year, its predecessor in both interest and numbers. It is seldom in the older States of the Atlantic coast that an Institute assembles whose members exceed the number registered as attending this-over four hundred names-and I may state here for information, that one hundred have applied before the State Board of Examination for State certificates, thereby recognizing the demand, on the part of the Teachers of this State, for something more than a one year's certificate of fitness to teach in a Common School, a demand that they shall not be kept vibrating here and there, to be subjected to the annual insult of examination from those who often-not always, but often-are their inferiors in mental qualifications and in everything that relates to fitness and capacity for practical work in the School room. [Applause.] I believe that the Teachers who have assembled at this Institute will go back to their work and their homes feeling stronger and better for the labor which has been done, and vitalized by the spirit of enthusiasm which has been manifested. It was more than the most sanguine of the friends of the State Teachers' Journal could have expected. Even Mr. Smith himself did not expect that such an amount should be raised the very first day of attempting to start a subscription, and now it is a fixed fact; and when this Institute shall assemble a year hence, as I hope it will assemble, I have no doubt that the list of subscribers will be doubled. Ladies and Gentlemen: I regret that the pressing nature of the double duties I have had to perform, in connection with the Institute and State Board of Examination, have absolutely prevented me from becoming personally acquainted with many of you. I hope, as my duties shall call me to travel through the different portions of the State, that I shall yet have the pleasure of becoming acquainted with many of you, in your own School houses, where you are at your daily work. [Applause.] The hour of adjournment having arrived, the President now declares the California State Institute adjourned sine die. [Applause.] DUTIES OF THE STATE TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS. отку 414 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE CALIFORNIA STATE TEACHERS' INSTITUTE, At a time like the present, when the nation is one vast Camp of Instruction for armed men; when argument has ended in the right of appeal to trial by battle; when the one absorbing topic of each successive day is the brief telegram, telling of victories won, or of hope deferred; when our eyes turn with longing gaze across the Sierras to catch the first breaking of the war clouds which fringe their summits it might seem, at first thought, that a Convention like this, which waives all military and political considerations, and relates only to the peaceful and almost unseen workings of the Public Schools, would be inopportune, and out of harmony with the spirit of the times.> But when we stop to ponder and consider the vital relations which Public Schools hold to our national life; when we consider the agency which they have had in supplying the intelligence and the patriotism of the Army; when we begin to feel, amid the terrible realities of war, that the Schools have been the nurseries of loyalty, and the lack of them, the right arm of treason; when we begin to fully realize that the trite. truism, "the only safety of a Republican Government is in the virtue and intelligence of the people," is no abstraction there is a deep significance in this meeting,) and in all such Conventions, as concerning the future stability of the Government, and the integrity, power, glory, and unity of the nation. Constitutions and laws may be bequeathed by one generation to its successors; but patriotism, intelligence, and morality die with each generation, and involve the necessity of continual culture and education. Public opinion, the sum of the intelligence of the citizens of the nation, constructs and modifies all constitutions, and breathes vitality into all laws by which the people are governed. Let the public opinion of one generation become demoralized by ignorance, or by passion, resulting from ignorance, and any Constitution is like gossamer to restrain and bind it. It is an axiom in education that the great majority of the people can be well educated only by a system of Free Public Schools, supported by law, in which the property of the State is taxed to educate the children of the State. "The first object of a free people," says Daniel Webster, "is the preservation of their liberty." In a Government where the people are not only in theory the source of all powers, but in actual practice are called upon to administer the laws, it is evident that some degree of education is indispensably necessary to enable them to dis charge their duties, maintain and administer the laws, and to retain their constitutional rights. All nations recognize the necessity of educating the governing classes. In a Government like ours, either we must have officers unqualified for their duties, or we must be ruled by an educated and privileged aristocracy, or we must provide a system of public instruction which shall furnish a supply of intelligent citizens capable of discharging their various official trusts with honesty and efficiency. If left to their own unaided efforts, a great majority of the people, will fail through want of means to properly educate their children; another class, with means at command, will fail through want of interest. The people, then, can be educated only by a system of Free Schools, supported by taxation, and controlled directly by the people. The early settlers of our country recognized this vital principle by providing by law for Free Schools, and by making Schools and taxation as inseparably connected as taxation and representation. It was reserved for the stern Puritans of New England to first recognize and carry into effect the right of every child to demand of society an education as the inalienable birthright of a freeman. And it is not inappropriate here to briefly revert to the early history of our American School system. Says Daniel Webster: pays. New England may be allowed to claim for her Schools, I think, a merit of a peculiar character. She early adopted and has constantly maintained the principle, that it is the undoubted right and the bounden duty of Government to provide for the instruction of all youth. That which is elsewhere left to chance, or to charity, we secure by law. For the purpose of public instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property, and we look not to the question whether he himself have or have not children to be benefitted by the education for which he We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which property and life and the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent, in some measure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early age. We hope to excite a feeling of respectability and a sense of character by enlarging the capacity and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere, to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law and the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We hope for a security beyond the law and above the law, in the prevalence of enlightened and well principled moral sentiment. We hope to continue and prolong the time when, in the villages and farm houses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep within unbarred doors. And knowing that our Government rests directly on the public will, that we may preserve it, we endeavor to give a safe and proper direction to that public will. We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen, but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of general knowledge and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, as well against open violence and overthrow, as against that slow but sure undermining of licentiousness. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay had just escaped from a government which provided only for the education of the higher classes; which declared in the words of Charles the First, that "The people's right was only to have their life and their goods their own, a share in the government being nothing pertaining to them ;" and in nothing does far-seeing sagacity of those self-reliant men appear more conspicuous than in the wise forecast which led them to provide for the general diffusion of the elements of knowledge as the basis of a principle which is expressed in the Constitution of Massachusetts, as opposed to the declaration of Charles the First, in the following words: "The people of this Commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State." A section of the Massachusetts Colony Laws of sixteen hundred and forty-two, reads as follows: Forasmuch as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any Commonwealth; and whereas, many parents and masters are too indulgent and |