h less time than the Latin, which is a
derivative language. It is to be hoped that the great University of the
South, about to be established on the cool and salubrious plateau of the
Cumberland Mountains, if it does not banish Latin, will at least give a
greater degree of prominence to the Greek and Hebrew, the two languages
in which the Scriptures were originally written. By comparing "_The
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Education_, 1859, with
"_Les Lois concernant les Ecoles Publique dans l'Etat de la Louisiane_,
1849," it will be perceived, that the New England system of public
education is not adapted to Louisiana and the South. The laws are
excellent, if the system itself was in conformity to the spirit of our
political institutions. After ten years' trial, we learn from the Report
of the Superintendent, that they can not be carried out, as no laws can
be, which are theoretical, burdensome, troublesome, expensive, and void
of practical benefits. If a law were passed by the State of Louisiana
appropriating three hundred thousand dollars per annum to furnishing
every family with a loaf of bread every day, it could not be executed.
More than half the families would not accept the bread. The Report of
the Superintendent of Public Education proves that more than half the
families in Louisiana will not accept of the mental food the State
offers to their children. Some parishes will not receive any of it.
Tensas, for instance, which is taxed $16,000 for the support of public
schools, has "not a single public school," says the Report, "in it, yet
nearly every planter has a school in his own house." The truth is, that
government does more harm than good by interfering with the domestic
concerns of our people. If let alone, they would not need governmental
aid in furnishing food for either the body or the mind. The South would
have been far ahead in education, manufactures, and internal
improvements, if the federal government had not interfered, to shut out
the only kind of laborers who can labor in the cane and cotton field and
live. The system of public education, all admit, has failed in the
country, but, it is asserted, has succeeded very well in New Orleans. If
the tree be judged by its fruits it is poisonous instead of salutary, to
republican institutions, in our great cities. If the boys whom it has
taught to read novels, had been put to trades, they could not have been
driven away from the polls after t