HENRY WARD BEECHER ON COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 289, 14 August 1873, Page 6

HENRY WARD BEECHER ON COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

" Ignorance should not be permitted in the State ; that is to say, education should be compulsory'" The first feeling that almost every man has when you say " Education should be compulsory," is that it shakes off for ever the predominant freedom of the State, the rights that so many enjoy, believing that it is a divine right which they possess, to educate their children exactly as they please — to educate them a little, or perhaps not educate them at all ; so tbat to compel to educate seems a great crime. " But this compulsory education is no new extension of the power of the State — the State already has it ; the State has a right to legislate for the public good, aud determine what you can do and what you can't. It takes your land if it wants it ; it takes you off yourself in time of war if it wants you. " Take your children ! The State has a right to meddle with all the&e things if the State requires them. So, in like manner, if the State requires your children to be educated, it will take them. If you want your children educated, that law will not touch you ; no law touches a man where the man is higher than the law. " Take, for instance, the law against counterfeiting; nothing in that law touches me. There is not the least possibility of that law touching me ; it exists with me in name merely. The law against burglary is viewed in the same light ; I leave that law so far beneath me tbat I am, as it were, drawn back and sheltered from committing any such acts as that law specifies. So with respect to compulsory education. " The great argument of compulsory education is the educating voluntarily of a majority of the State's children j but the people say, " If the schools are good, may you not safely leave these children to parental affection ?" No, no. There is a vast number of uneducated foreigners that bring uneducated children into thia land, and they don't understand the necessity and advantages of education until after they have been here a short time, and then they catch the spirit of the thing at once. " There are a great many bad characters and criminals, people that have no care for the educating of their children ; the State can do much foiherself in the care of them. There are a great many more of your careless parents, who do not appreciate the necessity of education, and look more to themselves than to the intelligence of the child. When this is the case, the state has a right to step in and take care of the children. " If the parent sacrifices the child's intelligence, then the State is invested with a parent's right ; for though all parents have the liberty of doing right, no parent has the right to do wrong ; and in this respect, tbe great parent, the State, will not let pass unheard tbe inarticulate cry of the armj of little children that are growing up around us. The State hafc no right to pampor the feelings of selfishness in this question of educating tbe minds of the young, or to stint the privileges of a full manhood. "No ; as when, upon earth, our Master rebuked His dinciples and said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, and took them into His arms, and laying His hands upon them blessed them,' so the State, the great master, calls all the little children to it, and — laying the hand of intelligence upon their heads — blesses them. " Education for those that wish it, and education for all — for rich, for poor, for good, for bad, for bond, for free, for black, for white, for man, for woman — education till they are able to discern between right and wrong, till they are able to be good citizens in this glorious Republic."

Relapse.— Squire— "Why, Pat, what are you doing, standing by the wall of the public-house? I thought you were a teetotaller ? " Pat—" Yes, yer honnor. I'm just listenin' to them impenitent boys drinking inside ! "