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SEQUEL 
 
 SO CALLED CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 BETWEEN THE 
 
 Rev. M. H. SMITH and HORACE MANN, 
 
 SURREPTITIOUSLY PUBLISHED 
 
 BY 
 
 Mr. SMITH; 
 
 CONTAINING A / 
 
 LETTER FROM MR. MANN, 
 
 SUPPRESSED BY MR. SMITH, 
 
 WITH THE 
 
 REPLY THEREIN PROMISED. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WILLIAM B. FOWLE, 138^ WASHINGTON STREET. 
 TUTTLE AND DENNETT, PRINTERS, 
 
 c^ 1847. 
 
MR. MANN'S REPLY 
 
 Rev. M. H. SMITH 
 
 Rev. M. H. Smith;— 
 
 Dear Sir; — When, on the 19th of October last, I addressed you 
 a note privately, I had no anticipation of ever doing so, publicly. 
 You have forced this painful necessity upon me. 
 
 I had then just seen, in the Boston Recorder of Oct. 15, a re- 
 port of " A Sermon" twice delivered by you, in Boston, — once in 
 Faneuil Hall, and once in your own pulpit. In that Sermon, the 
 Massachusetts Board of Education were charged with the gravest 
 offences against morals and religion. The Board then consisted of 
 His Excellency, Governor Briggs, His Honor, Lieut. Governor Reed, 
 Hon. Wm. G. Bates, Rev. Dr. Humphrey, J. W. James, Esq., 
 Prof B. Sears, Rev. E. H. Chapin, Rev. H. B. Hooker, and Hon. 
 S. C. Phillips, — three of the nine being eminent Orthodox clertry- 
 men, and three others, members of Orthodox societies. These gen- 
 tlemen, — these ornaments to learning and religion, — were charged 
 by you with aiding, in their combined and collective capacity, to get 
 the Bible out of our Common Schools ; to get all religious instruction 
 out of them ; to remove all restraints from the depraved passions 
 of scholars, " but a little talk ;" and, by the anti-religious, or non- 
 religious instruction encouraged by them in the Common Schools, 
 to neutralize the religious instruction which pious parents and teach- 
 ers might give at home, or in the Sabbath School. I was repre- 
 sented as the chief actor in this diabolical work; they, as my aiders 
 and abettors. This atheistical work, — for the e.xckision of all reli- 
 gion is atheism, — was not in prospect, in intention, merely. Accord- 
 ing to you, it had, in pari, been already perpetrated. 
 
Without making me a partner in their guilt, you further charged 
 the Board of Education with inculcating deadly heresy upon the 
 minds of the young, and luring them, under the guise of attractive 
 books, to temporal and eternal death ; — opening, in the thousands of 
 school districts in the State, a gate-wny to he'll, and strewing with 
 flowers the paths that led to it. In the whole account, there was not 
 a syllable to soften or to palliate our fiendish purpose. The Board 
 and myself were not treated as idiots or madmen, sportively scatter- 
 ing our " firebrands, arrows and death," and irresponsible, because 
 irrational . We were spoken of as sober men, knowing what we were 
 about, and, of course, foreseeing the consequences of our conduct. 
 
 Nor was this concentration of iniquities the result of any rash or 
 unfortunate movement, — of any of those mistakes or missteps which 
 wise men may sometimes make. 
 
 The Massachusetts Board of Education has existed for ten years. 
 It has proposed important measures, which, by the co-operation 
 of ten successive Legislatures, by the aid of thousands of school 
 committee men, and other thousands of the wisest friends of educa- 
 tion and truest lovers of their race, — of all parties and all creeds, — 
 have been carried forward into practice. Four of the New England 
 States, having been spectators of our movements, have, at length, 
 through their Legislators, copied the leading features of our system ; 
 and most particularly have they favored the one to which you most 
 particularly object. W^hat the Board have done, therefore, they have 
 not done in a corner. Their acts have been known in other places. 
 They have been imitated by the most intelligent States in the coun- 
 try. They must, of course, have been approved by them. The 
 humble individual whom the Board have honored with their confi- 
 dence, has been on the most intimate terms with the several mem- 
 bers, both officially and personally. He has made numerous reports 
 to their body, deliberated at their sessions, corresponded with them 
 frequently, and delivered hundreds of addresses, when they, or some 
 of them were present. They cannot plead ignorance of his purpo- 
 ses, nor he of theirs. If, instead of doing what we can to sustain 
 and to brighten the fair fame of Massachusetts, we, — worse than the 
 Moloch of the Ammonites, — are dooming not only the bodies, but the 
 souls, of children to perdition, we are doing it wittingly and of mal- 
 ice aforethought. Indeed, this is the view you took of us, in order 
 to fill up the measure of our guilt. 
 
It was in this condition of things that you, — the Rev. M. H. Smith, — 
 after having been, by your own confession, blindly wandering from 
 ti-uth, through almost all the years of your past life, and leading souls, 
 — (the powers above and below only know how many,) — into what 
 you now call a damnable heresy ; — that you, claiming, at last, to have 
 had your eyes miraculously opened, but as yet, like the blind man 
 m the gospel, only seeing men as trees walking, — burst upon the 
 world with your astounding revelations ! 
 
 The occasion of which you availed yourself was an aggravation of 
 your conduct. Some developments had been made in regard to 
 the morals of the city of Boston. The young were thought to 
 be in peculiar jeopardy. A general alarm was sounded. Large 
 meetings were held. The beautiful sight was exhibited of a union 
 of all the Sabbath School teachers of all denominations, to save the 
 lambs of their different folds from the common prowler, I supposed 
 I felt as deep an interest in this movement as you or any other per- 
 son could do. At one of the meetings I was invited to preside, by 
 some of the most respectable citizens of Boston, and my compliance 
 with the request was prevented only by indispensable engagements. 
 It was given out that you were to discourse upon this exciting topic, 
 in which all good citizens had an equal interest. Crowds assem- 
 bled, without any reference to political or denominational distinc- 
 tions. You seized this opportunity. You collected together all the 
 crimes known to society, and called out, by name, the classes of 
 men at whose door you laid them. The following are the leading 
 points of your assertions; — I do not exaggerate their spirit, but only 
 abbreviate their language : — Boys and girls belonging to the Boston 
 public schools, had an assignation-house, furnished with'all that pan- 
 ders to base and wicked passions, where both sexes met at night. 
 Obscene French prints wei-e circulated in school. Little school- 
 girls, having turned bawd-mothers, corrupted their associates. In 
 the best schools in the city, licentiousness abounded. The Washing- 
 tonians, and not the rumsellers, caused the increase of intemperance. 
 The professed friends of prisoners stimulated crimes, and so forth, 
 and so forth. But the highest of all offences, known to the laws of 
 God, or among the ethics of men, you hurled at the Board of Educa- 
 tion, and at me, and said — These are yours ! It is three months 
 since you said these things. Had they been true, Boston, ere this, 
 would have been a Sodom. 
 
Had you called the members of the Board of Education and my- 
 self a knot of pickpockets and sheepstealers, I do not think that any 
 of us could have been taken more by surprise at the charge, or could 
 have denied it, and defied you to prove it, with more conscious inns- 
 cence ; or, in relation to the Board, at least, that such a charge 
 would have been more incompatible with the whole of their lives. 
 
 When I first saw your sermon, so called, I said, as I have no 
 doubt hundreds of others did, — \Vho is the Reverend Matthew Hale 
 Smith ? Who is he, whose perspicacious eye sees what the other 
 watchmen of the city have failed to discover ? Where, for ten 
 years, have been the Sharps, the Jenkses, the Blagdens, the Wins- 
 lows, the Beechers, and others ? In the language of the prophet, 
 are they " blind watchmen ?" — are they " all dumb dogs that cannot 
 bark ; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber ?" Your sermon 
 accuses them of this, as plainly, if not as indecently, as it accuses 
 the Board and myself of getting the Bible out of the schools. 
 
 In that part of your pamphlet, which, as I shall presently show, 
 you untruly call the " Correspondence" between yourself and me, 
 you accuse me of a want of good taste. Waiving for a moment the 
 falsity of your accusations, allow me to ask you if it is in good taste 
 for a young clergyman, in his sermon, to call out and denounce indi- 
 viduals by name, or by any such special designation as identifies 
 them to the audience. Where the accused cannot answer, it is held 
 dishonorable to attack. Those cjergyman who desecrate their pul- 
 pits by indulging their malevolence, generally commit their libels in 
 their prayers. You have thrown off even this screen. In a sermon, 
 in your pulpit, you charged the Board of Education and myself, with 
 the above detailed enormities. Three of us were your fellow-citi- 
 zens. Attracted by the subject, if not by the speaker, we might 
 have been members of your audience. We were not, — but some of 
 our friends and the friends of truth were ; and when they heard 
 your charges against the Board and myself, moved by sudden indig- 
 nation, they were pronounced, on the spot, and in no inaudible whis- 
 per, to be a lie ! If that response was in bad taste, what was your 
 provocation, which struck it out, as flint a spark .'' If men are to be 
 invited to church, by the attraction of an occasional discourse, on 
 a deeply interesting theme, and are there to hear themselves or their 
 friends called out by name, and denounced as guilty of the blackest 
 
crimes, will there not soon be such a chnnt in the churches as will 
 not redound either to the honor of the place or to the cure of souls ? 
 
 On reading the Recorder's account of your sermon, I could not 
 believe it to be a correct representation of any discourse ever deliv- 
 ered in the city of Boston. The uncouth title, resembling those 
 tricky devices by which low hucksters and pedlars attract attention 
 to their miserable wares ; the declaration positively made, that our 
 State prison would soon be full of convicts, when it is known to all 
 who lake an intelligent interest in the subject of crime, that for thir- 
 tyfive years past, there have been but two years in which the com- 
 mitments have been so few as during the last, and also that there 
 were fewer inmates in it than at any period for twenty years ; the 
 assertion that the increase of intemperance is to be attributed to 
 the Washingtonians, who, though they may not always have been 
 discreet, or judicious, (and how, from their previous education 
 and habits, could this be expected,) have yet done incalculable 
 good ; the infamous " Five-Points" character given to the Boston 
 schools ; and, worse than all, because affecting more deeply the 
 moral and religious foundations on which alone society can repose, 
 your charges against the Board of Education ; — when I saw these 
 things, my second thought was that some roaming penny-a-liner had 
 dropped in to hear you, and supposing the Boston Recorder to be 
 always ready to accept any thing, however unjust or untrue, against 
 the Board or myself, had dressed up your sermon, after the style of 
 a criminal romance, and had sent it to that paper. 
 
 Hence my first note to you was one of inquiry, not of accusation. 
 I expressed my reluctance to believe that you had been correctly 
 reported. That you might know how zealous the Board had been 
 on the subject of introducing the Bible into our schools, I sent you 
 a copy of their Eighth Report, which contains the ablest argument 
 in favor of its use, to be found in the English language. I sent it 
 to you as I had reprinted it in the Common School Journal, that you 
 might see what I had done to give it circulation, and to promote its 
 object. I closed by saying that the charges in the Recorder ought 
 either to be substantiated or withdrawn. This letter bore date Oct. 
 19th, 1846. 
 
 In your reply, you neither withdrew, nor attempted to prove. 
 You aggravated the case. ' You made the most cruel and unfound- 
 
8 
 
 ed suggestions. You said " I regard you as the representative of 
 a system, or its head, which seeks to change, slowly, perhaps, but 
 surely, the whole system of Education in Common Schools, — the 
 result of which, will be to elevate the intellectual above the moral, 
 and man above God." You said, " I understand you to be opposed 
 to the use of the Bible in school, as a school book." Having be- 
 fore represented me as being in favor of aholishing the rod, you 
 now asked, " Are you in favor of the use of the rod as a principle 
 means of enforcing obedience .''" " I understand you to be opposed 
 to religious instruction in schools," and so forth. This letter was 
 dated October 27th. 
 
 All this seemed to be wholly repugnant to high minded and hon- 
 orable conduct. I then addressed you my letter of Nov. 9th, com- 
 plaining that you had left your original charges without a particle of 
 proof, and without that retraction which should have followed the fail- 
 ure of proof. 
 
 More than six weeks after this, namely, on the 23d of Dec, I re- 
 ceived the long communication, which you have since published in 
 your pamphlet, under the title of " Reply." 
 
 On the next day, I acknowledged its receipt, and immediately 
 placed the letter in the post office, with my own hands. The fol- 
 lowing is a copy of the letter I sent you : — 
 
 West Newton, Dec. 24th, 1S46. 
 Rev. M. H. Smith ; 
 
 Dear Sir ; — I received, late last evening, by express, your long communi- 
 cation of the 23d inst. — if I rightly read the date, which is not very legible. 
 I am now engaged in getting out the Annual Report of the Board of Educa- 
 tion, — which includes my own, — and shall continue to be engaged with this 
 and other work of an indispensable nature, until about the end of the second 
 week in January next. This work occupies me at least fifteen hours a day, 
 and will continue to do so. I regret this unavoidable delay in attending to 
 your communication. I ran my eye over it last night, enough to see its plan 
 and to learn its salient points ; and I assure you that I shall not allow what 
 seems to me to be such a compact tissue of evasion, misstatement and un- 
 warrantable inference, to remain unanswered for a single day longer than 
 other engagements compel me to do. 
 
 Very truly, yours, &c. &c. HORACE MANN.* 
 
 Just one fortnight from the date of the above note, namely on 
 the 6th of January, I found your pamphlet on the counter of a 
 
 ♦Owing to the great length of the Board's Report, it was not out until Jan. 22d. 
 
bookstore in Boston, exposed for sale. One part of it is entitled, 
 *' Correspondence between the Hon. Horace Mann, Sec. of the Board 
 of Education, and Rev. Matthew Hale Smith," I complain that 
 this title is false, in form and substance. Your pamphlet does not 
 contain the correspondence between yourself and me, but only a 
 part of it. An integral portion of what was written is suppressed, 
 and you were apprized of my intention to reply to your last letter. I 
 stated to you the causes which made a brief delay, on my part, una- 
 voidable. Were they not reasonable ones ? It was more than six 
 weeks from the time I wrote you, on Nov. 9th, before I received 
 your reply. Why not allow me a reasonable time to prepare mine? 
 Was it just, fair, decent even, for you to precipitate the publication, 
 and thus forestall public opinion ? Look at the case. You denounce 
 me before the public for one of the most heinous sins which it is possi- 
 ble for a man to commit. Instead of recrimination as public as your 
 crimination, I approached you privately, to ask whether you did it, 
 and why you did it; and I sent you evidence of your error. You 
 answered me with cool, sullen aggravation. I expostulated further, 
 showing you that, instead of inquiring, and then condemning, you 
 had condemned and then inquired. You waited six weeks, and 
 more. From your foot-prints, it seems that, during this interval, 
 you travelled through all my writings to find cause of accusation 
 against me. In your " Reply," you have tcrlured my language, to 
 make it mean what I never said. As editor of the Common School 
 Journal, I once had an animated discussion with a correspondent on 
 the subject of corporal punishment ; — he being against its use, and 
 I defending it. I followed his arguments with my own, on the same 
 page, and veliemently protested against them. You have taken his 
 remarks, ascribed them to me, and expunged my protest. You 
 have attributed to me what was said in this country when I was in 
 Europe, and of which I \vas as ignorant as an unborn child. You 
 have drawn out and misrepresented conversations, as strictly entitled 
 to the right of privacy as any thing can be, said out of a man's own 
 bed-chamber. Without waiting a reasonable time, — without wait- 
 ing at all, — for my vindication, you have hurried this case before 
 the public, suppressing my last letter, giving no hint, by note or 
 otherwise, that I had aught further to say. 
 
 When your pamphlet appeared, it was understood to contain the 
 X 2 
 
10 
 
 whole correspondence between us. Many people formed their 
 judgments accordingly. Those judgments have been communicated 
 through private circles and published in the press. 
 
