s unanimously adopted. When it came to the question of schools,
Mr. Belcher indulged in a few flights of oratory. He thought it
impossible for a town like Sevenoaks to spend too much money for
schools. He felt himself indebted to the public school for all that he
was, and all that he had won. The glory of America, in his view--its
pre-eminence above all the exhausted and decayed civilizations of the
Old World--was to be found in popular education. It was the
distinguishing feature of our new and abounding national life. Drop it,
falter, recede, and the darkness that now hangs over England, and the
thick darkness that envelops the degenerating hordes of the Continent,
would settle down upon fair America, and blot her out forever from the
list of the earth's teeming nations. He would pay good wages to
teachers. He would improve school-houses, and he would do it as a matter
of economy. It was, in his view, the only safeguard against the
encroachments of a destructive pauperism. "We are soon," said Mr.
Belcher, "to consider whether we will take any steps for the improvement
of the condition of the poor, now supported at the public charge. Here
is our first step. Let us endow our children with such a degree of
intelligence that pauperism shall be impossible. In this thing I go hand
in hand with the clergy. On many points I do not agree with them, but on
this matter of popular education, I will do them the honor to say that
they have uniformly been in advance of the rest of us. I join hands with
them here to-day, and, as any advance in our rate of taxation for
schools will bear more heavily upon me than upon any other citizen--I do
not say it boastingly, gentlemen--I pledge myself to support and stand
by it."

Mr. Belcher's speech, delivered with majestic swellings of his broad
chest, the ostentatious removal of his overcoat, and brilliant passages
of oratorical action, but most imperfectly summarized in this report,
was received with cheers. Mr. Snow himself feebly joined in the
approval, although he knew it was intended to disarm him. His strength,
his resolution, his courage, ebbed away with sickening rapidity; and he
was not reassured by a glance toward the door, where he saw, sitting
quite alone, Miss Butterworth herself, who had come in for the purpose
partly of strengthening him, and partly of informing herself concerning
the progress of a reform which had taken such strong hold upon her
sympathies.

At length the ar