NORTH CAROLINA.

Comptroller's Office, 7th Dec., 1833.

        I, James Grant, Comptroller of Public Accounts, do hereby certify the foregoing statement to be the aggregate amount of the annual expense of the Government from 1810 to 1832, inclusive.

J. GRANT, Comp.

--Legislative Documents, 1833.

9. CALDWELL LETTERS ON POPULAR EDUCATION.

        Title page of the collected letters as published.

LETTERS
ON
POPULAR EDUCATION, ADDRESSED
TO THE PEOPLE
OF
NORTH CAROLINA.

How can he rule well in a commonwealth
Who knoweth not himself in rule to frame?
How should he rule himself in mental health
Who never learned one lesson for the same?
If such catch harm, their parents are to blame:
For needs must they be blind, and blindly led,
& Where no good lesson can be taught or read.

Cav. in Mir. for Mag.

HILLSBOROUGH:
PRINTED BY DENNIS HEARTT.
1832.

PREFACE.

        Report of 1825 committee work of the chairman.

        Plan called for too vast expenditures.

        A few years ago the attention of our Legislature was directed upon the subject of general education. They closed their proceedings upon it at that time by appointing a standing committee of four persons from the community at large, to whom it was prescribed to consider the subject of popular education through the ensuing year, and report to the Assembly at its next Session. That committee never met and no opportunity was afforded of comparing the sentiments of its members in personal conference. Towards the close of the year a paper drawn up by the chairman was sent to the other members for perusal, that if no other should have been prepared, and they should express their assent to such a measure, it might pass as a report to the Legislature. It detailed a plan conformable with the practice of some other states in the east and north, with provisions adapting it to our own circumstances. Objections were not raised to the measure, and it was presented as a report. As a basis it called for the creation of funds so vast as to preclude all hopes that it would be deemed practicable, and the anticipated issue was verified, that the ways and means necessary to its accomplishment, were of themselves an insuperable objection.

        Caldwell's plan of public education embodied in these letters.

        The writer of these letters, it may be recollected, was honored with an appointment on that committee, and it will not be strange that himself or any other person on whom the eye of the Legislature had been thus particularly turned, should feel some sense of obligation to reflect more fully on the subject, and engage in further researches as longer time and larger opportunity might put them within his power. He feels himself to be standing on ground somewhat different from that which he would have continued to occupy, had the appointment never occurred.

        From the circumstances, as they have been explained, it might be concluded, that all he has to think or say on the

subject of popular education is already before the public, which now at least, and for three years past would not do justice to his opinions and views. Had the writer been called upon at any time within this compass, to explain such a scheme of elementary education as would be preferable to all others, especially in our circumstances, and which instead of being impracticable can with the utmost facility be commenced and carried forward into execution without delay, the system he would have proposed is fully exhibited in these letters. They have occupied no small portion of his inquiries on a subject which involves the very highest interest of the State. He has now discharged what, with such views as he had, he could not but consider as a duty, and to his fellow citizens, he cheerfully leaves the consideration and disposal of it.

        No intended reflection on real teachers.

        In these letters remarks have been made freely upon the past and present method of schools in our own state. It may appear that injustice is done to many respectable and useful men, acting in the occupation of schoolmasters. It is hoped that these strictures will not be understood as pointed upon individuals, or upon the profession. It is to this class of society that the writer himself belongs. Is it not natural that he should be jealous for its honor? He is fully aware of the proper distinction between the truly respectable and worthy, and others who are wholly unmeet for the trust, in principles, character and qualifications. If a proper system of education were established, these would no longer appear as blots upon the profession. Instead of securing its high and important purposes to the community, they have exerted an influence baneful to an extent which none can tell, and have been most accountable for the reproach in which all education is now held by multitudes throughout the state.

Chapel Hill, Oct. 17, 1832.

LETTERS ON EDUCATION.

LETTER I.

Fellow Citizens,

        Letters originally appeared in the Raleigh Register.

        The substance of these letters was commenced in publication more than two years ago, in a different form, with the signature of Cleveland, in the Raleigh Register. It soon appeared that, from failure of health and inevitable avocations, my purpose could not then be prosecuted. From the postponement, greater opportunity has been given of revolving the subject, and maturing the plan it was then intended to suggest, of popular education. I believe, however, that nothing material has since occurred to change the views then contemplated, and they are now presented in the form of letters, instead of numbers with the chosen signature.

        Any plan of education must consider the conditions peculiar to North Carolina.

        I have no need to inform you that my life has been much, may I not say exclusively conversant with the subject of education. It has been passed too, among your selves, in habitual familiarities with the necessities of the state, its difficulties, the habits of the people, your peculiar sentiments on the subjects of legislation, and on the nature and extent of the means at once in unison with your inclinations and commensurate with your resources. The necessity of such information for the construction of plans to advance the interests and meliorate the condition of the people is indisputable. The writer of these letters is fully sensible of the deficiency of any pretensions he can properly make to a competent share of this species of qualification, compared with what might be rationally expected from the circumstances in which he has been acting for more than five and thirty years, and in comparison too with many others of his fellow citizens, who have enjoyed far less opportunities in reference to this particular subject. It has been his object however, to discipline his views

to the particular circumstances of his countrymen whose welfare he would consult, and to exclude everything which would be impracticable or hopeless for want of concurrence with their established modes of motives and action, while he should forever repudiate the thought of urging one consideration, or recommending one step, perceived to be variant from integrity, and in the practical adoption of which he is not prepared to make common cause with his countrymen to its utmost issue.

        An innovation in North Carolina legislation must embody great advantages to gain consideration.

        When a people have continued long in one course of legislation, when they have frequently and habitually resisted essays made to diversify or enlarge it, any measure which looks beyond the limits of their ordinary action, must conspicuously embody advantages great and numerous and unquestionable, if it would hope for complacent consideration, much more for final acceptance. Should an innovation in any instance gain their assent, and through malformation or mismanagement unhappily fail to secure its object, the event will be pregnant with disappointment to all future efforts at improvement. If on the contrary it should prove successful, even inveterate prejudice may be weakened and dissolved and many things become easy which before were impossible.

        Recent progress in primary education.

        Examples of the perfection of the schoolmaster's art too remote.

