made by the heritors of the parish, and on their refusal by the majority of the inhabitants. The statute of 1646, rendered the assessment compulsory on each parish, for the purpose of building a school-house, and electing and supporting the schoolmaster. Though this latter statute was repealed at the restoration of Charles II., it was reenacted by the Scottish parliament in 1696, and this excellent school establishment and plan of national instruction, has had a propitious influence on the moral and enterprising character of the nationa The establishment of common schools, and provision for the education and supply of competent teachers, in the Prussian dominions, by Frederick II., were surprisingly liberal, and shed lustre on his reign. He began the system in 1750, and some years afterwards directed, by ordinance, that a school should be kept in every village, and subsistence for the school and the master raised by a school tax levied on the lord of the village and the tenants without distinction. The boys were to be sent from their sixth to their thirteenth year, whether the parents were able to pay the school tax or not, and the parent or guardian was doubly taxed who neglected, without sufficient cause, to send his child or pupil.b

a Dr. Currie's Life of Burns, vol. i. App. No. 1. note a. This elegant writer says, that he gave his statement of the history of the Scottish laws, upon "unquestionable authority."

b Adams' Lectures on Silesia, 361-372. In the more recent and more general Prussian system of common schools, and coercive popular instruction, the duty of parents to send their children to school is enforced by law. Each commune or parish is bound to maintain, at its own expense, an elementary or primary school, by providing a suitable salary to the schoolinaster, and a good school-house properly supplied with books and other means of instruction. Every town must support one or more burgher schools of a somewhat higher order. This interference of government in the institution of a system of coercive instruction in the common schools, was in use in Germany, Scotland, and New-England, in the 17th century; and it has been found, by experience, that coercion, in some indirect way at least, is necessary to insure the requisite education to the lower classes. The gymnasia or colleges in Prussia are principally supported at the ex

Great pains have been taken, and munificent and noble provision made, in this country, to diffuse the means

pense of the state. Primary seminaries, or normal schools, for the training of schoolmasters, are provided, and supported partly at the expense of the state, and partly at the expense of the departments.

Each commune has its superintending committee, of which the magistrates of the commune constitute a part. The law, under strong penalties, imposes upon parents the obligation of sending their children to school; and the law of 1819 is applied to all the ten provinces of the Prussian dominion. A large proportion of the regulations enforced by the law of 1819, were contained in enactments of the date of 1718 and 1736; and this system of public instruction has elevated the German people to a high rank in the scale of intelligence. Many other states besides Prussia, such as Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, Saxe Weimar, Nassau, Wirtembergh and Baden, have followed the same coercive system; and through the exertions of M. Cousin, the distinguished French professor, the Prussian system of popular instruction, as digested by law in 1819, and especially the system of primary normal schools, for educating schoolmasters, has been introduced, and essentially adopted in France, in the beginning of 1833. These normal schools have been found the most efficient means of raising the standard of primary instruction in Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, Holland and Scotland. The former French law of 1816, on the same subject, was wanting in means to give it effect. Rapport sur l'etat de l'instruction publique dans quelques pays de l'Allemagne et particuliérement en Prusse, par M. Victor Cousin, Conseiller d'Etat, Professeur de Philosophie, Membre d'Institution, &c. This report was translated into English by Sarah Austin, and published in New-York in 1835. It was made to the minister of public instruction in 1831, and was followed by a supplementary report in 1833, affording fresh proofs of the prosperity of primary instruction in Prussia under the coercive system. The work, as translated, is deemed so highly valuable, that it has been, by the order of the legislatures of some of these United States, distributed in the school districts at the public expense. In France, every commune is obliged to have a school, and it is stated that there are 28,196 communes which have school-houses, and only 8,991 which have not. But parents are not compelled in France, as in Germany, to send their children to school, and the inhabitants of the rural districts very greatly neglect it. The plan of elementary schools in Austrian Lombardy, was introduced from Austria in Germany in 1821. It is compulsory like that of Prussia. All male children, between six and twelve years of age, must attend the elementary schools, or a fine is inflicted on the parents. The teachers receive salaries, and must have been trained in the normal schools. The elementary schools are vigorously superintended. In 1832 they amounted to 3535, and of these 71 were normal schools, and the teachers male and female then amounted to 3484, and the pupils

of knowledge, and to render ordinary instruction acces

male and female to 166,767, besides 22,112 children and youths taught in more private establishments. The pupils in the schools amounted to 1-12th of the population. If we add thereto the number of elementary schools and pupils in the Austro- Venetian provinces, which are of slower advance, the whole number of pupils throughout Austrian Italy amounted, in 1830, to 220,419, or 1-19th of the gross population. The amount has since considerably increased, for in 1837 the local or elementary schools amounted to 4531. Part of the expenses was defrayed by the communes and the residue by the government. And with respect to the educational system in Prussia, Mr. Laing, in his remarks on the social and political state of continental Europe, (Notes of a Traveller, London, 1842,) observes that the intervention of the military system, and the want of free social institu. tions and of parental control and influence in Prussia, counteracts the goodness and value of the educational machinery, and leaves the people without just and elevated moral influences, and without active, rigorous, free and independent personal exertions.

