Delivered before the Institute of Education of Hampden Sidney College,
at its Anniversary Meeting, September the 24th, 1835, on the
invitation of that body,--by Lucian Minor, Esq. of Louisa.
[_Published by request of the Institute_.]
Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Institute:
I am to offer you, and this large assembly, some thoughts upon
EDUCATION, _as a means of preserving the Republican Institutions of
our country_.
The sentiment of the Roman Senate, who, upon their general's return
with the shattered remains of a great army from an almost annihilating
defeat, thanked and applauded him for _not despairing of the
Republic_, has, in later times, been moulded into an apothegm of
political morality; and few sayings, of equal dignity, are now more
hackneyed, than that "A good citizen will _never_ despair of the
commonwealth."
I shall hope to escape the anathema, and the charge of disloyalty to
our popular institutions, implied in the terms of this apothegm, if I
doubt, somewhat, its unqualified truth; when you consider how
frequently omens of ruin, overclouding the sky of our country, have
constrained the most unquestionable republican patriot's heart to
quiver with alarm, if not to sink in despair.
When a factious minority, too strong to be punished as traitors,
treasonably refuse to rally under their country's flag, in defence of
her rights and in obedience to her laws; when a factious majority, by
partial legislation, pervert the government to the ends of
self-aggrandizement or tyranny; when mobs dethrone justice, by
assuming to be her ministers, and rush madly to the destruction of
property or of life; when artful demagogues, playing upon the
credulity or the bad passions of a confiding multitude, sway them to
measures the most adverse to the public good; or when a popular chief
(though he were a Washington) contrives so far to plant his will in
the place of law and of policy, that the people approve or condemn
both measures and men, mainly if not solely, by his judgment or
caprice; and when all history shews these identical causes (the
offspring of ignorance and vice) to have overthrown every proud
republic of former times;--then, surely, a Marcus Brutus or an
Algernon Sidney,--the man whose heart is the most irrevocably sworn to
liberty, and whose life, if required, would be a willing sacrifice
upon her altars--must find the most gloomy forebodings often haunting
his thoughts, and darkening his hopes.
Indeed, at the best, it is no trivial task, to conduct the affairs of
a great people. Even in the tiny republics of antiquity, some twenty
of which were crowded into a space less than two-thirds of
Virginia,--government was no such _simple machine_, as some fond
enthusiasts would have us believe it might be. The only very simple
form of government, is despotism. There, every question of policy,
every complicated problem of state economy, every knotty dispute
respecting the rights or interests of individuals or of provinces, is
at once solved by the intelligible and irreversible _sic volo_ of a
Nicholas or a Mohammed. But in republics, there are passions to
soothe; clashing interests to reconcile; jarring opinions to mould
into one result, for the general weal. To effect this, requires
extensive and accurate knowledge, supported by all the powers of
reasoning and persuasion, in discussing not only _systems_ of
measures, but their minutest details, year after year, before
successive councils, in successive generations: and supposing the
_machinery_ of _Legislative_, _Executive_, and _Judiciary_ to be so
simple or so happily adjusted, that an idiot might propel it, and a
school-lad with the first four rules of arithmetic--or even "a negro
boy with his knife and tally stick"[1]--might regulate its movements
and record their results; still, those other objects demand all the
comprehension and energies of no contracted or feeble mind. Nor are
these qualities needful only to the actual administrators of the
government. Its proprietors, the people, must look both vigilantly and
intelligently to its administration: for so liable is power to
continual abuse; so perpetually is it tending to steal from them to
their steward or their agent; that if they either want the requisite
sagacity to judge of his acts, or substitute a blind confidence in him
for that wise distrust, which all experience proves indispensable to
the preservation of power in the people,--it will soon be _their_
power no longer. A tame surrender of it to him is inevitable, unless
they comprehend the subjects of his action well enough to judge the
character of his acts: unless they know something of that vast and
diversified field of policy, of duty, and of right, in which they have
set him to labor. Yes--in its least perplexed form, on its most
diminutive scale, the task of self-government is a perilously
difficult one; difficult, in proportion to its nobleness: calling for
the highest attributes of the human character. What, then, must it be,
in a system so complex as ours? Two sets of public functionaries, to
appoint and superintend: two sets of machinery to watch, and keep in
order: each of them not only complicated within itself, but constantly
tending to clash with the other. Viewing the State government alone,
how many fearful dissensions have arisen, as to the extent of its
powers, and the propriety of its acts! Turning then to the Federal
government, how much more awful and numerous controversies, respecting
both the constitutionality and expediency of its measures, have,
within half a century, convulsed the whole Union! No less than three
conjunctures within that time, threatening us with disunion and civil
war; not to mention the troubles of the elder Adams' administration,
the conspiracy of Burr, the Missouri dispute, or the cloud (now, I
trust, about to disperse) which has just been lowering in our northern
sky. To the complexity of our two governments, separately considered,
add the delicate problems daily springing from their relations with
one another, and from the mutual relations of the twenty-four
states--disputes concerning territory; claims urged by citizens of
one, against another state; or wrongs done to some states, by citizens
and residents of others--all these, and innumerable other questions,
involving each innumerable ramifications, continually starting up to
try the wisdom and temper, if not to mar the peace, of our
country;--and say, if there are words forcible and emphatic enough to
express the need, that the POPULAR WILL, which supremely controls this
labyrinthine complication of difficulties, should be enlightened by
knowledge, tempered by kindness, and ruled by justice?