        There is perhaps no art or science in which greater improvement has been made than in that of education in primary schools. It has assumed a character wholly different from that of former times, and from that in which it still appears among ourselves. The mode of communicating instruction, the variety of which it consists, the interest ever kept alive in the bosom of the pupil, the exclusion of corporal punishment with which it is most successfully conducted, the activity and versatility to which it trains the intellectual faculties, the life and force which it imparts to the human affections, and the wide range of thought and knowledge which it opens before the reason and curiosity of the pupil, transcend the anticipated pictures even of an indulged imagination. Could we witness

it in its processes and effects, its superior excellence would assuredly occur to us with a conviction as complete, as every one now feels in favor of the gin in preference to the fingers in the process of now cleaning cotton, of the steamboat compared with sails or oars, or of a locomotive engine carrying its numerous tons at twelve miles an hour, contrasted with the labor and plodding movement of wagons and horses, of which unhappily to our incalculable loss we are still fain to avail ourselves, over the sharp pinches, the floundering water pits and jolting obstacles of highways on which the hand of improvement has never operated. Nothing certainly is wanted but this occular demonstration, to the resolute and instant adoption of all these astonishing and inestimable improvements which distinguish the generation of men and the age to which we belong, above the bygone ages and generations of the world. But to witness the present perfection of the school master's art is not our privilege, for its examples are too remote. And this presents an obstacle to any system of elementary schools we can recommend for the children of our state.

        Our aversion to taxation for support of schools.

        Another obstruction meets us in our aversion to taxation beyond the bare necessities of government and the public tranquility. Any scheme of popular education must be capable of deriving existence originally, and of maintaining it perpetually, without taxing us for the purpose, or we are well aware that we shall not as a people consent to its establishment.

        Indifference of many to the advantages of education.

        Picture of the results of lack of education on the thinking of the masses.

        A still further difficulty is felt in the indifference unhappily prevalent in many of our people on the subject of education. Vast numbers have grown up into life, have passed into its later years and raised families without it: and probably there are multitudes of whose fore-fathers this is no less to be said. Human nature is ever apt to contract prejudices against that which has never entered into its customs. Especially is this likely to be the case if there have been large numbers who were subject in common

to our same defects and privations. They sustain themselves by joint interest and feelings against the disparagements and disadvantages of their condition. It becomes even an object to believe that the want of education is of little consequence; and as they have made their way through the world without it, better than some who have enjoyed its privileges, they learn to regard it with slight if not with opposition, especially when called to any effort or contribution of funds for securing its advantages to the children. Such are the woful consequences to any people who, in the formation of new settlements, have not carried along with them the establishment of schools for the education of their families. So strangely may the truth be inverted in the minds of men in such circumstances, that they become avowed partizans of mental darkness against light, and are sometimes seen glorying in ignorance as their privilege and boast. When a people lapse into this state, and there is reason to fear that multitudes are to be found among us of this description, it must be no small difficulty to neutralize their antipathy against education, and enlist them in support of any system for extending it to every family in the state.

        Sparse population.

        I might mention further, as one of the greatest obstructions, the scattered condition of our population, over a vast extent of territory, making it difficult to embody numbers within such a compass as will make it convenient or practicable for children to attend upon instruction.

        Lack of commercial opportunities a great difficulty in the way of the support of schools.

        A most serious impediment is felt in our want of commercial opportunities, by which, though we may possess ample means of subsistence to our families, money is difficult of attainment to build school houses and support teachers. Could the avenues of trade be opened to this agricultural people, funds would flow in from abroad, and resources would be created at home, which would make the support of schools and many other expenses to be felt as of no consequence. Excluded as we now are from the market of

the world, the necessity of rigid economy is urged against every expenditure however small, and the first plea which meets us, when the education of children is impressed upon parents is their inability to bear the expense. This is one principle reason why it has been thought that among all the improvements upon which we are called to engage for the benefit of the state, commercial opportunity shall be the first. With the enlargement of funds, every difficulty would vanish in the way to such improvements as are rapidly elevating other states to distinction and opulence.

        Summary of difficulties in the way of supporting schools.

        It appears then how numerous are the discouragements we have to encounter in framing any plan for popular education. Our habits of legislation have been long established, and their uniformity has in few instances been broken, from our first existence as a state. To provide for the education of the people, has unhappily never entered as a constituent part of these habits. We are wholly unaware of the immense improvements, which would render captivating to us if we could but witness them, the methods of instruction in elementary schools, now practiced in other parts of the world. Our aversion to taxation, even to provide for the education of poor children, is invincible, and extinguishes at once the hopes of any plan to the execution of which such means are necessary. The same fate awaits every scheme of education, which looks for success to the borrowing of funds. Through the influence of inveterate habit, large portions of our population have learned to look with indifference on education. But to what an appalling magnitude does this difficulty grow, when among many, a spirit of hostility is even boasted in behalf of ignorance against knowledge! We want resources too, and must for ever want them, not only for educating our children, but for every other improvement, so long as we are without commercial intercourse with the world.

        Aversion to surrendering any personal liberty another difficulty in the way of public education

        I have already mentioned seven distinct causes of embarrassment

in the organization of any plan for popular education. It were easy to extend the enumeration, but these will suffice to show the serious obstacles that meet us in the formation of a system of primary schools, to stagger our hopes of its acceptance with the people. An eighth, however, I must not omit, on account of its very great influence. It is seen in the aversion with which we recoil from laws that exercise constraint upon our actions. We are a people whose habits and wishes revolt at everything that infringes upon an entire freedom of choice upon almost every subject. It would be easy to elucidate how this has come to be a trait so deeply marked in our character, but its reality is unquestionable. Provision for general instruction can scarcely be effected, without some compulsory measures regulating the actions of individuals into particular channels directed upon the object. Every such measure is felt to be an entrenchment upon the indefinite discretion to which we tenaciously adhere, when a relinquishment of it is not absolutely indispensable.

I am, fellow citizens, yours,
With the highest respect,
and best wishes for your welfare,

J. CALDWELL.

LETTER II.

Fellow Citizens,

        Our duty to find a way around the difficulties.

        Such difficulties as have been enumerated must be either avoided or overcome in any scheme which we would propose as practicable for popular education. And what is our object in the specification? Is it to discourage or induce the conclusion that the object is unattainable? Certainly not. If impediments must be encountered on our way to a distant spot to which we would travel, of these we ought to be well informed, lest we waste time or effort in arriving at it, or be wholly repulsed in the attempt. The obstacles appear numerous, and some are invincible, but let

us endeavor to select a course that will either shun or surmount them. As a total relinquishment, can we be reconciled to acquiesce in it, till every trial shall have been made, which may issue more happily.

