Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

No school & state, as well as no church & state! / letter of Gerrit Smith to Charles Stebbins.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 578

NO SCHOOL & STATE, AS WELL AS NO CHURCH & STATE!

LETTER OF GERRIT SMITH TO CHARLES STEBBINS.

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PETERBORO, November 5th 1873.

CHARLES STEBBINS, Esq., Cazenovia:

MY DEAR SIR,

I address this letter to you because I number you amongst the deeply thoughtful and wisely benevolent men of my acquaintance.

It is now some twenty or thirty years since I began to speak and write upon the radical evils of our common-school system. So intense still is my feeling in regard to them that, while life lasts and these evils last, I must continue to speak and write upon them.

All admit the paramount right of parents to choose and - control the education of their children, and their paramount obligation to defray the cost of it. But many apprehend that if this be left exclusively to parents, a large share of the children will remain uneducated, and will by their ignorance and its attendant vices curse their homes and their country. Hence the state, is relied on to supply the lack. But if the state will only stand aside, voluntary offerings will flow in and far more than equal what is raised by taxation. This, however, is denied: and the denial rests upon the assumption that, before the common-school passed into the hands of government, the education provided in it was neither of so high a grade nor so generally acquired, as it has been since. But whether this assumption be wrong, or right, it does not follow that the school would stiffer, now or hereafter, by the withdrawal of the aid of government. In the former half century of our national existence our fathers, impoverished by one war and much reduced by another, were obliged to yield to claims far more urgent than those of education. They had to struggle for the material comforts and absolute necessaries of life. Their supreme concern was not to feed and clothe the mind, but to feed and clothe the body. In the fatter half we have risen into happier circumstances, and are tree to engage in the higher work of mental cultivation. We are now able to do much more in the department of education than we were in the infancy of our nation, and we are too well disposed to do it to need government to compel us to do it. Our rich men of the present generation, far surpassing in this respect the rich men of monarchical countries, have learned to pour out their money like water in the cause of human improvement. They give hundreds of thousands and even millions to advance the interests of education; and the people at large have come into such an appreciation of the benefits of the school, that they no longer need to be taxed to extend them, but only left free to extend them.

The meddling of the state with the school is an impertinence little less than its meddling with the church. A lawyer, than whom there is no abler in the land and who is as eminent for integrity as for ability, writes me: "I am against the Government's being permitted to do anything which can be entrusted. to individuals under the equal regulation of general laws." But how emphatically should the school be held to be the concern and care of individuals instead of the government! It is not extravagant to say that government is no more entitled to a voice in the school than in the church. Both are, or ought to be, religious institutions: - and in the one important respect that the average scholar is of a more; plastic and docile age than the average attendant on the church the school has greatly the advantage of the church.

I admit the great importance of having the common-school education as well-nigh universal as possible. Nevertheless it is better that this education should not reach as many than that. the hand of government be in it. Nothing serves so much to maintain a manly and independent spirit in the people - nothing indeed is so essential to their national life - as the keeping of government within its normal and narrow limits. A people who hang helplessly on government, and, instead of doing their own work, look to government to do it for them, make a usurper of their government and children of themselves. And, just here, let me say that whilst every work in the department of morals and religion, including especially the training of children, is to be done by the people, the sole work of government is to wield its brute force for the protection of the people.

The signs that this evil of state education is approaching its end are multiplying. Amongst them is the rising up of the great body of the Roman Catholics against it. No wonder that they feel themselves to be cruelly oppressed by it. When the Roman Catholics of Ireland were compelled to support the English Church in addition to

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their own, all Americans sympathized with them. But is not the oppression of our Roman Catholics the same in principle as was that? Ours set their hearts on training their children to be catholics from their infancy. Hence they naturally desire to have their schools such, as will promote this warmly cherished object. But how can they support their own schools at the same time that they are taxed to sustain the state school ? Here is a burden that presses heavily not upon their conscience only but upon their property also - all the more heavily upon their property, since, as a people, they are not rich - certainly not so rich as the protestants, whose children they are with such flagrant injustice compelled to help educate. It is to mock the ignorance of a large share of catholic parents, or, at least, what they humbly feel to be their ignorance, to tell them that they can themselves at their homes teach enough religion to their children. Conscious of their little learning, they rely for help at this vital point not upon the priest only. but upon the schoolmaster also. And well would it be were protestant parents more concerned to have the teachers of their children competent and desirous to impart religious instruction. Scarcely less unwise is it to exclude religion from the desk of the, schoolmaster than from the pulpit of the pastor.

The protestants are freshly endeavoring to load the catholics with the blame of this school agitation. In this unfairness they only add another to the already numberless editions of the wolf's complaints of the lamb for roiling. the stream. The protestants are themselves the responsible party. It is they who have roiled the stream. It is both foolish and wicked to charge the catholics with bad motives in establishing their parochial schools. For nothing less than conscience sake do they establish them, and burden themselves with the vast expense: and for this faithfulness to their deepest convictions they should be honored and not denounced.