With respect to the condition of the common school system of educa tion in the neighboring English colonies in America, I would refer the student to the valuable work of George R. Young, Esq., of Halifax, NovaScotia, "on Colonial Literature, Science, and Education." He has given a very instructive detail of the state of education in Lower and Upper Canada, Nova-Scotia, New-Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward's Island. In regard to East Canada, there has not been any legislative provision until recently for popular education. Its educational endowments for colleges and seminaries, were owing to the liberality and zeal of the Catholic Church, and they have been munificent, and the course of education in them has been well conducted under accomplished teachers. Though they are Catholic institutions, Catholics and Protestants are admitted in the best of them indiscriminately, and no attempts made to convert the youth. They are institutions for the teaching of the higher branches of literature and science. Efforts have recently been made for the endowment of a high school, as well as a Protestant college at Montreal. In 1841, there was an act of the united legislature of East and West Canada for the establishment, endowment and support of common schools throughout the United Province, for children from five to sixteen years of age. This statute requires local assessments on the school districts in aid of the public funds, and it is considered by Mr. Young, as opening a new era in Canada, and laying the foundation of popular education. It contains no provision for the religious instruction of the scholars, and is so far radically defective, but it enables the minority of every parish professing a religious faith different from that of the majority, to have separate trustees and schools subject to the general visitation and rules provided by statute, and to receive their due portion of the monies appropriated by law or raised by assessment.

196 sible to all. Several of the states have made the main

The new act has been acted upon in West, but is inoperative in East Canada, because the French have declined to organize the districts according to the system. The insuperable difficulty in Lower Canada is the hostile division of the two races, French and English. They are to most intents and purposes two separate nations with intense hatred of each other, and the French common people are in most deplorable ignorance. Young on Colonial Literature, &c., vol. 1, 179–211. Upper or West Canada has highly respectable collegiate institutions, but their district and common school system is far from flourishing.

In Nova Scotia the system of grammar and common schools is established and supported by funds from the treasury, and by parents, and raised from the parishes. The system has by several statutes in 1832, 1836 and 1841, been placed under the management of a board of commissioners, but it is not sufficiently vigorous, and a great number of children are left without any education. The great objection to the institution is the inadequacy of the funds, the absence of all religious instruction, the want of proper school books, and the want of coercion, instead of the principle of voluntary assessments. Halifax has its schools for the higher classes and its schools for the common people of all degrees, and they are well conducted and duly appreciated. New-Brunswick has the same defective system, though the most praiseworthy efforts have been made on the part of the executive government, to improve the laws and regulations on the subject, by the introduction of the use of the Bible, and of normal and industrial schools One serious difficulty in the colonies arises from the Catholic population being opposed to the use of the Bible in schools, and the Protestant being adverse to the system without it.

a It has been uniformly a part of the land system of the United States to provide for public schools. By the ordinances of congress under the articles of confederation of May 20th, 1785, and of July 13th, 1787, respecting the territory of the United States north-west of the river Ohio; and by the acts of congress of March 30th, 1802, ch. 40, and of March 3d, 1803, ch. 74, for the admission of Ohio; and the act of April 19th, 1816, ch. 57, for the admission of Indiana; and the act of April 18th, 1818, ch. 62, for the admission of Illinois; and the act of March 6th, 1820, ch. 20, for the admission of Missouri into the Union, it was made a specific condition, among other things, that a section of each township should be permanently applied for the use of public schools. So, the act of February 15th, 1811, ch. 81, relative to the territory of Louisiana; and the act of March 3d, 1823, ch. 28, relative to the territory of Florida; and the act of June 23d, 1836, ch. 120, relative to the admission of Arkansas into the Union, all provided for the appropriation of lands in each township for the use of public schools. The elevated policy of the federal government, (and which applied equally to public roads and highways,) as one of our American VOL. II.

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tenance of public schools an article in their consitutions. In New-England it has been a steady and governing principle, from the very foundation of the colonies, that it was the right and duty of government to provide, by means of fair and just taxation, for the instruction of all the youth in the elements of learning, morals, and religion. Each town and parish was obliged, by law, to maintain an English school a considerable portion of the year, and the school was under the superintendence of the public authority, and the poorest children in the country had access to these schools. Select men in each town were to see, that in every family, children and ap

statesman (Mr. Cushing) has justly observed, was "a noble and beautiful idea of providing wise institutions for the unborn millions of the West; of anticipating their good by a sort of parental providence; and of associating together the social and the territorial development of the people, by incorporating these provisions, with the land titles derived from the public domain, and making school reservations and road reservations essential parts of that policy."

a The states of Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New-York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alabama.

b Common schools for each town were instituted in Massachusetts in the early settlement of the colony, and the general instruction of children was made a public charge and duty. The colony, as the United States have since done, incorporated public instruction and improvement with her land titles; and in assigning townships to settlers, it was the practice to reserve one lot for schools and another for parochial uses. The first legal provision for enforcing this duty, and sustaining the system of common schools, was in 1647; and Massachusetts has the honour of taking the lead, in this country, in this great and wise policy. Winthrop's History of New-England, vol. ii. p. 215. This compulsory system upon parents and masters to teach their children and servants to read, and to give them some knowledge of the scriptures, and of the capital laws, and to bring them up in some lawful employment, was enforced by fine in Massachusetts by the act of 1642, and in the Plymouth Colony Laws, 1671. Brigham's edit. 1836, p. 270. The compulsory system of supporting common and grammar schools in each town, is sustained to this day in Massachusetts, and enforced by indictment. In 1818, the inhabitants of the town of Dedham were indicted, tried and convicted under a statute of 1789, of the offence of neglecting for a year to keep and support a grammar school to instruct children in the Greek, Latin, and English languages. 16 Mass. Rep. 141.