 Put this case, Mr Smith, in the light least unfavorable to yourself. 
 Suppose we were litigants before a court, not in a case involving life, 
 but character, which is more than life. Suppose copies of all the 
 documents, — the accusation, plea, answer, cSjc, to be in possession 
 of us both. At a point in the investigation, where you deem the 
 aspect of the evidence most favorable to yourself, though it is known 
 to you at the same time that I am about to reply further, you gather 
 together the papers, hasten to the court, represent the argument as 
 closed, and claim a decision in your favor, and a sentence of con- 
 demnation against me. You are guilty of all this. 
 
 I now demand that the case be reopened. If we are not in Bota- 
 ny Bay, — if we are not in a place worse than Botany Bay, — I think 
 it will be reopened. 
 
 But this is not all. You call your publication " Correspondence," 
 &c. What constitutes a correspondence ? I answer, it must include 
 the attendant circumstances, as well as the main facts. Among these 
 circumstances is that of time. The date of an instrument or a 
 letter, is an essential part of it, — oftentimes it is the only part which 
 gives relevancy and force, or takes them away. All the letters which 
 passed between us had a date. In what you call the " Correspond- 
 ence," you have given the date to all but one. That one is your 
 last. From this, in publishing it, you have stricken the date. 
 Hence the dates which appear in your pamphlet carry the reader 
 far back into the last autumn. An inquiring reader asks, when 
 the " Correspondence," took place. The last date that appears 
 on the face of it is Nov. 9th. He, therefore, says, " from the 
 first part of November to the first part of January is surely long 
 enough for any man to reply — who can reply. Hence Mr. Mann 
 must have abandoned his case." Such is the inference which every 
 intelligent man would draw from the case, as your acts have repre- 
 sented it. Such is the inference which many men did draw, but it 
 is a false inference. Your trick of suppressing my last letter and 
 the date of your own, caused the public to be deceived. 
 
 The obliteration or alteration of a date, Mr. Smith, in a court of 
 law, is forgery. In this case, you have done what is equivalent to 
 both. The only difference is, that your acts affect no pecuniary 
 
11 
 
 interest before a court of law ; but morally they are the same 
 Had you committed this offence before a legal tribunal, in a case 
 where but one shilling had been at stake, your prediction about the 
 State Prison's being full, would have been one degree less untrue 
 than it now is. 
 
 Will you hear me ore moment longer on this point, Mr Smith ? 
 You had no moral or legal right to publish my letters, without my 
 consent. They were private property, — my property, — by the laws 
 of the land ; neither youi's, nor that of the public. It is true they do 
 not contain a syllable which I am unwilling the world should see, 
 if seen in its proper connection ; but this does not exculpate you. 
 Had I supposed it possible that you could be guilty of such a flagrant 
 breach of duty, I could have applied to the courts, and they would 
 have enjoined you to desist. If you were not restrained by any 
 natural conscience, they would have been a vicarious conscience to 
 you. They might not have been able to reform your will, but they 
 would have restrained your hand. 
 
 A few days after my note to you, of tne 24th December, a gentle- 
 man in Boston, who, it seems, knew you far better than I did, told 
 me you were engaged in publishing a pamphlet, in which the matters 
 in controversy between us were to appear. I replied immediately, 
 that I had but just received your letter, (that of Dec. 23d, whose 
 date you have suppressed,) and that I had notified you of my inten- 
 tion to answer it ; and then added, " It is impossible that Mr. Smith 
 should have the baseness to publish our letters until he has received 
 my reply to his last." This is the language, in which I repelled an 
 intimation so dishonorable to you. I did not believe it possible for 
 any man, in your position, to do a thing so vile. Alas ! you have 
 confuted my charity. One of your standing charges against me is, 
 that I think too well of human nature. If I do not modify my 
 opinion after this, it will not be your fault. 
 
 I found your pamphlet, on the 6th day of January instant, — the 
 day of the assembling of the General Court, among whose members, 
 I have been told, it has been extensively and gratuitously distributed. 
 
 To this I now address myself. Its nature will be found worthy of 
 the manner in which it was born. 
 
 The first part is a republication of your sermon, from the Recorder. 
 That sermon has now had. a pretty extensive circulation. Twice de- 
 livered in Boston ; printed in the Recorder and distributed to all its 
 
12 
 
 subscribers, (and, as I have heard, on good authority, with some 
 hundreds of extra copies ;) and now printed in a pamphlet form and 
 strown abroad ; — if all its leading averments are untrue, as I think I 
 shall demonstrate, it has surely been a wholesale way of bearing 
 false witness against your neighbor. 
 
 The second part is called, " Review of the Sermon, in the Boston 
 Courier, Oct. 27, 1846, by Wm. B. Fowle, Publisher of the Massa- 
 chusetts ' Common School Journal.' " This " Review" you have 
 prefaced by a note of a dozen lines, containing two positive mis- 
 statements of fact. In the first, you call Mr. Fowle the " co-asso- 
 ciate," in the Journal, with me. Mr. Fowle neither is nor ever has 
 been my " co-associate" in the Journal, any more than the publish- 
 ers of your pamphlet are your colleagues in the pastoral care of 
 your church. Mr. Fowle has never written half a dozen articles 
 for the Journal, during the eight years of its existence ; — not one 
 of these articles relates to any point of which you complain, and the 
 longest was on the discussion of an educational point, upon which 
 we differed, and where I agreed to admit his views, reserving the 
 right to reply to them. 
 
 Your other misstatement is, that Mr. Fowle's " Review" was 
 "semi-official," First, the Journal is not itself official. The Board 
 had several times referred to it, and commended it, but, at the same 
 time, they have disclaimed all control over it, or responsibility for 
 it. Now, when the Journal itself is not official, how an article on 
 your sermon, in the Boston Courier, can be " semi-official," trans- 
 cends my knowledge of Fractions ; — but as your object, in these two 
 misstatements, doubtless was to connect me, in some way with that 
 " Review," or that " Review" with me, I will state, that I was absent 
 from the city, attending Teacher's Institutes, at the time of its 
 appearance, knew nothing of it, and never saw it until weeks after- 
 wards, when, hearing of its existence from another source, I looked 
 it up, and then read it for the first time. I will only add, that I 
 have since heard some of your denominational friends say that the 
 " Review," so far as it went, did you good justice. 
 
 The third portion of your pamphlet is entitled " Strictures on the 
 sectarian character of the Common School Journal," &c. " By a 
 member of the Board of Education." 
 
 In these three lines, 1 notice but one positive misstatement of fact ; 
 but it is an exceedingly gross one. 
 
13 
 
 On this point, however, before 1 correct you, I must correct 
 myself. 
 
 Ill October last, I copied into the Journal Doct. Howe's report 
 on that interesting girl, Laura Bridgman. That Report contains 
 the following sentiment : '' Almost ail children are as pure as Eve 
 was ; but the tempting apples are left hanging so thickly around, 
 that it would be a marvel if they did not eat." This was excepted to by 
 the Rev. Dr. Humphrey, in the N. E. Puritan, as out of place in a 
 Journal, intended for circulation among all religious denominations, 
 and, therefore, to be kept aloof from "any controverted theological 
 point." In this view I fully concur. I do not believe in the sentiment 
 myself; and, if I did, I would not insert it in the Journal, without 
 some protest or explanation. I now disavow it. I would have readily 
 disavowed it at the time, had it been brought to my notice. I have 
 prepared an article for the Journal disavowing it there. Its original 
 insertion was an oversight. The article in the Puritan escaped me, 
 and I was ignorant of the existence of the objectionable passage, 
 until I saw it in the pamphlet. Since then, it has caused me great 
 regret ; and, if I cannot justify myself, I can at least explain the 
 circumstances which led to the error. The truth is, I read Doct. 
 Howe's report, soon after its appearance, — that is, early in the year. 
 For six weeks or more, in the months of September, October and 
 November last, I was almost continually absent attending Teachers' 
 Institutes, in different parts of the State, teaching during the day, 
 lecturing at least half the evenings, and being obliged to prepare 
 matter for the Journal, and to attend to a very extensive correspond- 
 ence during the night. Under these circumstances, 1 took up Doct. 
 Howe's Report, and, recollecting its highly interesting character, 
 sent it to the printers without reperusal. The proof of these par- 
 ticular lines must have been either very carelessly read, or, what is 
 perhaps more probable, must have escaped being read at all, amid 
 the cares and engagements which often obliged me to take up the 
 sheets and lay them down several times, before the reading could 
 be completed. The sentiment was not mine. It was not the senti- 
 ment of a correspondent, writing for the Journal. May 1 not be 
 pardoned for once being asleep ? " Aliquando bonus dormitat 
 Homerus.'''' 
 
 But you, Mr Smith, could not have been asleep, when you made 
 your misstatement. It required faculties alive, active, and inventive. 
 
14 
 
 The " Strictures" you quote, were upon a single three-line passage, in 
 a publication now extending to eight octavo volumes. Dr. Humph- 
 rey referred to this one passage. He alluded to no other sentence 
 in all its more than three thousand pages. By fair implication and 
 inference, therefore, he acquitted all the rest. By signing himself 
 " Watchman," and by saying that such a sentiment ought to be 
 " promptly protested against," he virtually said that he had seen 
 nothing else exceptionable in the work.- But what have your inven- 
 tive powers done ! You have entitled this, in capitals, Strictures on 
 the " Sectarian Character" of the Journal. Now, character 
 means some general, distinctioe quality, or attribute ; — something 
 that marks and distinguishes a man, or thing, from other men or 
 things. Can any thing be more intellectually absurd than to say, 
 that a passage of three lines gives character to a work of eight vol- 
 umes, containing more than a hundred and seventy thousand lines .'' 
 But when such an absurdity is committed in order to mislead, its 
 moral quality is infinitely worse than its intellectual. 
 
 Since every word of the above was written and printed,! have re- 
 ceived the subjoined letter from Dr. Humphrey himself. Although 
 it will cause an unfortunate delay, yet I cancel some of the sheets to 
 insert it. Its perusal will show you, Mr. Smith, that that truly vener- 
 able and high-minded gentleman, on seeing the false character which 
 you had given to his article, and the " false witness" which you had 
 borne against me and against the Journal, was moved to repel your 
 unfounded imputations. 
 
 Pittsfteld, Jan. 26, 1847. 
 
 Hon. Horace Mann; — Dear Sir; — I have just received a pamphlet 
 through the Post Office, containing a correspondence between the Rev. 
 Matthew Hale Smith and yourself, touching your important relation to 
 tlie Common Schools of the State, as Secretary of the Board of Education. 
 Tlii^ pamphlet also contains some remarks, extracted from the New Eng- 
 land Puritan of Oct. 29th, on a passage in Dr. Howe's Special Report to 
 the 'IVustees of the Asylum for the Blind, upon the remarkable case of 
 Laura Bridginan, copied mto the Common School Journal of Oct. 15. 1846. 
 The sentence strongly objected to in that article, is this, — that almost all 
 children are as pure as Eve ivas. Mr Smith, I see, in his pamphlet, entitles 
 the article " Strictures on the Sectarian Character of the Common School 
 Journal, edited by the Hon. Horace Mann. By a member of tlie Board of 
 Education." 
 
 I am told that Mr Smith, (in conversation,) names me as the author of the 
 article; by what authority, I am not informed. Now, my dear sir, as you 
 will niiuirally be anxious'to know the exact truth in the premises, I frankly 
 confess to you, that I wrote the article. But I do assure you, I never 
 dreamed that any such use would be made of it; and much less, that any 
 
15 
 
 body would think of entitlinof it " Strictures upon the sectarian character of 
 the Common School Journal." Nothing was further from my thoughts. 
 So far as I recollect, I had never noticed anything before in the Journal, of 
 a sectarian character. My attention was confined, and my remarks were 
 intended exclusively to apply, to the nuujber before me, and to the single 
 quotation which I made from Dr. Howe's Report. 
 
 I confess, I was very sorry to see that such a sentiment had found its 
 way into the Common School Journal, bolh on its own account, and be- 
 cause I knew how unfavorably it would strike the minds of a very large 
 class of your readers. Under this impulse, I penned the article, and sent 
 it to the Puritan. Upon reflection, I think it would have been better, if I 
 had communicated my objections privately to you, as the responsible editor 
 of the Journal. 
 
 But " what is written is written" ; and I know you will not expect nor 
 allow me, as an honest man, to say anything in this exglanation, which can 
 fairly be understood as taking back the objections which were frankly and 
 honestly stated in my remarks. I view the sentiment, that " Almost all 
 children are as pure as Eve was," just as erroneous and just as much out 
 ol place in the Journal, as I did when I first saw it. 
 
 At the same time, I did not ascribe the admission of it, to the design or 
 sanction of the Editor. It must have heen an oversight; though I could 
 hardly see how it came to escape his quick and practised eye. I did not 
 believe, and do not now believe, that it was your intention to send any- 
 thing into our families, under the cover of a neutral journal, to which we 
 could justly take exception, as bearing a sectarian aspect. It must have 
 been an oversight. 
 
 And here, I feel bo(jnd in justice to yourself to add, that our relations, 
 since I became a member of the Board, have always been of the most friend- 
 ly character. And as I have myself admired, so I have everywhere borne 
 witness to your zeal and untiring industry, in the great cause to which you 
 are devoting your time and tlie maturity of your talents. 
 
 It is no new objection in Mr. Smith's pamphlet, as I presume you are 
 well aware, that you are opposed to the use of the Bible, and to the giving 
 of such religious instruction as it contains, in our Common Schools ; but 
 my answer, when I have heard it, has uniformly been, that no evidence of 
 such opposition has ever struck my mind, in listening to your annual re- 
 ports, nor in the familiar interchange of opinions in the meetings of the 
 Board ; but much to the contrary. 
 
 I have only to add, that v/ith regard to the banishment of the rod from 
 our Common Schools, I do not see how any one can charge you with stand- 
 ing between incorrigible transgressors and corporal punishment, who has 
 attentively read your remarks upon the no-punishment doctrines of a cor- 
 respondent, in the Common School Journal for May, 1841, p. 154. You 
 there say, " you are not able to discover any principle or precept, that 
 would prohibit the use of punishment in school, which, if carried out to its 
 legitimate consequences, would not also prohibit it in society." 
 
 May you receive all that wisdom from above, which you need for the 
 right discharge of your responsible duties ; and may all your efforts to ele- 
 vate the standard of popular education on the broad basis of Bible reading, 
 and sound Bible instruction, be crowned with success. 
 
 I am sincerely and truly yours, H. HUMPHREY. 
 
 I now come to that part of your pannphlet, which you have enti- 
 tled " Correspondence," &c. between yourself and me. 1 have 
 before shown that it is not what you have entitled it. A material 
 
16 
 
 letter of mine, you suppressed. An important date of yours, you 
 suppressed. Had you suppressed all the dates, the question of time 
 would have been left open, and every intelligent reader would at 
 once have inquired, when the correspondence took place, and whether 
 it was closed. But by omitting a part of the dates, and retaining the 
 rest, you made the true ones declare an untruth, — impregnated with 
 this power from your own fulness. 
 
 In deciding upon the merits of a controversy, nothing can be more 
 material than to know whether it is ended. Arguments the most 
 plausible may prove, on a deeper analysis, to be fallacious. Evi- 
 dence the most decisive, may turn out to be fabricated. Every 
 candid man asks the judicial question, " Aj^e all the arguments and 
 the evidence in V Nor is it necessary that a disputant sliould say 
 he has done. The lapse of time may say this for him. In a con- 
 troversy carried on by letters that a man can write in a day, or, at 
 most, in a week, if weeks after weeks elapse and a party makes no 
 reply, the universal and legitimate inference is, that he is silenced ; 
 that he has surrendered and sued for quarter, to save him from death, 
 or does not sue for quarter, because already dead. 
 