        We have not been in the habit of taxing ourselves for education.

        We have been in certain habits of legislation, until they have become fixed upon us, and any deviation from these seems to be almost instinctively regarded with aversion. Among the objects for which we have, through our whole history been accustomed to provide, education is not one. But the reason why we have never acted upon the subject is confessedly, not because it has not been deemed desirable, but that the methods proposed for effecting it have depended upon taxation. Is there no course then to be taken, to which funds thus raised are unnecessary? If one may be found, the plea of mere habit is probably displaced with the cause to which our habit, on this point at least, owes its inveteracy.

        All would favor public schools if they could see what was being done in other States.

        If our indifference and inactivity in regard to popular education be in any degree due to the wretchedly imperfect methods of instruction in our primary schools; if a knowledge of the admirable height of improvement which they have reached in other states, and other parts of the world, would kindle an enthusiasm for the acquisition of their privileges, which would no longer brook delay, let us hope that this want of information and light is not so essential to the subject, as to be an insuperable impediment. In truth, I have no hesitation in averring that it does constitute a difficulty equal if not superior to any other with which we have to contend. We may venture to predict, that could every parent in North Carolina be present for a few hours only to witness the process of elementary schools as they are now conducted in New York, and Connecticut, and Massachusetts, the impressions they would produce could never be effaced, nor the impulse excited in his bosom repressed. Could the conviction attending such a scene be common to every head of the family in our state,

how soon would all hearts and all hands be united in some effort, which by the union would be irresistible.

        Taxation will be fatal to any plan.

        With respect to the difficulty arising from our aversion to taxation, I am ready to admit, nay conclusively to affirm that it must and will be fatal to every scheme of popular education to which it is made necessary.

        People can not be said to favor ignorance.

        As to a spirit of hostility against knowledge, and a determination upon principle to sustain the cause of ignorance and to exclude all education as a foe to human happiness, and to true republicanism, the portion of our people who hold such opinions, is too small to contend with the great body of our citizens, who for the honour of our state, it is verily believed, are of entirely different sentiments. If no system of primary instruction has been established among us by legislative action, it is not that N. Carolina is at enmity with the subject itself, but because her means have been thought inadequate to its accomplishment.

        Other difficulties may be surmounted.

        Our resources doubtless fail, for want of commercial privileges. But this obstacle, too, ceases, if some plan for the diffusion of education can be effected by means already at our command.

        Lastly, it is true, we are a people, whose feelings may be said to be sensitive to the irksomeness of constraint. Let us then consult this feeling with all the delicacy in our power. Let us, if possible, contrive the structure of our schools so as not to depend upon compulsion but upon inducement. Let it lie principally upon the attractions of its charms. Let it avoid giving offence by the imposing sternness of its features.

        It is not then to dishearten, that I have spoken in detail of such difficulties as meet us, in digesting a plan of popular education. The survey is attended with no dispiriting effect, if we can only keep clear of one or two principal obstructions, to which the rest owe their chief if not all their influence.

        Schemes of education by taxation only perpetuate party spirit and will ever fail.

        It will be forever vain to mediate plans of legislative action, if we persist in looking to means, which the people

have given prescriptive evidence that they will never adopt. Why continue to press schemes from year to year, involving the necessity of taxation? such projects may serve to amuse, to distract, to weaken. Party spirit, which is the bane of all wise and sound policy, is perpetuated from year to year, assumes a standing character, and is propagated among the people, poisoning the fountains of legislation. The halls of the Assembly become an arena to fight over again the same battles, in which it often happens that the best interests of the country are connected with the degradation of defeat. Success is made the test of merit. The strength of a cause is estimated not from the benefits with which it is pregnant to the state, but by the comparative numbers enlisted in its support or subversion, by adherence to a party, the agitations of hope and fear, and the delusions of artificial excitement. The triumphs of victorious opposition, even to an object so sacred and all important as the education of the people, are capable of covering the object itself with ignominy, through an indiscreet and persevering connection of it with loans and taxes to which our established feelings are in revolting and irreconcilable aversion.

        The fate of former schemes of taxation for education should give us pause.

        The laws and measures which have been urged upon us by the most unquestionable patriotism, and by minds of every rank in ability, and which have owed their prostration to the taxes proposed for their execution, who could attempt to enumerate? They lie entombed in the mouldering records of our legislative assemblies. Were each to occupy the space of earth usually alloted to a fellow mortal, no repository of the dead in the wide range of our state would be ample enough for their receptions. Let us take warning from their fate, and look to other means.

        The people will accept an inexpensive voluntary plan of education.

        Thousands of parents are ready to second any practicable system by which education may be accessible to their children. Let it be offered to their voluntary acceptance by the best methods of instruction, and at the least expense,

and they will grasp with eagerness the proffered privilege. How can we imagine that a people like ourselves, living in an age of knowledge every where distributed through a thousand channels, can continue indifferent to its opportunities. There is not a wind of heaven, come from what quarter it may, which wafts not to our ears, improvements and discoveries that fill the world with activity and interest.

        Deplorable condition of the man who can not read.

        Can we sit contented to hear of them only in confused sounds, unable to examine for ourselves? Shall the eyes of a people so numerous, and prepared for the full exercise of every knowledge of personal and public freedom, continue wrapt in clouds and darkness? And shall not our imaginations, too, be set at liberty to delight themselves in the rich luxuriancy of their proper enjoyments, which the journals of travelers, the productions of genius, and publications of every discription, are daily offering to our contemplation? It is our boast that we live in an age fruitful in wonders both in art and knowledge. How deplorable is the condition of that man who is debarred all access to them by the use of books. To him who can read, the press is a watch-tower from whose summit he can extend his view over the whole earth, stretching into boundless prospects of harvests, and fruits and flowers, under a culture unexampled in the past ages of the world. To what but the press does the present generation owe its superior light? It is the vehicle by which we travel over every region of the globe, surveying its continents, islands, oceans, with their productions in endless diversity. The animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, the manners and customs of its tribes and nations, their governments, the causes of their happiness and their miseries, their institutions and inventions, superstitions and prejudices, their depravity and cruelty, their struggles for liberty, their forfeiture of its blessings by dissention, ambition, and by yielding themselves a prey to despotic power, are all made

to pass in review by the mysterious revelations of the press before the optics of the mind. Who that enjoys its opportunities can frame adequate conceptions of the dark prison of his thoughts who cannot read, and the contracted limits of his intellect? To him the lament of the poet is applicable, whom blindness by disease had shut up from the light of day.

