sonal effort in those whom they are training up for the ministry. Here, if any where, the mind should be vigorous and active, and preparation should be made for arduous and self-denying labours. On this account, they became early convinced that it was injudicious to make their appropriations so large as to cover all the ordinary expenses of their beneficiaries; and subsequent experience has taught them that it is wisest that what they do appropriate should be granted not as a charity, but as a loan. Beneficiaries were accordingly required not long after the Society was established to give their notes for one half of all which they received; and hereafter they will be required to give rotes for the whole. This is regarded as an important and highly auspicious change in the system of conducting Education Societies. Although the loan is in many respects a paternal one, being made without a surety; and without interest, until a reasonable time after preparation for the ministry is completed; and with the further expectation of its being cancelled by the Directors in case it should be impossible or unsuitable to refund; -although it is a loan upon these peculiarly favourable conditions, it possesses many obvious advantages.

1. It exerts a salutary influence upon the character of the beneficiaries themselves. They cease to be in the strict and proper sense charity students. All those associations which belong peculiarly to ideas of charity, and which have often been observed to have an unhappy effect on the character, are in this manner avoided. youth is taught to look to his own efforts as the ultimate means of his education, and is permitted to cherish in some degree those feelings of independence which, when properly regulated, exert a wholesome influence on the mind.

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2. The system is also fitted to promote economy. Every degree of aid which is received increases a debt for which the beneficiary is responsible. Of course there is a strong inducement to take as little from the funds as possible, and to make that little go as far as possible. Self-interest, the most powerful of motives, is made a continual check to extravagance. The relatives and friends of the beneficia

ries experience also, for a similar reason, new inducements to contribute to their necessities, in proportion to their ability. Few parents will withhold their aid, when the smallest gift which they can bestow lessens a burden which is accumulating upon a child.

3. Another advantage of the system is, that it furnishes a better test of character than can be had where the assistance is entirely gratuitous. A youth whose motives are questionable, or who is greatly wanting in efficiency of character, will be less likely to apply for a loan, than for a gift; and if he should so far succeed in imposing upon the Directors as to obtain access to the funds, they would hold his obligation for all which he might receive, and be in a situation to recover it again, whenever he should have the means of repaying it. At least the encouragement which is held out by a loaning fund to persons of an improper character to seek an education is far less than that which is afforded by a charity.

4. Another important benefit of the system is, that it renders the funds more extensively and permanently useful. A single donation of a benevolent person may afford assistance to a succession of young men; for when one has had the benefit of it, he refunds it and it is appropriated to another-and that one does the same, and it is again appropriated, and thus the benevolence of the giver is made to extend from youth to youth, and probably from generation to generation, long after he has gone to his rest.

5. Young men who are most worthy of the patronage of the Society will be better pleased with this mode of receiving aid, than with one which makes them entirely dependent on charity. If their hearts are warmed with the same spirit of benevolence which prompts Christians, many of whom are themselves poor, to patronize them, they will wish to add as little as possible to the burdens which are sustained on their account, and will ask no more than to be assisted till they shall have it in their power to refund what they have received. Certainly they will ask no more when it is considered on what favourable conditions the loans are made to them, and how completely they are guarded from being ultimate

ly oppressed, if they exercise the proper self-denial and do their duty.-If they finish their preparatory course and enter upon their destined profession, they are indulged with sufficient time to repay, before any interest has begun to accumulate; and if they devote themselves permanently to the service of Christ in the most destitue regions, where a scanty subsistence is all which they can ever hope to receive for their labours, or if, in any other way, they are deprived of the power of refunding, the directors will exercise the right entrusted to them, of abating or cancelling obligations at their discretion.

The Directors have received the fullest assurances from their beneficiaries that this system is not less agreeable to them, than it has been proved to be acceptable to a large part of the friends and benefactors of the American Education Society. As evidence of this, it will be sufficient to quote a single

extract from one of the letters addressby the beneficiaries of the Society to a person appointed to confer with them on this subject. That extract is as follows-"As the Directors have seen fit to regard the approbation of the beneficiaries, we can only say we are perfectly satisfied with the measures they have adopted, and do unanimously prefer our present, to our former situation." To this testimony there is a general assent among all the beneficiaries of the Society, so far as their feelings are known to the Directors.