 Now the trick of giving all the dales up to Nov. 9th, and then sup- 
 pressing the date of your '' Reply," and suppressing my last letter 
 itself, if com.mitted in a court of law, would cause any practitioner 
 to be thrown over the bar. What it will do in the profession to 
 which you belong, remains to be seen. Should any man say in your 
 behalf, " Mr Smith could not be so silly as to venture upon a device 
 so easily exposed," — I reply, that one of the lessons I have learned 
 from an observation of men and of life, is, that there is no telling 
 beforehand what follies even an intelligent man, with a wicked pur- 
 pose in his heart, will commit. For thus saith the wise king : " The 
 way of the wicked is as darkness ; they know not at what they 
 stumble." 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 I proceed to your " Reply." On its second page, you have re- 
 stated what you call " The accusation." But the fatality of your 
 nature follows you here. You have not restated it truly. You have 
 altered its language some, iis sense more. Here, too, you have 
 suppressed what was one of the prominencies of your original charge. 
 That charge was, that an effort had been made " with some success" 
 to get the Bible out of our schools. Again ; in your restatement, — 
 
17 
 
 omitting here, too, all reference to " success" — you say, the Board 
 have aided " also to get religion out of school." Bui according to 
 your original charge, they had not only aided, " with some success," 
 to get all religious instruction out of school, but " to make Common 
 Schools a counterpoise to religious instruction at home and in Sab- 
 bath schools;" that is, if I understand you, they had aided, with 
 partial success, to make the irreligious or non-religious instruction of 
 the Common School, cancel, efface, or neutralize whatever religious 
 instruction the children might have received at home or at Sunday 
 schools. The restatement of your case, then, being spurious, I 
 recur to your first accusation. " An effort has been made" — 
 " with some success" — " to get the Bible out of our schools." " The 
 Board of Education in Massachusetts, has aided in this work." 
 What must every intelligent hearer or reader of these words under- 
 stand ? Surely no less than that the Bible, — the sacred Scriptures, — 
 the Old and Neio Testament, — King James's version of them, — had 
 been expelled, by the aid of the Board of Education, from a part, 
 at least, of our schools ; — that the Bible is, of course, now found in 
 a less proportion of our schools than it was when the Board came 
 into existence. Look at your language, Mr Smith. Can it mean 
 any thing less than this, or any thing else than this ? 
 
 But in your " Reply," this whole ground is changed. You say, 
 in substance, the Bible is a revelation from God ; it is full of 
 inspired maxims; it conta-ns laws and sanctions; it is able to 
 make men wise unto salvation ; but that I, Horace Mann, hold 
 certain erroneous notions regarding the divine authority of par- 
 ticular passages in it, and think also that it contains certain other 
 passages not suitable to be read in schools ; and therefore, though 1 
 may advocate its introduction and use in schools, to the best of my 
 ability ; nay, though I may "command a thousand copies per day 
 to be introduced into th^ schools,' yet that, on account of my errors 
 respecting the authenticity of some parts, and the propriety of reading 
 some other parts, [in a promiscuous assembly of young lads and 
 misses,] my " in^uewce" is really "against the Bible in schools." 
 This is the ground taken in your " Reply ;"— not that I am really 
 getting the Bible, — the Book itself, — out of school; but that 1 am 
 disposed to acco.mpany its introduction with su-h errors and restric- 
 tions, as will impair or defeat its salutary, its saving power. I think 
 I have here stated your present ground fairly and fully. 
 
18 
 
 Could you not then, Mr Smith, have said this, without more ? 
 I deny, on the threshold, that you had any right to say even this, and 
 I shall trouble you, by and by, with a consideration of the evidence 
 on which you have said it. *For the present, I task my imaginative 
 powers, and suppose it to be true. 
 
 But assume, for a moment, that my " influence is against the 
 Bible in schools," — as you understand it, because of my erroneous 
 notions respecting it. Standing in the Cradle of Liberty and in the 
 House of God, could you not have addressed the people somewhat 
 after this wise : " I acknowledge that Mr Mann advocates the use of 
 the Bible in schools ; has circulated, through his Journal, the ablest 
 argument in favor of it to be found in the English language ; has 
 introduced it into all schools and all Institutes wherever he has had 
 influence or control ; but still I have reason to fear and do fear, that 
 he worships the God of our fathers after the way which I call 
 heresy, and therefore, I believe his injiuence to be, really, against 
 the Bible in school, as I understand it ; and, for my single self, I would 
 as lief he would get it out of school altogether, as to get it in with 
 his heretical interpretations." 
 
 Now, had you said this, at Faneuil Hall, and at the Church of the 
 Pilgrims, would any body have understood you to affirm, what 
 every body did understand you to affirm ? 
 
 Suppose you were to say of the late Dr. Channing, that for the 
 last thirty years of his life, he never read the Bible at all, and would 
 not suffer a copy of it to be in his house ; and when called upon, 
 and, at last, driven to explain, you should say that, true enough he 
 had read the Bible, but the reading was always accompanied with 
 such false glosses and interpretations, that, the more he read it, the 
 more he did not read it, and the more copies he had in his house, 
 the more he got it out of his house. Virtually, this is the way you 
 now explain your charge against me. 
 
 The great Bible Society was organized on the principle of includ- 
 ing all denominations, who were to unite, as one man, in circulating 
 the Scriptures. Could each of these denominations say, with either 
 truth or decency, to all the rest, " You are all aiding to expel the 
 Bible from the face of the earth, because, collaterally, you are all 
 striving to have false interpretations go with it" } 
 
 Nay, Mr Smith, was not this the grand distinction between the 
 
j^ia^ 
 
 19 
 
 Catholics and Protestants ? The Catholics wished to keep the Bible 
 from the hands of the common people. The Protestants sought to 
 2;et it into their hands, and to enable them to read it. Yet the Cath- 
 olics, or some Jesuit amongst them, in writing the history of the 
 Protestants, might say, with just as much truth as you have said of 
 me, that it was one of the grand objects of Protestantism to get the 
 Bible out of all schools, and out of all men's hands. 
 
 Make a home application of your docti'ine. Nearly half the 
 school committee men in Massachusetts are clergymen. Though of 
 all denominations, yet they act. as one man in prescribing the Bible, 
 as a school book. No sooner, however, are tliose meetings dissolved 
 at which the Bible is placed on the list of school books, than they go, 
 each to his pulpit, to his Bible-class, his Sunday school, his lecture 
 room, to preach up his own peculiar views of that Book, and to 
 preach dov/n the views of his colleagues on the committee, so far as 
 they differ from him. Can each one of these say to all the rest, 
 "Your influence is against the Bible in schools." You are " aiding 
 to get the Bible out of school," because you expound it falsely .? 
 This is what yon have said of me. 
 
 Let us try your present explanation by the standard of a writer on 
 morals. Paley is not thought to be very stringent in his ethical no- 
 tions, yet hear his definition of a Lie : — " It is the wilful deceit that 
 snakes the lie ; and ive loilfully deceive when our expressions are 
 not true in the sense in tvhich we believe the hearer to understand 
 them.'''' Now, when you delivered and re-delivered, and published 
 and circulated, your "New Cart" sermon, you could not suppose 
 that your hearers and readers would understand you to affirm, that 
 the Board and myself were really aiding to get the Bible into the 
 .schools, but that I was making the work " void" and of " none ef- 
 fect," by my errors of interpretation. They could not understand 
 thus from your language ;— and, therefore, I infer you did not mean 
 to have them so understand. Now, can any case come more strictly 
 within Paley 's definition than yours } If you meant what you now 
 explain yourself to mean, you said one thing and meant its opposite. 
 
 Look at your assertions in another of their mournful aspects. 
 Surely, you knov/ the difference between the present and past tenses. 
 The original charge goes to the point that efforts had been made to 
 get out the Bible, &c. ; that these efforts had been attended " with 
 
20 
 
 some success" ; and that the Board had aided in the work. These 
 allegations are all in the past tense. It was ^uilt, not in purpose, 
 but in fulfilment. The enemy were not menacing; the citadel from 
 afar ; they were already in it, and " with some success," had hegun 
 their work of destruction. But how is it in your " Reply .?" "Your 
 influence is against the Bible in schools." " No plan can so eflec- 
 tually get the Bible, ultimately, out of Common schools, as that 
 which rejects p. part as not true, and another part as not fit to be 
 read." " Ultimately^'' is now the word. The past has now be- 
 come yw^Mre. The Bille is not yet got out, but only to be got out, 
 at some indefinite future lime. Had you restricted yourself to a 
 prophecy^ instead of writing history, a thousand members of the 
 Teachers' Institutes would have replied, — " At all our meetings 
 has not iVIr. Mann reverently read the Scriptures every morning V 
 A thousand Normal School scholars would have said, " Has not 
 Mr. ]V]ann been with us and joined with us in the reading of the 
 Scriptures ?" Every reader of the Journal would have said, " Has 
 not Mr. Mann published arguments in favor of reading the Bible in 
 school, stronger than were ever published elsewhere .?" All would 
 say, " Shall we believe in Mr. Smith's predictions or in Mr. 
 Mann's actions .'" In your original charges, you held up this guilt 
 to the world as in part committed ; in your defence you say, it toill 
 he committed. According, to yourself, therefore, your original 
 charges loere not true in the sense in which you meant your hearers 
 should understand them. If true at all, it was only in another and 
 a wholly different sense. Holding up before you again the above 
 quoted definition of Paley, as a mirror in which you may see your 
 face, I leave this point. 
 
 My offence now is, that my " influence is against the Bible in 
 school," on two accounts : 1st, Because I do " not believe the whole 
 Bible to be the inspired word of God." 2d, " That parts [of it] are 
 not proper to be read in school." What is the proof.? A private 
 conversation held with the Rev. J. E. Woodbridge, some time since 
 Dec. 11, 1S45. I am sure Mr Woodbridge will do me the justice to 
 say, that in that conversation, I spoke of what are considered " t?i- 
 terpolations^'''' and of interpolations only. And are there no interpo- 
 lations, I\lr. Smith, in our present version, or King James's version, (as 
 we call it,) of the Bible .'' Are you so verdant in theological learn- 
 
21 
 
 ing, that you do not know that the greatest Biblical critics of all de- 
 nominations, unite in opinion that there are passages in our present 
 version which are not considered authentic ? Let me refer you to 
 the particular passage which, as 1 now distinctly recollect, I had in 
 my mind, when conversing with Mr. Woodbridge, — namely, I. John, 
 V. 7. Do you not know that the ablest trinitarians consider it to be 
 spurious ? I do not here mean to say, nor to intimate, that there are 
 not a hundred other texts which prove what that text declares ; but 
 are you ignorant of what is said of that particular text, by Bishop 
 Lowth, Dr. Jortin, Dr. Bentley, Dr. Adam Clarke, Dr. J. Pye Smith, 
 by the Eclectic Review, the organ of the trinitariau dissenters in Great 
 Britain, and by Prof. Stuart, of Andover ? Did not Luther reject it 
 from his translation, and protest against its authenticity ? Are they, 
 and liundreds of other Calvinists and trinitarians aiding to get the 
 Bible, not only out of schools, but out of pulpits, and out of the 
 world, because they disclaim this passage ? By invidiously quoting 
 against me that '■'■All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God," 
 do you determine what " all Scripture" is. A centui-y ag-o, in the 
 time of Mill, there were thirty thousand various readings ; there are 
 now a hundred thousand or more. May we not exercise our private 
 judgments upon these ; and may we not say what we think, in a 
 private conversation, with a private individual, without being de- 
 nounced by you as aiding in getting the Bible out of schools ? or as 
 exercising an influence adverse to the Bible in schools ? 
 
 There is something so outrageous, Mr Smith, in your hunting up 
 this private conversation, giving it so false a turn, and then publish- 
 ing it to to the world, that it amazes me into silence. 
 
 When I called on Mr Woodbridge, he told me he had heard that 
 I was opposed to the use of the Bible in schools. As the best of 
 proof, I showed him what I had written and published, at a time 
 when no question or controversy on the point was pending. He 
 took the documents home, read them, and he then declared to me he 
 was satisfied with my views as there expressed. 
 
 On the other point I shall be brief, for though I have no recollec- 
 tion of saying or of admitting to Mr. Woodbridge, that there are parts 
 of the Bible " not proper to be read in school," — yet, if I had said so, 
 1 think I could defend my position, and fortify it by the practice of 
 every school teacher in Massachusetts, of whatever religious denomi- 
 
22 
 
 nation. In schools and academies, composed in part of young mas- 
 ters and misses, or young men and women, from fourteen to eighteen 
 or twenty years of age, as four-fifths of all our schools and acade- 
 mies are, does any teacher, female or male, select Solomon's Song, 
 or the history of such a case of incest and crime as is recorded in 
 the 38th chap, of Genesis, to be read by the classes ? I know of not 
 one. I never have known of one. I think a universal public senti- 
 ment would reprove it. 
 
 The above is the extent, the uttermost, of what I have ever said, 
 in any place, about there being parts of the Bible " not proper to be 
 read in school" ; and if I am to be burned, — either in lody or in 
 character^ — as a heretic for this, kindle your fagots ! 
 
 In another place, page 37, you say, " You have no where in your 
 public writings said, that you were" — " favorable to the whole Bible 
 in schools." Here you only quibble on. the word " whole.'''' What 
 I had said in my public writings, and what I had quoted to you as 
 having said, was this : " It is my belief that the Bible makes known 
 to us the rule of life, and the means of salvation, and it is my wish, [I 
 have no authority in the matter,] that it should continue to be used in 
 our schools." By this I meant, what the words obviously imply, — our 
 present version of the Bible. You construct your sentence so as to 
 bring in the adjective "wi^oZe," before the word " Bible," and then 
 deny my declaration. 
 
 On page 37, you imply that I did not answer a question you put 
 to me. I did answer it, though at the same time I protested against 
 your right, under the circumstances, to ask it. 
 
 On page 43, a similar point occurs. To a question of yours, I 
 replied, that, if you had inquired at the " proper sources of informa- 
 tion," you would have known. You retort, sharply, that you inquir- 
 ed of me, and was simple enough to suppose that to be the most 
 proper source. But, when did you inquire of me ? — he/ore you 
 made your public attack upon me, or after it ? If you think the 
 two cases alike, — inquiring of a man beforehand, in order to obtain 
 information, and inquiring of him after an attack, in order to catch 
 him in his words, you must indeed be " simple ;" but in a very dif- 
 ferent sense from what you probably intended. 
 
23 
 
 THE ROD. 
 
 Your whole argument on this point is a consecutive series of mis- 
 statenaents, — bearing the same relation to a single untruth, that a 
 mountain does to the particles of which it is composed. Up to the 
 time of my controversy with a portion of the Boston Masters, as 
 many public speakers and public writers had objected to my views 
 of corporal punishment, because too severe, as had objected to them, 
 because too lenient. 
 
 At the very outset, you recklessly venture upon the following 
 assertion : " No one has understood you, as far as I can learn, to 
 advocate, or be in favor of the use of the I'od in Common Schools, 
 as that phrase is commonly understood. The man is yet to speak 
 who has so understood you ; the paragraph is yet to be written, that 
 so asserts." pp. 40-41. Now, from a company of a thousand wit- 
 nesses-, all ready lo confront you, and to deny the truth of your as- 
 sertion, let me select one. Did you never hear of David P. Page, 
 Esq., long a distinguished teacher in the High School, Newburyport, 
 and a very able and prominent member of the Essex Co. Teachers' 
 Association ; and now, for more than two years past. Principal of 
 the State Normal School at Albany ; which he is conducting with 
 extraordinary ability and success. In his work entitled, " Theory 
 and Practice of Teaching," — a volume of 350 pages, — he has a sec- 
 tion on the subject of " Corporal Punishment," or the use of the rod 
 in school. Through fourteen pages, he vindicates its use. Nearly 
 four of these pages, he has done me the honor to extract from my 
 writings, and has made the considerations urged by me, in favor of 
 the rod, the basis of his own argument. I select this witness from 
 innumerable others, because he is a conspicuous one. You, daring 
 to come in collision with Mr Page, on any point of judgment or ve- 
 racity relative to schools, must be dashed in pieces like a potsherd. 
 Here is his testimony. Probably it is within bounds to say, it is 
 what he has openly declared a' hundred times, in oral addresses, 
 written lectures, and in conversation, before publishing it in his book. 
 Yet you aver, " the man is yet to speak who has so understood you ; 
 the paragraph is yet to be written, that so asserts." 
 