                         "This to me returns not,
                         But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
                         Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
                         Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
                         Presented with a universal blank
                         Of the world's works, to me expunged and rased,
                         And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."

        He lives indeed in the most enlightened period of the world, and the sun of knowledge is blazing in splendor around him, but he is enclosed in walls impenetrable to its beams, and he is sunk in the obscurity of a distant age.

        Do we reflect, fellow citizens, on the multitudes who are in this dark and cheerless condition, constituting no small portion of our population? How many more of our generations must still grow up, to pass through life, surrounded with the gloom of three hundred years ago? Shall we not say with united voice, this evil is too grievous, too inglorious, and in its effects too mischievous to be borne? It must have a remedy and it must have it soon. Let us bring all the resources of our minds to bear anew upon the subject, and use the best means in our power to disseminate education through every county of the state, and among every portion of the people.

I am, fellow citizens,
Yours, with the highest respect.

J. CALDWELL.

LETTER III.

Fellow Citizens,

        Three methods of popular education.

        Two methods of providing for popular education occur in ordinary practice. One is voluntary, leaving it wholly to the discretion of the people themselves, without aid by the state; the other is by the intervention of the legislature. A third will appear in a combination of both. On the two former some explanation, as brief as I can make it, will help us to arrive at intelligent and satisfactory conclusions. This will be given in the present letter.

        The voluntary plan we now follow; its evils.

        The first method is the one which we now practice. It consists in the origination and maintenance of a school in any neighborhood, by a voluntary combination among as many of the inhabitants as will agree. Its insufficiency is proved by all our past and present experience. A school house is to be erected at the common expense; a site for it is to be chosen with the consent of all; a master is to be found; a selection and approbation if there be more than one, is to be discussed and settled; his compensation and support must be fixed to the general satisfaction, and the time of continuance must be stipulated.

        Here are six principal points on every one of which dissention of opinions, feelings and interests may spring up, to produce weakness or defeat. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the perplexities that meet us at every step, and the discouragement of failures and disappointments, until at last in a vast number of instances, the object is relinquished in despair.

        Lack of proper teachers the greatest evil; condition of the primary schools.

        The evil which is the greatest of all, is the want of qualified masters. It may be difficult to obtain a teacher at all, but it is pretty certain in the present state of the country, not one is perfectly fitted for the occupation. Do we think that of all the professions in the world, that of a schoolmaster requires the least preparatory formation? If we do, there cannot be a more egregious mistake. For if any man arrived at years of maturity, who can read, write and

cypher, were taken up to be trained to the true methods of instructing and managing an elementary school, by a master teacher who understands them well, he could scarcely comprehend them and establish them in his habits in less than two years. This is not to speak with looseness and extravagance on the subject; and we need only to examine with opportunity of information, to be convinced of it as a practical truth. Yet in our present mode of popular education, we act upon the principle that school-keeping is a business to which scarcely any one but an idiot is incompetent, if he only knows reading, writing and arithmetic. If in almost every vicinage there happens to be one or a few who have more correct opinions, the numbers who think otherwise carry it over their heads, and our primary schools are kept sunk down to the lowest point of degradation, and education is disgraced by our own misconceptions and mismanagements.

        Teaching regarded with contempt.

        In the present condition of society and of public opinion, the occupation of a school master in comparison with others, is regarded with contempt. It would be wonderful were it otherwise, when we look at the manner in which it is very often, if not most usually filled. Is a man constitutionally and habitually indolent, a burden upon all from whom he can extract a support? Then there is one way of shaking him off, let us make him a school master. To teach a school is, in the opinion of many, little else than sitting still and doing nothing. Has any man wasted all his property, or ended in debt by indiscretion and misconduct? The business of school-keeping stands wide open for his reception, and here he sinks to the bottom, for want of capacity to support himself. Has any one ruined himself, and done all he could to corrupt others, by dissipation, drinking, seduction, and a course of irregularities? Nay, has he returned from a prison after an ignominious atonement for some violation of the laws? He is destitute of character and cannot be trusted, but presently he opens

a school and the children are seen flocking into it, for if he is willing to act in that capacity, we shall all admit that as he can read and write, and cypher to the square root, he will make an excellent school master. In short, it is no matter what the man is, or what his manners or principles, if he has escaped with life from the penal code, we have the satisfaction to think that he can still have credit as a school-master.

        People's estimate of education degraded by the poor teaching done in the primary schools.

        Is it possible, fellow citizens, that in such a state of things as this, education can be in high estimation among us? Is it strange that in the eye of thousands, when education is spoken of, you can read a most distinct expression that it is a poor and valueless thing? Can we rationally hope that so long as a method of popular education as this shall be all to which we look, the great body of the people will become enlightened and intelligent? Will they be qualified to act in all the various relations of parents and children, brothers and sisters, masters and servants, neighbors, members of the community, citizens of the state, subjects of providence and heirs of immortality? In all these capacities every child that grows up into life must necessarily act, and the teacher whose habits, views and dispositions do not qualify, and whose conscience does not urge him to instill into his pupils the principles, excite the emotions, and select the books best fitted to them all, is totally defective in the business of a school master, and has need to learn the first elements of his art. If any difficulty occurs as to the largeness of the qualifications of a common teacher, which seem here to be required in excess, it is a subject on which I propose to explain more fully afterwards, and will hope for a reference at present to the further remarks to be made upon it.

        Every species of business may be executed with various degrees of ability, and men may differ in their opinions of such as possess skill of a higher order in their professions. But respecting such as possess no talent, no qualification,

none can mistake. All must feel one common overpowering conviction that their pretentions are despicable. Let any profession be wholly consigned to occupants so wretchedly destitute of every qualification in skill or principle, let it be known to the people only in such defective and degrading forms, and how can it be otherwise than contemptible, and all that is connected with it of little or no worth?

        The people must be given better teachers in order to change present conditions.

