INAUGURAL ADDRESS. By JOHN HANCOCK.......
PROCEEDINGS OF STATE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION..

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School Days of Eminent Men-Child's Book of Natural History............... 254 OUR ADVERTISING PAGES..........

A WORD TO AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS.......

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THIS INSTITUTION-situated as it is in a very retired portion of the beau tiful Forest City, with extensive and beautifully shaded Grounds, a new and spacious Edifice, elegantly furnished and finished, abundantly supplied in all its parts with PURE SPRING WATER, an extensive collection of Apparatus, and a large corps of

EXPERIENCED AND SUCCESSFUL INSTRUCTORS, affords advantages not surpassed, if equaled, in any institution in the country. It combines all the advantages of both city and country, with few of the disadvantages of either.

Next Term commences Thursday, September 6th, 1860, and continues Twenty Weeks.

Board and Tuition in English and Classical Courses $100 per Term, payable

in advance.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION: Let me congratulate you on the happy circumstances under which, after another year's labors, so many of us have been again permitted to assemble for counsel, and for social intercourse.

Permit me, at the opening of the few remarks I may have to make, to return to you my sincere thanks for the high mark of your approval and the honor you have done me in placing me in the position I am to occupy during the present session: and not only for this mark of your regard, but for the many others I have reccived from you during my connection with this Association.

Let me also express the hope that this meeting of the Association—the last at which I shall ever probably preside-may not be inferior to its predecessors in interest, and in its contributions to the progress of our cause; but rather may be remembered by every friend of popular education, as one in which flagging interests and dormant energies were aroused, and in which wise counsels prevailed.

To this end it shall be my endeavor, in all the deliberations of this Convention, to enforce, so far as I understand them, the par* President of the State Teachers' Association, and Principal of the First Intermediate School, Cincinnati.

liamentary rules, divested, of course, of all those formalities which seem to have been invented to enable a factious minority to thwart the will of the majority, and to retard business. In this endeavor, I trust I shall have the hearty concurrence and assistance of every member of the Association, for I am convinced that it is only by a rigid adherence to parliamentary usage that perfect fairness may be secured to all parties.

And shall I be deemed presumptuous, if I express the hope that we shall find among us none of those who, like the messenger in Bible story, shall be found running, having no tidings ready; nor yet many of them who seem to be possessed by what may be termed a demon of resolutions, and whose special mission it seems to be to offer resolves in deliberate assemblies, and to consume valuable time in making speeches thereon, looking to no determinate action, and embodying only the baldest and stalest common-places.

I believe I but speak the unanimous voice of the Association, in saying that we desire the freest and fullest discussion of every topic worthy of discussion which may come up; but at the same time desire that there may be no long-winded speeches; that the speaking may be spirited, prompt, sharp, and go directly to the heart of the subject, while it shall be characterized by a courtesy devoid of bitterness and personalities.

Carlyle has somewhere said: "Not what I have, but what I can do, is my kingdom." Had he asserted the kingdom to be not what we can do, but what we have to do, the teachers of our State might justly claim a very ample heritage. The stone which we had with so much labor rolled up the mountain side is beginning to return upon us, and our work is partly to be done over again.

The short-sighted and illiberal policy of our Legislature last winter, in repealing the Library law, backed, I am grieved to say, by a few of our newspapers, can not but be a profound regret to every friend of progress.

source of

There is rapidly developing amongst us a taste for reading, and it is a matter of no little importance that this taste should be directed in the proper channel; that it should be fed with proper food, and not with poison. Free libraries will furnish the former -our thousands of flash newspapers the latter.

The question resolves into this: Shall we have purity and no

bleness cultivated among our people, or that impurity and recklessness that convert men into brutes? One of these we must have. Our legislators have chosen; shall we will the peopleabide by this choice? I trust not. Let the just indignation of the people fall upon and consume them. "Let them be remem

bered at the polls."

For my own part I shall ever look upon free books as the means next in importance to the free schools in the cultivation of the popular mind; and I shall always speak and labor for them with whatever of ability I may possess. The liberal policy would have been to amend the law in those points in which it was defective, not to destroy it.

The development of the natural resources of our State is, of course, of the first importance. But is that any reason that the minds of our people shall, mole-like, burrow in the earth they cultivate? Shall the feverish desire for wealth increase in a geometrical ratio with the facilities for its acquisition? Such seems to have been the case for the last few years; yet it ought not to be so. Nobler culture and purer tastes should go hand in hand with increased wealth. A liberal expenditure by the State to secure these, is the truest economy; yet we hear from many steadfast friends of free schools cautious warnings in regard to levying taxes to sustain them, lest the people should rebel. For myself, I now have, as I have always had, a better opinion of our people. These foreboding friends of the schools are deceived; what opposition there may be to taxes for this purpose, comes not from the people at large, but is the sniffling cant of professed politicians, whose sole aim is, by a kind of plausible demagogueism, to advance their own selfish interests. It would be well, could we return to the Grecian system, (for which I have a profound admiration,) and ortracise these demagogues. Among us, these pests to society seem to be cat-lived. Having killed them in one place by a most decided popular vote, and buried them deep beneath public contempt, yet they are sure to turn up somewhere else, just in time to prove the bane of some good cause.

If the State shall determine to pursue a starving, miserly economy towards our public schools, let it save all by abolishing them altogether, and abandon education to private enterprise. Let not the people be mocked by a show of culture without its substance.

We hold it to be self-evident that the great masses in every nation, and under every form of government, must be educated by a system of public instruction, or not at all. And were our legislators to suspend the operations of our schools but for a single year, they would learn the views of the people in most unmistakeable terms. The mass of our people bear the lot of poverty and toil that falls to them, not without grumbling, it may be, yet without violent outbreak; but inaugurate any system looking towards a withdrawal of those facilities for education, that in some sort, place all men on a common level, depriving them of the hope of ever rising to a better condition, and reducing them to a condition of serf-bondage, and, unless we much mistake their temper, you would raise a storm of indignation that would sweep from the management of affairs both pettifogging statesmen and pettifogging notions of public policy. Education has already raised a spirit among the people that no exorcism of politicians can ever lay. Our schools must then go on, and the questions we are here to consider are as to the best means of making them more effective and more worthy the public confidence and regard.

Time was when this Association was a power in the State for good. I see around me to-day the warriors who, in its earlier days, fought hard battles and won great victories. As in time of a sudden invasion by an enemy, the veterans of former wars, who have long rested in the shade of the olive tree, arise, gird themselves and go forth to battle, so we may expect to see again our veterans buckle on their armor and take the field.

There seems to be a conviction among the most earnest and best informed of our educators that we have about reached that point when it will be necessary to go over the whole field of educational controversy; and, although we have no more doubt of the final result than we have of the ultimate triumph of truth over error, yet the attainment of this result, by our indifference and inaction, may be long retarded; and we can not, humanity can not afford to wait. The field is whitening for the harvest and reapers are called for.

This meeting of our Association has been looked to as the pivotpoint in its history, and the question has been anxiously and frequently asked as to what was to be done at it. The Chairman of the Executive Committee has made such provision as warrants the ex