the Dutch captain had bartered off his negroes
for tobacco,--fifty years from the election of the first governor by the
people in the cabin of the Mayflower,--the King appointed Commissioners
of Education, who addressed letters to the governors of the colonies
upon the subject. The Governor of Connecticut replied, that one fourth
of the entire income of the colony was laid out in maintaining public
schools. Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, who owned a great plantation
and many slaves, and who wanted to keep the government in the hands of
the few privileged families, answered,--

"I thank God there are no free schools nor printing in this
colony, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred
years."

All the Northern colonies established common schools, and liberally
supported them, that every child might obtain an education. The Southern
colonies, even when they became States, gave but little attention to
education, and consequently the children became more ignorant than their
fathers. Thus it has come to pass, that in the Northern States nearly
all can read and write, while in the Southern States there are hundreds
of thousands who do not know the alphabet.

In 1850 the State of Maine had 518,000 inhabitants; of these 2,134 could
not read nor write, while the State of North Carolina, with a white
population of 553,000, _had eighty thousand native whites, over twenty
years of age, who had never attended school_!

The six New England States, with a population of 2,705,000, had in 1850
but eight thousand unable to read and write, while Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama--five States, with a
population of 2,670,000 whites--_had two hundred and sixty-two thousand,
over twenty years of age, unable to read a word_! In the Northern States
educational facilities are rapidly increasing, while in the South they
are fast diminishing. In 1857 there were 96,000 school-children in
Vermont, and all but six thousand attended school. South Carolina the
same year had 114,000 school-children; of these _ninety-five thousand_
had no school privileges. Virginia had 414,000 school-children; _three
hundred and seventy-two thousand_ of them had no means of learning the
alphabet!

In Missouri, in some of the counties, the school lands given by Congress
have been sold, and the money distributed among the people, instead
of being invested for the benefit of schools. With each generation
ignorance has