f the question had related to anything in the Digest under
Adr, or anything thereafter, I should have been found probably
more ignorant than they were. But Judge Poland took me into
high favor, and I found his friendship exceedingly agreeable
and valuable. I do not remember that the Committee on the
Revision of the Laws had another meeting while I belonged
to it.

I was also, as I have said, put on the Committee of Education
and Labor. The Bureau of Education had been lately established
and the Commissioner appointed. But the office was exceedingly
unpopular, not only with the old Democrats and the Strict
Constructionists, who insisted on leaving such things to the
States, but with a large class of Republicans. A very zealous
attack was made on the Bureau, led by Mr. Farnsworth of Illinois,
and by Cadwallader C. Washburn, a very able and influential
Republican from Wisconsin. The Committee on Appropriations,
of which my colleague, Mr. Dawes, was Chairman, reported
a provision for abolishing this Bureau. Mr. Dawes, himself,
however, dissented. The Republicans on the Committee of Education
and Labor took up the cudgels for the Bureau. We beat the
Committee of Appropriations. The result of the strife was
that the Bureau was put on a firmer footing with a more liberal
provision, and it has since been, under General Eaton and
Dr. Harris, the accomplished and devoted Commissioners, of
very great and valuable service to the country.

That led me to give special study to the matter of National
education. I introduced a bill for establishing an education
system by National authority in States which failed to do
it themselves. Later, I introduced and carried through the
House a measure for distributing the proceeds of the public
land and sums received from patents and some other special
funds, among all the States in aid of the common schools.
This bill passed the House, but was lost in the Senate mainly
because Senator Morrill of Vermont, a most excellent and influential
statesman, insisted that the money should go to the agricultural
colleges, in which he took great interest, and not to common
schools. Later when I became a member of the Senate I succeeded
in getting a like measure twice through the Senate. But it
failed in the House. So the two Houses never agreed upon
it. But the movement and discussion aroused public attention
throughout the country and were of great value.

While I was on that Committ