and finally, when fostered and inflamed by artful and ambitious demagogues, into violent antagonism, would have been avoided! how strong but subtle, numerous yet almost unseen, would have been the ties which, knit in their academic walks, and strengthened in the generous competition of scholarship, and in the interchanged visits of each other's homes, and by correspondence, would have been interwoven into the domestic life and the public action of those graduates in the course of a century! How much the sentiment of nationality, the grateful feeling of being the recipients of the culture provided by a common country, would have been fostered! and how the public service, supplied, as it would have been, at least by all the earlier Presidents and heads of departments, from these graduates, trained in languages and sciences such as the public interests required, for its curriculum must have been moulded by public opinion, would have been elevated and rescued from the low personal and partisan purposes to which it has been degraded! Looked at from an educational point of view, and in connection with the immense scientific material which have been gradually gathered in the necessary operations of the government, such a University, with its own and the libraries, museums, and galleries, to which its professors and graduates could have had access for original research, and the endowments which, like those of Washington and Smithson, it would have received, would have been worthy of the name of Washington, and ranked now second to no other in this or any country.

Benjamin Franklin, with all his other claims to the affectionate remembrances of his countrymen, should be honored for his great services to popular education in the foundation of one of the earliest public libraries in the country, and in his plan of an Academy and an English School, which is now the University of Pennsylvania. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the avowed advocates of education in its elementary as well as its higher forms, and devoted their time and estates to the foundation of schools and higher seminaries of learning. Mr. Adams was the author of the section in the first Constitution of Massachusetts (1780) relating to the encouragement of literature and schools, which has since been incorporated substantially into the organic law of every State. Twenty of the last years of Mr. Jefferson's life were spent in labors to establish a great institution of liberal culture; and he will be remembered, with the Declaration of Independence, as the founder of the University of Virginia.

I wish I could give with precision the name of that great benefactor of American education who inserted in the first draft of the Ordinance of 1784 for disposing of lands in the Western

Territory, the paragraph which reads as finally passed. "There shall be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools." This provision of 1785 was confirmed by the Ordinance of 1787, "for the government of the territory northward of the river Ohio," which also declared that "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and other means of education shall be forever encouraged.' Thus was incorporated into the land policy of the National Government an educational endowment, which, if it had been properly guarded and administered, would have increased with the expanding wants of each community, where these lands thus reserved were situated. Although sometimes neglected, and even misapplied, this magnificent endowment of over 70,000,000 acres of public lands, has started germs of educational institutions in more than one hundred thousand districts, and kept alive by its place in the constitution and laws of each of the States where the lands were situated, the obligation of legisla tors to consider the educational interests of the people. To this generous provision for elementary schools by Congress should be added the endowment of higher seminaries—a College or University in each of the States in which public lands were situated, to the extent of nearly 2,000,000 acres. *

*

Various attempts have been made from time to time to nationalize the educational feature of the Land Policy of the National Government, so as to embrace all the States; but it was not until 1862, after the persistent efforts of Hon. Justin M. Morrill, of Vermont, that public lands were donated to the several States and Territories, to provide Colleges for the benefit of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts,' by which over 9,000,000 acres have already been set apart, and over forty institutions established or enlarged to realize the objects of the grant.

In this direction reconstruction and reëndowment could have been carried on promptly, liberally, and with universal acceptance, if due regard had been had to the existing conditions of southern society. It is not too late now, although three generations of children and youth have been swept beyond the reach of schools and colleges, since this work should have been begun, and made the problem of universal education more difficult. A noble example was set by Mr. George Peabody, and much good has been already done, and will continue to be done, by the mode in which his funds are applied, in stimulating local contributions, and helping sustain normal and model schools. But his benefaction, large as it is, is insignificant; it should be at once a hundred, nay, a thousand-folded, to supply the educational destitution of the States in which the old labor and

