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dent. The American people are unwilling that the Cabinet should be controlled by Congress. Such a consolidation of the executive and legislative power would be highly dangerous in this country. Under the American system the people rely on the President and his Cabinet to check Congress and rely on Congress to check the President and have no wish to abolish those checks. The maneuvering, manipulations, intrigues, confusion, and turmoil of allowing the diverse interests of this vast nation to change the administration at any time would foment disorder, riot, and revolution. There are the Eastern states, conservative and rich; the Southern states, voting solidly by reason of the negro; the Central states, agricultural in sentiment and interest; the Pacific Coast states, with their own views of public policy; states mountainous; states mining; states grazing; each and every kind making new combinations, new blocs, new struggles to control or take part in control - all this would be a maelstrom which Americans decline to enter. Gusts of emotion and passion at times sweep over the American people, but the checks of the Constitution and the distance of a new election prevent hasty action until the people with full knowledge and calm consideration decide what shall be done, and then they are almost invariably right. Professor Becker of Cornell well says: "The federal system, with its checks and balances, although it often seems rather slow and clumsy, is nevertheless pretty well adapted to this large and diverse country in which the formation of a national opinion is a low and often a clumsy process. It is often said that the government of Great Britain responds much more quickly to the pressure of public opinion than the government of the United States does. This is perhaps true, but it is not so true as it seems to be. What seems to be a more ready response to public opinion is often only a more rapid formation of public opinion itself. England is a small country — about the size of the state of Kansas. The political and industrial and intellectual life of the nation centers in London, where the government sits.

The whole country reads the same papers - the London papers - on the same day they are printed; discusses the same events, the same men, the same measures, the same speeches, the same scandals. Nothing like this happens, or can happen, in the United States. Strictly speaking, the United States has no capital, no dominating center of industrial, political, or intellectual life.” 1

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(7) Universal Common Schools. A common school education for every child, free of charge, supported by taxation, and requiring every child to attend, is an American institution. The Encyclopædia Britannica " says that the Massachusetts law of 1647 was "epoch making. . . . It required every town of fifty householders to establish a school, the master of which should be paid either by the parents of the children taught or by public tax, as the majority of the town committee might decide." That Massachusetts statute of 1647 recited that its purpose was "that learning may not be buried in the grave of" the fathers, and also to circumvent "that ould deluder, Sathan." As Reisner points out, "the first modern compulsory attendance law in the United States was passed in Massachusetts in 1852" and by "1914 all the states except six had enacted such laws of greater or less effectiveness." 4 The famous North West Ordinance of 1787 provided "That religion, morals, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged," and Congress then and thereafter gave 86,138,473 acres of land for educational purposes,5 In 1922 out of the 28,627,201 population from 5 to 17 years of age inclusive, 23,239,227 were enrolled in the public schools; private and parochial schools 1,580,873. The total expense of education was $1,580,671,296, of which $860,952,724 was for teachers, salaries, etc. The public high schools had 2,319,407 pupils.6 The universities, colleges, and professional schools took in $272,703,983 and of course expended it all. Never before in

the history of the world has education been so recognized as the rock on which good government is built. Free schools are the ribs of the ship of state; the ground work of the American republic; the warp and woof of American life. They had their roots in Europe but flowered in America and America alone. They are said to have existed among the Romans and later the Moors. In the 13th and 14th centuries Holland was noted for the size and number of her burgher schools. Martin Luther advocated free schools in 1524. England for centuries has had a great number of privately endowed free schools, especially after Henry VIII broke up the monasteries, thus affecting the schools connected with them. Free schools existed in Holland to some extent before 1609, the year in which the Pilgrims went to Leyden, but as Martin says, "These Dutch elementary schools . . . resemble in all essential particulars the... . . schools of England,"1 and as to the school established by the Dutch in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1633, he says, "it has never been a public school in the Boston sense," but has always been a school for the Dutch Reformed Church. In Scotland, however, in this same year, 1633, "a parliamentary enactment directed that a school should be established in every parish, and that the lands be assessed for the purpose. But it remained for America to establish a compulsory universal common school education, supported by taxation, for all children. The whole world recognizes the fact that that system is distinctively an American institution and is a contribution which America has made to civilization. De Sumichrast, an English writer, truly says, "In a democratic country, where opportunities are freely extended to all, it is education which is the prime necessity. In the fact that the American people clearly perceive this lies the conviction of the ultimate development of the Nation into one of the most remarkable, if not absolutely the most remarkable, the world has ever seen." 3

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(8) Town Meeting. Local self-government can, of course, be traced back through history; in fact, to the city governments

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of ancient Greece, but there the city was the state and owed allegiance to no one. The town meeting of New England was an institution which the New Englander carried with him wherever he went. It prevails today throughout the North. It educates the people to self-government, furnishes an outlet for discontent, and keeps a vigilant eye on local officials and expenditures. Its powers are small but its educational influence is far reaching. As Emerson wrote, "The American town is the unit of the Republic, as the leaf is of botany, or one vertebra is of the skeleton." 1 Henry Cabot Lodge says, "The State might fall to pieces, and the towns would still supply all the wants of everyday governOn the towns rested the whole political structure, and from them came the capacity for practical self-government, the readiness for federation, and the keen sense of local rights. Among all the institutions of the Puritans the town government is preeminent, not only as a distinctive mark, but for its strength, usefulness, intrinsic sense, and political importance." 2 The town meeting is a New England institution, free from city, state, and federal centralization of power. Sturdily it holds its way. It asks no favors and grants none. Formerly it was the center of power. It no longer is that, but its spirit still lives in demanding home rule for states, cities, counties, towns, and school districts. In cities the town meeting has been displaced by political parties, but the old town meeting spirit of home rule survives. It is an American institution.

(9) Separation of the Church from the State. Hildreth says that in Rhode Island in 1647, "Freedom of faith and worship was assured to all the first formal and legal establishment of religious liberty ever promulgated, whether in America or Europe." Long says of Rhode Island, "It guaranteed religious liberty in the words 'none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine.' It was further provided 'all and every person and persons may freely and fully have and enjoy his . . . own judgment and consciences in matters of religious concernment.'

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To the rulers of Rhode Island belongs the full credit for instituting a government in which there should be absolute freedom of religious thought and action, but priority is due Maryland, where a few years anterior to 1641, but unknown in Rhode Island, religious liberty had been established. But in Maryland there were limitations on its exercise, while in Rhode Island there were none." The toleration in Maryland to which Long refers was toleration under the administration of Lord Baltimore and not by a fixed law. It was not until 1649 that the famous Maryland toleration act was enacted.?

Religious toleration is one thing; entire separation of church from state — in other words, religious equality — another thing. In Providence, as Professor Harlow says, "there was no established church, and consequently no compulsory attendance, and no forced contributions for church support."3 This is now so well established and so universally accepted throughout the United States that it is difficult to appreciate that it was a burning issue at the time of the Revolution. In 1770 nine of the colonies had an established church, i.e. a church supported by general taxation. The Episcopal was so sustained in New York, Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. The Congregationalist in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. In New Jersey the Episcopal church was by order of the King in 1702 made the established church, but the Assembly steadfastly refused any grant and so it was not much of an establishment. In Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Delaware entire religious equality prevailed. In all the Colonies the Congregationalists had 658 congregations, the Presbyterians 543, while the Episcopalians had only 480.5 The whole world practically considered it proper and necessary that there be a recognized, established church of some kind, supported in part at least by the state. America broke away from this and gave complete religious liberty. An amendment in 1791 to the federal constitution forbade the United States making any "law respecting

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