        It is apparent then that popular education cannot be efficient, when left to the insignificancy into which it sinks, with no other security for its prosecution than the accidental and voluntary action to which it is now left. So unvarying and universal has been this method of educating children among us, that to speak of schools and school masters modelled upon other plans, as they are understood and maintained in other parts of the world, would probably expose a man to the charge of romancing, or at least as recommending something to us wholly unattainable, and fitted only to men of different attributes and capabilities from our selves. This plan of popular schools, hitherto, the only one we know, is so meagre and deformed in its features, and rickety in its constitution, that its repulsiveness prevents many from the use of it, who have not a doubt that education is of the utmost importance to the young, to families and to the population of a free state. The mind is a proper subject of cultivation, as much at least as the soil which we subdue and mellow for a harvest. Its powers must be developed, and its affections moulded by an informing and plastic hand. It should have the knowledge of letters, and the easy use of them, both in reading and with the pen. These are the portals which should be thrown open to all, that they may have free access to the information of the age. These are essential; but to know how to read and write are but a part of the great objects of early education.

        Good and evil dispositions must be distinguished, and

habits established of feeling and thinking and acting. Reading and writing are but instruments for forming the mind. All this would be admitted, nay strenuously asserted by many, if not by every individual. But when the concession is made, when the conviction is complete, and we turn to the means of securing these advantages for children, how are all our ardors suddenly arrested and congealed, as soon as we turn to the only means for forming their principles and dispositions. The school house too often presents itself to the eye as a region infested with mists and noxious reptiles, and poisonous plants, and among these the dearest objects of our affections must be placed, that they may have access by reading and writing to the springs of knowledge and intellectual life.

        That education in our primary schools should be held in low estimation, is but a natural consequence of the circumstances in which it is acquired. It never can be valued so long as they continue. The resources to which we have been left through our whole progress as a people, being of this character, the consequence is well known that thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, are left to grow up unable to read at all. Experience has made it undisputable that the plan which we have practiced, if plan it can be called, is a total failure so far as North Carolina is concerned. Can evidence be wanting of its deplorable consequences, when it is by no means rare to hear men directing upon education a derision which would imply that they can deem it a glory and a privilege to be without it? I have been placed in circumstances, and there are few I fear who have not been similarly situated, where it would be dangerous to the election of a candidate to have it thought that he had any pretensions to information or culture, at least beyond a bare capacity to read. And some miserable being, to secure the great object of his ambition, has frontlessly presented it as a sure and glorious passport to success over the head of a rival, who was so unfortunate

as to have had some education, that he belonged to the class of the ignorant, with whom the greater part considered it their glory to be ranked.

        We see, then, the consequences of educating children by such wretched methods as we commonly practice. Thus it will always continue to be, so long as these methods are retained. We dress up the occupation of a school master in rags. It appears in hideous deformity by our own arrangement. It is no wonder if that which we intended for the figure of a man, cannot be thought of otherwise than as a laughing stock a by word, or a scarecrow, and then education is put down as a questionable subject. Nay, it becomes a thing of scorn and reproach. The repulsive and disgraceful forms in which it appears, have been given to it by ourselves, in the crudity of our own misconceptions. Where is the subject or the personage that may not be exposed to derision and rejection by a similar process?

        And how shall the confidence and the affections of the people be regained? It is by stripping off the offensive and contemptible disguise, and presenting education in all the beauty and excellence of her proper character. No sooner shall this be done, than all will fall in love with her. Her presence will be courted as the privilege and ornament of every vicinage, and under her patronage the clouds and mists that lower upon us will be dissipated.

With the highest respect,
I am your obedient servant,

J. CALDWELL.

Fellow Citizens,

        Summary of preceding letter.

        My last letter was occupied in showing that inefficiency of the mode of popular education, which has been our sole dependence in North-Carolina, and the pernicious effects it produces in harassing those who look to it, in disappointing their wishes, and in planting and in propagating prejudices upon the whole subject of knowledge and education.

We saw that from disagreements among neighbors when schools are to be instituted, from the incompetency of teachers, their total ignorance of their profession, the profligacy, idle habits and degeneracy by which many of them are characterized, such a method of elementary instruction has left us overwhelmed in thick darkness amidst a firmament gleaming with the brightness of the most enlightened age. It is in a persevering adhesion to this system, if system it can be called, that it has become fashionable with many to decry education as a thing of no value, and as qualifying men, not for distinguished usefulness and integrity, but for dexterity in the arts of cunning and selfishness. So long as we continue these methods of educating children, it threatens an invelopement in denser clouds of obscurity and prejudice. It surely behooves us to make good our escape from it without delay, from the baleful effects it has already produced, and which it will surely multiply upon us, if it cannot be replaced by something better.

        The Connecticut plan of education will not be adopted here.

        Another system which in our circumstances however is beyond our reach, it is my purpose now to explain, for the single reason that it comes upon us with reiteration from year to year, with no other consequence than to occupy our time, to distract the public mind, and to dishearten us with efforts terminating in abortion. It is the method practiced in some of our sister states, especially in Connecticut, New York and others. In these states, through time, and by such resources as they could command, a vast school fund has been treasured up, to such an amount as a million and a half of dollars. By the annual interest of these funds, schools are supported for educating every child in the country. The state is divided into districts of convenient size, a school house is erected in each, and teachers are either partially or entirely maintained by appropriations from the proceeds of the school fund. In New York a district is not entitled to aid until it can report authentically

that it has already provided a school-house, and is prepared to pay a certain sum towards the support of a teacher.

        Calculation to Show that the plans of other states can not be carried out here.

        Let us now enter into some computation, to see whether such a plan is within our power. If it be not, it is useless to think of it. It is worse than useless, it is time misspent on projects which must end in baffling disappointment. To make the subject plain, let us begin with the supposition of a single school in each county of North Carolina, and that fifty dollars, only, are annually allowed from a school-fund for its support. This supposition is put not with the idea that one school is enough for a county, or fifty dollars for its maintenance, but for further calculations.

        The state containing sixty-four counties, an allowance of fifty dollars to each, calls for an annual expenditure of three thousand two hundred dollars. The capital necessary to yield this interest at six per cent. is 53,333 dollars. Hence the following table is easily framed, showing the capital which must be accumulated for the maintenance of schools, from one to sixteen in each county, at fifty dollars each. Fractions are omitted, except in gaining other numbers from the preceding.

        

TABLE I.