 Will you screen yourself under cover of your phrase, " as far as 
 I can learn ;" then I reply, that your repugnance to learning must 
 be equal to your repugnance to truth. 
 
24 
 
 I cannot follow you here through all your groundless assertions ; 
 for you not only get a misstatement into your briefest sentences, but 
 you manage the adjectives and adverbs so as to make them perform 
 the same office. 
 
 As a specimen of the hydrostatic pressure with which you can 
 compact misrepresentations, I will consider eight consecutive senten- 
 ces or declarations of yours, which may be found commencing on 
 page 40. I italicise your assertions, to distinguish them from my 
 answers. 
 
 1. " Those who use the rod and contend for its necessity, you 
 hold up as adopting the terrible motto, ' Authority, Force, Fear, 
 Pain: " 
 
 Here you change a particular and limited application of my re- 
 mark into a universal one. In one of the schools of those to whom 
 I ascribed that motto, — consisting of about two hundred and fifty 
 scholars, — there were 828 separate floggings in one week of five 
 days, or an average of 65f each day. In another, eighteen boys 
 were flogged in two hours in the presence of a stranger. In another, 
 twelve or fifteen in one hour, &c. It was only those who flogged 
 and vindicated flogging, at this rate, to whom I ascribed the above 
 motto. You have made it apply to all who use the rod, and contend 
 for its necessary use, however discreetly. I am sorry that you have 
 awakened associations, or made it necessary to recur to facts con- 
 nected with a by-gone controversy ; but you have been pleased to do 
 this thing. 
 
 2. " You quote and endorse the sentiment that the rod would 
 KEVER BE NEEDED, if right instruction were given to a child.'''' 
 
 In support of this, you refer to an essay written by a gentleman, 
 now a Grammar Master in one of the Boston schools ; — surely a 
 good authority for me, though you are careful to keep this fact out of 
 sight. He is an orthodox gentlemen, also, — which shows that not 
 all of that faith found the necessity of corporal punishment on your 
 basis. But you have grossly misrepresented him. All that he said 
 was that corporal punishment would not be needed, i?? school, provided 
 there had been a wise and systematic course of family government 
 at home. You leave out \heplace and one of the conditions. You run 
 the sword clean through the body of your denominational brother, for 
 
26 
 
 the sake of wounding me with its protruded point. It has pleased 
 you, Mr Smith, to do this second thing ! 
 
 3.* '^'^ You estimate the ability and fitness of a teacher, by his 
 capacity to govern without punishnie^ity 
 
 The following is my expression : " This however is certain, that 
 when a teacher preserves order and secures progress, the minimum 
 of punishment shows the maximum of qualifications." Does my 
 commending, — not the exclusion, — but the minimum of punishment, 
 prove that I would abolish " the rod and all correction, but a little 
 talk, in school ?" Besides, I put in the conditions of '^preserving 
 order'''' and " securing progress,''"' which you take the liberty to 
 expunge. Tt has pleased you, Mr. Smith, to do this third thing ! 
 
 4. " You say the use of the rod in school, is twice cursed, 
 cursing him that gives and him that takes, — nay three times cursed.'''' 
 
 The audaciousness of this and the following misstatements cannot 
 be understood without an explanatory word. In 1841, I published, 
 in the Journal, a series of articles from an able and excellent corres- 
 pondent, touching various topics pertaining to Common School 
 education. On niost points, we agreed. On the subject of corporal 
 punishment, we differed, — he being for its entire exclusion from 
 school, I, then as always, being for investing the teacher with power 
 to use it, and for using it, should other and higher motives fail. At 
 the end of an article, in which he contended for its entire disuse, I 
 appended, editorially, almost two pages of remarks, contesting his 
 views with all the vigor and effect I could command. Preparatory 
 to answering his objections, I restated them ; and, to give him all the 
 advantage he could possibly claim, I restated them very strongly, 
 on his side. I thought then, as I think now, that the merits of the 
 case were so decidedly strong in my own favor, that I could safely 
 imitate the example of Mr Fox, in the British Parliament, whose 
 habit it was to recapitulate his adversary's argument, and to restate 
 it more strongly than it had been stated by himself,— to build it up 
 and clamp it, and then — demolish it. I thought I could afford to do 
 this ; and therefore I said I would " concede" to my friend, that 
 *' the use of the rod, in school, is twice cursed," &c. Yet this 
 concession to my opponent, made to be answered, and as I believe, 
 actually answered, and on the spot, by preponderating considerations 
 4 
 
26 
 
 urged by me, — you, Mr. Smith, having expunged the concessory 
 words, both hefore and after ^ for they followed as well as preceded, — 
 have quoted as my language, and as proof of my opinion. It has 
 pleased you, Mr. Smith, to do this fourth thing! 
 
 5. " Masters who use the rod, you designate as ' consenting to 
 turn fiagellators to the parish.'' " 
 
 This expression is not mine. Never, in any way, have I used 
 it, approved it, or assented to it. It is taken from the same article 
 of the same correspondent, above referred to, — an article which I 
 vehemently protested against, on the spot. This expression, too, not 
 mine, contested and, as I think, refuted by me, at the time, you have 
 quoted as mine. It has pleased you, Mr. Smith, to do this fifth thing ! 
 
 6. " You affirm that it is a greater evil to keep boys in subjection 
 by the terror of the rod, than to turn them loose into the streets,'''' 
 
 Precisely as before ! This sentiment is not from any thing I ever 
 wrote. It is from the above mentioned communication ; and so far 
 from adopting or endorsing it, I replied to it, on the spot, as follows : 
 
 " If, as is suggested in this excellent communication, [the com- 
 munication discussed many topics, besides that of corporal punish- 
 ment,] every scholar is to be turned out of school, who cannot be 
 managed by persuasion in it, we should have, on an average, at the 
 very lowest calculation, more than one scholar expelled for each of 
 our summer and each of our winter schools ; — that is, more than 
 three thousand for each season, and therefore more than six 
 thousand annually ; — six thousand children, released from all fear, 
 from all immediate pain, from all salutary restraints, and turned out 
 to be marauders and freebooters on society. Who can contemplate 
 this result, and say that it is a less evil than that of corporal punish- 
 ment in schools !" Yet this answer of mine, immediately following 
 the above sentiment, you not only omit, but you proceed to say, that I 
 " affirm" the very sentiment I so earnestly combatted. With just as 
 much truth might you say, that I was the author of your " New Carl" 
 sermon. It has pleased you, Mr. Smith, to do this sixth thing ! 
 
 7. '■'• In your Eighth Annual ReporC — '■'• I find in almost every 
 instance, in the school returns, in which anything is said against the 
 use of the rod, or the ability to govern without it for a season, the 
 fact has a conspicuous place in the report,— published in capitals or 
 
 italics.^' 
 
27 
 
 In the first place, there is not a " school return" in my Eighth 
 Report; nor aught that bears any resemblance to a " school return," 
 on this subject. 2. In the Report of the Board, — not mine, — there 
 are some letters, — not school returns, — highly commendatory of 
 teachers who had been educated at one of the Normal schools. 3. 
 The capitals and italics which you intimate to be mine, and used for 
 the purpose of arresting attention, were copied from the letters 
 themselves ; and, if offences at all, are the offences of their respec- 
 tive authors, not mine. 4. There is nothing said, in any of those 
 letters, as you have represented, against the ability to govern with- 
 out using the rod. It has pleased you, Mr Smith, to do this seventh 
 thing! 
 
 8. " You further say, that when the right kind of teachers shall 
 he secured, the rod, or corporal punishment, will come into ' total 
 disuse.^ " 
 
 Here the words " total disuse," which you have quoted as mine, 
 are not mine, but were quoted by rne from the antagonist with whom 
 I was then dealing, and were signalized as his, by quotation marks. 
 It has pleased you, Mr Smith, to do this eighth thing ! 
 
 The above eight cases are to be found in twenty-one consecutive 
 lines, pp. 40, 41, of your " Reply." What can be done with a let- 
 ter of twenty-five pages, filled with base coin from the same mintage ? 
 Certainly, Mr. Smith, you must have credit for one thing. In one re- 
 spect you are unanswerable ! — you invent so fast ! There is a prov- 
 erb, homely and detestable, inherited from lawless, feudal times, 
 which says that one may as well be hung for an old sheep as for a 
 Iamb. You have gone for the whole flock ! 
 
 You next affirm that I " assume the native purity of children." 
 This you have done four several times ; pp. 42, 45, 46, 48. This 
 comes under the same category with the rest of your assertions. I 
 never, by pen, speech or thought, affirmed the native purity of chil- 
 dren. I do not believe it, — never believed it. My writings abound 
 with expressions incompatible with such a belief. Take the follow- 
 ing specimen, from my Ninth Report, p. 65, which, if you are ever 
 to be believed, you must have seen : " Were children born with per- 
 fect natures, we might expect that they would gradually purify 
 themselves from the vices and corruptions which are now almost en- 
 forced upon them by the examples of the world. But the same na- 
 
28 
 
 ture by which the parents sunk into error and sin, pre-adapts the 
 children to follow in the course of ancestral degeneracy.''' After 
 the public had read similar sentiments from my pen, and heard 
 them from my lips, for ten years, it is impossible you should have 
 expected that any intelligent and candid man would believe you. 
 You must, therefore, have addressed yourself to another class. 
 
 It is in this connection you say, that you " object to [my] the'ory 
 of school discipline, because of its theological character.^' Here, 
 as every where else, you have sought to give your attack a sectarian 
 turn. You argue the necessity of the rod in schools, on strict 
 Calvinistic ground, — on the ground of total depravity. I am ready 
 to meet you on this ground, and to show how short sighted and 
 sophistical your argument is. 
 
 All children, say you, are totally depraved ; and God, through 
 Solomon, has commanded parents and teachers to use the rod, in 
 order to restrain and reform them. They who oppose this view, 
 you add, " throw themselves across the word of God." Then does 
 it not inevitably follow that all children must be regularly flogged, 
 until they are regenerated ? If you dare to make a single exception, 
 in favor of any unsanctified child, however docile, confiding and 
 submissive he or she may be, you are ruined. For if there may 
 be an exception in regard to one, how can you stop at ten or ten 
 thousand ? Every parent or teacher, then, who does not flog all his 
 unregenerate children, or scholars, " throws himself across the word 
 of God." Do you say ; " Not, perhaps, every child, and every 
 scholar ; for one may be deterred by the example of another ?" 
 Surely, if mere example would do this, is there not a stock of 
 examples already laid up, ample enough to last to the end of time ? 
 Again ; if the unregenerate must be flogged, because they are 
 unregenerate, then, by parity of reasoning, the converted must be 
 exempts because they are converted. But, nevertheless, do we not 
 see some grown men and women, who have once given evidence 
 of a saving change, temporarily backsliding, and requiring church 
 discipline ; and may we not, therefore, expect the same thing of some 
 children } If so, then the application of your rule to the converted, 
 as well as to the unconverted, fails. 
 
 Again ; as to frequency, or continuity, of flogging. If Solo- 
 mon commands all parents and teacliers to chasten every child, in 
 
29 
 
 their houses or schoolrooms, and not let their " souls spare for his 
 crying," how frequent are the floggings to be, or how long are 
 they to be continued ? Are the inflictions to be so short, as to allow 
 many intervals, each day ; or are they to be so long as to leave time 
 for but few intervals ? Do you say there may be a case, even of an 
 unconverted child, where one flogging will answer for a whole life, 
 then why not ten such cases, or ten thousand ?- Will you assign 
 limits to the Divine command ? If one flogging, or one himdred, 
 may be enough to be given to a school child, then, in some towns, 
 the children may all have received their quota at home, or in the pri- 
 mary school, and so this form of penalty may be dispensed with, in 
 all the upper schools. No, Mr. Smith, your sectarian argument binds 
 you in the chains of an adamantine necessity, to flog eiwry child, both 
 at home and at school, at least until the heart has been renewed by 
 the Holy Spirit ; and every Christian parent or teacher, who has a son, 
 a daughter, or a scholar, whom he has never flogged, has "thrown 
 himself across the word of God." How, on your own ground, 
 would one find time to flog all, in a large school, or in a large family. 
 
 As expository of a view which seems to me better to com- 
 mend itself to the good sense and the Christian feeling of the com- 
 munity, I subjoin a passage from one of my own reports, made 
 to the Board and sanctioned by them, — which you have referred to, 
 to condemn. The extract is this : 
 
 " Order is emphatically the first law of the schoolroom. Order 
 must be preserved, because it is a prerequisite to every thing else 
 that is desirable. If a school cannot be continued with order, it 
 should not be continued without it, but discontinued. After all 
 motives of duty, of afiection, of the love of knowledge and of good 
 repute, have been faithfully tried and tried in vain, I see not why 
 this 'strange work,' [punishment,] may not be admitted into the 
 human, as well as into the divine government. Nor will it do to 
 prohibit the exercise of this power altogether, because it is sometimes 
 abused. The remedy for abuse is not prohibition, but discretion. 
 This, however, is certain, that when a teacher preserves order and 
 secures progress, the minimum of punishment shows the maximum 
 of qualifications." Fifth Annual Report, 57,8. 
 
 I think we are commanded to punish the disobedient and lawless, 
 precisely as we are commanded to visit the sick, to feed the hungry 
 and clothe the naked, — tiot every moment of the tim^y — but with 
 
30 
 
 discretion, according to the exigencies of each case, in the love of 
 man and in the fear of God ; and, as it is the duty of us all to relieve 
 mankind from disease, hunger and nakedness, as fast as we can, so, 
 as fast as we can, we should strive to bring in higher motives and 
 examples, in order to supersede the necessity of punishment, whether 
 In school or elsewhere. 
 
 RELIGION IN SCHOOLS. 
 
 Your charge here is, — " You are opposed to religion in schools." 
 Your original charge was, that the Board and myself had aided in 
 getting " all religious instruction''' out of schools, and in " counter- 
 poising," or neutralizing all religious instruction given at home, and 
 in the Sabbath school. 
 
 I complain, here, that not only are all and each of the particular 
 assertions in support of your present charge, without any foundation 
 in truth ; but, as I will show you, they all proceed upon a false hy- 
 pothesis, — upon such false assumptions as would vitiate any conclu- 
 sion, however logically deducible from them. 
 
 You speak again and again, of my having " ruled" religious in- 
 struction out of the schools. But where is the order, direction, re- 
 quest, suggestion even, ever made by me to any school committee 
 man, or school teacher, in the State, that he should withhold religious 
 instruction from the school? The constitution and laws declare what 
 shall be taught and what shall not be taught, on the subject of reli- 
 gion in our schools. The school committees administer the laws. 
 Neither the Board nor myself has ever sought, in the slightest de- 
 gree, to encroach upon their prerogatives. All our united power 
 cannot alter a book, or a lesson, except so far as committees ap- 
 prove and direct. And it is remarkable, and would of itself excite 
 suspicion of your honesty, that, through all the pages, where you 
 charge me with being " opposed to religion in schools" ; with " pro- 
 claiming what we may teach and what we may not, of religion, in 
 schools" ; with ruling out " common truths," " which are essential 
 to a virtuous life, as well as to the salvation of the soul" ; with sub- 
 stituting " for the principles of piety, allowed by the Constitution, 
 nothing above, nothing more than Deism, bald and blank," &c. die. ; — 
 I say it is remarkable, that for the support of all these charges, 
 thickly strown along your pages, you have not adduced a single sen- 
 
31 
 
 tence, or word, that I have ever delivered in any oral or written 
 address, or have ever published in any report, or have ever written 
 for any page of the Journal, — not a word ! 
 
