UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT.

The views of Chairman Walker, of the New York Board of Education, on the subject of public support of higher education, as recently delivered at the annual meeting of the board, are presented below: Mr. Walker thought higher education should be provided for otherwise than by annual charge upon the tax-payers. One reason was that such education was too essential to the community to remain a subject for legislative vagaries; another was that it should be religious, not to say sectarian; a third reason was the inevitable increase of a citizen's burdens as a bachelor for the luxury of a college education of the children of his wealthy neighbor. One of the motives that had led the people to establish schools for higher education is the conviction that by so doing primary instruction is better secured. The higher education gave the tone and determined the character of the lower. The elementary schools in Germany were the best in the world, for the reason that they were the open doors to the real and burgher schools and the gymnasia. Primary schools in England have been a by-word because the chasm between the great endowed schools, colleges, and universities and the places for the instruction of the poor was as wide as that between Lazarus and Dives. Huxley had said that no system of public education was worthy the name unless it created a great educational ladder, with one end in the gutter and the other in the university.

"There is not a college graduate in Sing Sing to-day," said Mr. Walker. "If the argument that common school education is a preventive of crime and poverty is a good one, will some one tell me why a college education is not better? The expensive crimes to a community are what may be termed crimes of intelligence; not murder and beastliness, but forgery and burglary on sound chemical, mechanical, and scientific principles. It is a clear proposition of republican government that the greater the number of the inhabitants who are intellectually cultivated the greater the safety of the State. I believe that promotion should be not the reward of industry merely but of capacity. For entrance to the colleges there should be evidence of natural competence and aptitude for study, which should insure the true welfare of the scholar and not overload the colleges with those who are a drag-weight upon the class-room work."