f 



198 WANT OF SCHOOLS. 



branches of familiar science. I liave been 

 assured by a highly respectable foreigner, who 

 has long resided in the country, that the 

 questions were once deUberately put to him 

 by a curate — whether Napoleon and Washing- 

 ton were not one and the same person, and 

 whether Europe was not a province of Spair 

 _ From the earhest time down to the seces- 

 sion of the colonies, it was always the policy 

 of the Spanish Government as well as of the 

 papal hierarchy, to keep every avenue of 

 knowledge closed against their subjects of 

 the New World ; lest the hghts of civil and 

 religious hberty should reach them from their 

 neighbors of the North. Although a system 

 of pubhc schools was afterwards adopted by 

 the repubhc, which, if persevered in, would 

 no doubt have contributed to the dissemina- 

 tion of useful knowledge, yet, its operations 

 had to be suspended about ten years ago, for 

 want of the necessary funds to carry out the 

 original project. It is doubtful, however, 

 whether the habitual neglect and utter care- 

 lessness of the people, already too much in- 

 ured to grope their way in darkness and in 

 ignorance, added to the inefficiency of the 

 teachers, could not eventually have neutrahzed 

 all the good that such an institution was cal- 

 culated to effect. The only schools now in 

 existence, are of the lowest primary class, sup- 

 ported entirely by individual patronage, the 

 hberal extension of which, may be inferred 

 from the fact, that at least three-fourths of the 

 present population can neither read nor write. 



