tuted participate in just proportion in the public moneys, which are conveyed to them by commissioners also elected by the people. Such schools are found distributed in average spaces of two and a half square miles throughout the inhabited portions of the state, and yet neither popular discontent, nor political strife, nor sectarian discord, has ever disturbed their peaceful instructions or impaired their eminent usefulness. In the publicschool system of the city, one hundred persons are trustees and inspectors, and, by continued consent of the common council, are the dispensers of an annual average sum of $35,000, received from the Common School Fund of the state, and also of a sum equal to $95,000, derived from an undiscriminating tax upon the real and personal estates of the city. They build school-houses chiefly with public funds, and appoint and remove teachers, fix their compensation, and prescribe the moral, intellectual, and religious instruction which one eighth of the rising generation of the state shall be required to receive. Their powers, more effective and far-reaching than are exercised by the municipality of the city, are not derived from the community whose children are educated and whose property is taxed, nor even from the state, which is so great an almoner, and whose welfare is so deeply concerned, but from an incorporated and perpetual association, which grants, upon pecuniary subscription, the privileges even of life-membership, and yet holds in fee simple the publicschool edifices, valued at eight hundred thousand dollars. Lest there might be too much responsibility, even to the association, that body can elect only one half of the trustees, and those thus selected appoint their fifty associates. The philanthropy and patriotism of the present managers of the public schools, and their efficiency in imparting instruction, are cheerfully and gratefully admitted. Nor is it necessary to maintain that agents thus selected will become unfaithful, or that a system that so jealously excludes popular interference must necessarily be unequal in its operation. It is only insisted that the institution, after a fair and sufficient trial, has failed to gain that broad confidence reposed in the general system of the state, and indispensable to every scheme of universal education. No plan for that purpose can be defended, except on the ground that public instruction is one of the responsibilities of the government. It is, therefore, a manifest legislative duty to correct errors and defects in whatever

system is established. In the present case, the failure amounts virtually to an exclusion of all the children thus withheld. I can not overcome my regret, that every suggestion of amendment encounters so much opposition from those who defend the publicschool system of the metropolis, as to show, that in their jndgment it can admit of no modification, neither from tenderness to the consciences, nor from regard to the civil rights of those aggrieved, nor even for the reclamation of those for whose culture the state has so munificently provided; as if society must conform itself to the public schools, instead of the public schools adapting themselves to the exigencies of society. The late eminent superintendent, after exposing the greatness of this public misfortune, and tracing it to the discrepancy between the local and general systems, suggested a remedy, which, although it is not urged to the exclusion of any other, seems to deserve dispassionate consideration. I submit, therefore, with entire willingness to approve whatever adequate remedy you may propose, the expediency of restoring to the people of the city of New York-what I am sure the people of no other part of the state would, upon any consideration, relinquish—the education of their children. For this purposc, it is only necessary to vest the control of the common schools in a board to be composed of commissioners elected by the people; which board shall apportion the school moneys among all the schools, including those now existing, which shall be organized and conducted in conformity to its general regulations and the laws of the state, in the proportion of the number of pupils instructed. It is not left doubtful that the restoration, to the common schools of this city, of this simple and equal feature of the common schools of the state, would remove every complaint, and bring into the seminaries the offspring of want and misfortune, presented by a grand jury, on a recent occasion, as neglected children of both sexes, who are found in hordes upon the wharves and on corners of the streets, surrounded by evil associations, disturbing the public peace, committing petty depredations, and going from bad to worse, until their course terminates in high crimes and infamy.

This proposition, to gather the young from the streets and wharves into the nurseries which the state, solicitous for her security against ignorance, has prepared for them, has sometimes been treated as a device to appropriate the school fund to the

endowment of seminaries for teaching languages and faiths, thus to perpetuate the prejudices it seeks to remove; sometimes as a scheme for dividing that precious fund among a hundred jarring sects, and thus increasing the religious animosities it strives to heal; and sometimes as a plan to subvert the prevailing religion and introduce one repugnant to the consciences of our fellowcitizens; while in truth, it simply proposes, by enlightening equally the minds of all, to enable them to detect error wherever it may exist, and to reduce uncongenial masses into one intelligent, virtuous, harmonious and happy people. Being now relieved from all such misconceptions, it presents the questions whether it is wiser and more humane to educate the offspring of the poor, than to leave them to grow up in ignorance and vice; whether juvenile vice is more easily eradicated by the court of sessions than by common schools; whether parents have a right to be heard concerning the instruction and instructors of their children, and tax-payers in relation to the expenditure of public funds; whether, in a republican government, it is necessary to interpose an independent corporation between the people and the schoolmaster, and whether it is wise and just to disfranchise an entire community of all control over public education, rather than suffer a part to be represented in proportion to its numbers and contributions. Since such considerations are now involved, what has hitherto been discussed as a question of benevolence and of universal education, has become one of equal civil rights, religious tolerance, and liberty of conscience. We could bear with us, in our retirement from public service, no recollection more worthy of being cherished through life, than that of having met such a question in the generous and confiding spirit of our institutions, and of having decided it upon the immutable principles on which they are based.

