150 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



people. The constitution of Elaine declares in effect, that the 

 diffusion of knowledge being essential to the perpetuation of a. 

 republican form of institution, the legislature shall require the 

 towns to support and maintain public schools. My own state 

 declares through its constitution that intelligence being essential 

 to the perpetuation of Republics, schools shall be founded and 

 maintained. In the same spirit in which the fathers founded 

 our State constitution, the United States Congress, when it 

 organized the great western territories out of which have grown 

 rich and powerful empire states of the West, made provsion for 

 a free public school ; declaring, as our own state constitutions 

 have declared, that liberty, both religious and civil, rests upon a 

 general diffusion of knowledge among the masses, and provided 

 that schools and seminaries of learning should be forever main- 

 tained. They gave to every state a couple of townships to found 

 a universitv and to everv town sections of land to found free 

 public schools. 



Catching this later and wider spirit touching our rural schools, 

 the western states have provided large funds for their mainte- 

 nance, and now such states as Nebraska from the public treasury 

 every year assess a mill and a half on the dollar to support the 

 township schools, aside from the munificent grant of Congress 

 and subsequent grants by states. The State of Illinois annually 

 appropriates two mills from the State treasury to free public 

 schools. The Territory of Utah, where I had the pleasure of 

 living for several years, had so organized its public school sys- 

 tem that this state, which we supposed to be the home of super- 

 stition and bigotry, is third in the Union in the ratio of people 

 that can read and write. In the county in w^hich I lived, a rich, 

 rural county, there was turned back from the state treasury of 

 Utah more money to support the schools of that county than the 

 whole county paid in as state tax. 



I invite your attention to the language of the constitution. 

 The schools were not founded for the benefit of the student or 

 the parent, but for the sole purpose of preserving the life of the 

 State. Borrowing the language of Horace Greeley, ''Unless 

 reason is a fool and mathematics a lie," as schools are founded 

 for the sole purpose of perpetuating the life of the State, it is the 

 duty of the State to provide the entire education of its children. 