For 1 school to a county, at $50 per annum a capital must be created and kept at interest of.	$53.333
For 2 schools to a county, at $50 each	$106.666
3 schools to a county, at $50 each	160.000
4 schools to a county, at $50 each	213.333
5 schools to a county, at $50 each	266.666
6 schools to a county, at $50 each	320.000
7 schools to a county, at $50 each	373.333
8 schools to a county, at $50 each	426.666
9 schools to a county, at $50 each	480.000
10 schools to a county, at $50 each	533.333
11 schools to a county, at $50 each	586.666
12 schools to a county, at $50 each	640.000

13 schools to a county, at $50 each	693.333
14 schools to a county, at $50 each	746.666
15 schools to a county, at $50 each	800.000
16 schools to a county, at $50 each	853.333

        The counties are very different in size; and the schools assigned must vary in number, according to the circumstances. Taking thirty-two miles square for the extent of the counties one with another, and alloting a school to a space eight miles square, each county would have sixteen schools. In this case the distance which some children must go to a school is at least four miles, but they would be those only who lived at the limits of the square. For sixteen schools to a county, a fund of eight hundred and fifty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three dollars must be vested at interest, to pay fifty dollars a year to every school. The table shows us by inspection the fund required for any less number of schools.

        But it will hardly be thought that fifty dollars a year will be sufficient for the maintenance of a school. A hundred would probably be too little, but let us take that sum for exemplification. The following table is furnished upon the same basis, and we have only to double the former numbers:

        Further calculations.

        

TABLE II.

For 1 school to a county, at $100 per ann	$106.666
2 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	213.333
3 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	320.000
4 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	426.666
5 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	533.333
6 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	640.000
7 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	746.666
8 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	853.333
9 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	960.000
10 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	1,066.666
11 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	1,173.333
12 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	1,280.000

13 schools per annum, at $100 per ann	1,386.666
14 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	1,493.333
15 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	1,600.000
16 schools to a county, at $100 per ann	1,706.666

        It is probably unnecessary to explain the use of this tabular statement. It is obvious that the fund necessary for the annual disbursement requisite for sixteen schools to a county at $100 each is one million seven hundred and six thousand six hundred and sixty-six dollars.

        We can now see the extent of our enterprise, if we undertake to provide for popular education upon the plans of New York, Connecticut and some other states. If 150 dollars be allowed to each school instead of 100, the numbers of both tables must be united to exhibit the requisite funds.

        No hope to raise such a large sum.

        But the essential question occurs, How shall the funds be created which the tables show for executing such a system? That it will be done by taxation, there is no prospect. To raise a fund of a million and a half dollars, we must be taxed to the amount of a hundred thousand dollars annually for fifteen years. Is this within the limits of probability? It is presumed that no one will announce that it is. Were we taxed at the rate of fifty thousand dollars a year, thirty years must pass away before the fund would be completed. Both the amount of the tax, and the postponement of the time, are enough singly to preclude all thought of such a measure.

        Present taxation of 75 cents on each poll regarded as oppressive.

        Our habits are at variance with taxation for any purpose, beyond the bare necessities of governmental subsistence. Even this levy it is our anxious and ever exerted effort to reduce to the very lowest point by every device of legislation. The tax now paid by the people for the support of our state government is twenty-five thousand dollars a year. Have we any doubt whether the sum is so small as this? The Bank stock owned by the state, I am informed, amounts to seven hundred and fifty thousand

dollars. The annual revenue derived from it into the treasury, at six percent is forty-five thousand dollars. If the expenses of our state government be seventy thousand, no more than twenty-five thousand are necessary beyond the interest of the stock to make up the sum, and this is not twenty cents to the poll. It is evident that I speak of bank stock in its ordinarily productive state.

        Of county taxation we cannot speak with precision. In no two counties is it probably the same, and it fluctuates in each county from year to year, with the emergencies with which it is to provide. It is for those who are better informed than I am, to say whether it is likely to be more than such a sum as fifty cents to the taxable poll, upon an average through the state. Admitting this, our annual taxation in North Carolina, is at the rate of seventy-five cents to every taxable poll. If there be any mistake in these statements it is easily corrected, but it is presumed the result will not differ much from the truth. Such taxation as this, we should think, must be too small to excite discontent. But who does not know that it is habitually urged as subject of complaint, if not as oppressive. Now if while it is so inconsiderable, we have our eye ever solicitously directed upon its diminution, how shall we expect that any plan of popular education shall be accepted and carried into execution, to which additional taxation to the extent of a hundred thousand dollars a year, or fifty thousand dollars a year, or even a much smaller sum, becomes necessary for fifteen or thirty years to come?

        Better to drop the idea of schools by taxation.

        It is now submitted to the dispassionate consideration of those who look to New York, or Connecticut, for plans of popular education, whether the proposal and discussion of them is likely to be attended with any other consequences than apprehension in the general mind that the whole subject of education is hopeless. Is it not better to drop them, and turn our eye to a different direction? There may possibly be other methods of accomplishing the object.

Let us not despair that one may be devised susceptible of execution by means within our power. In one assurance at least we may rest with satisfaction, that if our time may be lost in adopting this course, in cleaving to the other it certainly will.

        No hope that bonds will be issued.

        Nor can we look with better hopes to the consent of the state to borrow the necessary funds. To loans as well as taxes for all purposes such as these, we have ever shown an invincible dislike. It is in vain to urge the authority and-the example of other states. We may lament over the losses both of moral and pecuniary wealth to an incalculable amount perpetuated through every year of our existence, by what we may call our unhappy prejudices against a taxation which we should not feel, and against raising funds by loan to be attended with immense profits to the state; but to what end shall we repine, and vent our regrets in the most flowing and eloquent strains? We wish to provide a system of elementary schools. If we would busy ourselves with the least prospect of success, let us avoid placing it upon the issue of loans and taxes. While the spirit now ascendant shall continue to reign in our political atmosphere, the vessel which shall have the hardihood to venture freighted with these, may for a white buffet the surge. Her friends may with momentary exultation exclaim,

                         Her path is o'er the mountain wave;
                         but soon it shall be as a doom pronounced upon her,
                         Her home is in the deep.

I am yours, with the highest respect,

J. CALDWELL.

LETTER IV.

Fellow Citizens,

        Qualified teachers necessary whatever plan of education is adopted.