The condition of the treasury will be fully presented by a report from the proper officer. The revenues from every source exhibit a prosperous increase. The amount derived from auction duties was $206,702, being an increase of $42,080 over the corresponding revenues in the previous fiscal year. The amount received by the superintendent for duties on the manufacture of salt, was $194,216, being more than was received in the previons year by $36,030. The manufacture of salt, and consequently the revenue,

have been improved by allowing drawbacks upon our salt reaching distant markets. I suggest an inquiry into the expediency of reducing still lower the duty upon the manufacture, with a view to an improvement of the revenue and under a belief that such a measure would secure a market for our salt in the valley of the Mississippi. The superintendent renews his complaint of the unskilful process used in manufacturing fine salt, and suggests efforts for discovering a corrective. Confident anticipations of reviving the manufacture at Montezuma are expressed.

Although the harvests were less abundant than heretofore, and there has been a considerable diversion of western trade through the valley of the St. Lawrence, the tolls upon each of the canals exhibit a gratifying increase. The income from all during the season of navigation, was $2,034,878, exceeding the tolls in the previous year by $259,131, equal to 145 per cent. The tolls in 1831 were $1,223,801.

The Canajoharie and Catskill Railroad Company, and the Ithaca and Owego Railroad Company, having failed in July and October last to pay the interest on the stocks issued in their behalf, under laws passed in 1838 and 1840, the amount of that interest, equal to $11,405 was paid at the treasury. Proceedings of foreclosure have been instituted. A portion of the Canajoharie and Catskill railroad has been made, but I regret that there is not a probability of its completion under present circumstances. The Ithaca and Owego railroad is somewhat productive, and its profits will be much enhanced when it shall be brought into use as a connection of the New York and Erie railroad with our large inland lakes, the Erie canal, and the central railroads.

The revenue of all the canals during the fiscal year, after deducting only the expenses of collection and ordinary repairs, was $1,551,098. The permanent public debt, at the close of the last fiscal year, exclusively of temporary loans, contingent liabilities, and the balance of the Erie and Champlain canal debt, for the payment of which equivalent funds are set apart, was $15,540,530, to which must be added temporary loans amounting to $1,855,000, making the aggregate debt $17,395,530, and the interest annually payable thereon, including also interest on the stocks loaned to the railroad companies which are in default, is $919,704. The debts consist of stocks chiefly redeemable in 1845, 1850, 1855, and 1860. The amount of stocks issued to the Delaware and

Hudson Canal Company, and railroad companies, is $5,035,700. You will, of course, give immediate attention to proper measures for reimbursing temporary loans.

The Auburn and Rochester railroad, and the Albany and West-Stockbridge railroad, have been brought into successful operation. A further portion of the Long Island railroad, a new section of the Genesee Valley canal, and the eastern section of the New York and Erie railroad, have been opened. Our railway communications having thus been extended one hundred and sixty miles, their aggregate length is seven hundred and fortyseven miles. Our canal navigation has also been increased by an addition of fifteen miles. Its total length is eight hundred and three miles. Enlightened citizens of this state and of Pennsylvania have opened a prosperous exchange of gypsum, salt, coal, and iron, by the Chemung canal, and by the Ithaca and Owego railroad, while the enterprise of citizens of Albany and Boston has connected our interior communications with those of the eastern states, consisting of one hundred and fifty-two miles of canals, and eight hundred miles of railways, opening to us facilities for social intercourse with the people of those prosperous communities, and convenient access to their manufactories, quarries, seaports and fisheries. There is reason to expect that the continuous line now reaching from Boston four hundred and eighty-three miles to Batavia, will, in another year, be extended to Buffalo. So obviously do the growing relations between New York and the states around her, contribute to the general prosperity, that we can not but indulge a hope that more distant communities, with which we are equally allied, will not find themselves ultimately constrained by fear of exposure of their peculiar institutions, or other causes, to adopt, in regard to us, such an opposite policy of annoyance and alienation, as they seem now to apprehend, may be necessary.

The progress of civilization is always indicated by the condition of those interior communications, by means of which political and social relations are formed, supplies exchanged, and defence established. Internal improvement is only an improvement of such facilities; and manifestly includes not less, at an advanced stage of a country, the construction of railways between important positions for commerce or defence, and of artificial channels. between navigable waters, than, at earlier periods, an extension