The grand reason is, the _selfish apathy_ of the educated classes, and the _stupid apathy_ of those who are too ignorant to appreciate an education for their children. In those states where no school system is established by law, the intelligent and wealthy content themselves with securing a good education for their own children, and care nothing for the rest. When any project, therefore, is presented for obtaining a good school system, the rich and intelligent do not wish to be taxed for the children of others, and the rest do not care whether their children are educated or not, or else are too poor to pay the expense. In those states where a school system is established, parents of intelligence and moral worth, seeing the neglected state of the common school, withdraw their children to private schools. And feeling no interest in schools which they do not patronise, they pass them with utter neglect. And thus, neither rich, nor poor care enough to be willing to be taxed for their elevation and improvement. Thus, too, it has come to pass, that while every intelligent man in the Union is reading, and hearing, and saying, every day of his life, that unless our children are trained to virtue and intelligence, the nation is ruined, yet there is nothing else for which so little interest is felt, or so little done. Look, now, to that great body of intelligent and benevolent persons, who are interesting themselves for patriotic and religious enterprises. We see them sustaining great organizations, and supporting men to devote their whole time to promote these several enterprises, which draw thousands and hundreds of thousands from the public for their support. There is one organization, to send missionaries to the heathen and to educate heathen children, with its six or eight paid officers, devoting their whole time to the object. Then there is another to furnish the Bible, and another to distribute tracts, and another to educate young men to become ministers, and another to send out home missionaries, and another to sustain Western colleges, and another to promote temperance, and another to promote the observance of the Sabbath. Then we have an association to take care of sailors, and another to promote the comfort and improvement of convicts in prisons and penitentiaries, and another to relieve and ransom the slave, and another to colonize the free coloured race. All these objects are promoted by having men sustained by voluntary contributions, who spend their whole time in urging the claims of these various objects on the public mind, while almost all have a regular periodical to advocate their cause. But our two millions of little children, who are growing up in heathenish darkness, enchained in ignorance, and in many cases, where the cold law professes to provide for them, enduring distress of body and mind even greater than is inflicted on criminals in our prisons, where is the