Herewith is respectfully submitted the Annual Report required by law from this Depart ment, embracing accompanying documents. Very Respectfully, Your obedient Servant, FRANCIS W. SHEARMAN, Superintendent of Public Instruction. No. 6. LEGISLATURE, 1855. ANNUAL REPORT of the Superintendent of Pub lic Instruction. OFFICE OF THE SUPT. OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, To the Legislature: It is a source of gratification to every friend of American Institutions, that changes of power in the political departments of the government bring with them no diminution of interest in relation to the instruction of the rising generation. Education is a subject of paramount importance with all, differences of opinion existing only as to the modes by which the widest blessings may be bestowed, and the most enduring results secured. It is a peculiar characteristic of the American people, and more especially of that portion from whence, for the most part, the States of the North-West are settled, that they have ever bestowed of their means, whether scanty or ample, for the benefit of education, with a liberality and zeal which deserve our gratitude, and which will forever deserve the gratitude of posterity. To diffuse such benefits most widely, the early settlers of our common country were willing to stint themselves, and submit to every hardship incident to their settlement on the shores of a new world—that by these means future generations of men might find no excuse for the encroachments of ignorance and vice and despotism, in consequence of their neglect to provide for the means of universal free education. It was the sagacity and forethought of such men, which, as early in the history of our country, as 1785, laid broad the foundation, upon which the people of Michigan and of the Northwest, have built their educational superstructures, in the munificent appropriation of the one-thirty-sixth part of the public domain, for the use of schools, forever. There were none at that time, in the vast region we now inhabit, who could be the recipients of its benefits. The wild beast and the savage shared its deep solitudes together, and this great wilderness then gave no promise of settlement and progress and greatness, such as we witness here to day. The strong arm of the General Government, had not then thrown around the settlement of the country, the great Ægis of its protection. The ordinance of 1787 gave to it its first impulse, and infused into it, its first vitality, respecting the provisions of the grant of 1785, and declaring further, that as "Religion, Morality and Knowledge were necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education should forever be encouraged." It was not until 1824, more than a quarter of a century afterward, when the people who had then settled in our Peninsula, had for the first time elected their own local Legislature, that any steps were taken to secure the benefit of the grant, which at this day amounts in value, to a million of dollars, and the interest of which is distributed to every portion of the State. At that early period, two of our most venerable and distinguished citizens, who have reached the highest honors which the State can confer, and who still live, gave their attention to the subject of the grant, and to the establishment of a University. The attention of the local Legislature and of Congress was called to the preservation of the former, and its ultimate application to the uses so nobly designed by the Fathers of the Republic. The circumstances of the country had been peculiar. The population was small, and ancient private land claims existed, unsettled and ill defined. No surveys were made until after the war of 1812, and it had till then been impossible to give effect to the grant; but as the prospects of the Territory began to be changed, the fertility of the soil developed, and the influx of emigrants from other States com. menced, it was the earliest work of the first Legislature of the Territory to secure for themselves, for us, and for posterity, the benefits it was de. signed to afford. |