 You must allow me here, Mr Smith, to speak in decided tones. 
 You are touching solemn matters, at least with heedlessness, if not 
 with wickedness aforethought. You accuse me before the world, of 
 being opposed to religion in our schools. I regard hostility to reli- 
 gion in our schools, as the greatest crime which I could commit 
 against man or against God. Had I the power, I would sooner re- 
 peat the massacre of Herod, than I would keep back religion from 
 the young. My own consciousness acquits me of your accusation. 
 I call the All-searching Eye to witness that it is as false as any thing 
 ever engendered in the heart of man or fiend. What right have you to 
 say that I am opposed to religion in our schools, because I may en- 
 tertain, or express privately, certain opinions not exactly coincident 
 with your opinions ; when, perhaps, before the moon changes, you 
 will tear your name from your present creed, and subscribe another .'' 
 If my godlessness consists in not thinking as you happen now to 
 think, ascend your papal throne, proclaim your infallibility, — be in- 
 fallible, in the same way, more than a twelve-month at a time, — and 
 then excommunicate, imprison, torture, burn. But, thank heaven ! 
 you have got to build your throne first. We are in the nineteenth 
 century, and not in the fourteenth. For the destruction or imprison- 
 ment of heretics, in Massachusetts, fagots will not burn, and granite 
 walls are dust, which the breath can scatter. But because weak and 
 fallible man can no longer impose his faith upon us, are we absolved 
 from our allegiance to heaven ? God forbid ! What religion, then, 
 shall be inculcated upon the young, in our public schools ? I an- 
 swer, — not my religion, nor yours, as such, nor the religion of any 
 class or sect, — but the religion of the Bible. If your religion can be 
 found in the Bible, then your religion is taught in the schools. If 
 my religion is in it, then my religion is taught there. If we are 
 both in error, then let us rejoice that there is a power which, if it 
 fails to rectify our faith, will save us at least from the woe of having 
 transmitted a false faith to others, so far as we had sought to do. 
 The Bible is one and unchangeable. Like Him whose providence it 
 records, it is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Customs and 
 manners may change ; arts and sciences may advance or recede ; 
 
3-2 
 
 empires may rise or fall ; but there stands this Celestial Luminary, 
 ever shining upon the world with the same unquenchable light ; and 
 should ignorance and superstition, intolerance and bigotry, ever tran- 
 siently obscure the brightness of its beams, yet we know they are 
 only like the clouds suspended in our atmosphere, and intercepting 
 the rays of the sun ; and though, for a few miles above our heads, 
 and for the handbreadth of our horizon, the sky may look murky 
 and dark, yet above that curtain, we know there is an immensity of 
 light ready aj^ain to pour back upon us, and to flood the world with 
 its radiance. But suppose the interpretation of any man, or of any 
 dynasty, could be made authoritative, and be enforced upon the com- 
 munity by legal pains or penalties, or be inculcated upon the recep- 
 tive minds of childnm, as the only true interpretation ; then the Bible 
 loses lis character of permanency ; it becomes one thing under one 
 ruler, and another thing under another ruler ; it speaks one language 
 under oiie government, and another language under another govern- 
 ment. It changes its doctrines as its priests are changed, and the 
 Uacaof to-day becomes the Raibi of tomorrow. I maintain, there- 
 fore, that the Bible shall go into our public schools enshielded from 
 harm, by the great Protestant doctrine of the inviolability of con- 
 science, the right and the sanctity of private judgment. I have en- 
 deavored to act in accordance with these great principles, so funda- 
 mental both to religion and to liberty ; and I challenge any author, 
 bookseller, school committee man, teacher, or other person, official 
 or unofficial, to say that I have ever sought to invade his province, 
 or to suborn him to act in contravention of these rules. They are the 
 principles which the Pilgrim Fathers consecrated by their self-expa- 
 triation ; — they are the principles solemnly ratified and confirmed by 
 our constitution and laws ; and, unhappily for your schemes, they 
 are principles deemed sacred and inviolable by a vast mnjorily of 
 the people of Massachusetts. As for muzzling the mouth of every 
 school teacher and every school committee man, or condemning 
 them for the expression of a private opinion on any matter connected 
 with the interpretation of the law, or the interpretation of the Bible, 
 it is a gross violation of all Protestant principles ; but it is what you 
 have sought to do to me. 
 
 Of course, I refer here only to Public Schools, for which all the 
 citizens are taxed. 
 
33 
 
 1 now come to your proofs that I am opposed to religion in schools ; 
 — having before said that you have not brought forward a single 
 sentence from any report, address, or editorial article, I have ever 
 written or made. 
 
 Your first proof of my being oppo'Sed to religion in schools, is, 
 that the Principal of the West Newton Normal school, " has issued 
 a circular, in which he makes it the duty of his scholars, wind and 
 weather permitting, to attend church half a day on the Sabbath, and do 
 their walking for recreation on that day, in the morning and evening." 
 
 Who are the Special Visiters of this school ? I answer, three or- 
 thodox gentlemen, — John W. James, Esq., of Boston, the Rev. Dr. 
 Humphrey, late President of Amherst College, and the Rev. H. B. 
 Hooker, of Falmouth. Are they opposed to religion in schools.? 
 
 But you say, Mr. Pierce's circular " makes it the duty of his schol- 
 ars," — " to do their walking for recreation on that day, [Sunday,] in 
 the morning and evening." This is unpardonable slander. The 
 word " recreation" is not in the circular. The idea of " recreation" 
 is not in it. You might, with just as much truth, have foisted in the 
 word " bowling^'''' Sunday morning and evening, (and yoit will under- 
 stand what I mean by this,) as " recreation." On this point, I leave 
 you to the forgiveness of all the teachers and the young ladies com- 
 posing that school. 
 
 But let us hear the judgment of honest men, on this subject. 
 
 On the 3d day of Dec. last, about the very time when you were con- 
 cocting these libels, and, (I add upon good authority,) when you 
 went to the Newton school, incog., to spy out the land, the above 
 named Visiters, — Messrs. James, Humphrey and Hooker, — made 
 their annual examination of the school. In their report to the Board 
 of Education, signed by them all, after stating that they " regard the 
 Sabbalh and public worship, as divine institutions, intimately connect- 
 ed with the best welfare of society, and believe that an exemplary 
 regard for them should be manifested by those beneficiaries of the 
 State, who take so important a part iu forming the character of the 
 rising generation," they go on to say, that they had examined all 
 the reports, in regard to attending divine service, and, " considering 
 the diversity of religious sentiments in the school, and the remote- 
 ness of some of the churches, they [the reports] presented, on. the 
 whole, a favorable view of .the habits of the pupils in this particular." 
 They close their report, in other respects highly complimentary, 
 5 
 
34 
 
 with the following sentence : " The Visiters, in conclusion, cheer- 
 fully express their conviction, that this school exhibits the elements 
 of substantial prosperity, and rejoice in believing that it has had, 
 and will continue to have, eminent influence for good, on the interests 
 of education in this Commonwealth." 
 
 This is the testimony of the above named gentlemen, respecting 
 the usefulness of this school, and the exemplariness of its pupils in 
 regard to attending divine service ; and Mr. Pierce's circular, is the 
 first proof offered by you that I am opposed to religion in schools ! 
 
 Your next proof is a reference to a selected article in the Common 
 
 School Journal, for August, 1843. Here if my character for truth was 
 
 as good as that of the old Roman, Regulus, or did my sanctity equal 
 
 that of Enoch, I could hardly expect to be believed, did I merely recite 
 
 what you have done. I will, therefore, quote your evidence entire, 
 
 and follow it, by the article to which you refer ; so that every reader 
 
 may have an opportunity to do justice to your creative posver. 
 
 This, then, is your second proof : 
 
 " Under the caption, ' What shall be my Sabbath Reading,' your Jour- 
 nal teaches that we must road no books, except those of a liberal charac- 
 ter.' ' Sermons and religious tracts' I must not read, ' if they make me 
 selfish ;' i. e. inculcate the difference between the righteous and the wick- 
 ed ; or make me ' distrustful of my fellow man,'or despairing of his ad- 
 vancement :' i. e. that teach natural depravity ; such books are to be avoid- 
 ed on the Sabbath, I commend the good sense of the writer in making no 
 allusion to the Bible, in such a category, as a book fit to be read upon the 
 Sabbath.— Jowrna/, Vol. V. 946. Is there no dogmatism here .'" — Reply, 
 p. 45. 
 
 Though the article in the Journal to which the above refers, is of 
 a length which renders it inconvenient to be transcribed, yet I sub- 
 join every word of it, to which, by any possibility, your criticisms 
 can refer : — 
 
 WHAT SHALL BE MY SABBATH READING.? 
 
 I HAVE determined that I will spend my Sabbath as a day of rest from 
 the labors of the week, and I will devote it, so far as I can, to the im- 
 provement and elevation of my spiritual character. I will endeavor to 
 exclude schemes of gain, which have occupied so many of my daily 
 thoughts, as I find myself imperceptibly too much engrossed by them ; 
 and I tremble lest I become a slave of mammon. I desire no longer to 
 indulge in dreams of pleasure, lest the silken net of sensuality be cast 
 over me before I am aware. And plans of ambition ; — they surely belong 
 not to the peace and rest of this day. If then I free myself from the in- 
 fluence of these evil spirits which have hitherto made me almost a pris- 
 oner, and if I refuse to waste the precious hours in sloth, I shall have 
 some portion of each Sabbath to spend in reading. What shall it be ? 
 What reading will be most favorable to the high, and pure, and holy 
 
35 
 
 thoughts which I desire to cherish ? What would the Savior, if I could 
 ask him, approve ? He has taught me that it is lawful to do good on the 
 Sabbath day. What is good ? 
 
 He has told me that unless I humble m3'self as a little child, I cannot en- 
 ter the kingdom of heaven. Humility then is an essential doctrine of His 
 gospel, and my reading must be favorable to humility. I must avoid 
 what has a tendency to make me self-satisfied, or proud of my thoughts or 
 opinions, or whatever belongs to myself Pride, in every form, is the great 
 enemy of the spiritual life. Is there not danger of my becoming proud 
 even of my religious opinions, my religious character, my religious humili- 
 ty ? I am often aware of a feeling of this kind ; and if it be real, and the 
 Savior is not mistaken in the stress he lays upon humility, what is my 
 religion good for? Can spiritual pride, or any pride, be consistent with 
 the spirit of the lowly Jesus ? 
 
 Another lesson which my Savior teaches is charitableness. " Judge 
 not," are his words; and one who was instructed of Him has told me what 
 charitableness is ; — that charity " thinketh no evil." I must, therefore, not 
 read any thing which diminislies my charity for my fellow-creatures, — for 
 their character, their purposes or their opinions. Whatever is written in 
 an uncharitable spirit, no matter what it is, I will endeavor to avoid. 
 Let me not be deceived by names. What tends to make me uncharitable, 
 to think evil of others in comparison with myself, cannot be less harmful, 
 coming under a cloak of a sermon or a religious tract, than if it came 
 under the name of scoffing or unbelief. Probably it will be more so ; for, 
 in the latter case, I should be on my guard ; in tiie former, I should not. 
 Whatever renders me uncharitable must be wanting in that Christian 
 spirit whose most marked characteristic is charity. 
 
 My Savior teaches me that my first duly is to love my Father in 
 Heaven. My heart tells me that the highest privilege is to draw nigh to 
 Him and worship Him. Whatever book, therefore, tends to make me love 
 Him, fills me with reverence for his character, makes me rejoice in His 
 works, and leads me to exclaim with delight, "my Father made them all," — 
 must be useful reading. And whatever makes me doubt of His goodness. 
 His justice, or His mercy, must be injurious, and ought to be avoided. ^ 
 
 The second commandment of the New Testament is like the first. 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." How divine are both these 
 commandments ! Those books must be useful which quicken my love of 
 my neighbor, and show me how I may benefit him ; which increase my 
 sympathy for him, and interest me in what tends to advance and improve 
 society. Those books must be bad or doubtful which make me selfish, or 
 distrustful of my fellow-man, or despairing of his advancement. 
 
 The most comprehensive charge of the Savior is. Be ye therefore 
 perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." 
 
 In your estimation, then, Mr Smith, there is not only no religion 
 
 in the above article, but it is so irreligious, that printing it in the 
 
 Journal, is proof of my being opposed to religion in schools. It is 
 
 then, your decision, that there is no religion in obeying the command 
 
 to rest from labor on tlie Sabbath day, — none in shutting out the 
 
 world and solemnizing the thoughts ; none in the spirit which asks, 
 
 " What would the Savior, if I could ask him, approve .^" — none in 
 
 humility ; none in seeking to extirpate a Pharisaical pride ; none in 
 
 charitableness ; none in loving God, in drawing nigh unto Him, and 
 
36 
 
 worshipping Him ; none in loving our neighbor as ourself, — on 
 which, it was said by another authority, hang all the law and the 
 prophets ; — none, finally, in the fervent aspiration, " to be perfect, 
 even as our Father in heaven is perfect." According to you, there 
 is -nothing of religion in all this ; nay, to print it is proof of my hos- 
 tility to religion in schools. 
 
 In the whole passage there is not a word, to give counte- 
 nance to your first two commentaries. Your last commentary is 
 this : " I commend the good sense of the writer in making no allu- 
 sion to the Bible, in such a category, as a book fit to be read on 
 the Sabbath." Was ever any thing written which more certainly 
 presupposed the reading of the Bible, or that showed a heart more 
 deeply imbued with its spirit .? As the fragrance exhaled from one 
 who has been wandering amid spice-groves, reveals where he has 
 been ; so did the writer of this article prove, more strongly than by 
 any words he could use, that he had held daily communion with the 
 Bible, by the " odor of sanctity" with which each paragraph is redo- 
 lent. The main object of the writer seems to be to point to the Bible, 
 as the source of all the Christian graces he recommends. 
 
 Are all the five hundred volumes of your Sunday School Library 
 free from all taint of such irreligion as is contained in the above ex- 
 tract } 
 
 I wish I could believe that, in the strait to which your intellect 
 was driven to find proofs in support of your accusation, you had here 
 done violence to your heart ; but I see no evidence of this ; your 
 whole nature seems to have consented to the deed. 
 
 But can blackness be blackened, Mr Smith .•* or total depravity de- 
 praved } or your conduct, on this point, be made to appear worse 
 than it now appears } 
 
 When the above quoted article which you have cited as proof of 
 my hostility to religion in schools, was published in the Journal, I 
 was four thousand miles from Boston. It appeared Aug. 15, 1843. 
 I left the country in May preceding, and returned in the following 
 November. While absent, the whole control of the Journal was in 
 the hands of Mr. George B. Emerson, who, as it appears on the pages 
 of the Journal itself, was the Editor pro. tern. You refer to such a 
 passage, as proof of my irreligion, and attribute its insertion to me, 
 when you must have known that, whether sacred or profane, it was 
 not inserted by me, but in my absence. 
 
 Another of your proofs that I am adverse to religion in schools, is 
 
37 
 
 derived from my obedience to the law of the State, which forbids 
 sectarian instruction. Here you say, and repeat, that no "class" of 
 men, or no " respectable class" of men, in our community, have 
 urged, or desire, the introduction of sectarianism into our schools. 
 I affirm, on the contrary, that ninety-nine hundredths of all the oppo- 
 sition which the Board or myself have ever encountered, has been 
 excited against us because we abstained from favoring sectarian in- 
 struction. Owing to my official engagements, I have not been so 
 extensive a reader of the religious newspapers and periodicals, as I 
 have desired ; nor have I preserved a tenth part of the evidence on 
 this subject, which, from time to time, has fallen under my eye. I 
 have, however, before me, a few copies of two of the religious news- 
 papers, printed in Boston. From a part of these I will make a few 
 selections, illustrative of their general spirit. The selections from 
 one of the works shall go back to a time shortly after the establish- 
 ment of the Board ; those from the other shall be taken from a pe- 
 riod more recent. 
 
