344 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



respecting, self-governing; that which gold can not buy; that which 

 kings can not make ! Grief ! Envy ! Theirs let it be who look upon 

 this young land in her freshness, in her strength ! Let them feel it 

 who behold, from afar, our people bravely battling their onward way; 

 treading, with liberty at their side, the path of progressive improve- 

 ment, each step upward arid onward onward to the great goal of 

 public virtue and social equality. 



Equality ! I spoke of our citizens as equals; equals in the sense of 

 the Declaration of Independence; equals in political privilege, in the 

 legal right to the pursuit of happiness. Equals, in a restricted sense 

 of the term, men never can be. The power of intellect will command 

 while the world endures; the influence of cultivation will be felt while 

 men continue to live upon earth, and felt the more the longer the 

 world improves, the better men become. Unequal, then, in their 

 influence over their fellows; unequal in the space they fill in the 

 world's thoughts; unequal in the power with which they draw after 

 them the hearts of many thus unequal, to some extent, men must 

 ever be. 



But here arises a great question; a practical question; an inquiry 

 especially pertinent to the subject before us. The natural inequality 

 of man is a thousand times increased by artificial influence throughout 

 society. Is that well; or, if not well, can it be avoided? Or, if not 

 avoided, can it be lessened ? I feel assured that it can be much lessened. 

 I am not sanguine enough to believe that I perhaps not my children, 

 even shall see the day when equality of education shall prevail even 

 in this republican land. But I hold it to be a republican obligation to 

 do all that we properly and constitutionally may, in order gradually 

 to reach, or at least to approach, that period. I hold it to be a dem- 

 ocratic duty to elevate, to the utmost of our ability, the character of 

 our common-school instruction. I hold this to be a far higher and 

 holier duty than to give additional depth to learned studies, or supply 

 curious authorities to antiquarian research. 



Guided by such considerations, I incorporated in the bill before 

 you, as one of its principal features, a normal branch. This, and the 

 clause providing for original researches in natural science, are the only 

 important additions that have been made in it to Senator Tappan's bill 

 of last session. 



Normal schools that is, schools to teach teachers, to instruct in the 

 science of instruction are an improvement of comparatively modern 

 date. The first ever attempted seems to have been in Prussia, estab- 

 lished about the year 1704, by Franke, the celebrated founder of the 

 Orphan House of Halle. They have gradually increased in number 

 and favor from that day to this in all the more civilized nations of 

 Europe; and Mrs. Austin, in her preface to Cousin's Public Instruc- 

 tion in Prussia, remarks that the progress of primary instruction in 



