Begins to do its blessed work. This fund is dedicated to the work of
“Uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States
and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Christian
education,” and it seeks to accomplish this result by “the training
of teachers among the people requiring to be taught.” This fund works
through existing institutions; it does not found new schools; there are
already more good and deserving schools than it can help. Many times the
sum this fund affords could be wisely used.
There is not space in this article to discuss the question, but my
opinion may be stated: It is necessary that the United States government
should aid the States to make their public schools more efficient.
Whatever may be true of other sections, the Southern States, owing to the
facts of their history and to conditions now existing, are not able to do
the work that is upon them.
As to the sentiment in these States on the subject of negro education, it
may be said in brief: The outcry of small village papers does not always
even reflect the sentiment of the people, and there are certain facts
that indicate that the work of educating the negroes will go on with less
and less hindrance. Three such facts I mention in closing this article:
(1) The duty and necessity of educating the negro has been recognized
by every representative church in the South. (2) This necessity is
recognized in the educational system of every Southern State. (3) No
man who believes he has any political or educational “future,” any
longer opposes, under his proper name, the education of his negro fellow
citizens.
* * * * *
Dress changes, but we are not to suppose on that account that the make of
the body changes also. Politeness or rudeness, knowledge or ignorance,
more or less of a certain degree of guilelessness and simplicity, a
serious or playful humor; these are but the outer crust of a man, and may
all change; but the heart changes not, and the whole of man is in the
heart. One age is ignorant, but the fashion of being learned may come; we
are all moved by self-interest, but the fashion of being disinterested
will never come. Amidst the countless myriads of creatures born in the
space of a hundred years, nature may perhaps produce two or three dozen
of rational beings whom she must scatter over the world, and you can
readily imagine that they are never found any where in such large numbers
as to set the fashion of virtue and uprightness.—_Fontenelle._