 In an article in the Boston Recorder, of Jan. 18, 1839, highly 
 complimentary to the Board and its Secretary, the course was 
 sketched out which they were called upon to pursue ; and the means 
 were particularized, — such as " ministerial associations," " church 
 conferences," " social prayer meetings," " the periodical press," and 
 "the pulpit," — by which a public opinion was to be manufactured, 
 to stimulate and sustain them in the work they were summoned to 
 perform. The climax of the new order of things to be ushered in, 
 was this : " the grand doctrines of the Gospel must be regularly and 
 clearly taught." All know what must be meant in that paper, by 
 
 " the GRAND DOCTRINES." 
 
 In the Recorder of March 1, 1S39, a very talented and respecta- 
 ble clergyman, in commenting upon our statute law, which declares 
 that " the school committee shall never direct to be purchased or 
 used in any of the town schools, any school books which are calcu- 
 lated to favor the tenets of any particular sect of Christians," uses 
 the following language : " If their object, [the object of the framers 
 of the law,] was to exclude books which teach the leading doctrines 
 of Protestantism ; or, to be more definite, the leading doctrines held 
 by the Pilgrim Fathers of New England ; or, to be more definite 
 still, the prominent truths-embraced by the evangelical churches of 
 Massachusetts, then it is no matter how soon the law is repealed." 
 
 In another part of the same article, the writer expounds his plan, 
 
38 
 
 which is, that, " the majority must govern." " If the majority," saya 
 he, " of any town be Universalists," " they will naturally have books 
 and teachers which will inculcate the peculiar sentiments of that 
 sect, and there is no remedy." " If the major part of the inhabi- 
 tants of another town are Orthodox," "they should have the privi- 
 lege of introducing the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, if they please, 
 into their schools, and of employing teachers who will thoroughly 
 indoctrinate the children into the religious faith of their fathers, if 
 the majority of another town are not only evangelical in their prin- 
 ciples, but are also holy and spiritual in their practice, the State 
 should permit them to make their schools bear directly upon the re- 
 generation and salvation of their children." 
 
 Under date of March 22, after quoting, with commendation, a long 
 passage from my First Annual Report to the Board, the writer gently 
 chides my short-comings in the following strain : " How gratifying 
 it would have been to many of your fellow-citizens, if the sentence 
 had continued to run in something of this strain ; — ' the pages are 
 wanting which teach the ever-during relations of men to God, and 
 Christ, and eternity ; which teach the lapsed state of human nature ; 
 the necessity, not of the improvement of the moral tastes already ex- 
 isting, but of their entire transformation by the renewing grace of the 
 Holy Spirit; the high importance of secret prayer, not performed as 
 a penance, but from a love of communion with God ; the need of re- 
 ceiving those daily baptisms from on high, which shall purify the 
 affections of the heart, and induce the children to consecrate the 
 " dew of their youth' to the service of Jesus Christ and his Church to . 
 the spread of the gospel, and the salvation of this apostate world." 
 
 Again ; — " public sentiment demands, that the interests of educa 
 tion be placed under the direction and control" " of that honest, 
 manly piety, which regards the rising generation as destined to re- 
 ceive in this probationary state, that cast of character, which will fit 
 them tosing with the seraphim, or wail with the devil and his angels." 
 
 Again ; — " the Bible, insisting on the great facts of man's moral 
 ruin, of his need of a Redeemer, of regeneration and sanctificalion, 
 to fit him for the highest measure of usefulness on earth, and for the 
 holy employments of the redeemed in heaven, — should be daily and 
 thoroughly taught in the schools. Nothing can be a substitute for 
 this. Nothing will satisfy a large portion of the people of the Com- 
 monwealth, and secure their cordial co-operation, but the faithful in- 
 culcation of those religious truths, which tend to the BALVikTioN of 
 
39 
 
 THB SOUL. Unless our schools have a direct bearing on this most 
 IMPORTANT END, all else besides, 
 
 ' Is empty talk, 
 Of old achitvements, and despair of n»w.' " 
 
 What think you, Mr. Smith, or what thought you, in 1839 ; — would 
 this favor the tenets of any particular sect or not ? 
 
 I have before me a very few copies of the " Christian Witness 
 and Church Advocate," for the year 1844. This paper is the organ 
 of the Episcopalians. I believe it is true of all the passages which 
 I shall cite, that they came from the pen of the Editor or Assistant 
 Editor of that paper, or were expressly approved and endorsed by 
 one or both of them. 
 
 In a series of articles, commencing Feb. 23, 1844, the principal 
 ground of complaint against our present school system is that 
 " all teaching of what Orthodox men hold to be the doctrines of 
 grace is excluded." See March 8, March 29, May 17, &c. 
 
 The Church of England is impliedly defended and approved for 
 having " resolved that Christianity, as understood and taught by the 
 Established Church of the realm, shall be taught also to the young 
 in all schools." 
 
 In the paper for March 29, the Editor says, " Of what particular 
 sect does it favor the tenets to teach that " we are by nature children 
 of wrath .^" "We wish to have the young trained for heaven as 
 well as earth," — " we wish them to have access not to the negatives 
 of a sect, but to the positive and life-giving faith which, ' the holy 
 church, [the holy episcopal church,] throughout all the world doth 
 acknowledge.' " 
 
 Under date of May 17, an Honorable correspondent who stands 
 deservedly high in the Episcopal ranks, and with whom the Editor 
 zealously cooperated, complains that the " Assembly's Catechism," 
 was not taught, under the law, every Saturday afternoon, as formerly. 
 " The idea of a religion," says he, " to be permitted to be taught 
 in our schools, in which all are at present agreed, is a mockery." — 
 " As to precepts^ perhaps, there may be a pretty general agreement, 
 and that this is one great branch of the Christian scheme, we allow. 
 But is this all, — all that the sons of the Puritans are willing to have 
 taught in their public schools ?" " The teaching of the evangelical 
 doctrines of the gospel is not the teaching of Sectarianism, according 
 to the letter of the statute itself." Christian Witness, July 12, 1S44. 
 " The law" — " can be made" — " by no fair interpretation to shut 
 
40 
 
 out the evangelical doctrines of the gospel from our Common 
 Schools." 
 
 " The believers in the evangelical doctrines of the gospel, consti- 
 tuting as they do a large majority of the people of the Common- 
 wealth, have a right to demand that their own views, and not the 
 views of the minority, shall be taught in the schools." 
 
 Even during this present January, the Boston Recorder, in an 
 editorial article, has commended the submission to the majority of 
 each district^ of the question, what religious instruction shall be 
 given in school. 
 
 I have in my possession the printed report of a school committee, 
 in which the teaching of the Westminster Catechism, every Saturday, 
 is commended to all the teachers in the town. 
 
 I have seen Newcomb's Bible Questions introduced into a public 
 school, under the control of an orthodox committee. 
 
 In a long and elaborate article of a religious quarterly, the school 
 systems of Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania have been 
 condemned in the gross, because they do not teach the evangelical 
 doctrines in the Common Schools. 
 
 Now the above, Mr Smith, are but specimens of what, if time and 
 inclination would allow, I could show to have been demanded for 
 the last eight years, by a party in our community. Yet you tell 
 me, " you cannot put your finger on the request, from any respecta- 
 ble class of the community," to have more religious instruction in 
 our schools, than the laws and constitution allow. I leave you to settle 
 the question of " respectaMlity'''' with the above authorities ; (I think 
 many of them " respectable,'''' though greatly mistaken,) but that 
 they are a " class," no man but yourself would deny. That they 
 are a small class, I gladly admit ; for the Methodists and the Baptists, 
 though orthodox, refuse to confederate with them. The " Christian 
 Watchman," the organ of the Baptists, and the " Olive Branch," 
 the organ of the Methodists, and the great majority, as I suppose, of 
 the Congregationalists, disclaim their fellowship and condemn their 
 schemes. 
 
 I leave you for a moment, Mr. Smith, in order to address a few 
 considerations to those who think that doctrinal religion should be 
 taught in our schools ; and who would empower each town or school 
 district to determine the kind of doctrine to be taught. It is easy 
 to see that the experiment would not stop with having half a dozen 
 conflicting creeds taught by authority of law, in the different schools 
 
41 
 
 of the same town or vicinity. Majorities will change in the same 
 place. One sect may have the ascendency, to-day ; another, tomor- 
 row. This year, there will be three Persons in the Godhead ; 
 next year, but One ; and the third year, the Trinity will be restored, 
 to hold its precarious sovereignty, until it shall be again dethroned 
 by the worms of the dust it has made. This year, the everlasting 
 fires of hell will burn, to terrify the impenitent ; next year, and 
 without any repentance, its eternal flames will be extinguished, — to 
 be rekindled forever, or to be quenched forever, as it may be decided 
 at annual town meetings. This year, under Congregational rule, 
 the Rev. Mr. So and So, and the Rev. Dr. So and So, will be on the 
 committee; but' next year, these Reverends and Reverend Doctors 
 will be plain Misters, — never having had apostolical consecration 
 from the Bishop. This year, the ordinance of baptism is inefficacious 
 without immersion ; next year one drop of water will be as good as 
 forty fathoms. Children attending the district school will be taught 
 one way ; going from the district school to the town high school, 
 they will be taught another way. In controversies involving such 
 momentous interests, the fiercest party spirit will rage, and all the 
 contemplations of heaven be poisoned by the passions of earth. 
 Will not town lines and school district lines be altered, to restore an 
 unsuccessful, or to defeat a successful party ? Will not fiery zealots 
 move from place to place, to turn the theological scale, as, it is said, 
 is sometimes now done, to turn a political one ? And will not the 
 godless make a merchandise of religion by being bribed to do the 
 same thing ? Can aught be conceived more deplorable, more fatal 
 to the interests of the young than this ? Such strifes and persecutions 
 on the question of total depravity, as to make all men depraved at 
 any rate ; and such contests about the nature and the number of 
 Persons in the Godhead in heaven, as to make little children atheists 
 upon earth. 
 
 If the question, "What theology shall be taught in school.^" 
 is to be decided by districts or towns, then all the prudential and the 
 superintending school committees must be chosen with express refer- 
 ence to their faith ; the creed of every candidate for teaching must 
 be investigated ; and when litigations arise, — and such a system will 
 breed them in swarms, — an ecclesiastical tribunal, — some Star 
 Chamber, or High Commission Court, must be created to decide 
 them. If the Governor is to have power to appoint the Judges of 
 6 
 
42 
 
 this Spiritual Tribunal, he also must be chosen with reference to the 
 appointments he will make, and so too must the Legislators who are 
 to define their power, and to give them the Purse and the Sword of 
 the State, to execute their authority. Call such officers by the 
 name of Judge and Governor, or Cardinal and Pope, the thing will 
 he the same ! The establishment of the true faith will not stop with 
 the schoolroom. Its grasping jurisdiction will extend over all 
 schools, over all private faith and public worship ; until at last, after 
 all our centuries of struggle and of suffering, it will come back to 
 the inquisition, the fagot and the rack ! 
 
 Let me ask here, too, where is the consistency of those, who advo- 
 cate the right of a toion or a district to determine, by a majority, 
 what theology shall be taught in the schools, but deny the same right 
 to the State 7 Does not this inconsistency blaze out into the faces 
 of such advocates, so as to make them /eeZ, if they are too blind to 
 see 1 This would be true, even if the State had written out the the- 
 ology it would enforce. But ours has not. It has only said that no 
 one sect shall obtain any advantage over other sects, by means of 
 the school system, which, for purposes of self-preservation, it has 
 established. 
 
 It is sometimes further said, that under our present laws, the 
 Christians called Liberal, have an advantage over those called Evan- 
 gelical, for two reasons ; firsts because what is taught in school as 
 religion, is taught as the ivhole of religion, when it is only a part. 
 But here the fact is not so. I have never known or heard of an in- 
 stance where it was so. It would be a plain contravention of the 
 law so to teach. A teacher has no right to say that what he is al- 
 lowed to teach in school is the whole ; and, if not so taught in 
 school, every child has opportunity enough out of school, to know 
 that what is taught in school, is not considered the whole of religion, 
 as held by any of the various sects. 
 
 The other alleged advantage is, that if the evangelical doctrines 
 are excluded from school, then what is left is Liberal Christianity. 
 But is it not obvious that one party suffers as much by being de- 
 barred from contesting and confuting the doctrines of its opponents, 
 as the other suffers by being debarred from inculcating those doc- 
 trines .? The question in discussion between the sects is, the truth or 
 error of certain theological points. One sect could make the schools 
 a powerful instrumentality for spreading them ; another sect could 
 make the schools as powerful an instrumentality for extirpating 
 
43 
 
 them. But botli parties are debarred from using the schools for any 
 such purpose ; and thus the sacrifice is equal. The case must be 
 argued in another forum. 
 
 Suppose the question to be between the Evangelical and the Cath- 
 olic denominations ; would the former be content to stop with incul- 
 cating its own views affirmatively ? Would it not also teach the 
 error of a belief in purgatory, the saving efficacy of relics and 
 masses for the dead ? 
 
 I come now, Mr. Smith, to your only remaining proof, — an alleged 
 conversation with the Rev. Mr. Moore. Two things here demand 
 your attention. First, you say that the object of a visit made by me 
 to Mr. Moore, was " to induce him to correct certain expressions 
 made in the Recorder, which you informed him had done you injus- 
 tice." Totally and unequivocally untrue! You give us no variety, 
 Mr. Smith ! I cannot conceive of a man so enamored of falsehood, 
 that he would not like an occasional truth, if for no other reason than 
 to whet his appetite, and renew his relish for the false. But you 
 cannot serve your readers with truth, even for a condiment ! The 
 call I made on Mr. Moore, was at the suggestion of, and in company 
 with, a gentleman, orthodox in his denominational connections, and 
 with whose character for truth and veracity, no friend of Mr. Moore 
 would venture to bring his in competition. He knows, and if neces- 
 sary, will testify, that my visit to Mr. Moore had nothing to do with 
 asking redress for any injustice against me, committed by that paper. 
 I had long before learned to bear its accusations and its thwartings 
 in silence, and with what meekness I could. 
 
 When our mutual friend, and my companion in that visit, (whose 
 name, at his request, I omit, although I am a great loser by doing 
 so,) saw your statement of the alleged conversation with Mr. Moore, 
 he immediately declared to a by-stander, that no conversation like 
 that reported by yon, had transpired iri his presence, during our call 
 on Mr. Moore. Taking occasion, on the same day, to see Mr. Moore, 
 he called his attention to your story. Mr. Moore then said that he 
 had, some time before, — (was it after your sermon was preached, 
 Mr. Smith, or before ?) — related such a conversation to Mr. Smith, 
 but that he had no idea that Mr. Smith would make such use of it 
 as he had made, and did not expect it would be published. Your 
 use, then, of the conversation, whatever it was, was unauthorized. 
 But we ought not to be surprised at this. My friend then presented 
 to Mr. Moore the improbability of my giving such a monosyllabic 
 
44 
 
 " No ! !" as I am represented to have done, to the last question. To 
 this Mr Moore replied, — and I take the exact words from the lips of 
 my companion, — that " he had not been particular in noting it, [my 
 answer,] that he had recorded in as few words as possihle, the sub- 
 stance of the conversation, and that Mr. Mann might have replied 
 to the last question in a manner different from that imputed to him, 
 and that his negative answer might not have been a simple No ! and 
 might have been attended with some qualifying, explanatory remarks.'''' 
 Such, then, is the statement made by Mr. Moore, even after the Re- 
 corder had committed itself by publishing your sermon, and after you 
 had committed your friends as well as yourself, by your pamphlet. 
 
