NEBRASKA.

Nebraska was organized as a Territory in 1854, and admitted as a State in 1867, with an area of 75,995 square miles, and a population in 1870 of 122,993, and taxable property of $56,584,616. The constitution of 1867 provides that all educational funds accruing out of the sale of all lands or other property granted or intrusted to the State for educational and religious purposes, shall forever be preserved inviolate and undiminished, and the income thereof shall be applied to the specific objects of the original grants or appropriations, and no religious sect or sects shall ever have any exclusive right or control of any part of the school funds of the State. The legislature must secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the State.

The school lands were estimated by a committee of the constitutional convention to exceed 3,000,000 acres, which, if sold at the minimum rate recommended, would give a permanent fund, estimated by the same committee at $15,000,000.

The system now in operation under the school law of 1866 is administered (1,) by a State Superintendent; (2,) 40 County Superintendents, one for each county, elected by the people, subject to the rules and instructions of the State Superintendent; (3,) trustees for the several districts. Teachers are examined by the County Examiners, and receive three grades of certificates running for different periods of time, according to their qualifications. The law requires a county Institute under the County Superintendent, and one for a wider territory by the State Superintendent.

In 1870, there were 1,032 organized school districts, with 41,063 children between the ages of 5 and 21 years, of whom 23,158 attended school under 1,080 teachers, whose wages amounted to $145,975. The cost of school-houses and value of school lots is returned at $445,538, and the total expenditure for all purposes for the year, was $363,524.

NEVADA.

Nevada was organized as a Territory in 1861, and admitted as a State in 1864, with an area of 81,539 square miles, and a population in 1863 of 43,000, which in 1870 as given by the census, stood at 42,491, with taxable property valued at $25,740,973.

The constitution of 1864 enjoins the legislature 'to encourage, by all suitable means, the promotion of intellectual, literary, scientific, mining, mechanical, agricultural, and moral improvements; provide for the election of a superintendent of public instruction, and the establishment of a uniform system of common schools, by which

a school shall be established in each school district for at least six months in each year; and any school district neglecting to establish and maintain such school, or which shall allow instruction of a sectarian character therein, shall be deprived of its portion of the interests of the public school fund during such neglect or infraction. The legislature is authorized to pass such laws as shall secure a general attendance of the children at school. The 16th and 36th sections in every township, the 30,000 acres for each senator and representative in Congress by act of 1862, the 500,000 acres granted to new States in 1841, all escheats and fines for penal offenses, shall be held and used for educational purposes, the interest thereof only to be applied as directed in the laws donating the same. The legislature shall provide for a State university, which shall embrace departments of agriculture, mechanic arts and mining, and is authorized to establish normal schools and schools of different grades, from the primary school to the university, in which no sectarian instruction shall be imparted or tolerated.' A special tax of one half of one mill on the dollar of all taxable property, must be provided for the maintenance of the university and common schools. The governor, Secretary of State, and Superintendent are a board to manage the university funds and affairs.

The school law of 1865, and amended in 1867, makes it the duty of the State Superintendent to convene an institute of teachers annually, and visit each county for the purpose of addressing public assemblies on subjects pertaining to common schools, and consulting county and other school officers. In 1870 there were 2,883 pupils out of 3,952 children between the ages of 6 and 18 years, under 53 teachers; and 727 persons over 10 years of age who can not read, and 872 who can not write.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

By the first national census in 1790, New Hampshire had a population of 141,899, which had increased in 1870 to 318,300, on an area of 8,280 square miles, and with taxable property to the value of 149,065,290.

The first settlements within the present limits of New Hampshire were made from Massachusetts at Dover and Portsmouth in 1623, and down to 1680 all the settlements were treated as belonging to the county of Norfolk; and for brief periods afterwards it was united to Massachusetts, and the school policy of that colony prevailed generally in its legislation as an independent province. In the first constitution of New Hampshire, adopted in 1784, the language introduced by John Adams into the second section of

the article on education in the constitution of Massachusetts, relating to the encouragement of literature, the sciences, and seminaries of learning, was followed literally.

In 1789, a general school law was passed, repealing all former acts on the subject, and providing: (1,) That the selectmen of the several towns and parishes shall assess, annually, the inhabitants of the same according to their polls and rateable estate, in a sum to be computed at the rate of five pounds for every twenty shillings of their proportion for public taxes for the time being, to be applied to the sole purpose of keeping an English grammar school or schools for teaching reading and writing and arithmetic within the towns and parishes for which the same shall be assessed; except such town be a shire or half-shire town, in which case, the school by them kept shall be a grammar school for the purpose of teaching the Latin and Greek languages, as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic aforesaid; and in failure to assess, collect and apply this tax in the manner set forth, the selectmen must pay out of their individual estates, for the benefit of the town schools, a sum equal to that in which they may be found delinquent,' on the requisition of the town clerk, whose duty it is made to look after this matter. (2,) 'No person shall be deemed qualified to keep a town public school, unless he shall produce a certificate from some able and reputable schoolmaster and learned minister, or preceptor of some academy, or college president, that he is qualified to keep such school.'

