Report of the minority of the committee of the primary school board by Edmund Jackson. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1846 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.

Excerpt from Report of the Minority of the Committee of the Primary School Board: On the Caste Schools The assertion, that Mr. Fletcher's opinion is not applicable to the separate schools of Boston, is not true. The whole scope and force of his reasoning from beginning to end, as well as the terms m which he states his conclusions, show that his Opinion 1s entirely applicable to the case where districts do not exist. He nowhere alludes to their existence in Salem, although his attention is called to them in the statement submitted to him, nor draws a single inference therefrom. He could not say that his conclusions are inapplicable to this city, without taking back every line and word which he has uttered. No better summary of our views upon this question can be made, than by adopting the following language from his opinion. The principle of perfect equality, is the vital principle of the system (our free school system.) Here all classes of the community mingle together. The rich and the poor meet upon terms of equality, and are prepared to discharge the duties of life by the same instructions. It is the principle Of equality, cherished in the free schools, on which our. Free government and free institutions rest. Destroy this principle in the schools, and the people would soon cease to be a free people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Should the majority always rule? If not, how should the rights of minorities be protected? In Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy, Kyle G. Volk unearths the origins of modern ideas and practices of minority-rights politics. Focusing on controversies spurred by the explosion of grassroots moral reform in the early nineteenth century, he shows how a motley but powerful array of self-understood minorities reshaped American democracy as they battled laws regulating Sabbath observance, alcohol, and interracial contact. Proponents justified these measures with the "democratic" axiom of majority rule. In response, immigrants, black northerners, abolitionists, liquor dealers, Catholics, Jews, Seventh-day Baptists, and others articulated a different vision of democracy requiring the protection of minority rights. These moral minorities prompted a generation of Americans to reassess whether "majority rule" was truly the essence of democracy, and they ensured that majority tyranny would no longer be just the fear of elites and slaveholders. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth-century, minority rights became the concern of a wide range of Americans attempting to live in an increasingly diverse nation. Volk reveals that driving this vast ideological reckoning was the emergence of America's tradition of popular minority-rights politics. To challenge hostile laws and policies, moral minorities worked outside of political parties and at the grassroots. They mobilized elite and ordinary people to form networks of dissent and some of America's first associations dedicated to the protection of minority rights. They lobbied officials and used constitutions and the common law to initiate "test cases" before local and appellate courts. Indeed, the moral minorities of the mid-nineteenth century pioneered fundamental methods of political participation and legal advocacy that subsequent generations of civil-rights and civil-liberties activists would adopt and that are widely used today.