would establish and maintain a free library, have
remained without acceptance, thus forfeiting a liberal endowment. Where
public education has been so neglected as to render possible such a
niggardly, penny-wise and pound-foolish policy, there is manifestly
signal need of every means of enlightenment.

* * * * *

We now come to the various State libraries founded at the public charge,
and designed primarily for the use of the respective legislatures of the
States. The earliest of these is the New Hampshire State Library,
established in 1790, and the largest is the New York State Library, at
Albany, founded in 1818, now embracing 325,000 volumes, and distinguished
alike by the value of its stores and the liberality of its management.
The reason for being of a State library is obviously and primarily to
furnish the legislative body and State courts with such ample books of
reference in jurisprudence, history, science, etc., as will aid them in
the intelligent discharge of their duties as law-makers and judges of the
law. The library thus existing at each State capital may well be opened
to the public for reading and reference, thus greatly enlarging its
usefulness.

Every State in the Union has now at least a legislative library, although
the most of them consist chiefly of laws and legislative documents, with
a few works of reference superadded; and their direct usefulness to the
public is therefore very circumscribed. The New York State Library is a
model of what a great public library should be in the capital of a State.
In it are gathered a great proportion of the best books in each
department of literature and science, while indefatigable efforts have
been made to enrich it in whatever relates to American history and
polity. Its reading-room is freely opened to the public during many hours
daily. But a State library should never be made a library of circulation,
since its utility as a reference library, having its books always in for
those who seek them, would thereby be destroyed. Even under the existing
system, with the privilege of drawing books out confined to the
Legislature, some of the State libraries have been depleted and despoiled
of many of their most valuable books, through loaning them freely on the
orders of members. The sense of responsibility is far less in the case of
borrowed books which are government property, than in other cases. The
only safe rule for keeping a