        I have mentioned some difficulties in the way of making provision for general education, most of which it is probably in our power to supersede. But one there is, of which

in our present situation, that is not to be said, and until it is removed it would prove alike fatal to all that could be proposed. It is the want of teachers qualified for the business of instruction, whatever be the mode of instituting and maintaining schools. To no purpose should we create a capital of a million and a half or two millions of dollars, if school masters could not be called into action competent to their office. This is a truth as vital as it is unquestionable. Teachers are necessary instruments to every system of popular education, and here, as in everything else, without the means, the end cannot be accomplished. It is a part of the subject, on which if it be not understood, it is most difficult to give the necessary explanation. Doubtless there are many, to whom a want of instruction would appear least likely to produce any embarrassment. For who is there able to read, write and eipher, who cannot teach a school? If there be any who have such opinions as these, an error more essential cannot be held upon any subject. That I may not appear to be speaking things extravagant and without authority, permit me to quote the opinions and declarations of others.

        School for training teachers.

        It will be seen in the course of these letters, that an institution for preparing school masters for their profession is regarded as necessary, and in the first instant at least as a competent provision in our own state, for general education. To this thought as an original conception by me I make no pretentions. It has been often urged and sometimes adopted in practice in other parts of the world. In the year 1826, Gov. Lincoln addressed the legislature of Massachusetts upon the subject in these terms: "The qualifications of instructers deserve much more of care and attention. To the great honor and happiness of the commonwealth, this employment has become an extensively desirable and lucrative occupation. It may be safely computed that the number of male teachers, engaged by the

towns annually, for the whole or parts of the year, does not fall short of twenty-five hundred different individuals, to which, if the number of female instructers, and those employed in private schools be added, the aggregate would amount to many thousands. Knowledge in the art of governing, and a facility in communicating instruction, are attainments in the teacher of indispensable importance to proficiency by the pupil. These talents are as much to be acquired by education, as are the sciences themselves. It will merit the consideration of the legislature, whether the provision for the preparation of a class of men to become the instructors of youth in the public schools, is not among the highest inducements to the measure, and should be an object of primary and definite arrangement."

        "Nothing surely," says the Journal of Education, "can be more beneficial to the interests of our state, than the establishment of a seminary, which may furnish a constant supply of well educated teachers, prepared to enter on their office with accomplished minds, and enlightened views of the whole subject of education, as well as the best practical qualifications for instruction. Such a seminary cannot fail soon to become so popular as to support itself. But all its actual success must depend on the liberality with which it must be enabled to commence its operations; for a poor and imperfect institution, instead of promoting the object desired, would unavoidably fix and entail a low standard of qualifications on the part of instructers, and consequently a low state of public education."

        Even Massachusetts has found such a school necessary.

        Public education has never been neglected in Massachusetts. The first settlement of the state commenced with provisions for popular schools, that not a child should grow up in the new republic uneducated. It was felt to be a first principle, that in a free and popular state every member of it ought to be enlightened. These were men as strictly tenacious of original and inherent rights as any whose names are recorded upon the page of history. Are they to be considered as committing a breach upon these

rights, when they established laws for educating the children of the state? Such laws have ever been maintained through their whole progress to the present hour. We should suppose that among such a people, an ample supply of men could always be found well qualified to act as school masters. Yet we have seen what were the sentiments of one of their governors upon the subject and his recommendation to the legislature, that a seminary should be forthwith instituted for training teachers to the business of their vocation. In North Carolina no provision has ever been made for the maintenance of schools. Our population have spread themselves over the soil to the utmost limits of a large state, and the education of families has been wholly excluded from our policy. Is it likely, then, were we to adopt any plan of popular education at present, it could be carried into effect, without such an institution for preparing instructers, as is deemed necessary even in Massachusetts.

        Bell's plan of central teachers' schools in India.

        It is well known to have been an object for many years past in British India, to discover and put in practice the most effectual methods of diffusing christian civilization among the population of that country. It was in the prosecution of this object that Bell instituted his system of mutual instruction. It was soon considered as the most successful plan of instruction in elementary schools. Its peculiarities were so various, and so much depended upon familiar acquaintance in the teacher with these peculiarities, that few could adopt them from description, and none could fully understand and apply them in practice without witnessing the processes through which the pupils were passed in the whole course of their education. It was on this account deemed expedient to establish institutions called "Central Schools," whose purpose was to train up teachers qualified to take charge of schools as they might be formed in every place, and conduct them with the necessary skill. The reason why they were denominated

Central Schools, obviously occurs. They were points of emination, fountains of light, from which knowledge was to be propagated in every direction, till it should reach the extremities of the empire. From the "Christian Observer," a publication second to none of the present age in talent and benevolent spirit I extract a brief notice, touching upon the subject of Central Schools, shortly after their commencement in 1820.

        "The president and the members of the Bombay School Committee, after having provided for the education of European and Christian children of both sexes, have at length turned their serious consideration to the means best calculated for extending the blessings of intellectual cultivation to the native children of India.

        "The result of this consideration has been the proposal of a plan, so palpably beneficial that it has already met with the complete aprobation of the assemblies of two classes of the native inhabitants.

        "A Mohammedan youth, the son of a Sepoy in the office of the chief secretary to government, who has received instruction for about a year at the Central School in the town of Bombay, gave, in the course of a rigid examination, such proofs of his capacity to convey to his countrymen the rudiments of tuition in English, on the plan of Dr. Bell, that the first class of upwards of twenty Parsee children was to be placed under his care. A prospectus of the proposed plan is now printing for the purpose of distribution, in order to diffuse among the native inhabitants a more general knowledge of the means about to be offered them, of educating their children more extensively, economically, and effectually, than has hitherto been in their power. A teacher of the Guzerattee has declared himself ready to attend the Central School, in order to prepare himself for instruction on Bell's Plan*."

        * See Christian Observer for year 1820, p. 528.

        Fellenburg's school in Switzerland, and others, examples.

