During the

not exceed five per cent. of the whole; the remainder comes from State or local taxation. At one time, in some of the States, fees were charged from the pupils. But the opinion came to be widely entertained that this charge impaired in many ways the efficiency of the system. Six or eight years ago fees were discontinued, and now the schools of the nation are free to all. The Americans witness with approbation the increase of their expenditure on education. ten years which preceded the rebellion this expenditure was doubled; again, during the ten years which followed it was trebled. It has now grown to nearly eighteen million sterling a sum larger than all the nations of Europe unitedly expend for the same purpose. Large as it is, however, it is equal to no more than two-thirds of the sum which Britain still expends upon her military and naval preparations.

The common school is used by all classes of the American people. At one time there existed among the rich a disposition to have their children educated with others of their own social position, and many private schools sprang up to meet their demand. As the common schools have increased in efficiency, and consequently in public favour, this disposition has weakened, and private schools have decayed. Their number is much smaller now than it was ten years ago, and continues to diminish. With one unhappy exception, the common school satisfies the requirements of the American people. The leaders of the Roman Catholic body perceive that its influences are adverse to the growth of their tenets, and do not cease to demand the means of educating their children apart from the children of those who hold religious beliefs differing from theirs. their proposals meet with no favour beyond the limits of their own denomination, and even there only partial support is given. The American Roman Catholic is more apt than his brethren in Europe to fall into the disloyal practice of independent judg

But

ment. It has not been found possible to alienate him wholly from the common school.

It is of interest to inquire in what measure the American people have been requited by the success of their common-school system for the vast sums which they expend on its maintenance. At first sight the statistics of the subject seem to return a discouraging reply to such an inquiry. When the census of 1870 was taken it disclosed a high percentage of illiteracy. Seventeen adult males and twenty-three adult females in every hundred were wholly uneducated-numbers almost as high as those of England at the same period. But the special circumstances of the country explain these figures in a manner which relieves the common school of all blame. The larger portion of this illiteracy had its home in the Southern States and among the coloured population, whose ignorance had been carefully preserved by wicked laws and a corrupted public feeling. Again, America had received during the ten years which preceded the census an immigration of four and a half million persons. The educational condition of those strangers was low, and their presence therefore bore injuriously upon the averages which were reported. The common school must be judged in the Northern States and among the native white population, for there only has it had full opportunity to act. And there it has achieved magnificent success. In the New England States there is not more than one uneducated native of ten years and upwards in every hundred. In the other Northern States the average is scarcely so favourable. The uneducated number

from two up to four in every hundred.

It thus appears that the common school has banished illiteracy from the North. The native American of the Northern States is almost invariably a person who has received, at the lowest, a sound primary education. The efforts by which this result has been reached began with the foundation of each State, and have been continued uninterruptedly throughout its whole history.

In the rising industrial competition of the time, it must count for much that American artisans are not only educated men and women, but are the descendants of educated parents. A nation which expends upon education a sum larger than all the nations of Europe unitedly expend; which contents itself with an army of twenty-five thousand soldiers; whose citizens are exempt from the curse of idle years laid by the governments of Continental Europe upon their young men,-such a nation cannot fail to secure a victorious position in the great industrial struggle which all civilized States are now compelled to wage

for existence.

CHAPTER V.

EUROPE AND AMERICA.

ROM the very dawn of her history, America has been a powerful factor in the solution of many great European problems. In the early days of her settlement she offered a welcome refuge from the oppression and poverty of the Old World. Her assertion of independence inflamed the impulses which were preparing the French Revolution with all its unforeseen and incalculable consequences, and hastened the coming of that tremendous occurrence. Throughout the half century of struggle by which Europe vindicated her freedom, it was a constant stimulus to patriot effort to know that, beyond the sea, there was a country where men were at liberty to prosecute their own welfare unimpeded by the restraints which despotism imposes. A constant light was thrown by American experience upon the questions which agitated Europe. Men accustomed to be told that they were unfit to bear any part in the government of their country, saw men such as they themselves were enjoying political privileges in America, and governing a continent to the general advantage. Men accustomed to be told that State support was indispensable to the existence of the Church, saw religion becomingly upheld in America by the spontaneous offerings of the people. Methods of government altogether unlike those of Europe were practised in America; and Europe had constant opportunity of judging how far these methods surpassed or fell

short of her own. Europe lived under a system of government which scarcely regarded individual rights, and cared supremely for the interests of the State-meaning ordinarily by that the interests or caprices of a very few persons. In America the State was an organization whose purpose was mainly the protection of individual rights. On the eastern shores of the Atlantic the belief still prevailed that in every nation the Almighty had conveyed to some one man the right to deal as he pleased with the lives and property of all the others. On the western shores of the Atlantic a great nation acted on the theory that national interests were merely the interests which the aggregated individual citizens had in common,* and that government was nothing more than an association of persons whose duty it was to guide those interests in conformity with the public desire. The American doctrine extended into Europe, and contributed in no inconsiderable degree to the growth of liberal ideas and the overthrow of despotism. The sustained exhibition upon a scale so vast of freedom in thought and action, with its happy results in contentment and prosperity, could not fail to impress deeply the oppressed nations of Europe. Here were a people who made their own laws, who obeyed no authority which was not of their own appointment, to whom decrees, and ukases, and all the hateful utterances of despotism were unknown. Here were millions of men enjoying perfect equality of opportunity to seek their own welfare; here was life free from the burden of a class inaccessibly superior to the great mass of the people. The daily influences of American life sapped the fabric of privilege, and helped the European people to vindicate the rights of which they had been deprived.

The influence which America exerts upon the currents of European history must continue to increase in power. Her population, reinforced as it is by emigration from less happily

"This country with its institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it." President Lincoln.