Be ashamed, protestants ! Consider who they are, whom you are so cruelly oppressing! They are your countrymen, and as patriotic as yourselves. On many a battlefield have they mingled their blood with your own. They are more than your countrymen. They are your brothers and of the same Father with yourselves. You complain of their religion. But your injustice to them is an argument against your own religion. Absurd and even farcical however is it for the protestant to complain of the Catholic's religion or the catholic to complain of the protestant's. They are substantially the same religion. The great doctrine in each is supreme love to God and a love to our neighbor equal to that we bear, to ourselves. Which party overloads this decisive doctrine with the most or the grossest superstitions is a comparatively unimportant question.

Another indication of the approaching downfall of the state school is its proposing compromises. Any institution may be regarded as near its end when, to prolong its life, it falls to compromising. One of these proposed compromises is to forego prayer in the school. Another is to forbid all religious teaching in it, and especially to exclude the bible from it. Nothing could justify the ostracizing of Shakspeare and Milton from the school. Still less can any thing justify the ostracizing of the bible from it. For admitting all that is said of the errors in the bible, no other book equals it in specimens of the truest eloquence and in the wisdom and purity of its precepts. Moreover, since it is from the sublime and sweet inspirations of this book far more than from any other source that we derive our ruling conceptions of the Deity, it follows that to insult the bible is little less than to insult God. The great disturbance, which this question of the bible in the school is producing, will never cease until either the government or the bible is driven from the school. God grant that the government be the vanquished party!

This allowed intrusion of government into the school opens the way for a still bolder usurpation. The proposition for compulsory education meets with growing favor: and the more strangely so because the example of Prussia is cited in its behalf. However well such compulsion may harmonize with a despotic government, it is quite out of place in a republic. It may suit the genius of a people who are owned by their ruler: but it is entirely unsuited to a people, each one of whom owns both himself and his children. We dishonor ourselves and our form of government when we look to a Prussian policy for the moulding of our children. Fatally injurious to their character would be such a moulding. Our laws and traditions encourage our children to freedom of thought and freedom of speech : - but narrow is the range to which she limits leers. It is her boast that she provides for the education of all her children: - but she also pro-

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vides that they shall use this education, both politically and religiously, only within such limits as her government shall prescribe. Our theory is that the people shall enjoy absolute freedom in politics and religion. The Prussian government on the other hand not only interdicts unwelcome political utterances, but it also audaciously interferes with religion. The highest aim in a republic is the largest freedom of the people: and nothing however plausible the pleas for it, which antagonizes such freedom, is to, be encouraged or even tolerated.

The claim that the common-school, especially in cities, gives a higher education than if it had not the aid of government, would, were it ever so well founded, afford an argument against rather than for such aid. As a general thing, whilst the wealthy prize such an education, the laboring classes either do not covet it, or do not feel able to enjoy it. Hard, therefore, is it for these classes to be taxed to give this higher education to the wealthy.

Let us then leave the school, as we leave the church, in the hands of the people. Government can no more help the cause of education than it can the cause of religion. It is no more its work to bring all the scholars of the locality into the same school than it is to bring all the religionists of the locality into the same church. I do not undervalue the importance of uniformity in the early education of the children of our country and the consequent importance of bringing all races, classes, conditions and faiths into the same school-room. But this desirable end is to be reached not through coercion but voluntarily ; not by the power of government but by the power of love. Into a work so purely moral government cannot intrude itself without producing disturbance and estrangement. But love prevents and quiets disturbance and assimilates those who feel its influence. The disunion of the people in respect to the common-school has not been overcome by government; and should not be if it could be. No benefits resulting from such an abuse and perversion of the powers of

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government could equal the cost. In fine, however great and however lamentable may be the disagreements of the people in respect to education or religion, government has nothing to do with them : - the people alone, and not the government, are responsible for them.

Because government had a large and emphatically responsible part in upholding slavery, and degrading and imbruting our colored race, it did right to follow up the emancipation of that race with provisions for its education. These provisions it might very properly extend. There is no danger of its making excessive payment for its great debt to this outraged, yet patient and gentle race. I recall no other instance where government has aught to do with education.

There need be no difficulty in disposing of the school fund. As it was drawn from the whole people, so it belongs to the whole people. Hence the best way to dispose of it is to use it in reducing the debt due from the whole people - the debt due from the State of New York.

I close with saying that one of the great, errors of our times is leaving to others to do what we should do ourselves. We prefer relieving our sympathies to having them exercised; and to do by proxy what we have not the heart to do with our own hands. We huddle into Poor-Houses such as we do not like to meet in our daily walks. We patronize benevolent societies rather than come ourselves in contact with human misery; and we rely on their machinery to accomplish in various forms for human welfare what we are too lazy or indifferent to give personal attention to. It is not a little in this lukewarm spirit that the protestants turn over to the state the education of their children, and misinterpret the affectionate spirit, which impels catholic parents to gather their children into parochial schools.

Your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.