This is still more apparent when we pass from the towns to the country. There the cost frequently falls below 10_s._ a head. The children educated in these schools are those of the proprietors of the land, but who cultivate it themselves as well as own it. Are the children of this class, in any part of the world, educated for so small a number of shillings a year? Why, in New York you have to pay as much for a pair of gloves, and more for a bottle of wine. In Illinois, one of the richest States in the Union, and whose population is probably better off than any equal number of people in any other country, the average cost for the children of the whole State is little more than this 10_s._ a head. And in Massachusetts, the State in which attention has been most carefully and for the longest time directed to the subject, and where everything is done that is thought necessary, the average for the town and country children actually at school is only 25_s._ The fact is simply this. The rural population in America is the most homogeneous in the world. It is composed entirely of farmers, and of their sons and brothers who are the professional men and tradesmen of the district. Landlordism and tithes are unknown: so there is no one above the farmer-proprietor, and from New York to San Francisco there is no such class as our agricultural labourer, and so there is no one below the farmer. Now, how can a number of families of this kind, who are all completely on a footing of social equality, and also, if the word may be allowed to pass, pretty nearly of possessive equality, best educate their children? In a new country there are no foundation schools and few private ones—that is to say, to all practical purposes, no schools at all. There is, therefore, but one way of getting what they want—that is, by establishing schools of their own; and this can only be done by taxing themselves. There is no great sagacity shown in seeing this; and, as a matter of fact, everyone in America sees it. It is not seen more clearly in Massachusetts than it is in Ohio, or in Ohio than in California, or in California than in Colorado. I understood, indeed, that the schools of California (I had no opportunity of examining them myself) are the best in the Union; and the statement is not incredible, for the Californians are a people who will have nothing that is second-rate. One can hardly get now at any price a real Havana cigar in London or Paris, because the people of San Francisco will always pay the best price for the best thing. And in the territory, for it is not yet the State of Colorado, in the mountains, at Denver, and on the plains, two thousand miles away from Massachusetts, I saw the common-school system at work, in places where Judge Lynch is still the guardian of society in its infancy. No motive of patriotism or philanthropy can act in this universal and unfailing way. It can only be done by all, and in the same way by all, because