cause? We do not hesitate to say that the chief cause is one which no Government action, State or Federal, can ever reach—viz., defect of home discipline. The boy who will not attend school, or who, attending school, learns nothing, is the boy accustomed to rebellion at home, or the boy whose parents are themselves too negligent and vicious to care whether he learns anything or not. It is no doubt the case that a certain portion of the population of these States is being brought up in partial or total savagery. Not for want of schools, however, for schools abound. The evil is deep-seated, and can only be reached by the vigorous action of public opinion, and by wise measures of reform in connection with the administration of justice. When we explain why it is that our educational systems fail altogether to reach a certain element in the population, we explain, also, why the work of education is in many cases so shallow, and why it even seems at times to do more harm than good. Everything depends on the spirit with which it is approached. A well-known figure in contemporary fiction—Maud Matchin—well illustrates the work of the high school or academy on the mind of a vain and vulgar girl, who sets no value upon education, save as it may help her to a position in the world, and the vices of whose character are therefore brought only into stronger relief by her wretched varnish of accomplishments. And here we see the folly of all schemes that would set the Federal Government at work to repair the weak places of education throughout the States and Territories. All that is proposed is that reading and writing should be made universal accomplishments, so as to remove the reproach and danger of technical "illiteracy." But there is absolutely no guarantee that the voter newly instructed to read and write would be any better man than he was before. If our high-schools are turning out Maud Matchins by the score and hundred, and if youths by the thousand leave school to pursue a career of "smartness," without one thought of social responsibility, it is evident that the mere extension of educational facilities is a much less pressing need than the moralizing of the whole business of education. Philosophers have told us that it is perfectly possible to educate in an intellectual sense without touching one single moral chord; and daily experience confirms the truth of the statement. Instead, therefore, of engaging the Federal Government to establish more schools, we would engage the whole community to place the schools that now exist upon a higher moral plane, and to render them more effectual in their working by a higher quality of home influence. It is in the home above all that reform is needed; but, unhappily, the school has of late years so dwarfed the home, so interposed between the parent and his natural and proper responsibility toward his child, that to preach "home influence" to-day is almost like raising one's voice in the wilderness. Things are badly complicated; one thing only is certain, and that is, that more State interference will not help to clear up the complications, or to put things on a sound basis.
It is needless, we trust, in concluding these remarks, to say that we yield to none in the importance we attach to education rightly understood. By education, however, we do not understand merely the ability to read and write, and we are not fully persuaded that our institutions would be any safer than they are to-day if every child in the country over twelve years old could both read and write. What we know for certain is, that an individual able to do both may be in a condition of very unstable intellectual equilibrium, and so, we believe, might a whole community of such individuals. What we need to improve our intellectual state is not an increase of activity on the part of the Government, but deeper convictions
