able to render. Time will not permit a more extended reference portant agency in our educational work. But I venture to sughis Association at whose solicitation the bureau was established, ediate steps to urge upon Congress the importance of providing blication of not less than ten thousand copies of its invaluable rits own distribution annually. erican statesmen must rise to a proper conception of the grandeur pportunities and the magnitude of their duties in respect to the of the people. And here I will content myself with a simple from one who being dead yet speaketh with an eloquence which surpass. Says Horace Mann: "In our country and in our times, s worthy the honored name of statesman who does not include st practicable education of the people in all his plans of adminisHe may have eloquence, he may have a knowledge of all history, y, jurisprudence, and by these he may claim in other countries ted rank of a statesman; but unless he speaks, plans, labors at all 1 in all places for the culture and edification of the whole people, he e an American statesman." clusion let me speak a few words in behalf of this Association as y in the great work of the future. Allusion has already been made t of its modest beginning. Forty-three members were enrolled at of its organization. Thousands of the most active educators of ry have since participated in its deliberations and the best thoughts eds of the best minds devoted to the work have been embodied ely distributed in the reports of its proceedings, of which about sand volumes have been published. It was mainly through its ency that the Bureau of Education was established. Probably no rumentality has done more, directly and indirectly, to draw this erest into the arena of National discussion or give it character both and abroad. Sustained hitherto solely by the voluntary contributs members who gather from all sections of the union at consideraniary sacrifice, a necessity has arisen that some additional provision for enlarging the sphere of its usefulness by securing a moderate, ent endowment. Shall the work be undertaken at this auspicious, ial season? What more appropriate time or place could be preHere, where are assembled the men and women of large hearts ng hands, here in this beautiful city, whose appreciation of univeration is attested by its magnificent system of public schools, by its ensive charities and reformatories embracing provision for every d weakness of erring humanity, and last but not least, by its Johnss endowment for a grand university, the largest bequest ever made vate citizen for educational purposes, here is the place and now is e to accomplish the task. this end attained we shall move forward to the great future with d courage, prepared to act well our part in the subjugation of ignond in achieving the patriotic purpose of elevating our country to h eminence for which a merciful Providence so evidently designed it. Dr. E. T. TAPPAN moved that that part of the President's a ring to an endowment be referred to a special committee. T named gentlemen were appointed: Messrs. S. H. WHITE, M. JOHN HANCOCK, JAMES CRUIKSHANK, and E. T. TAPPAN. On motion of W. D. HENKLE, the following persons were special committee on the Bureau of Education and Public La WICKERSHAM, Pa., W. H. RUFFNER, Va., J. H. SMART, Ind., Ga., J. H. HOOSE, N. Y. After the appointment of this committee the Association tained with music. All further reference to music will be omi in a note at the end of the minutes of the General Association. On motion of W. D. HENKLE, JAMES CRUIKSHANK, of New Y ARMSTRONG, of Iowa, were appointed Assistant Secretaries. EVENING SESSION. The Association met at 8 o'clock. S. H. WHITE, from the Committee on Endowment and Life-m gave notice of a proposed amendment to the constitution, inc fee for Life-Membership, and providing for Life-Directorship appointment of a Board of Trustees, to have charge of the safe k investment of funds. On motion of the treasurer A. P. MARBLE, of Massachuset R. NEWELL, FRANK ABORN, and C. C. ROUNDS, were appointe Treasurers. The President announced the following D. B. HAGAR, Mass., Committee on Nomination of Officers. C. C. ROUNDS, Maine, S. H. WHITE, Ill., J. H. SMART, Ind., W. H. RUFFNER, Va., E. S. JOYNES, Tenn., B. MALLON, Ga., Mr. ROCHE, of Washington, referred to the system of Higher in vogue, and asked permission to give his views of needed imp Dr. HENDERSON, of Kentucky, raised the question whether the the Association into Sections was a constitutional provision. T decided. He gave notice of a proposition to amend the cons that all business should be transacted in the general session. The Rev. A. D. MAYO, of Springfield, Mass., then delivered the following address on THE DEMANDS OF THE COMING CENTURY ON THE The establishment of the government of the United States found New England, alone, in possession of a system of free schools for the whole people. Every great, good idea or constitution is the child of all things great and good that came before, but is also original, like every new child born into the world. A people at a white heat of consecration for civil and religious liberty assimilates history and strikes out great central plans which include the possibilities of coming generations. The colonists of Massachusetts Bay struck the key-note of the American system of education and their earliest statutes contain its fundamental principles. These fundamental principles are the following:-1st. That every child shall be freely offered the opportunity to obtain the intelligence and education essential to citizenship in a Republic. In the original statutes of Massachusetts Bay we find also the idea of compulsory education which this year has come to the front in the message of the President of the United States. 2d. That this education shall never be controlled by any party or sect, ecclesiastical, social, literary, or political. The common school shall be the child of the people, depending on the whole people for support and supervision. 3d. That the whole people be finally responsible for the cost of common education, that the schools may be free. Private aid was not discouraged; indeed from the first the rich Yankee felt the stress of a public opinion that to-day will not let a wealthy New-England man sleep quietly in his grave who has not given something to educate the people. But when private effort ceased, the people came in to sign the great bond of free instruction for all the children of the State. 