of mankind for self-government, and claimed and maintained the largest liberty for individual action, we are, in the opinion of many, virtually stopped from doing more than to set the means of education before the people. If they refuse to accept them, the result may be deplorable, but we have no power to prevent it. The horse may be led to the water, but the moment we attempt to make him drink, we interfere with rights we have in the most solemn manner declared inalienable. The spirit of our institutions is hostile to any infringement of the rights of any of the people. If we concede that ignorance is sacred to its possessor, that he may not only hug it to his own bosom, but entail it upon his offspring, the question is closed. No great good is ever achieved by violation of vested right.

But does such right exist? We affirm that it does not, that its existence is scouted by the spirit as well as by the letter of our laws, every chapter of which is replete with abridgments of individual liberty. We prescribe, for instance, that men shall not be drunkards or thieves, profane or obscene, and lay a heavy hand upon all business which either directly or indirectly tends to produce or foster vice or immorality, or to interfere with the public health or safety. For the support and defense of government, we impose taxes upon private property, and enforce their collec tion. A man's house is indeed his castle, but if he bars its doors and resists the entrance of the officer of the law, it is stormed and taken relentlessly. The very fact that the state exists presupposes its possession of the right of self-preservation, as well against foes within as without. And the man who persists in bringing up a family in ignorance or vice (and the two are inseparably connected) is a public enemy. His enjoyment of his own want of knowledge we may not disturb, but in his children we have a proprietary interest, which he has no right to impair. In becoming a parent he has assumed, of his own choice, certain obligations to society, first among which are his duties to his children. If he is willing to perform them, well; if not, society must make up the deficiency, in self-defense. If he neglects or is unable to feed or to clothe them, our interference is direct and positive; we remove them from his charge and repudiate his claim to control them without hesitation. And if we can do this, without strain or distortion of organic law, it is surely broad enough and strong enough to cover the case in question. We might adduce the moral grounds of support for our position, but we prefer to place it upon

the basis which its enemies claim as their own especial property and then stand or fall with it. If we can compel the building of a school-house, the employment of a teacher of a standard of qualifications which we fix at pleasure, and lay a tax upon private property to defray the necessary expenses of the school we thus create, it is idle to say we can not compel the attendance of the children. The greater includes the less.

We might rest here, if this were the only aspect of the question. A system which is powerless to educate one third of the children of the State, is not worthy of the name of public instruction. But it is possible for a plan to fail in its most important particulars without destroying its capacity for good in other respects. The education of even a part is better than that of none; and a part at any rate will attend school without being compelled to do so by law. If the new Code has improved the condition of these, in any respect, let us not fail to give it full credit therefor. Let us see if it does so.

The defects of our common schools under the old system came under two heads-irregular attendance of the children, and incompetency of the teachers. The first of these is, as we have seen, untouched by the new law. For the rectification of the latter, the provisions are numerous. The Normal School was already in operation, and its efficiency is acknowledged. The powers and duties of teachers, long the subject of uncertainty and vagueness, are now specifically defined. The examination of teachers, the provisions for which occupy very considerable space, is not rendered more certain or thorough than the old law required, and may be slurred over with quite as much facility as formerly. But the reason of the low grade of qualification, the insufficiency of compensation, has been scotched not killed. We provide now that a sum varying from $2.75 to about $5 may be raised for educational purposes by the State and townships for each child between the ages of five and eighteen. The average number of children in our rural districts is rather below one hundred. Assuming it to be one hundred, the appropriation for all school purposes may he as low as $275, and may not exceed $500, unless a majority of two thirds of the voters of the district who may be present at a meeting annually called for that purpose shall so decide. Now every one knows-at least every one who is familiar with the workings of school meetings-how difficult it is to get a majority of two thirds to vote in favor of levying a district tax; and the

consequence will be that, in most cases, the school will be kept on the appropriation, or within it. And on that appropriation of from $275 to $500 per year, we expect to elevate the standard of our teachers! We ask men and women to spend years in study and preparation for a laborious occupation of great responsibility, and give them the wages of an ordinary farm hand; worse still, we do not even pay them this till their work is done, nor even then, perchance, until the authorities have collected the tax and paid other claims more pertinaciously urged. Is it surprising that so few adopt teaching as a profession; that our common schools are the refuge of incapables or of those who seek something to do in the mean time; that honorable, high-minded men and women, with large and liberal views on educational subjects, and intelligence and scholarship at least respectable, are fairly driven away from the common schools of New-Jersey? The framers of the new law might have remedied this in part at least. They might have provided that the school tax should be general throughout the State, and either sufficient to pay decent salaries to decent teachers, or that the supplementary process should be obligatory upon the district, and graduated by the average attendance of the children. Till this is done, normal schools and teachers' institutes, boards of examiners and superintendents, and all the paraphernalia of the new system, will not elevate to a great extent the common schools of New-Jersey. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and the promise of peace and prosperity is not for those who withhold it from him.

