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tation about an affirmative answer. There is a system of in- 

 stmction, designed expressly to meet the exigencies of popular 

 education, the practicability and superior excellence of which 

 have been demonstrated by experiment over and over again, 

 and to which, in this application of the plan, no sufficient or 

 plausible objection, I believe, ever has been or can be urged — 

 a system by which one competent man may carry on the in- 

 struction of two hundred scholars, and many more even, with 

 about as much ease as he could otherwise instruct a class of 

 ten, and with signal advantages in point of thoroughness and 

 effect. I allude of course to the monitorial system. How is 

 it, that so little has been done to introduce this method where 

 it is most needed, and where alone it is fitted for great utUity? 

 If we wait for the people themselves, self-moved, or on account 

 of some sudden illumination, to adopt this or any other great 

 improvement, designed to work out their intellectual elevation, 

 we shall wait forever and in vain. The impulse must come 

 from without. Beginning, as it doubtless must, with the learn- 

 ed and the enlightened, yet it must be brought to bear on the 

 multitude under the auspices and the sanctions of pubhc au- 



I cannot avoid insisting on it, if it be really intended to ele- 

 vate the standard of popular instruction in this State, to make 

 the system universal, and educate the people, that some me- 

 thod like the one now suggested must be adopted and en- 

 forced. Can it be seriously expected by any one, after due re- 

 flection, that ten thousand school-masters, qualified after the 

 new standard, can be furnished to our people within any rea- 

 sonable period? Nay, would it not require twenty thousand 

 to meet the demand of an increased population, long before 

 the ten could be ready to take the field? And then, if the re- 

 quired number was actually forth-coming, does any man seri- 

 ously believe that the people can be persuaded to meet the ex- 

 traordinary expense of sustaining them? If so, he believes 

 that they wiU voluntarily pay $3,700,000 for teachers' wages, 

 instead of the $400,000 which they now pay; that each town, 

 as an average sum, besides the double taxation now imposed, 

 wiU pay $4,353; each of the twelve districts in a town $363; 



