SCHOOLS AND PAUPEKISM. 



Ten years ago strenuous objections were made to free schools, 

 as being a charity tending to pauperize the people, a kind of 

 alms that no man could accept without impairing his manli- 

 ness and self-respect. But they are now recognized as the peo- 

 ple's schools by right, not favor, and prized as never before. 

 Instead of being a charity, tending to demean and pauperize 

 its recipients, all find themselves recognized as equal partners 

 in the concern, having an equal voice in selecting the mana- 

 gers, in raising the funds, or in criticising the methods adopted. 

 Thus the school is no more a charity than is the free public 

 road or bridge. Help in schooling is really help towards doing 

 without help — towards self-reliance. ' In Europe, those who 

 express the greatest apprehension that the independence of the 

 working classes would be destroyed by free schools, evince 

 little desire to develop that genuine independence which true 

 education fosters. In lands where the insolence of office is 

 proverbial, they make it a prominent lesson to every child to 

 "order himself reverently and lowly to all his betters, and to 

 submit to the humors of my Lords." The people whose inde- 

 pendence" is so carefully guarded, are kept under various petty 

 and vexatious restraints. Says Francis Adams, one of the 

 most earnest advocates of free schools in Great Britain, " There 

 is a large class in England, from whom we hear most about 

 preserving the independence of the poor, who have always 

 been opposed to measures intended to enlarge popular freedom. 

 They find a personal gratification in the exercise of petty char- 

 ity and the power to deal out to the working-classes little doles 

 such as are provided for the remission and payment of school 

 fees. ISTotwithstanding their homilies about parental independ- 

 ence and responsibility, they possess the spirit of patronage so 

 long fostered by the social conditions of the country, which 

 has done much to keep so many of our people in a state of 

 miserable dependence and subjection. When their system of 

 alms-giving can be carried on at the public expense, their zest 

 is no doubt greater and they will not willingly surrender any 