These simple and salutary provisions, coupled with another dating back to 1691, empowering the towns to build suitable school-houses by tax on the rateable estates of the inhabitants, rigidly enforced would have kept up a system of public instruction on a uniform basis over the state, when, unfortunately, in 1805 the towns were authorized to divide their territory into districts; and school districts thus constituted were authorized to provide school accommodation, appoint a local committee, and in general, to manage the public school in their own way. The lack of intelligent, vigilant, and re- . sponsible town inspection over the district schools in which the local management was left to themselves, and the establishment of academies in the large centers of population and business, which met the wants of the educated, were followed with the same real or relative deterioration which characterized the common schools of New England, generally.

The subject of school improvement attracted attention as early as 1830, in the lyceum movement conducted by Josiah Holbrook, and was continued by county common school conventions and

associations, begun in 1836. The first State convention was called in 1843; the first teachers' institute held in 1845; the office of State commissioner of common schools was instituted by the Legislature in June, 1846; and the duty of the State in respect to the supervision of schools, which it makes obligatory on the towns, has since been recognized in some form, and at present by a State Board constituting the Governor and council, and the Superintendent of public instruction acting through county commissioners, or rather through a commissioner for each of the eight counties into which the State is divided. A private Normal school was instituted in 1845 at Reed's Ferry, by Prof. Wm. Russell, and a State Normal school was established in 1870 at Plymouth.

To supply the want of the old town grammar school, an act was passed in 1837 giving to the town of Portsmouth, and any other town which chose to adopt the provisions of the act, authority to provide for a graded course of studies in connection with the district schools. The same authority was given to central districts in 1848.

In 1872, there were 2,452 common schools taught in 2,284 districts, located in 232 towns, with a registered attendance of 72,672 pupils, under 3,826 teachers (3,241 females). The whole amount raised for school purposes was $468,527, of which $11,565 was paid the superintendents of town committees for their services. The buildings and sites of school-houses were valued at $1,870,000. According to the census of 1870 there were 7,618 persons over ten years of age who could not read, and 9,926 who could not write.

Various attempts have been made since 1846 to protect children under fifteen years of age employed in factories and other manufacturing establishments from excessive labor, and secure to all children elementary instruction, which culminated in 1871 in ‘An Act to compel children to attend school,' which ordains that all parents, guardians, or masters of any child between the ages of eight and fourteen, residing within two miles of a public school, shall send such child at least twelve weeks in each year, six of which must be consecutive, unless such child shall be excluded from such attendance on the ground of physical or mental inability, to profit by such attendance; or is instructed in the same period in a private school or at home, under penalties for violation, $10 for the first and $20 for each subsequent offense, to be recovered as in an action for debt. A penalty attaches to school officers for not executing the law.

NEW JERSEY.

New Jersey was first settled in 1627, and adopted its first constitution as a State in 1776, with an area at that time of 8,320 square miles, and a population in 1790 of 184,139, which in 1870 had increased to 906,096, with a valuation of taxable property of $624,868,971.

The constitution of 1776 contains no allusion to schools or education; nor prior to the colonial period was there any legislation respecting common schools. In 1816 an act to create a fund for the support of free schools was adopted, and the first distribution of its income took place under the act of 1829, passed to establish common schools.' By this act towns were authorized to raise money to support schools by tax, and must raise in this way a sum sufficient to entitle it to any portion of the income of the school fund; but it was not till ten years later that towns were compelled to raise a specified sum every year, nor till 1871 that the schools were made free by a State school tax of 2 mills on the valuation.

The first educational convention in the State was held in 1828, at Trenton, and from that time the subject of school improvement was agitated in county and state meetings until 1838, when a large meeting of delegates from every part of the State was held at Trenton, presided over by Chief Justice Hornblower, and the address of which to the people of the State was drawn up by Rt. Rev. Bishop Doane. From this rousing address we make a brief extract: We address you as the sovereign people, and we say that it is your duty and your highest interest to provide and maintain, within the reach of every child, the means of such an education as will qualify him to discharge the duties of a citizen of the Republic; and will enable him, by subsequent exertion, in the free exercise of the unconquerable will, to attain the highest eminence in knowledge and power which God may place within his reach. We utterly repudiate as unworthy, not of freemen only, but of men, the narrow notion that there is to be an education for the poor as such. Has God provided for the poor a coarser earth, a thinner sky, a paler air? Does not the glorious sun pour down his golden flood as cheerily upon the poor man's hovel as upon the rich man's palace? Have not the cotter's children as keen a sense of all the freshness, verdure, fragrance, melody, and beauty, of luxuriant Nature as the pale sons of kings? Or is it on the mind that God has stamped the imprint of a baser birth, so that the poor man's child knows with an inborn certainty that his lot is to crawl and not to climb ? It is not so. God has not done it. Man can not do it. Mind is immortal. Mind is imperial. It bears no mark of high or low, of rich or poor. It heeds no bound of time or place, of rank or circumstance. It asks but freedom; it requires but light. It is heaven-born, and aspires to heaven. Weakness does not enfeeble it. Poverty can not repress it. Difficulties do but stimulate its vigor. And the poor tallow-chandler's son that sits up all the night to read the book which an apprentico lends him, lest the master's eye should miss it in the morning, shall stand and treat with kings, shall add new provinces to the domain of science, shall bind the lightning with a hempen cord, and bring it harmless from the skies. The common school is common, not as inferior, not as the school for the poor men's children, but as the light and air and water are common.