Statutes are enacted as average intellects may decide, or the balance of selfishness allow, but laws are not made, but discovered as God has enacted, and related them to permanent interests. The making or unmaking of the one is the facile work of charlatans when by some mysterious providence they find their way into our legislative halls; the discovery of the other is work for seers and statesmen which once done is done forever.
The Revised Statutes of this Congress make obsolete those of the last, not necessarily because superior wisdom has devised better, which must prove a permanent gain; but when a law of human society has been recognized and so enunciated that it becomes a regulating force, civilization has taken a forward step. The race is not simply less disturbed and more comfortable because temporary adjustments have been made of conflicting interests, but it is richer and stronger because of an enduring possession, and we can afford to labor and wait for such.
Each new application of an old principle calls for a fresh statement of the principle. That man’s personal rights are modified by the fact of his social relations, is a truth old as the beginning of civilized life, but that he may not suffer his children to grow up in ignorance, is a proposition startling to many, and practically asserted by but few of our State governments, though it is well-known that our government itself as well as all our social interests are put in jeopardy by the ignorant citizen who becomes a voter.
That the constitutional duty of the President to execute the laws, and of Congress to provide for the safety of the Republic involved the right to levy war against states, to blockade their harbors, to emancipate their slaves, to dictate the Constitutions under which they could resume their autonomy as States in the union, this was recognized only in face of fearful dangers and admitted only when established on many bloody fields of a desolating war, but is now so familiar, so axiomatic that no one doubts the nation’s right to defend its own life by all means which do not of themselves subvert that life.
That the safety of the Republic requires a general diffusion of intelligence no sane man will deny, and yet some assert that it will subvert the fundamental principles of this government if it practically secured this prime condition of its own life—that it must delegate to other hands the control of conditions and facts vital to its life, with no power or right to enforce attention to them. The right and capacity of self-government are found only in the virtue and intelligence of the people. If this be so, the obligation of a free government to enforce the education of its citizens is involved in its right to live.
This obligation is recognized, or should be, in the constitutional guarantee of a Republican form of government to each State, for the guarantee of such a form of government carries with it the conditions essential to it, one of which, and a prime one, is the intelligence of the citizen. This cannot be secured by the military arm of the nation, but by the school-master alone, who thus becomes a constitutional officer of the republic. The proposition that a republican form of government may be maintained by force over a people too ignorant to maintain it for themselves is too absurd for serious debate.
The right of the national government to interfere in case a State neglects the education of its children, seems clear on the ground of self-protection. The duty to aid the States struggling to accomplish this work, but unable to do it, because of its vastness, and of its own poverty, seems also clear, and has now become urgent in view of the appalling facts revealed in the last census.
Our national Congress is constrained to hear the cry that is coming up from all parts of the country calling attention to this duty. Let not those who feel an interest in this, relax effort or lose heart. It is not a measure to be adopted in a moment. It means much; it involves much. It will bring with it new and seemingly revolutionary conceptions of the functions of the government when it reaches out its strong arms to defend its life, not in the sad work of shooting down ignorant and brutalized parricides, but in the better work of helping to qualify for their children, who are to be charged with duties, the gravest which fall to men, and for positions the highest to which ambition can impel them—the duties and position of a citizen of this free republic.
Arrangements have been made by the Missionary Society of Connecticut to hold thirty conventions in the State, at which the following benevolent societies supported by the Congregationalists will be represented; American Board, American Congregational Union, American Home Missionary Society, American Missionary Association, American College and Education Society, New West Education Commission, Congregational Publishing Society. The meetings for the first month will be held as follows: Tuesday, Feb. 6, Stamford, morning and afternoon; Wed. the 7th, Danbury, 1st Church, morning and afternoon; Thursday the 8th, Hartford, Park Church, afternoon and evening; Tuesday the 13th, Bridgeport, 1st Church, morning and afternoon; Wednesday the 14th, New Milford, morning and afternoon; Thursday, the 15th, Bridgeport, Park st. Church, morning and afternoon; Tuesday the 20th, New Haven, 1st Church, afternoon and evening; Wednesday the 21st, Ansonia, morning and afternoon; Thursday the 22d, Hartford, South Church, afternoon and evening; Tuesday the 27th, Middletown, 1st Church, morning and afternoon; Wednesday the 28th, New Haven, College st. Church, morning and afternoon.