Public School Education

lse can. It is this love that makes my heart bleed when I call to mind the actual state of society in our country, and the principles that prevail everywhere. It is indeed but too true

s penetrated with the spirit of licentiousness, from the pretentious quarterly to the arrogant and flippant daily newspaper, and the weekly and monthly publications are mostly heathen or maudlin. They express and inculcate, on the one hand, stoical, cold, and polished pride of mere intellect, or on the other, empty and wretched sentimentality. Some employ the skill of the engraver to caricature the institutions and offices of the Christian religion, and others to exhibit the grossest forms of vice, and the most distressing scenes of crime and suffering. The illustrated press has becom

rmits these robberies, and condone for them by lavishing place and power upon the offenders. "The way of the transgressor" has ceased to be "hard"-unless

the view, after first exciting our hate, next succeeded i

ation, which is the best safeguard of honesty, has been diluted into a maudlin sympathy with the malefactors. And the rankness of the growth of this evil is not more startling than its rapidity. It

faulter, and the indignation which drove him ever forth from place and country, on his detection. Pu

t elevated into the dignity of a fine art, whose most emin

, Schuyler, Fowler, and other small sinners like them, who even found the country too hot

the last ten years, where they stole cents, their successors stole by thousands and tens of thousands; and, instead of flying from punishment, flaunt

en on whom the tower of Siloam fell, were sinners above all others in Jerusalem? I tell you nay!" Think you that those six or seven on whom the axe of the public press fell, are sinners

it such as that which inspired the French people when they denied even God, and substituted a prostitu

while soundness remained in them, but rising only as they rotted, and floating only from the buoyancy of corruption"-seems, unhappily, destined to find its pa

ter. Nay, in view of the many recent terrible visitations which have fallen upon different parts of our country, many voices have already been raised proclaiming them as marks of Divine wrath against

n. But they are responsible before Heaven and to posterity for the criminal apathy they manifest in their silent sanction of the

If the representative men of a country, those in whom its high trusts are reposed, be corrupt and shameless, they will drag down into the same mire the morals of the people they plunder and misrepresent. Indeed we want no prophet, nor one raised from the dead, to tell us the awfully fatal results. What can be done to stem the fearful torrent of evils that flood the land? We all know that when, in 1765, the famous Stamp Act was passe

cipally that wrong system of education introduced into this country about fifty years ago. At that time very few, perhaps, could foresee what effects it was calculated to produce. After a long trial, we can n

ty, and respect due from one citizen to another. If I offend the prejudices, convictions, or susceptibilities of any on this strangely misrepresented subject, no one can more regret it than myself; I can truly say it is not intended. All I ask of my fellow-citizens is a fair discussion on this great question of education, to look at it without prejudice, with