EDUCATIONAL FUNDS. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE FUNDS PERTAINING To the Convention : THERETO. The committee on education and the funds pertaining thereto report the following article: ARTICLE IX. Section 1. The legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this State may be educated. Sec. 2. The corporation created in seventeen hundred and eightyfour, under the name of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, is hereby continued under the name of the University of the State of New York. It shall be governed, and all its corporate powers exercised by not less than nine regents. Sec. 3. The common school fund, the capital of the literature fund, and the capital of the United States deposit fund shall be respectively preserved inviolate. The revenue of the said common school fund shall be applied to the support of common schools; the revenue of the said literature fund shall be applied to the support of academies, and the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars of the revenues of the United States deposit fund shall each year be appropriated to and made part of the capital of the said common school fund. Sec. 4. Neither the State nor any subdivision thereof shall use its property or credit or any public money, or authorize or permit either to be used, directly or indirectly, in aid or maintenance, other than for examination or inspection, of any school or institution of learning, wholly or in part under the control or direction of any religious denomination, or in which any denominational tenet or doctrine is taught. This section shall not apply to schools in institutions subject to the visitation and inspection of the State Board of Charities. In explanation of their action the committee respectfully submit the following considerations: Your committee have recognized the fact that they were intrusted with one of the most important parts of the work of this Convention, and that they had to deal with a subject nearer perhaps than any other to the direct personal interests of all the people of the State. They have held twenty-one meetings with unusually large attendance, all members of the committee being present on many of these occasions. In the careful study of the questions involved in its report they have received the aid of a large number of suggestions from most of the distinguished educators of the State, who either appeared before the committee or submitted their views in writing. The public has been kept advised by frequent and generally accurate reports in the press of the subjects under consideration, and a valuable opportunity was thus given to your committee for consulting and keeping in touch with public opinion. The attitude of the people of the State toward our work has been very significant. There has been no distinction of party, and but little serious difference of opinion, except upon some features of section four of the proposed article. The intelligence of the State has been found a unit in demanding from this Convention such action regarding education as should strengthen and protect the system which has already done so much, not only for the intellectual but also for the material prosperity of the State of New York. There seems to be no principle upon which the people of this commonwealth are so united and agreed as this, that the first great duty of the State is to protect and foster its educational interests. But for its quaint phraseology and prolixity we have no doubt that the people of this State would emphatically ratify the adoption by this Convention of the article of the constitution of Massachusetts, which has been a model for many other State constitutions, and which your committee feel justified in quoting entire : "Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation |