EDUCATION. —Though not the first• among the states of the confederacy to introduce the system of universal education, New York may, with some truth, be said to have surpassed all the other states, in the liberality, as well as the sound policy of her provisions for its maintenance. She has happily taken the due mean between relying wholly upon tax ation on the one hand, and upon accumulated funds on the other, for the support of schools throughout her community. She has avoided the error of ap plying all her legislation to a single class of institu tions; thus showing a spirit above the petty jealousy that would 'annihilate the higher, and a sense and patriotism that imperatively forbade her to neglect the lower seminaries of learning. We do not find colleges and universities multiplied till one actually devours another, while the mass of the community is without esen the ordinary rudiments of know ledge; nor do we perceive, on the contrary, the avenues to classical attainments so hedged about by the expensiveness, the useless requisitions and the forbiddingcerernonials which might appal the youth whose treasures were only of Cee mind, from attempt ing to gain the station in society for which his natural endowments had qualified him.
There does not appear any ostentatious display of extravagance in her expenditures for education,— nor any of that niggardly parsimony which would compel the people to buy a cheap commodity of learning, sure at the same time that it must be a poor one.
She has not hesitated, while prosecuting the most magnificent schemes for improving the value of her physical resources, to devise and execute plans far more magnificent for the development of her intel lectual treasures. It has not been the spirit of her measures to consign a whole generation now existing to brutish ignorance, in order that the next might riot on its earnings, and sink in the same manner into oblivion, without having been provided with means of any rational enlargement of the most ennobling faculties. She has not been terrified by the fear that the coming age; which is to be the heir of her noble heritage of knowledge, freedom and moral power, should be compelled to pay out of its immense resources, a few of the millions by which that heritage was originally obtained. She has
perceived it to be sound policy to incur a debt, when the transaction is sure to multiply a hundred fuld the power of repaying it. The system of internal improvements, instead of absorbing and annihilating those very resources which are wanted to sustain public spirit and intelligence, by means of educa tion, is, in New York, made to minister directly and effectually to that object, and thus to react in pro ducing again the foresight and discernment which were alone requisite to understand the utility of those improvements, even before they had an exis tence.
Origin of the System. The foundation of a sys tem of common schools was laid in this state nearly forty years ago. The first act to that effect was passed April 9, 1795, appropriating out of the annual revenues of the state, twenty thousand pounds annually for five years, the purpose of encouraging and maintaining schools in the several cities and towns in the state. The several counties were required to raise a sum equal to one half of that appropriated to each by the state. At the ex piration of this law in 1800, the legislature refused to renew it; but in 1805, impelled, probably, by a sense of the deprivation under which the state la boured, in being again thrown back upon voluntary individual or local efforts, the legislature passed an act, providing that the nett proceeds of five hundred thousand acres of vacant and unappropriated public lands should be applied to form a permanent fund for the support of common schools. In the same year, three thousand shares of bank stock were or dered to be subscribed by the state, and to belong to the school fund. No part of this fund was to be applied to its ultimate object, until the interest should amount to fifty thousand dollars annually.