measures to consign a whole generation now existing
to brutish ignorance, in order that the next might
riot in 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 per-
ceived it to be sound policy to incur a debt, when the
transaction is sure to multiply a hundred fold the
power of repaying it. The system of internal im-
provements, instead of absorbing and annihilating
those very resources which are wanted to sustain
public spirit and intelligence, by means of education,
is, in New-York

, made to minister directly and effec-
tually to that object, and thus to react in producing
again the foresight and discernment which were
alone requisite to, understand the utility of those
improvements, even before they had an existence.

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 annu-
ally, for five years, for the purpose of encouraging
and maintaining schools in the several cities and
towns in the state. The several counties were re-
quired to raise a sum equal to one half of that appro-
priated to each by the state. At the expiration 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 laboured, in being
again thrown back upon voluntary, iridividual, 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