tain their separation that he even proposed that the law of exemptions be changed and that church property, except such as was used for schools and hospitals, be subject to taxation.[1]
The setting in which Gov. Safford found himself shows that his exhortation against sectarian influence was not out of place. The Territory had celebrated its entrance on responsibility by giving public funds to a church institution, and in 1875 an effort to divide the public funds in the same manner had been defeated, not without effort. Says McCrea:[2]
In regard to the final settlement of the question we have this statement of the governor: “At this session (1875) an attempt was made to divide the school fund for the benefit of sectarian schools. The measure, though ardently supported by the chief justice of the Territory (Judge E. F. Dunne), was defeated by a large majority in the legislature.”[3] Of this struggle, fraught with so much of good or ill for the future of the schools, not a word is recorded in the journals of the assembly that settled it. Happily for Arizona, it was settled right, though that Territory then and there parted from New Mexico in educational policy.
Gov. Safford resigned his office in April, 1877, on account of ill health, and ceased to be superintendent of public schools. But to this interest he was true to the end. To the legislature of 1877 he said, in review of the past and in exhortation for the future:
The education of the rising generation has kept steady pace with the increase of population and wealth. This is a very marked and gratifying decline in illiteracy, and from the present efficiency and prosperity of the school system a continued or ever [sic] greater decline in illiteracy may confidently be expected. This large increase of revenue has been found necessary to supply the constant demand for new schools, the number of these having increased from 9, as reported two years ago, to 19. It is believed that the revenue referred to will be found sufficient to maintain the school system and provide for the constantly increasing demands upon it. After watching carefully the present school law during the past two years, I am of the opinion that in the main it meets the requirements as well as any law that can be devised. School laws, of all others, should be changed as seldom as possible.
Then follows an exhortation to guard the school as a “sacred trust” and to keep it “free from sectarian or political influences,” for—
- ↑ Jours. Ninth Legislative Assembly, 1877, p. 44.
- ↑ McCrea, in Long’s Report for 1907–8, pp. 95–96.
- ↑ Judge Dunne’s address was entitled: “Our Public Schools: Are They Free or Are They Not?” It was delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives in February, 1875, and was first published in the San Francisco Monitor and in the New York Freeman’s Journal. It was then republished in pamphlet form (New York, 1875, O.. pp. 32). As a result of his arguments, the introduction states that “a bill was introduced in the legislature providing for corporate schools such as Catholics desire. It came within one vote of passing in the council.” In this lecture Judge Dunne also opposed compulsory-attendance laws. In both cases he based his arguments on the right of individual liberty.
