1st. All the lands now belonging to the United States, and all the lands which may hereafter be acquired by the United States, shall be and remain a perpetual fund for the support of education. The procceds of the sales of all such lands, after defraying the incidental expenses, shall be annually distributed among the several states and territories, according to the ratio of their representation, and shall by them respectively be invested, either in works of internal improvement, each state guarantying the legal interest, or in such other manner as the state may deem most secure and productive. The interest arising from said investments shall be invariably appropriated and applied to the support of the Common Schools, or a sys. tem of general education throughout each state.

§ 2. Of said interest or income, not more than one half shall be expended in the purchase of lots, the erecting and repairing of buildings, furniture, fuel, and other incidental or subsidiary objects; and the other half at least, shall be positively applied to the payment of teachers, purchase of books and apparatus, and to other direct and essential purposes of of general education.

§ 3. Lots not exceeding one hundred acres may be sold to actual settlers, on credit, for an indefinite time, at six per centum yearly interest; which interest and the principal, when paid, shall be paid to the treasuries of the states in which said lots are located, and the amount deducted from the dividend due such states (on account of land) from the general treasury; but when the amount shall exceed such dividend, the surplus shall be paid over.

§ 4. Until the tariff shall be reduced to the current expenses of government, the surplus revenues shall be annually divided among the states in the ratio of their representation, and at least one half of said dividend shall, by them respectively, be applied to education, in the manner specified in the second section of this proposition.]

The following pertinent quotations are from the writings of the celebrated Robert Owen.

"Reading and writing are merely instruments by which knowledge, either true or false, may be imparted; and when given to children are of little comparative value, unless they shall be also taught how to comprehend what is presented to their understanding, and to make a proper use of them.

"When a child receives a full and fair explanation of the objects and characters around him, and when he is also taught to reason correctly, so that he may learn to discover particular or general truths, and to discriminate between truth and falsehood; he will be much better instructed, although without the knowledge of one letter or figure, than those who are compelled to believe what it is impossible for them to comprehend, and whose reasoning faculties have been confounded or destroyed, by the violent distortion of reasoning, to purposes which reason can never reach, and which is most erroneously termed learning.

"It is readily acknowledged, however, that the manner of instructing children is of importance, and deserves all the attention which it has lately received, and that those who discover or introduce improvements which facilitate the acquirement of knowledge, are important benefactors to their fellow-creatures.

"Yet the manner of giving instruction is one thing, the instruction itself another, and no two objects can be more

distinct. The worst manner may be applied to give the best instruction. Were the real importance of both to be esti mated by numbers, the manner of instruction may be computed as one, and the matter of instruction to millions; the first may be considered only as the means, the last as the end to be accomplished by those means.

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If, therefore, in a national system of education for the poor, it be desirable to adopt the best manner, it is surely so much the more desirable to adopt also the best matter of instruction.

"Either give the poor a rational and useful learning, or mock not their ignorance, their poverty, and their misery, by merely instructing them to become conscious of the extent of the degradation under which they exist. And, therefore, in pity to suffering humanity, either keep the poor, if you now can, in the state of the most abject ignorance, as the Africans were in the West Indies, as near as possible to the brute animal life, or at once determine to form them into rational beings, into useful and effectual members of the state.

"Were it possible, without national prejudice, to examine into the matter of instruction, which is now given in some of our boasted new systems of instruction for the poor, it would be found as wretched and stupifying as any thing that could be purposely devised to confound the understanding, and frustrate every effort of the intellect to exercise its power like a rational creature. In proof of this statement, enter any one of the schools denominated national, and request the teacher to show any of the acquirements of the children; and what is the kind of exercise they are called upon to exhibit. Is it what their faculties are best adapted to acquire or to comprehend? Is it any thing which, in their future course of life, can contribute to their support-to foster their industry, or inform their understandings? Unhappy disciples of blind authority, of systematized ignorance, fanaticism, and infatua tion! The teacher questions children in matters of theology, on subjects upon which the most profound erudition cannot make a rational reply-upon which every day opinions are dividing, and sects splitting to more numerous and extravagant systems, which, at every new divergency, appears to take a bound more remote from the primitive simplicity and

natural humility which the most-sublime of all subjects should inspire yet the teacher proceeds as gravely with his interrogatories, as if the mere repetition of words was the comprehension of ideas or of facts. The children, too, answerthey answer readily in the very words that they have been previously exercised; and no parent can, it must be confessed, answer with more exactness, though it is also equally true that the parent and the child equally understand, and are equally competent to explain the lessons which they have been exercised in. This, surely, cannot be called education. It is a most crying mockery; and this mockery of learning is all that is required.

"Thus, the child whose natural faculty for comparing ideas, or whose rational powers shall be soonest destroyed, if at the same time he possesses a memory to retain incongruities without connection, will become what is termed the first scholar in the class; and three-fourths of the time which ought to be devoted to the acquirement of useful instruction, is really occupied in destroying the mental powers of those unfortu nate children.

"To those who are accustomed attentively to notice the human countenance, from infancy to age, in the various classes and religious denominations of the British population, it is truly an instructive, although a peculiarly melancholy employment, to observe in the countenances of the poor children, in these schools, the evident expression of mental injury, derived from the well-intentioned, but most mistaken plan of their instruction.

"It is an important lesson, because it affords another and a recent and striking example, in addition to the millions of others, which all history and experience record, of the ease with which children may be taught to receive any notions, and thence acquire any habits, however contrary to their real happiness. Great abhorrence is excited by the late narratives of the rites and ceremonies performed at Juggernaut, in India; but are not the unfortunate people who partake in that worship taught, that those rites and ceremonies are not only right and proper, but laudable. Were they not, when their minds were first opening, instructed in this idolatry? and can they be blamed who, being so taught, and subjected to reproach or punishment or persecution through life, or to ban

ishment from society, and without any chance of being received into any other society, if they should deny or dare to utter any other opinions than those which they have been taught can they be blamed or hated when, under such a terrible and intolerant system, they do not entertain opinions concurring with other men and other nations, taught differently from them. They are objects, indeed, of pity and commiseration-but a little dispassionate consideration would teach us to say also, that charity should begin at home; for, with all our boasted intellectual light, we are only a little less in the dark than the worshippers of Juggernaut.

"To those trained to become truly conscientious in any of the diverse and innumerable opposite opinions which distract the world, this free exposure of the weakness and inconsistency in which such individuals have been instructed, may at first create feelings of dissatisfaction or displeasure, probably, in some, extremely fanatical, sensations of horror; and these sensations will be acute and poignant, possibly violent even to wrath, sufficient to kindle flames and construct racks; this will be proportioned, too, to the obvious and irresistible evidence on which the disclosure of those errors is founded. But it is, at the same time, satisfactory and consoling to know, that this intense subjection to the tyranny of forced opinion, and the cruel application of the education of the poor to the support of a particular sect, so as to become hostile to every other sect, has produced a lively feeling of apprehension, and produced a spirit of inquiry, which, though arising out of the prejudices of sects, or the spirit of sectarian opinion, has, as is usual in all inquiries once boldly and honestly undertaken, resulted in the development of truths and judgments which promise to produce the best effects on society at large, and to promote a more correct and general impression as to the established modes of education, and the errors which have prevailed as to the dominancy of partial instruction, in form. ing the early opinions and habits.

"If men will think calmly on those subjects; if they will re-examine their own minds, and the minds of all around them, they will soon become conscious of the absurdities and inconsistencies in which their forefathers have trained them. They will then abhor the errors by which they have been so long abused, and with an earnestness not to be resisted, they will