We might pursue our research among these shattered remnants of what might have been a great work; we might point out the uncertainties which surround this or that detail, the difficulty in which the whole subject is left; we might tell of a Board of Education too numerous for responsibility or promptitude, and too few to represent their people, whose nomination must be sanetioned by the Boards of Chosen Freeholders of the several counties-those happy combinations of the Circumlocution Office and the Scottish Court of Macers, uniting the laborious "How not to do it" of the one with the "No knowledge" of the other-but to what purpose?

The defects we have noticed would be fatal to the success of any system, and to enumerate lesser ones is a useless waste of labor.

We confess we are disappointed and chagrined beyond measure

at the course the Legislature have taken. If the people were not ready for a code with a backbone, there was perhaps good reason for waiting till they were. But to enact a code without one, was a blunder nearly criminal. We have filled our statute-books with a medley of laws, conflicting, uncertain, and time-serving. We have piled amendment upon amendment, and tacked supplement to supplement, until our legal system is the aptest illustration of the truth of the remark, "See with how little wisdom the world is governed."

And now, when we do attempt to reconstruct from the founda tion, we set up an edifice as composite in its blending of strength and weakness as the image Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dreams.

We have combined the most objectionable features of a compulsory system with the worst defects of a voluntary one, and call our work “An Act to provide for the Establishment of a System of Public Instruction!" Could any sarcasm be more complete?

Some time or other, and we can fix the date if we will, we shall have a system worthy of this name-a system which shall extend to every boy and girl in the State the opportunity for acquiring a thorough business education, which will encourage earnest and intelligent men and women to make teaching in our common schools the business of their lives instead of a stepping-stone to something better. And for that time whose advent we have long expected, we are still content to labor and to wait.

EDITOR'S SADDLE-BAGS.

autumn parted from us in summer, while our autumn will be your winter, so rapidly does the ceaseless whirl of time bear us onward. We communicate, therefore, under the disadvantages of what that genial humorist and kindest of men, Charles Lamb, calls an "inconsistent chronology." Our seasons are not your seasons, and what is truth to us now, may be a lie before it reaches you upon the printed page. The past we know; of the future we can only speculate; ergo, you must

learn to take all predictions, whether of a literary, miscellaneous, or even meteorological character, cum grano salis, which Artemus the Delicious was wont to translate, "with a pinch of snuff."

market was already overstocked; there was absolutely no room—no, not even "up-stairs," for such a thing to stay temporarily, much less to live, move, and have a being. Such were the auguries which greeted us at our inception-not very encouraging, it must be admitted, had we seen fit to attach thereto any greater value than their intrinsic importance demanded. However, we were unwilling to accept this as the ultimatum of wisdom, and so, gathering together a few brave

Will our readers pardon the seeming egotism, if we drop, just here, a word or two about ourselves? As this number completes the first volume of THE NORTHERN MONTHLY, it seems fitting that something be said of its past history, present endeavors, and future hopes. Six months ago our literary souls, ardent in the good work of imventure entered upon what many well-provement and elevation, the literary meaning but over-cautious critics predicted would be, at the best, only a brief existence. Some wiseacres sagely proclaimed the entire field of magazine literature already occupied by the New-York and Boston monthlies; periodicals old in fame, ripe in experience, and unrivaled in ability. Others, equally as sagacious, questioned if the "barren soil of New-Jersey" possessed the requisite amount of vitality to grow any kind of a respectable publication. And then again, the novelty of the thing. -a provincial magazine! "Impossible," said one; "preposterous idea," observed another; "Quixotic attempt," echoed a third; "unheard of folly," chimed in a fourth, and so forth and so on to the end of the chapter. Not that any one was able to give a good and convincing reason why a publication of like excellence, if issued at Newark, should fail to find as appreciative readers as though it bore the imprimatur of the Hub. The objection, like the minor school-boy's, was "'cause," and there it broke off us abruptly, and with as little succeeding logic as does the perplexed urchin's stereotyped explanation of the incomprehensible. Moreover, these doleful doubters were of the opinion that there was no chance for competition; the

argosy was launched, the favoring divinity invoked, and, with sails trimmed as neatly as time and opportunity would allow, it floated out upon the perilous sea of fortune, strong in the determination to struggle with fate and win for itself recognition and success. It was tossed about somewhat rudely for a time on the wave of adverse criticism, though the unqualified favor it received from many sources, at the very outset, has more than exceeded our most sanguine expectations. Its claim rested upon merit alone, and its motto-Nulla vestigia retrorsum— as every through passenger will bear us witness, has never yet been falsified. To-day brighter skies bend over us, and the bow of promise spans the future's cloud. THE NORTHERN MONTHLY now numbers its readers by thousands, and its worth is everywhere acknowledged by the leading minds and united press of the entire country. Among the efficient crew of contributors at present engaged, many of whom have assisted from the start, are writers of reputation and experience as well as brilliancy and power. They will remain with us, and other well known names will be added as we pass along. We are well aware of the difficulties of founding and sustaining a maga.