 This statement led me to look again at the report of the conver- 
 sation, and I then noticed, for the first time, a curious fact on the 
 face of it. Mr. Moore's questions to me are put in quotation marks, 
 but my putative answers to him are not. Was there any sinister de- 
 sign here ? The whole statement with its context, implies, as 
 strongly as any thing can imply, that my loords were given. If it 
 were any object here to discuss shades of falsity, this point would 
 be worth inquiring into. 
 
 The above, surely, are very substantial abatements from the story 
 as you have told it. Granting that a conversation on this subject 
 ever took place between Mr. Moore and myself, they prove that I 
 might not have answered the last question as you have stated, and 
 also that I might have accompanied my answer with "some quali- 
 fying and explanatory remarks." 
 
 Now it is exceedingly unpleasant to come into direct collision, on 
 a plain matter of fact, with any gentleman. When one witness on 
 the stand has sworn positively to any event, a succeeding witness is 
 always embarrassed in testifying to the exact contrary, though the 
 belief of the latter may be as positive as that of the former. Such 
 irreconcileable contradictions always lead to an inquiry into motives ; 
 into the course of conduct which one party has pursued towards the 
 other ; and, in the last resort, it opens the question of general char- 
 acter. Now I have as little desire as fear to necessitate such ques- 
 tions between Mr. Moore and myself; and as it so happens that I 
 can vindicate myself, without expressly contradicting him, I now 
 forbear to call his statement and his conduct towards me in question. 
 Contenting myself, then, with saying that, after all the effort and the 
 tasking of our memories, that my friend and myself can make, 
 neither he nor I can remember any such conversation as is said to 
 
45 
 
 have takon place, I find sufiicient ground for self-justification in 
 the admissions now made by Mr. Moore. He acknowledges that he 
 may not have I'eponed my language ; he acknowledges that my al- 
 leged answer may have been attended with " some qualifying and 
 explanatory remarks." Suppose me then to have said that, accord- 
 ing to my understanding of the law, the doctrine of future rewards 
 and punishments could not be taught in our public schools, other- 
 wise than as it is taught by the Bible ;— that is, that it could not be 
 taught by introducing the Westminster Catechism, or any similar 
 work ; or that it could not be taught in express contravention and 
 denial of the belief of the Universalists, so far as future punishments 
 are concerned. Now I affirm that this is as far as I ever went in 
 any conversation with any man. I never said aught more than this 
 to Mr. Moore. What, then, is my offence ? Personally, I believe 
 jn a future state of rewards and punishments, just as firmly as I be- 
 lieve the sun will rise and set tomorrow. I believe that the Bible 
 teaches this doctrine. But this is my private belief. A portion of 
 the Universalists and Unitarians believe otherwise. The law forbids 
 each sect to make use of the schools as a means to propagate its 
 own peculiar belief, or to put down that of a rival sect. What, then, 
 did I say .'' At most, — merely that my sense of justice towards a 
 minority would withhold me from teaching, in our Common Schools, 
 what I myself believe to be true. You think such a course to be er- 
 roneous. You object again and again, that doctrines are excluded 
 " which nine-tenths of professed Christians, of all names, believe.'^ 
 pp. 11, 47. You say, "a fundamental truth, received by all Chris- 
 tian sects save one," is stricken out. p. 48. You condemn my al- 
 leged interpretation of the " principles of piety," as excluding "all 
 that treats of human depravity, — salvation by the blood of Jesus 
 Christ, the atonement, &c." Of course, you are in favor of introdu- 
 cing " total depravity" with its associate doctrines, into the Common 
 Schools. You either think it lawful to do this, or you think it un- 
 lawful. If you think it unlawful, then you condemn me for not join- 
 ing you in violating the law. If you think it lawful, then I advise 
 you to take the opinion of any respectable lawyer in the Common- 
 wealth ; or to raise the question and have it decided by the Courts. 
 Jn the city of Boston, where you are, there are several societies of 
 Universalists. Why denounce me for differing from you in opinion 
 about their rights .? Why not make a case, and carry the question 
 before the competent tribunals } If you prove to be right, I will 
 
46 
 
 hold my peace. If I am right, then all your denunciations of the 
 Board, and of me, made without any attempt to have the question 
 judicially settled, are false and wicked. 
 
 But why has a Universalist always been allowed to hold a seat as 
 a member of the Board of Education.? If that denomination have 
 no rights because they constitute but one-tenth " of professed Chris- 
 tians," as you intimate, then have they a representative on the Board 
 to be insulted, as well as disfranchised ? Besides, Mr. Smith, every 
 tyro in ecclesiastical history knows that every persecutinn, frf>m the 
 time of Constantine to St. Bartholomew's and the fires of Smithfield, 
 originated, proceeded, and was justified on the ground that a few dis- 
 senters, or a 7ninorily, had no rights. Doubtless you suggest this 
 course, ni)t because you are ignorant of its natural tendency, but be- 
 cause you know it. 
 
 I have a remark or two to make on the part Mr. Moore is said to 
 have taken in this matter. I rejoice to hear that he not only admits 
 the alleged conversation to have been private, but also that " he had 
 no idea that Mr. Smith would make such use of it as he has made ; — 
 he did not expect it would be published." I rejoice in this acknowl- 
 edgement, because the lowest notions of honor and veracity would 
 have required Mr. Moore, in such case, to give me the benefit of his 
 present concessions. It seems to me it would not have shown a sense 
 of honor squeamishly delicate, nor a conscience suflfering under any 
 morbid activity, if Mr. Moore, when he found that you had abused 
 his confidence, by publishing his story, and when, also, he saw and 
 acknowledged thai he had not given me the benefit of the conces- 
 sions to which I was entitled, — if lie had done me the justice to say 
 so publicly. Dr. Humphrey did so. Your conduct would then have 
 stood before the public in a truer liglit, and mine in a less false one. 
 
 As you and Mr. Moore are prone to stigmatize as "Deists," those 
 persons who diflbr from you, on certain theo'ogical points, I rejoice 
 that he has given us his notions of what Deism is. After staling an 
 alleged construction of the law, which would debar an appeal to a 
 future state of rewards and punishments, he says, this would exclude 
 from public schools "all but Deism" ; — that, under such a construc- 
 tion, not " any thing belter [than Deism] could be taught." We 
 have it, then, on the authority of an editor of the Boston Recorder, 
 that though the Bible may be in all our schools ; though the prophe- 
 cy of the coming of Christ, and the fulfilment of that prophecy be 
 there ; though it be declared that life and immortality were brought 
 
47 
 
 to light by the gospel ; that God was in Christ reconciling the world 
 to himself; that it is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, 
 that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, &c. &c. ; yet, 
 unless the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments be 
 taught, expressly, and separately from Bible reading, " ail but De- 
 ism" is excluded from the schools. The distinctive feature of Chris- 
 tianity then, is not a Revelation, nor the advent of the Messiah, nor 
 the Atonement, nor the miracles and death and resurrection of 
 Christ, nor all these together ; but it is the doctrine of a future state 
 of rewards and punishments ; and whoever believes all the former, 
 without the latter, Mr. Moore calls a " Deist." 
 
 But notwithstanding all I have said on this point, Mr. Smith. I have 
 one thing to add, in which your character is deeply at stake. Your 
 original charge was, that the Board of Education had allowed me, 
 *' under the sanction of its authority, to disseminate through the land 
 crude and destructive principles," &cc. 1 have examined your proofs 
 of this charge ; and, without making any abatement from them, 
 what are they ? — one private conversation with Mr. Woodbridge, 
 and one private conversation with Mr. Moore ! You have offered 
 nothing else which bears the semblance of proof. A private con- 
 versation with two individuals, in the course of ten years, is what 
 you offer as proof of your charge that I have had the sanction of the 
 Board of Education, in disseminating crude and destructive princi- 
 ples THROUGH THE LAND ! One could hardly have supposed before- 
 hand, that his indignation against falsehood could be even momenta- 
 rily lost, by the ridiculousness of the proofs ofl'ered by its inventor, 
 to sustain it. Besides, you once said, p. 26, "with your private 
 views, I have nothing to do." What were these but private } 
 
 As for your criticisms upon, (or sneers at }) the phrase " the nat- 
 ural conscience," (p. 46,) which phrase you have copied from the 
 Journal, 1 suppose every fair-minded man would understand by it, 
 precisely what Bishop Butler understood by it, in his celebrated ser- 
 mons upon Human Nature ; and precisely what St. Paul meant by 
 it, Rom. ii. 15; "their conscience also bearing witness," — "their 
 thoughts accusing or else excusing." 
 
 So, too, respecting your censure, (p. 45,) of the position that ev- 
 ery child has tlie '■'■ capacity f^r all that is good and noble.''' Must 
 not every child have such a " capacity,^' as preliminary to his becom- 
 ing a good man, a Christian.? His cupacily may be filled, or em- 
 ployed, or roused, either by the grace of God, acting directly upon 
 
48 
 
 his heart, or acting through the instrumentality of human means. 
 But how can any one of the human family, any more than any one 
 of the louer orders of animals, be the recipient of trutli, either di- 
 vine or human, if lie has not the capacihj to receive it ? This is the 
 true and obvious meaning of the passage you condemn. 
 
 Another suggestion of yours is so gross that I could not have be- 
 lieved that any man, having the slightest regard for his character, 
 could make it, before I saw it in your " Reply," and subsequently in 
 the Boston Recorder. It is, that a town's or a district's share of the 
 income of the school fund, may depend upon the character of the re- 
 ligious instruction given in its schools. No such condition is, or 
 ever has been, known to the law ; and further, neither the Board 
 nor myself has, or ever has had, the remotest connection with the 
 apportionment of that income. What bearing such a statement or 
 suggestion as this, coming from a clergyman, and a self-styled relig- 
 ious paper, and having no possible object but to mislead, may have 
 upon the question of the existence of a " natural conscience," Heave 
 for your respective readers to determine, 
 
 I have now considered all the leading proofs contained in your 
 " Reply." Paley sajrs, " I have seldom known any one who de- 
 serted truth in trifles, that could be trusted in matters of importance." 
 The converse of this must be universally true ; and so I may consider 
 all your more trivial and subordinate assertions to be also refuted. 
 
 But you array authority against me. You cite two distinguished 
 public personages, — the present Governor of the Commonwealth, 
 and a Senator in the Congress of the United States, — to put me 
 down. I acknowledge, if they can be fairly shown to be opposed 
 to me, I have no alternative but to surrender. With the former 
 gentleman, I have long enjoyed the honor of an acquaintance. 
 He was a member of the Board of Education at its establishment. 
 Could so humble an individual as myself bestow a compliment 
 upon him, I would task my faculties to eulogize him, in selectest 
 terms of power and brilliancy. This I could do, not only most 
 sincerely, but most consistently. But how could you do this, Mr. 
 Smith } Did you not know that the name of Governor Briggs 
 appears as a sanctioner, approver, commender of those very works, 
 in the School Library, which, as you aver, " inculcate the most 
 deadly heresy, — even universal salvation.'" Yes, Mr. Smitli, there 
 stands the name of Governor Briggs, as endorser and circulator of 
 what you represent as damnable works ! 
 
49 
 
 But you say, Governor Briggs " stands rebuked by his Secretary." 
 Surely, never had unworthy citizen so gracious a governor as I. 
 One week after your " Reply" was published, (and doubtless after 
 you or some of your friends had sent him a copy of it, — though this 
 is only my conjecture,) the Governor, in his annual message to the 
 Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, 
 addressed to them, to the State, and to you too, the following words, 
 in relation to me : " Justice to a faithful public officer leads me to 
 say, that the indefatigable and accomplished Secretary of the Board 
 of Education has performed services in the cause of Common 
 Schools, which will earn for him the lasting gratitude of the genera- 
 tion to which he belongs." May I be pardoned, under the peculiar 
 circumstances, for repeating these words to you ? I cannot say that 
 they are deserved ; but only that I will try to deserve them. Even 
 now, it makes me blush to quote so high an encomium from so high 
 an authority ; and if, when we both read it, for the first time, it made 
 you feel as black as it did me red, I would commend your case to 
 the Humane Society. 
 
 Although you cited the Governor against me, and sought artfully 
 to pique him against me, by saying he " stood rebuked by his 
 Secretary," yet perhaps you will say it is " in bad taste" for me 
 to cite the same authority, at a later date, to extinguish you ; but 
 my defence is, that there are occasions, and this seems to be one of 
 them, when it is lawful to indulge the sight of a Haman swinging 
 on his own gallows. 
 
 You cite iVIr. Webster, also, against me. Is it possible that you 
 can be so ignorant, or expect your readers to be so ignorant, as not to 
 know the infinite distance between our school system and the system 
 of Mr. Girard, against which Mr. Webster was contending ? After 
 referring to Mr. Webster's argument, you ask, with an air of triumph, 
 " Is he unacquainted with the Constitution?" 1 can only say in 
 reply, that the Supreme Court of the United States overruled his 
 argument, by their decision. Are they unacquainted with the 
 Constitution ? 
 
 Among his other vast and splendid attainments, Mr. Webster 
 doubtless possesses much theological lore, but his knowledge of the 
 laws and action of the human mind is ampler still. As you refer 
 me to a passage in one of. his public speeches, allow me to recipro- 
 cate the favor by referring you to a passage in another, of a later 
 7 
 
50 
 
 date, which will I think bring your conduct, and yourself, very 
 vividly to the minds of your readers. 
 
 In his celebrated speech on the Northeastern boundary, delivered 
 in the Senate of the United States, last April, there is the following 
 description, which to the readers of your pamphlet, needs no appli- 
 cation of mine : " Sir, this person's mind is so grotesque, so 
 bizarre, it is rather the caricature of a mind than a mind. When we 
 see a man of some knowledge and some talents, who is yet incapable 
 of producing anything true, or useful, we sometimes apply to him 
 a phrase borrowed from the mechanics ; we say, ' there is a screw 
 loose somewhere !' In this case, the screws are loose all over. 
 The whole machine is out of order, disjointed, rickety, crazy, 
 creaking, as often upside down as upside up ; as often hurting as 
 helping those who use it, and generally incapable of anything but 
 bungling and mischief." 
 
 THE COMMON SCHOOL LIBRARY. 
 
 On this topic but little needs to be said. You declared, in your 
 sermon, that the Board had accepted books for their Library, 
 " that inculcate the most deadly heresy, — even universal salvation." 
 In my first note to you I said, " May I ask you to tell me what those 
 books are r" In your answer, you neither quoted nor cited any 
 passage or page. Your only evidence was this ; " My attention was 
 first called to it by a preacher of Universalism," — being willing in 
 this case, to shield yourself under the authority of an anonymous 
 Universalist. In my reply, I pressed the matter more closely home ; 
 I called upon you to come out from under your shelter of a vague 
 accusation, and give " books" and " passages." I offered you my 
 copy of the Library, that you might prosecute your investigations 
 leisurely and thoroughly. I closed with admonishing you to "prove 
 your charge or withdraw it, or ask no man hereafter to believe 
 you." In your long " Reply," you still abstain from quoting a 
 single passage in proof of your assertion. And you cannot do it, 
 Mr. Smith. You dare not do it. You have referred to some papers 
 in three volumes of the Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons ; but there 
 is not a single paper, page or passage, refen-ed to, but would, if 
 spread out upon your pages, be your own condemnation. I challenge 
 you to spread before the public, the pages you have referred to. 
 
 Remember, Mr. Smith, the burden of proof is on you. You made 
 the accusation. You charged honorable and religious men with 
 
51 
 
 dishonorable and irreligious conduct. Your character for truth Is 
 now subjected to the single alternative of proving the charge or 
 withdrawing it. Failure to do one or the other of these, brands you 
 forever as a premeditated and persevering libeller. You have 
 failed to do either ; and though it is not incumbent on me to vindicate 
 the Library from your unproved and unprovable charge, yet a few 
 words, exposing the manner in which you have attempted to mislead 
 your readers, seem to be demanded. 
 
