ils; that, by imparting a knowledge of the organic laws, the
observance of which is essential to health and happiness, it would save
the lives of a hundred thousand children in the United States every
year, and that by promoting longevity, in connection with the advantages
already enumerated, it would tend more than all other means of state
policy to increase at once the wealth and the population of our country;
that its legitimate tendency would be to diminish, from generation to
generation, not only drunkenness and sensuality in all its Protean
forms, but idiocy and insanity, which result from a violation of the
laws of our being, which are the laws of God; that it would, in
innumerable ways, tend to diminish the sufferings and mitigate the woes
incident to human life, while it would acquaint man with the will of the
benevolent Creator, and lead him to cherish an habitual desire to yield
obedience thereto; and that it is the only possible means of perfecting
and perpetuating the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty to
the latest generations, and thus securing to the race the maximum of
human happiness. Yes, a system of popular education adequate to the
requirements of the states of this Union will do all this. None, then,
it would seem, can fail to see that true state policy requires the
maintenance of improved free schools, good enough for the best, and
cheap enough for the poorest, which are a necessary means of universal
education.

CHAPTER X.

THE MEANS OF UNIVERSAL EDUCATION.

I would recommend that each state should raise a school fund
sufficient for the entire support of the schools; that a suitable
school-house and apparatus, with a convenient dwelling-house for the
teacher, be furnished by the state for each district; and that every
school-house be supplied with a well-qualified teacher, who shall
receive from the state a suitable compensation.--JOHN DUER.

Let there be an educational department of the government, and let
its details be managed by proper officers, accountable to the
representatives of the people.--DR. HAWKS.

We have already considered the nature of education, which has reference
to the whole man and to the whole duration of his being. We have seen
its importance to individuals and families, to neighborhoods and
communities, to states and nations, and that in proportion as it
receives attention in any community, will that community b