Texas in 1850. By Melinda Rankin. Page: 45 of 196

48

TEXAS IN 1850.

every neighborhood. It may, however, be so distributed,
under careful and competent supervision, as to
aid the efforts of individuals, and go far in this way to
encourage the cause of education. If it be permitted
to lie in the treasury until it be sufficient to support
public schools throughout the State, it will be useless
for many years. In the meantime, those who are now
children will have grown up to be men and citizens,
and many of them, perhaps, without being able to read
the tickets which they place in the ballot box. The
consequences of such a result will not only be discreditable
to those who are at this day the guardians of the
public weal, but equally unfortunate in their effects upon
general society. Vice and crime, and a slavish subserviency
to dictation, are the usual concomitants of ignoance.
Let us arrest this state of things by timely
action. Justice demands that the taxes paid by the
present population of the State for education, should be
devoted to that object without unnecessary delay. To
hoard them for the benefit of the next generation
would be as manifestly unfair, as it would in my opinion
be unwise. The means at our disposal will do something
for the cause of education if judiciously applied.
Let this be done at once, and there will be some security
that the advantages thus conferred upon the present
generation will yield abundant blessings upon the
next."