 On page 57, though you dare to quote no passage, you have six 
 references. As a specimen of your perversions, take your reference 
 to vol. ii, page 104. You object that it contains an " offer of the 
 world to come, in which ' no death or sin is,' without that limit which 
 the Bible makes." On referring to the passage, I find the offer is 
 expressly, and in words, limited to " the redeemed." 
 
 You refer to vol. ii, page 278, as teaching " a resurrection to 
 immortal glory of the dead, without distinction of character." 
 On referring to this passage, I find it is expressly limited to the 
 " bodies of the just." But what can be said to you ; of what use to 
 bray you in a mortar, — preacher, clergyman, theologian, self- 
 appointed censor of the Board of Education. When you animad- 
 verted upon this passage, how could you be so stupid as not to 
 remember that St. Paul, in 1 Cor. xv. where lie describes the 
 resurrection, does it " without distinction of character V You 
 adopt a principle of exegesis which makes the Apostle Paul 
 a heretic. Do you say there is something in St. Paul's context } 
 I reply, there is not only something in the context of the passage 
 referred to, but something, also, in the body of the passage itself. 
 You make even an antagonist ashamed of your blindness and folly. 
 
 You refer to vol, iii, page 2-4, as containing an editorial note, 
 "mellowing the author's remarks on Christ." There is no editorial 
 note at that place. With your reference " 2-4" in my mind, I 
 looked the volume carefully through as far as page 224, (instead of 
 " 2-4,") where I find the following editorial note : " It is held by 
 some persons that this ' prince' is a personification of the principle 
 and power of that moral evil, which unquestionably exists to so great 
 an extent and virulent degree among men." It is true, this note re- 
 fers, not to Christ, as you say, but to the devil ; but I see no rea- 
 son, on that account, to doubt it to be the note you mean ; — this being 
 as near the truth as you generally come. 
 
 But I cannot dwell on your heart-sickening corruption. The work 
 
52 
 
 you refer to is that of the Rev. Dr. Duncan, of Scotland, one of the 
 most earnest of its evangelical divines. The School Library edition 
 was edited by the late Rev. Dr. Greenwood, who, in his introduc- 
 tion, declares himself to be " certain, that he has carefully and con- 
 scientiously abstained from introducing any of the peculiar opinions 
 of the denomination to which he himself belongs." It was approved 
 as a suitable volume for the School Library, after being attentively 
 read, by Governor Briggs, and by the Rev. Dr. Thomas Robbins, and 
 the Rev. Emerson Davis of Westfield, — two Orthodox divines. But 
 on this you say, " Nor can I conceive how the fact that Gov. Briggs 
 is sound in the faith, alters the character of certain books in the li- 
 brary," &c. But where were your senses, Mr. Smith ? Were they, 
 like your conscience, non-existent ? On the back of the title-page 
 of each of the volumes you refer to, stands the name of Gov. Briggs 
 himself, as a sanctioner of the work ! This beggars description. 
 
 But once more. The above work was carried through the press 
 and all its proofs carefully read and revised by an orthodox Episco- 
 palian, Joseph W. Ingraham, Esq. I close my evidence, on this 
 point, by introducing a letter from Mr. Ingraham, who, from his con- 
 nection with the press while the work was passing through it, must 
 be acquainted with every part of it : — 
 
 Boston, Jan. 30, 1847. 
 
 Hon. Horace Mann; — My Dear Sir; — I hardly know how to spare 
 time to comply with your request, and yet I cannot refuse to do so. When 
 charges are made against the School Library, from any responsible source, 
 I shall be again, as heretofore, ready to meet tliem ; but random charges, 
 like those to which you have called my attention, need no reply. Their 
 author had either examined the volumes of the School Library, or he had 
 not. If he had examined them, he knew that his charges were untrue. If 
 he had not examined them, he is guilty of making false charges, without 
 knowing whether he had grounds for so doing or not* 
 
 The charges now brought against the Library, are not a little singular. 
 It is said that the Library accepts books "that inculcate the most deadly 
 heresy, — even universal salvation." " All that savors of evangelical truth 
 is carefully removed, — sentiments abound which no evangelical Christian 
 can sanction." As a disbeliever in the doctrine of Universal Salvation, as 
 a lover "of evangelical truth," and as claiming to be an "evangelical 
 Christian," I pronounce these charges absolutely and unqualifiedly /a/se. 
 
 It is curious, that the only work instanced as liable to the charge of in- 
 culcating the doctrine of universal salvation, is the one against wliich the 
 Universalists have most loudly complained, as teaching directly the oppo- 
 
 *Two paragraphs otMr. Iiigraham's letter are here omitted, as not bearing direct- 
 ly upon the quesiioii at issue. Mr. Ingraham had the editorial supervision of the 
 whole Library, as far as it was printed two years ago, and he perlormed the service 
 in a most able and satisfactory manner. — H. M. 
 
site of their belief. Soon after the publication of " The Sacred Philosophy 
 of the Seasons," the Trumpet, the leading Universalist paper, attacked it, 
 as inculcating doctrines wliicii they did not believe; and one of the pub- 
 lishers of the Library, (who was a member of that denomination,) com- 
 plained, tlmt I had allowed the pledge of the Board to be violated in " innu- 
 merable instances" in this work. To this charge, I could not ple;id guilty ; 
 but at one time it was a serious question, whether the work should not be 
 excluded from the Library, on tins account. No one ever dreamed, that 
 the work would afterwards be attacked on the ground of its inculcating the 
 very doctrines that it was tlien supposed it so strongly opposed. 
 
 " Optics sharp it needs, I ween, 
 To see what is not to be seen." 
 
 The attack, to which you have now called my attention, speaks of the 
 alterations made in the "Seasons," by Dr. Greenwood, and says "those 
 alterations make all the difference in the world. Much that goes out into 
 the world under your auspices, as Sabbath reading, is as well entitled to 
 that distinction, as the Farmers' Almanac, and no more so. Read the 
 Titles," After giving the Titles of several of the "Sunday Papers," he 
 adds, "Such subjects, divested of the religious character given tlu-m by 
 their author, altered to suit the irreligious, indicate the character of the 
 Sabbath reading officially recommended." The Titles here given aie those 
 of Dr. Duncan himself; and the Papers are just as they stood in the origi- 
 nal, ivilhout alteration, except in a few trifling instances, to correct errois, 
 or objectionable expressions, and omissions of some sentences for the sake 
 of shortening the Papers. I believe there was but one omission, in </tese 
 papers, on account of its doctrinal tendency ; and no alteration to make the 
 author speak a language which he did not intend. 
 
 Six passages are commended to your attention, as " proof, in part, of 
 what" the writer " affirms of the Library." Five of these six passages 
 stand in the Library just as Dr Duncan wrote them ; with the exception, 
 as before, of a few trifling corrections, and tiie omission of a few sentences. 
 Dr. Duncan's doctrine is not altered, or any part of it omitted, I believe, in 
 a single instance. No one will, certainly, accuse hirn of inculcating Uni- 
 versalism. To the sixth passage referred to, — Dr. Greenwood's note, — if 
 any one can object, let him do so. I do not. 
 
 Objection is made to Mr. Peabody's "Life of Brainerd," as if it were an 
 abridgment of Edwards's. This was never pretended. It was thouofht that 
 a good selection could be made from Sparks's "Library of American Biog- 
 raphy," and an arrani,^eLneril for that purpose v/as made with the proprietors 
 of the copyright of that work. Lives enough to form three volumes ol our 
 Library, were selected ; and Peabody's "Lite of Brainerd" liappened to be 
 one of them. This was not an abridgment of Edwards, but was written 
 by Mr. P., and in his Preface he gives the sources whence he derived his 
 materials. Edwards's "Life" is the second named, of three works used in 
 preparing it. And yet this pamphlet writer has the hardihood to assert, 
 that " it goes down to posterity, as the veritable work of Edwards, endorsed 
 by the Massachusetts Board of Education" ! ! I 
 
 I have thus, my dear sir, given a very hasty reply to your request, and 
 have not time to add more, than that 
 I am, very truly, yours, 
 
 JOSEPH W. INGRAHAM. 
 
 Here, then, Mr. Smith, you have the broad declaration of an or- 
 thodox, evangelical Christian, intimately acquainted with the whole 
 
54 
 
 merits of the subject. He pronounces your charges "absolutely 
 and unqualified ly/aZse." Here is the reason why you did not dare 
 to quote a solitary passage, in your " Reply," but made a show of 
 referring to the volumes. But those volumes have been read by 
 others, who will all convict and condenui you, as Mr. Ingraham has 
 done. The library is scattered over the State, in a thousand school 
 districts. You can go but a short distance, in any direction, without 
 passing it. Wherever you go, the words in which Mr. Ingraham de- 
 scribes your charges, will forever hiss in your ears — " They are 
 false, ''^ " They are false." 
 
 Having considered your proofs, I come to your rhetorical perora- 
 tion. Your untrue allegations I have refuted by facts, but your 
 rhetoric may be answered by rhetoric. In your close, you compare 
 our Schools to the " steamer Great Britain," wrecked in Dundrum 
 Bay, on the Irish coast ; and, according to you, the Board of Edu- 
 cation and myself, by our fatal navigation, are running the Common 
 Schools of Massachusetts on the Dundrum Bay of infidelity. I take 
 no exception to your simile, because it fails in the very point where 
 resemblance was most needed ; for, while the " Great Britain" is 
 known to be a wreck, we have the testimony of three hundred boards 
 of school committee men, that our Schools were never before known 
 to be in so prosperous and safe a condition as at the present, — each 
 one of them, so far as I know, having the sheet, and bower anchor of 
 the Bible on board. But let this pass, as one of your poetic licenses. 
 I would that you had taken no other. When I first read this nauti- 
 cal similitude of yours, I thought I would match it by anolher, — also 
 nautical. But mine should be American, while yours was appropri- 
 ately Irish. It v/as this: In 1841, ascending the river Ohio, at a 
 time when competition between the boats was very keen, and the 
 most knavish tricks were sometimes played, to decoy passengers 
 from one boat to another, — just as we were about to leave one of the 
 " landings," a suspicious, malign looking person, was seen to step 
 from another boat into ours, and after walking two or three times 
 round the deck, with an air of vast importance, and a look designed 
 to indicate intuitive knowledge, he elbowed himself into the middle 
 of a group of passengers, and exclaimed, "Powder!" " I smell 
 powder!" " There is powder in this boat." "'Tis hid down by 
 the engines.'''' '' We shall all be blown up !" "You liiid belter fol- 
 low me into the next boat, which is to start soon !" After the sus- 
 pense of a moment's amazement, a staid bystander, in a quaker garb, 
 
55 
 
 replied, " Thee sayest the powder is hid by the engines. The boai 
 has been a good boat thus far. We will go and see whether thy 
 powder is there." The varlet instantly disappeared ! 
 
 Now, Mr. Smith, there is powder, and too much of it in the world ; 
 but the mistake, both of yourself, and the rogue whom I have de- 
 scribed, was, that you assigned so definite a place for your powder, 
 that every body could look for himself, and affirm it was not there. 
 It was as though you should tell a man, in plain citizens' apparel, 
 that he had on a State-prison garb. Its only effect would be, — to 
 make him look at yours. 
 
 I say, that when I concluded the first hasty reading of your "Re- 
 ply," I thought I Avould give the above illustration, as an offset to 
 yours ; but the emotions which a more careful investigation of your 
 conduct has excited in my mind, are too melancholy to allow me to 
 part with you in this mood. You are a professed minister of the 
 Gospel. You assume to be a disciple of Him who went about doing 
 good. You are bound by the most solemn obligations, to let your 
 light so shine before men, that they seeing your good works, may 
 be led to glorify our Father in heaven. But what have yon done ! 
 In a place and in a manner, — such as not the most aged and vene- 
 rable clergyman in the Commonwealth ; such as not the most distin- 
 guished layman ; such as not the most flagitious politician, goaded 
 on by fiery partisan zeal, has ever ventured upon, — you have ar- 
 raigned and denounced a body of men, as pure and as high as were 
 ever associated together in the State of Massachusetts. The most 
 heinous offences, which, ss members of a Christian Commonwealth, 
 or as subjects of the government of God, they could commit, you 
 laid to their charge. Owing to my relation to that body of men, and 
 to my being implicated in one part of your accusation, I addressed 
 you a private note, — a note dictated by kindness, and not by anger, 
 and not containing a word of recrimination. Knowing that the 
 statements attributed to you were diametrically opposite to the truth, 
 I gave you a detail of some facts, and forwarded to you some official 
 documents, demonstrative of your error. The facts and the documen- 
 tary proof, you disdained to accredit ; and with foul and insulting 
 innuendo, you persisted in the wrong you had begun. To this, in 
 another private note, I expostulated further ; and, at its close, I be- 
 sought you to reconsider. the course you had taken. " If," said I, in 
 closing it, " from inadvertence, from want of information, or from 
 any other cause, you have been led to do injustice to the Board of 
 
56 
 
 Educatioh and to myself, and to wrong a great and a sacred cause, 
 have the religion, have the Christianity, at least, have the worldly 
 magnanimity and honor, to make redress." You had smitten me on 
 one cheek; and I here turned to you the other. But you were not 
 satisfied with smiting me a second time, in private. You dragged 
 me before the public to insult and malign me, in the face of the 
 world. I have met your charges. Your falsification in regard to 
 the " sectarian character" of the Common School Journal, and my 
 views and desires as to the introduction of the Bible into school, I 
 have met, by the testimony of Dr. Humphrey. Your falsification in 
 regard to my opinions about the use of the rod in school, I have 
 proved by Mr. Page, — selected from among a thousand witnesses. 
 Your falsification in regard to the Common School Library, is con- 
 clusively shown by the testimony of Mr. Ingraham, as well as by 
 your own fear to spread a single passage of the books you referred 
 to, upon your pages. In each other particular, I think you have 
 been refuted, wherever you had gone round the thirty-two points of 
 the compass, affirming south to be north, and cast to be west. 
 
 In vindication of my conduct to my friends, I desire to say that, 
 had I known as much respecting your character and standing, when 
 I addressed you my first note, as I now do, I should not have trou- 
 bled you. But I wrote that note from the purest motives, and with- 
 out the slightest apprehension that it would draw after it such conse- 
 quences as your subsequent conduct has made necessary. 
 
 In writing the foregoing answer, and dwelling, as I necessarily 
 have done, upon the wrongs you have committed against a noble 
 cause, and against excellent men ; — and, from my intimate know- 
 ledge of what has been done, seeing this wrong as no other per- 
 son could do, — I have been moved to righteous indignation ; but 
 at the close of this letter, while bringing yourself more distinctly and 
 exclusively before my mind, my sorrow and pity predominate, and I 
 leave you with the sincere hope and prayer that you may repent and 
 find forgiveness, and " go and sin no more." 
 Very truly, yours, &c., 
 
 HORACE MANN. 
 
 West Newton, Jan. 30, 1847. 
 
Ov)«rw.- ^Ott-WvvJi/w 'JuAaXjwa^xA • 
 
 SEQUEL 
 
 SO CALLED CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 BETWEEN THE 
 
 Rev. M. H. SMITH and HORACE MANN, 
 
 S U Tx R E PT I T I r S L Y V V B L I S H K 1) 
 
 uv 
 
 Mr. SMITH; 
 
 CONTAIMNG A 
 
 LETTER FROM MR. MANN, 
 
 SUPPRESSED BY MR. S:\TITH, 
 
 WITH THE 
 
 REPLY THEREIN PROMISED. 
 
 A-M BOSTON: 
 
 WILLIAM B . F VV L E , 1 38 ^ W A S H I N G T O N S T R E E T , 
 
 TUTTLE AND DENNETT, PRINTERS. 
 
 1847. 
 
 
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