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ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF ANTIOCH COLLEGE, YELLOW SPRINGS, 0![10.

BY HORACE MANN, LL. D., PRESIDENT.

MY YOUNG FRIENDS:-My interest in your welfare, not only as present students, but as future men and women, prompts me to solicit your candid attention to the following suggestions. They pertain to a subject upon which teachers and pupils ought always to be in unison, but where they usually are at variance.

In colleges and schools, a sentiment very generally prevails that students ought, as far as possible, to withhold all knowledge respecting the misconduct of their fellow students from faculty and teachers. In many, if not most cases, this sentiment is enacted into what is called a Code of Honor. The requisitions of this code, in some places, are merely negative, demanding that a student shall take care to be absent when any wrong is to be committed, or silent when called upon as a witness for its exposure.Sometimes it goes further, and demands evasion, misrepresentation, or even falsehood, in order to screen a fellow-conspirator or a fellow student from the consequences of his misconduct. Under this doctrine, any one who exposes a violator of college laws, or even an offender against the laws of morality and religion, so that he may be checked in his vicious or criminal career, is stigmatized as an "informer," is treated with contempt and ridicule, and not unfrequently, is visited with some form of wild and savage Vengeance.

It is impossible not to see that when such a sentiment becomes the "common law" of a literary institution, offenders will be freed from all salutary fear of detection and punishment. Where witnesses will not testify, or will testify falsely, the culprit, of course, escapes. This security from exposure becomes a premium on transgression. The police of virtuous sentiment VOL. II.

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and allegiance to order, being blinded and muzzled, nothing remains to prevent lawlessness from running riot. Thus the "Code of Honor" becomes at once a shield for all dishonorable practices.

Now, in the outset, I desire to allow to this feeling, as we usually find it, all that it can possibly claim under any semblance of justice or generosity. When, as doubtless it sometimes happens, one student reports the omissions or come is iors of another to the College Faculty, from motives of private ill-will or malice; or, when one competitor in the race for college honors, convinced that he will be outstripped by his rival, unless he can fasten upon that rival some weight of suspicion or odium, and therefore seeks to disparage his character instead of surpassing his scholarship; or, when any mere tattling is done for any mean or low purpose whatever;-in all such cases, every one must acknowledge that the conduct is reprehensible and the motive dishonoring. No student can gain any advantage with any honorable teacher by such a course. Here, as in all other cases, we stand upon the axiomatic truth, that the moral quality of an action is determined by the motive that prompts it.

But suppose, on the other hand, that the opportunities of the diligent for study are destroyed by the disorderly, or that public or private property is wantonly sacrificed or destroyed by the maliciously mischievous; suppose that indignities and insults are heaped upon officers, upon fellow-students, or upon neighboring citizens; suppose the laws of the land or the higher law of G roken;-in the e cases, and in cases kindred to these, may a diligent and com; lary student, after finding that he cannot arrest the delinquest by his own friendly counsel or remonstrance, go to the Faculty, give them information respecting the case, and cause the offender to be brought to an accomet; or, if called before the Faculty as a witness, may he testify fully an farly to all he knows? Or, in other words, when a young man, sent to college for the highest of all earthly purposes, that of preparing himself for usefulness and honor,-is wasting time, health and character, in wanton mischief, in dissipation, or in profligacy, is it dishonorable in a fellow-stud at to give information to the proper authorities, and thus set a new instrumentality in motion, with a fair chance of redeeming the offender from ruin? This is the question. Let us examine it.

A college is a community. Like other communities, it has its objects, which are among the noblest; it has its laws indispensable for accomplishing those objects, and these laws, as usually framed, are salutary and impartiel. These! s are for the benefit of the community, to be governed by them; without the laws and without a general observance of them, this asy other, would accomplish its ends imperfectly-perhaps

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unally, what class is it that arrays itself in opposaluta y Laws? Of course, it never is the honest, the virtueus, the creadory. They regard goed laws as friends and protectors. But h 3 cou to.filers, defrauders of the custom-house or postoffice, these, in their several departments, league together, and form

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