Now we are by no means insensible to the force of these considerations. But at the same time we are not entirely satisfied respecting the conclusion to which the Directors would lead us. And we say so not because we would diminish in the least the public confidence which they so justly possess; but because we consider the system at present adopted, as something which is still subject to alteration and amendment and therefore fairly open to discussion. minds we confess are undecided; and therefore we doubt, though we can hardly venture to object. We doubt in the first place whether, in

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the "evil days" upon which Christian ministers at this period are fallen, it is the wisest policy to replenish the vacancies of the church with ministers whose operations shall be impeded, their spirits oppressed, and their independence of character restrained, by a heavy load of debt. There are few, very few churches in the land, who give their pastors more than is barely necessary for their support from year to year; and out of this pittance each minister must not only support himself; but he must also be, as becomes a Christian bishop, "given to hospitality;" he must be an example, in many things, of liberality and public spirit; he must, in these days of inquiry and reading and constant investigation, expend much for the attainment of those periodical and other publications without which he will soon find himself, in respect to knowledge, far behind the world which it is his business to instruct and influence; he must be so far independent of his people as that he can decamp and leave them whenever they shall say so; and in addition to all this, he must-if he has been a beneficiary of this society

refund the expenses of his education. We doubt the policy of filling the church, in these days, with ministers who must be burthened and distressed with this peculiarly painful embarassment. We doubt, in the next place, whether it is quite so generous or kind as it seems to be, to take up young men, and call them beneficiaries, and subject them to whatever is unpleasant in the name, and in the complicated liabilities to public inspection and public criticism, and in the manifold responsibilities of charity students, and after all to make them support themselves. The annual appropriations of the Board are only seventy-two dollars to each beneficiary; and for the loan of seventytwo dollars a year the student con

sents to be called a beneficiary, and to endure whatever is embarrassing in the supposed dependence and in the actual accountabilities of that relation in which all his actions become the subject of public watchfulness, and all his mistakes and indiscretions the theme of public remark. We would not be understood as intimating that there can be anything uncomfortable in being subjected to the paternal guardianship of such a man as the Secretary; on the contrary we know that the intercourse of the beneficiaries with him must be full of affection, and a source of mutual pleasure. But who does not know that a beneficiary stands a mark for folly to shoot at, and that those who hate the cause of benevolence and those who would find an excuse for indulging their avarice at the expense of that cause, are eager to catch at all his imprudences and all his failings, and blow the trumpet to proclaim whatever in his conduct, or his manners, or his speech, or his dress, can be distorted into ridicule. We doubt, thirdly, whether it is good policy to withdraw the beneficiary from his studies for three months or more in each year for the sake of teaching school. This is a part of the system to which the Directors have often referred in their reports without any apparent scruples respecting its wisdom. But it seems to us highly questionable. To send out two or three hundred young men every winter from the recitation rooms of colleges to teach school for a short period as a convenient expedient for raising a little money, does not seem to us like the best way of elevating the character and usefulness of our common schools. It is coming to be generally acknowledged that till the business of instruction is made a distinct profession, till it shall cease to fall into the hands of those men only who make it a merely temporary expedient, there VOL. I.-No. II.

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can be no essential improvement in our system of general education. And whether the policy of setting all the beneficiaries of the American Education Society to teach school does not tend to retard a consummation so desirable, admits of no debate. But on the improvement of the beneficiaries themselves, the operation of this part of the system seems hardly more favourable. All the time and strength which they expend in teaching is necessarily withdrawn from their studies. It is idle to say that in most colleges long vacations extend over most of the school-keeping season; for it is as important to the student that he spend his vacations in relaxation, as it is that he spend his terms in study. All the time then which is devoted to teaching is withdrawn from studying; and if the beneficiaries teach, on an average, three months in every year, their course of college study is cut down from four years to three. In some colleges, for aught we know, they may on this plan maintain a good relative standing for scholarship without sacrificing their lives or their health. In other colleges this cannot be done. If those who leave the walls of college at any time to engage in other occupations form any considerable portion of the classes, there will be substantially a vacation during the period of their absence, the classes will insensibly linger for the return of the absentees, or march with slower steps while the loiterers are coming up in the rear. If on the other hand those who go away bear so inconsiderable a ratio to those who remain as hardly to be missed, then obviously when they return, they will find that the former companions of their studies are far ahead, and while perhaps some two or three of them wear out their lives or ruin their constitutions as with flushed cheek and sunken eye they pursue their midnight studies