4th. That this education as to quality and quantity shall be the best that can be obtained. The schoolmaster and schoolmistress of the old time were the flower of the youthful learning and character of the neighborhood; the college students and graduates; the daughters of the minister, the doctor, the judge;—the best was none too good. As to quantity, they declared that the children should have all the education the people could be persuaded to pay for. Chief-Justice Shaw ruled that it was lawful to teach Hebrew in the common school if the people desired to pay for it. The New-England people began by giving generous State aid to every grade of education and the people of the United States have kept step to that music even to this day. 5th. That this school, from primary to college shall be essentially a school of character, imparting intellectual discipline with an eye to the making of the citizen and the ennobling of the man. The ideal of character in the school-room was the Christian ideal of the New Testament. In defence of the civil and religious liberty of the citizen and in tender reverence for the dawning conscience of the child, it insisted only on the fundamental elements of character, everywhere in christendom held as the commonplaces of public and private morality. But it never conceived the theory that respect for the individual conscience demands t from the school-room of everything any man may declare sect als or religion. Neither were they caught by that fallacy, every great educator in the world, that mental training may ducted apart from good discipline and instruction in the m establish character. On these great pillars the people of New England built up of colonial popular education. The outcome of that school-h in the war of the Revolution when these colonies gave 155,0 the country; nearly three-fourths the entire number of men, followed Washington from Boston to Yorktown. So was this onstrated, that the free education of the whole people makes otism and freedom that are the soul of a Republican State. The first question to the newly-established Republic was, su Can this New-England system of popular education be nation England was still a country of liberal Englishmen of the midd New York was cosmopolitan from the first;-Pennsylvania sectarian rivalries; the Southern Atlantic States feudal; and Alleghanies half a continent awaited the occupation of all who come. The past century has been occupied by the working out of t whether the Republic can receive a common system of culture its key-note was struck in that first overture on the stormy c chusetts Bay. It may not have occurred to those who persistently deny th general government to interfere in the education of the peop interfere in the beginning and, by one act of consummate s virtually established the common school of the New-Englan the American system of popular education. In the memora of 1787, which created the West, the Congress of the Confed this far-reaching sentence:-" Religion, Morality, and Knowle essary to good government and the happiness of mankind, sc. means of education shall forever be encouraged." Bound by the new West received the most magnificent grant of publi bestowed by a nation for popular education. Thus did the na ment establish the free school in the new Republic and assert ever to aid and protect the children of the whole people in right to be taught and trained for the citizenship of a free R leaders in western Education brought to the Northwest the dation stones of the New-England school-house and College, foundations have raised a structure, already the pride of t the admiration of the world. In the later methods of instru tails of organization, our western education has assimilat valuable elements of the German and British theories; essential respect the American school beyond the Allegha the logical outgrowth of the colonial school of New England The only real conflict has been in the middle and Sou And the strategic point of the battle of the schools has been ; a commonwealth imperial even in its errors, and, best of all representing that cosmopolitanism, at once the glory and e nation. In this State every cardinal principle of the origihool was obstinately questioned by eminent authorities. For ury, American Education was debated in New York with an persistence that no latter-day opponent of the American sysope to rival. No State has furnished the cause of popular edore far-sighted friends than the Clintons, Randall, and Seward State has the cause so often been in such deadly peril. New lished her rate-bill in 1850, thus assuring the freedom of eleducation. In 1872 the city of New York, erected the noblest School building in America as a free high school and normal girls, supplementing her free academy for boys. In 1870 Corersity arose by the united munificence of private gifts, State, n, opening its broad gates to men and women. And on the y, of the present year the old city of Albany, most stubborn of vative communities of the North, laid down the rusty arms h for two hundred and fifty years she had fought the advancof popular education and dedicated her first free high-school temple worthy a victory in such a cause. tory in New York established the common school in Pennsyl1 New Jersey down to the Southern line. Such plans and education as filled the souls of Washington and Jefferson will hen the day of providential deliverence came, the people of made haste to adopt the American common school. Already mon school in the South an established fact. And, happily, w soil there is no bar to the adoption of the finest methods tion and organization. I have never been so touched as by g of the colored children in the schools of Washington and on their blackboards ornamental drawing of which old Bost be proud. And there are communities that boast of pilgrim New England where the methods of primary instruction are o those in the new log school-houses in the pine-woods of the the American common school emerged from its century of now stands up, essentially the same as an hundred years ago; er and more complete in all its details; enriched with the conof the finest European thought and practice; marvellously o every community to which it comes; another, and yet the ust as you behold in the gracious woman who leads the social new city on the Pacific Coast, only a revised and adorned edie little old grandmother that has come three thousand miles Yankee-land to live out with the granddaughter her closing he same, plus all that culture and contact with finest native nd foreign travel can do for her. And as when she dresses herhe old-time costume at the Centennial ball, her grandmother dance once more before our eyes, so the American common the original thing that came out of the brains and hearts of the school committees down East who "builded better than they 1 |