formed which tend to interfere with the natural course of trade and commerce, and which seek to regulate, for selfish purposes, the business of the country. Capital, clothed by law with the attributes of succession and perpetuity, may be, and frequently is, employed oppressively and unjustly. No one need be surprised at the present day to learn respectable gentlemen had filed with the proper authority an application for a charter to trade in and control the air we breathe.

With the increase of wealth and population the habits and customs of pioneer life will naturally be changed, and in some respects it may be well, but the benefits of a change which dispenses with the industry and economy of pioneer life, and which stamps with disrespect any useful labor connected with it, may well be questioned. There is a tendency now-a-days among young people to seek occupations and positions which are lighter and esteemed by many as more respectable than the drudgery of work in any of the avocations of life. Clerkships in private establishments and in government offices are much sought after by young men starting in life. These employments may be well enough as means to an end, and as stepping-stones to a higher plane of activity, but for a young man to make those avocations his business and to seek nothing above and beyond them is to dwarf his manhood and to make him dependent upon brains not his own. Among the least desirable of these lighter occupations (I call them lighter because they seldom produce heavy results) is employment in the numerous departments of the government. The labor is responsible and hard, but the chances of promotion to independent positions are small. They tramp and tramp on the same track year after year in the government treadmill. They have some privileges, to be sure, not enjoyed by the convicts in our penitentiaries. They are permitted to go home once a year and vote, but the convicts have privileges not enjoyed by government employes. They are not obliged by "voluntary contributions" to pay a certain percentage of their earnings to keep their places.

There is a tendency among parents who have the means to do it, to give their children the best opportunities and all the advantages that our schools and colleges afford, without regard, always, to the tastes or capacity of the children; hence many young men and women are forced or dragged through a course of study which they may never use to much advantage to themselves or others, and which may be the means of spoiling them for the rugged duties of honorable and productive labor, on the farm, in the workshop, or in the counting-room. A farmer in the oil regions of Pennsylvania sold his farm for a sum which made him a millionaire, and he had a dear daughter who had been educated up to the standard of the circle in which she moved, but her kind father was not satisfied with this, as he wanted her to be a bright and shining light in the higher branches of education, and especially in music, but his daughter had little inclination or taste in that direction. The father was not to be baffled in his laudable desire to elevate and refine his daughter, so he sent her to a professional teacher of music for instruction. In about three months he visited his daughter to see how she was getting along in her studies. The teacher told him she was not progressing as well as he could wish-she did not seem to have a capacity for music. "Capacity," replied the father, "go and buy her one; I have plenty of money."

A young man or woman who has the will to obtain a thorough education, and an ability to use it, will, at this day, find a way to acquire it. Leonard Case, Sr., is said to have acquired a good knowledge of arithmetic when making baskets on his father's farm. John Bright, of England, in a speech recently made at Birmingham, referred to a Scotch peasant authoress, Janet Hamilton, who never had any education except that derived from the reading of the plays of Shakespeare, which she had committed to memory. She was untaught in the rules of grammar, yet she wrote English according to the best standards. No writer has been able to tell us, when, where,

or how, Shakespeare obtained his education. Elihu Burritt, the learned blacksmith, acquired the rudiments of his education while working at the anvil.

We are indebted to the discipline and statesmanship of the early settlers of Ohio, and especially of the Western Reserve, for our system of common schools, which places within the reach of all children within the State, rich or poor, the means of a good education. The support of common schools in Ohio, by taxation, did not become fully crystallized into a system till after the adoption of the Constitution in 1851. The attention of the people had been repeatedly called to the subject by most of the governors of Ohio, and the Legislature had sparingly made provision for the support of schools by taxation, but their support by taxation met with strenuous opposition. Acts were passed in 1821 and in 1825 by the Legislature providing means for the support of schools, and may be said to be initiatory steps to the present system, but the amount raised by them and amendatory laws had not been uniformly assessed and had not been systematically administered. In 1830 and 1831 John W. Willey, one of the early and distinguished settlers of Cleveland, and Harvey Rice, now your President, were elected members of the Legislature-Mr. Willey to the Senate and Mr. Rice to the House-and through their exertions and influence a law was passed authorizing the sale of the lands which had been granted by Congress to the inhabitants of the Western Reserve for school purposes. Mr. Willey drew up the bill, and Mr. Rice was appointed agent to sell the lands. The amount realized from their sale was about $150,000, which was loaned to the State as an irreducible fund, the interest of which is to be annually paid to the counties of the Western Reserve according to the enumeration of children of school age in each county. The Constitution of 1851 made it the duty of the General Assembly to "make such provision by taxation or otherwise, as with the income arising from the school trust fund will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the State."

Many, very many of the early settlers were members of the convention which framed this constitution. Peter Hitchcock, Jacob Perkins, and R. P. Ranney, were members from the counties of Trumbull and Geauga, and Sherlock J. Andrews and Reuben Hitchcock from the county of Cuyahoga. It devolved upon the General Assembly of 1852-3 to make provision by law for the establishment of a system of common schools in obedience to this provision of the constitution I have quoted. Harvey Rice, your President, was elected a Senator from this county in that Legislature, and was appointed chairman of the Senate Committee to which the subject of "common schools and school lands" was committed. On the 29th day of March, 1852, he introduced a bill "to provide for the reorganization and maintenance of common schools" and it became a law March 1, 1853. This law has been amended and changed, but the system which it organized has not been changed. Perhaps the modesty of your President may lead him to object to the introduction of his name in referring to our school laws, but he must consider, and I am sure you will agree that the omission of the name of Harvey Rice, when referring to the law of 1853, entitled "an act to provide for the reorganization and maintenance of common schools," would be "the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted."

I have referred to some of the tendencies of the times as suggestions for consideration. Evils, to be avoided, must be understood and their location marked, as the dangers of navigation are indicated by buoys in our rivers and lakes. When American slavery raised its rebellious arm against the Government which protected it, its true character was seen, and it was swept away by the angry waves of public opinion; and all the Mrs. Partingtons with their mops and brooms were powerless to prevent it. I am not one of those who believe that our civilization is receding, or that our government is threatened with overthrow. If the fountains of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government are kept pure,

we are safe. It is the duty of the people to keep them pure, and I have confidence they will faithfully perform it, and that the government which the industry and wisdom of the early settlers have established will be preserved in the vigor of its youth, and in the strength of its manhood.

A LIFE SKETCH OF THE LATE GOV. WOOD.

BY NOBLE H. MERWIN, ESQ.

MR. PRESIDENT: Descended from English parentage, Reuben Wood, the twenty-second Governor of Ohio, was born in the village of Middletown, Rutland County, Vt., in the year 1792.

He was the eldest son of Nathaniel Wood, a minister, and during the war a chaplain in the revolutionary army. The family were distinguished for their devotion to the patriot cause. Three of his father's brothers were participants in the battle of Bennington. Maybe from their patriotic example in those stirring times were derived the principles, and devotion to democratic, as distinguished from monarchial, institutions, that characterized the man during his long life.

Arriving at a suitable age for study, he was sent by his father to a cousin named Fairfield, in Ernestown, Upper Canada, where he studied law with the Hon. Barnabas Bidwell, and at the same time began his classical and other studies with an English clergyman, with all the ardor of youth, thus laying the foundation of the education and culture that were to be of benefit to him in his future aspirations. To his dying day his constant companions were well-thumbed editions of the Greek Testament and Cæsar's Commentaries, which he read in the original with facility.

At the commencement of the war in 1812, Reuben Wood, still a student, and while residing in Canada, was drafted into the Royalist militia, then mustering under General Brock for