riots, the burnings, the lynchings
perpetrated by the _men_ of the present day, are perpetrated because of
their vicious or defective education when _children_! We see and feel
the havoc and the ravage of their tiger passions now, when they are full
grown, but it was years ago that they were whelped and suckled."

In the very expressive language of Macaulay, the right to HANG includes
the right to EDUCATE. This is not a strange nor a new idea. It long ago
entered into civil codes in the Old World not only, but in the New. In
Prussia, when a parent refuses, without satisfactory excuse, to send his
child to school the time required by law, he is cited before the court,
tried, and, if he refuses compliance, the child is taken from him and
sent to _school_, and the father to _prison_.

Similar laws were enacted and _enforced_ by our New England fathers
more than two hundred years ago, which history informs us were attended
with the most beneficial results.[76] Although their descendants of the
present generation should blush for their degeneracy, still we should be
encouraged from an increasing disposition of late to return to these
salutary restraints and needful checks upon ignorance and crime. Said
the Honorable Josiah Quincy, Jr., late mayor of the city of Boston, in
his inaugural address, "I hold that the state has a right to compel
parents to take advantage of the means of educating their children. If
it can punish them for crime, it should surely have the power of
preventing them from committing it, by giving them the habits and the
education that are the surest safeguards." Similar sentiments have been
recently promulgated by the heads of the school departments of several
states in their official reports, and by governors in their annual
messages; and we have much reason for believing that the time is not
distant when an enlightened public sentiment shall demand the
re-enactment of these most salutary laws of our ancestors.

[76] The following paragraph is from the Massachusetts Colony Laws of
1642; "Forasmuch as the good education of children is of singular behoof
and benefit to any commonwealth, and whereas many parents and masters
are too indolent and negligent of their duty in that kind, it is ordered
that the select-men of every town in the several precincts and quarters,
where they dwell, shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and
neighbors, to see, first, that none of them shall suffe