Excerpt from The District School Journal of the State of New-York, 1851, Vol. 11 I plead guilty, then, to the charge of having, with all the earnestness and ability of which I was capable, recommended the passage of a law, securing the bene fits of common school education, fully and freely, to every child of the State Of a suitable age. This mea sure was earnestly recommended by some of my pre decessors, and I believed it to be demanded, not only by a sound public Opinion, but by con'siderations inti mately associated with the peculiar structure and func tions of our republican institutions. It was, in my judgment, the paramount duty of the State to provide for all its future citizens, the means of obtaining that amount and degree of knowledge essential to the proper performance Of the duties to be devolved upon them, and to the discharge Of the responsibilities they were to assume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.