social systems have been not only broken up, but left the ground perfectly covered and obstructed with their ruins But not only are funds wanted, but agents and teachers, with local sympathies and knowledge, must be searched for, and trained in the spirit and methods of Oberlin. A hundred normal seminaries, like those of Hampton Institute, should as early as practicable be established and aided by Congress, and a system of industrial schools, for whites and blacks, be at once organized all over the country. Here is a field in which the largest public spirit can find scope for the fullest exercise. Let all unite to do even tardy justice to this long neglected interest, and let Southern men and women be employed in the work of educating their own children, under such systems, and even without regard to systems as developed in other parts of the country, as shall be found practicable in their hands. What we want, what these States and the whole country want, are schools, numerous and good enough to meet the pressing want of over one million of children and youth. Let us have as soon as possible a generation of adults educated in the ideas and ways of the new dispensation. The old Bell, which has become historic from its association with the Hall in which the title deed of our liberties was signed, and that more august instrument, the Constitution of the United States, was framed, has long since done its work. It rang out the old, and rang in the new dispensation. But its proclamation of "Liberty throughout the land" which had come echoing down the centuries from the old Hebrew Commonwealth, took a prophetic significance in 1864; and now, on this centennial anniversary, ten thousand bells have quickened its still lingering vibrations and carried their inspiring tones into the hearts of millions which they never reached before; and on each recurring anniversary let them all

*

Ring out the old, ring in the new-
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out false pride in place and blood

The civic slander and the spite:
Ring in the law of truth and right,

*

*

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out the darkness of the land

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

THE GRAND MISSION OF AMERICA.

AN ADDRESS BY REV. JOSEPH H. TWITCHELL,

DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT HARTFORD, CONN., JULY 4TH, 1876.

This republic was ordained of God who has provided the conditions of the organization of the race into nations by the configuration of land and the interspaces of the sea. By these national organizations the culture and development of the race are secured. We believe that our nation is a creature of Godthat he ordained it for an object, and we believe that we have some comprehension of what that object is. He gave us the best results of the travail of ages past for an outfit, separating us from the circumstances that in the existing nations encumbered these results, and sent us forth to do his will. We built on foundations already prepared a new building. Other men had labored and we entered upon their labors. God endowed and set us for a sign to testify the worth of men and the hope there is for man. And we are rejoicing to-day that in our first hundred years we seem to have measurably-measurably-fulfilled our Divine calling. It is not our national prosperity, great as it is, that is the appropriate theme of our most joyful congratulations, but it is our success in demonstrating that men are equal as God's children, which affords a prophecy of better things for the race. That is what our history as a lesson amounts to.

There have been failures in particulars, but not on the whole; though we fall short, yet still, on the whole, the outline of the lesson may be read clearly. The day of remembrance and of recollection is also the day of anticipation. We turn from looking back one hundred years to looking forward one hundred. It is well for some reasons to dwell upon to-day, but the proper compliment of our memories, reaching over generations, is hope reaching forward over a similar period of time. Dwelling on

But as out of
Some things

to-day-filling our eyes with it-we can neither see far back nor far on. We are caught in the contemplation of evils that exist and that occupy us with a sense of what has not been done and of unpleasing aspects. True there are evils, but think what has been wrought in advancing the work of the grand mission of America. Do we doubt that the work is to go on? No! There are to be strifes and contending forces. strife has come progress, so will it be hereafter. that we have not wanted, as well as some things that we have wanted have been done, yet on the whole the result is progress. It is God's way to bring better things by strife. (The speaker here alluded to the battle of Gettysburg, where he officiated as chaplain in the burial of the dead-the blue and the gray often in the same grave-and said that the only prayer that he could offer was "Thy will be done, thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven."

The republic is to continue on in the same general career it has hitherto followed. The same great truths its history has developed and realized in social and civil life are to still further emerge. The proposition that all men are created equal is to be still further demonstrated. Human rights are to be vindicated and set free from all that would deny them-Is any law that asserts the dignity of human nature to be abrogated? Never. The Republic is to become a still brighter and brighter sign to the nations to show them the way to liberty. We have opened our doors to the oppressed. Are those doors to be closed? No; a thousand times no. We have given out an invitation to those who are held in the chains of wrong. Is that invitation to be recalled? No, never. The invitation has been accepted; and here the speaker alluded to the fact-which shows how homogenous we finally become as a nation, though heterogenous through immigration-that the Declaration of Independence is read here to-day by a man whose father was born in Ireland; the national songs are sung by a man who was himself born in Ireland; and the company of singers here, nearly all, were born in Germany. Then he passed to the subject of Chinese education in this country and spoke of Yung Wing and his life-work, alluding to him as the representative of the better thought and hope of China, and then paid