        Seminaries then for training teachers to act with ability in their profession, were established and proved of the highest benefit as early as 1820. It has been customary for such as wish to improve the art of education, and learn its best methods, to visit personally the institutions which have been thought to exhibit the best models. Scarcely a traveller passes through Switzerland, who does not make it a special object to visit Fellenburg's seminary at Hoffwyl, and formerly it was no less customary to look with inquiry into that of Pestalozzi at Yverdun. Lancaster's system was similar to Dr. Bell's, and who knows not the curiosity which has prompted numbers to witness the regulations of his schools where they have been ably conducted? The modes of business may be viewed for an hour or two with gratification, and we may become enlightened and convinced in regard to the best methods of instruction. But the art of teaching by these and other methods as they have advanced to perfection through many years past, is not to be acquired and appropriated in a moment. The knowledge of them is to be gained by minute study, the habits of its application in practice are to be established, the principles upon which the teacher is to live, and feel and act in his profession, must be planted and grow into strength, that he may intelligently and conscientiously adhere to them and take delight in them, and his dispositions and affections must be formed to the proper charities of his office. Do we think that all this can be comprehended, and assumed and confirmed in any individual in a moment, and that all we have to do is to pronounce that he shall be a school master, to convert him into a fit character to our hands? Such was not the opinion of Gov. Clinton on the subject.

        Gov. Clinton on the education of teachers.

        "In the first place," said he in 1827, "there is no provision for the education of competent teachers. Of the eight thousand now employed in the state of New York, too many are destitute of the requisite qualifications. Perhaps

one-fourth of our population is annually instructed in our common schools, and ought the minds and morals of the rising generations to be entrusted to the guardianship of incompetence? The scale of instruction must be elevated; the standard of education ought to be raised, and a central school on the monitorial plan ought to be established in each county, for the education of teachers, and as examples for other momentous purposes, connected with the improvement of the human mind."*

        * Journal of Education, Vol. II, p. 118.

        What 200 trained teachers could do in this State.

        It is no new undigested, or untried project, then, which is recommended to your adoption. If at this moment two hundred teachers could be produced from among us in the different counties of the state, all well accomplished for the direction of primary schools and universally known to have been formed and disciplined under a head master eminently skilled and of established reputation in the monitorial methods of instruction, we may assert with confidence that not a month would pass away, before they would be called into action. Nor would there be danger that we would be overstocked. The new methods of government, the unexampled alacrity of the pupils, the rapidity of their advancement, the evident influence upon their principles and habits, the total elevation of mind and heart under such tuition, would present the advantages of education they would impart with irresistable conviction. At the end of a single year it is not to be doubted that requisition would be importunely urged for a far more numerous body of the same description.

        We could use the interest of the Literary Fund to establish a teachers' school.

        It is in our power without delay to commence an efficient plan of popular education, by providing such a corps of instructers and offering them to the people upon terms to which few or none could think beyond their ability. We have a literary fund to the amount of eighty or a hundred thousand dollars. Let it forthwith be profitably invested. Let its annual interest be applied for the erection of a central school, that is, an institution for preparing

school masters upon the most improved methods of instruction. Let a head teacher be selected with time and opportunity for inquiry, from the whole field of the United States, and a salary be allowed him, to take charge of the institution, and in the central school let him train men sent to it from all the counties of the state, or at least from such as shall think proper to avail themselves of the opportunity. A single year need not pass, after teachers thus formed should have commenced their operations, till a demand for them would be heard, clamorous for more than could be supplied. Give us such teachers as those, would be the cry, and we too will have a school for our children.

I am, fellow citizens,
Yours, most respectfully,

J. CALDWELL.

LETTER VI.

Fellow Citizens,

        Purpose of former letters.

        My object in the preceding letters has been to explain the reasons for circumscribing and concentrating our views upon a plan for effecting popular education, which is now to be detailed. We have looked at the obstacles which usually meet us upon this subject, to which is to be ascribed an abortion of such laws as are commonly proposed for its accomplishment.

        Central school for preparation of teachers; necessity for it.

        Central school to have two years' course of study.

        Let a central school be instituted by the legislature, for the purpose of educating and preparing instructers of elementary schools for their profession. It is denominated a central school not because its situation is necessarily to be in or near the center of the state, but because wherever it is it will be a point or focus from which education is to emanate with diffusion to every part of the country. The provision of it evidently implies that the business of an instructor in popular schools, is itself an art not to be comprehended, and established in the habits of an individual, without much time, education and discipline for its formation

to it. It implies too, that the methods and results of education in these primary schools have become vastly, may totally different, in their present advanced stage of improvement, from school keeping as it is for the most part still practiced among us. For the reality of this it is not asked of any who have not had opportunity of information, that they take it for granted from the declaration of the individual. Numbers among ourselves can attest it to a greater or less extent by their knowledge, and the world abounds with publications to illustrate and confirm it. Some examples of this evidence have been selected, and are presented in an appendix to these letters. Let even these few be carefully perused, and it will begin to appear that so various and comprehensive are the objects of well trained and qualified teachers at present in their profession, that a man can scarcely be supposed to become intelligent, prompt and skillful, in less than eighteen months or two years, with diligent and well guided application through the whole time. In its merits and the importance of its effects, it claims the first attention of a people. It befits the dignity of the wisest and most enlightened legislature, and is worthy to be sustained by the zeal and energies of the state.

        Cost of education to the people would not be increased.

        Nor is it to be supposed that the education we recommend is too extensive or costly. The expense of such schools as we propose will probably be the same as it is in the present common schools of the country, or but little different. The time allowed to it by the parent will be discretionary with himself, while the whole manner and value of the instruction will be incomparably superior. With unhesitating confidence we may affirm that it would redeem the cause of education from the deplorable degradation to which it is sunk, and the public mind, by the convictions it would produce, would undergo a total regeneration in its sentiments upon the subject.

        Central school board; observation school.

        A board of education being appointed by the legislature,

consisting of men wisely and dispassionately selected, their first business would be to determine the site of the institution. The choice would properly be governed by the circumstances of health, cheapness of living, vicinage, facilities proffered, peculiar adaptation of service to the objects in view, the easy constitution and maintenance of a primary school for exemplification, accommodation to the whole state, and possibly proximity to the seat of the legislature.

        Teachers for the central school; importance of a trained principal.

        A head master or principal teacher must be sought out and appointed to take charge of the institution. As the success and efficacy of every plan of public education must chiefly depend upon its execution, nothing will be of greater import than a happy choice of the master who is to manage the details of the institution, and stand as a pilot at the helm. He should be one uniting much experience, sound discretion, a vigorous and well regulated mind, correct principles, regular habits of life, and a heart ardent with the benevolence of training up the rising generation to usefulness, the social virtues, to all the "charities of father, son and brother," and to the best prospects of a happy immortality. By past fidelity and success he should have already given proof of a mind fertile in resources, adapting itself to occurrences, and replenished with expedients practically ascertained in the most distinguished institution