, while the other spent not a dollar upon schools, but depended
solely upon the rigors of the law and the strong arm of avenging justice
for restraining the ignorant and corrupt masses, can there be any doub