SOUTHEEN CULTIYAEOE. 
205 
"West, land that will remunerate them for their labor 'I 
But independent of the indicatiops to which we have al- 
iuded, has there not been presented through the agricul- 
tural papers evidence sufficient to convince any one of the 
utility of a change 1 • i • u 
Successful experiments, based upon deep plowing, high 
manuring and a thorough preparation of the soil, have 
been reported time and again through these journals. 
Why, then, not adopt this system'? By it you increase 
the production of your land, render it more fertile and en- 
hance its value. By the other you destroy all its valuable 
properties and it becomes, both to you and the rest of i 
mankind, a worthless waste. Make this change, then, in i 
the mode of cultivating your land, and receive rather 
the l‘kssins:s than the cu?-sc of posterity. 
A You-vg Farmer. 
G'.siunclt county, May, 1856. 
WHAT IS THE DISEASE? 
Editors Southern Cultivator — I have lost a horse 
and two first- rate mules in three days, and can find no 
description of the disease in Youatt or any other Farrier’s 
book. Symptoms — drooping, refuse their food and in 12 
hours cannot eat or drink, from difficulty in swallowing. 
Aoihing I could give would impart relief, and they died 
the second day. The throat was affected, and if pressed 
at the root of the tongue they flinched from it, and they 
threw oft' matter from the nose. 1 bled and .gave purges, 
but to no effect — they died and 1 had them opened. The 
liver had small yellow pustules in it, or water pimples, 
and the water from which, with considerable blood, had 
settled in the cavity around Uie heart. The heart was 
much enlarged. I had the other horses and mules all re- 
moved from the stables, which were clean and well venti- 
lated; since which time one horse and one mule have 
^hown symptoms of the same disease, and I had them im- 
mediately bled copiously and fed entirely upon green 
srass. 'They have been sick for several days, but I be- 
lieve will recover. If any one can inform me vvhat the 
disease is. or suggest a remedy, I will be obliged, 
J. R. Stanford. 
Clarksville, Ga., Jn'oe, 1856. 
THE EDUCATIONAL WANTS OF GEORGIA. 
No. 1 . 
A State which has constructed more miles of railway 
according to the number of its citizens, and with a less 
pubhc debt than any other in the Union, has within it- 
self every element necessary to achieve greater distinction, 
by the superiority of its system of common schools. It is 
the conviction of the truth of this remark that prompts the 
writing of a few articles designed to call public attention 
to the educational wants of Georgia; which, perhaps, will 
apply equally well to the adjoining States. 
Hitherto common schools have not flourished at the 
South. Instead of multiplying with the increase of popu- 
lation. and improving with the advance of years and 
growth of wealth, our common schools are either station- 
ary or retrogressive, and dying out. With all her great 
enterprise, general intelligence, and material improvement, 
our State contains at this time not far from forty thousand 
adult white persons who can neither read nor write. The 
steady increase of old fields operates most disastrously 
on the facilities afforded to the masses for obtaining even 
the rudiments of a good common school education. Un- 
less something efficient is done to remedy this alarming 
I and growing evil, all public schools lor the education of 
the people will become extinct in Georgia. As these in- 
stitutions disappear, ignorance and barbarism will take 
root in the soil and spread in all directions till they fill the 
land Let this unfortunate state of things continue, and 
go on from bad to worse, and it is plain that the rights of 
property, popular sovereignty, arvd the personal safety of 
the citizen will be at the mercy of blind passion and po- 
litical demagogues. Both selfishness and ignorance grow 
on what they teed. Both are endowed with natural pro- 
creative functions by which a numerous progeny is called 
into existence. 
As weeds and briars, thorns and thristles spring up 
spontaneously in a half cultivated or an abandoned field, so 
mental vacancy encourages every sensual appetite and in- 
dulgence, until man with liberty, follows his vices into 
crimes, and his crimes into such deplorable social and po- 
litical sufferings as constrain him to invite some king, 
I emperor, or lord to be his master. The most civilized of 
! the ancients had no idea of universal education ; and this 
i primary defect was fatal to every ancient republic. Even 
; down to the time of John Milton, that truly learned and 
great reformer, sought to educate, not the millions, but 
“our noble and gentle youth” — the hereditary legislators 
of the kingdom As a measure of sound State policy, and 
to secure the inestimable blessings of moral, social and in- 
tellectual development, we propose nothing less than the 
education of all the republican princes and hereditary 
sovereigns of Georgia. 
Knowledge is so much better than its opposite that no 
one opposes free schools provided they are supported 
without a tax on the property of the community or the 
State. It is not hostility to schools, but opposition to 
their maintenance at the public expense that the friends of 
popular education have to encounter and overcome. To 
vanquish this unwise opposition is the end to be attained. 
Can It be done'? If the matter be discreetly managed, 
we have no doubt of final success. 
Are not the men who pay taxes on the granite rocks 
and sterile soils of Scotland and New England as close- 
fisted as any tax- payers in Georgia? Certainly they are ; 
and yet these tight fisted landed proprietors were the pio- 
neers of civilized communities, taxing themselves by legis- 
lative enactments to prove the value of free, common 
schools. As early as 1696, the General Assembly of the 
Kirk of Scotland founded a system oi' common schools by 
which one was kept in every parish. Scotch Landlords 
early saw and felt the necessity of having properly edu- 
cated and qualified overseers and tenants upon their es- 
tates ; while those who venerated the Cross and the Bible 
wished that all might read the sacred Book. Both the 
pious reader and the educated farmer will pardon a little 
emphasis as we call public attention to the fact, that it 
was the combined physical wants of man, represented by 
agriculture, and his moral wants, represented by religion, 
that established the first common schools in Europe. 
These wants being universal, the policy of educating the 
people is fast extending in all Christian countries. Free 
Schools are maintained by law in Prussia, Austria, and 
all the other German btates; in France, Switzerland, Den- 
mark, Sweeden, Norway, and even despotic Russia. 
But let us consider the influence of the system on the 
character and well-being of the people of Scotland. Have 
free schools paid in that country? No opponent of tax- 
ation for educational purposes has had the hardihood to 
deny the numerous and inestimable benefits conferred on 
the inhabitants of the North of Great Britain by their 
parish schools. The law first establishing these has this 
preamble : 
“Our Sovereign Lord, considering how prejudical ih: 
woMt of schools in many yloxes has been ; and how bene- 