[Footnote 1: Mr. Randolph's Speech in the Virginia Convention,
November, 1829.]
{18} Gentlemen, when such dangers hedge our political edifice; when we
recollect the storms which have already burst upon it, and that,
although it has survived them, we have no guarantee for its
withstanding even less furious ones hereafter--as a ship may ride out
many a tempest safely, and yet be so racked in her joints as to go
down at last under a capful of wind; above all, when we reflect that
the same cankers which have destroyed all former commonwealths, are
now at work within our own;--it would betoken, to my view, more of
irrational credulity than of patriotism, to feel that sanguine,
unconditional confidence in the durableness of our institutions, which
those profess, who are perpetually making it the test of good
citizenship "_never_ to despair of the republic."
But is it ever to be thus? Were then the visions of liberty for
centuries on centuries, which our fathers so fondly cherished, all
deceitful? Were the toil, and treasure, and blood they lavished as
that liberty's price, all lavished in vain? Is there no deliverance
for man, from the doom of subjection which kings and their minions
pronounce against him? No remedy for the diseases which, in freedom's
apparently most healthful state, menace her with death?
If it is not ever to be thus; if the anticipations of our
revolutionary patriots were not all delusive dreams, and their blood
fell not in vain to the ground; if man's general doom is not
subjection, and the examples of his freedom are not mere deceitful
glimmerings up of happiness above the fixed darkness which enwraps
him, designed but to amuse his fancy and to cheat his hopes; if there
is a remedy for the diseases that poison the health of liberty;--the
reason--that remedy--can be found only in one short precept--ENLIGHTEN
THE PEOPLE!
Nothing--I scruple not to avow--it has been my thought for
years--nothing but my reliance on the efficacy of this precept,
prevents my being, at this instant, _a monarchist_. Did I not, with
burning confidence, believe that the people can be enlightened, and
that they may so escape the dangers which encompass them, I should be
for consigning them at once to the calm of hereditary monarchy. But
this confidence makes me no monarchist: makes me, I trust, a true
_whig_; not in the party acceptation of the day, but in the sense,
employed by Jefferson, of one who _trusts and cherishes the
people_.[2] Throughout his life, we find that great statesman
insisting upon _popular instruction_ as an inseparable requisite to
his belief in the permanency of any popular government: "Ignorance and
bigotry," said he, "like other insanities, are incapable of
self-government." His authority might be fortified by those of Sidney,
Montesquieu, and of all who have written extensively or luminously
upon free government: but this is no time for elaborate quotations;
and indeed why cite authorities, to prove what is palpable to the
glance?
[Footnote 2: "The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They
exist in all countries, whether called by these names, or by those of
Aristocrats and Democrats--_Côté droite_ and _côté gauche_--Ultras and
Radicals--Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man, fears
the people, and is a tory by nature. The healthy, strong, and bold,
cherishes them, and is a whig by nature." _Jefferson_.]
Immense is the chasm to be filled, immeasurable the space to be
traversed, between the present condition of mental culture in
Virginia, and that which can be safely relied upon, to save her from
the dangers that hem round a democracy, unsupported by popular
knowledge and virtue. Cyrus the Great, when a boy, among his play
fellows, avoided contests with his inferiors in strength and
swiftness; always challenging to the race or the wrestling match,
those fleeter and stronger than himself: by which means, observes
Xenophon, he soon excelled them. Imitating this wise magnanimity of
Cyrus, let us, in looking around to find how we may attain an
excellence, worthy of Virginia's early and long illustrious but now
paling fame, compare ourselves not with States that have been as
neglectful as we, of popular education, but with some which have
outstript us in that march of true glory.[3]
[Footnote 3: Montesquieu, mentioning the adoption, by the Romans, of
an improved _buckler_ from a conquered nation, remarks, that the chief
secret of Roman greatness was, _their renouncing any usage of their
own, the moment they found a better one_. ("Ils ont toujours renoncé à
leurs usages, sitot qu'ils en ont trouvé de meilleurs.") _Grandeur et
Decadence des Romains_--_Chap._ 1.]
The _Common-school_ system of New York, which has been in operation
since the year 1816, is in substance this: The counties having been
already laid off into tracts of five or six miles square, called
_townships_,--each of these, upon raising one half the sum needed
there for teachers' wages, is entitled to have the other half
furnished from the state treasury: and each _neighborhood_ in the
township, before it can receive any part of this joint sum, must
organize itself as a _school district_, build and furnish a school
house, and cause a school to be taught there for at least three
months, by a teacher who has been examined and found duly qualified,
by a standing committee, appointed for that purpose. To the schools
thus established, all children, rich and poor alike, are admitted
without charge. Mark the fruits of this system. In 1832, there were in
the state 508,878 children; of whom 494,959 were _regular pupils at
the common-schools_: leaving fewer than 14,000 for private or other
instruction, and reducing the number who are unschooled, to an
inappreciable point. In Massachusetts, the townships are compelled by
law to defray nearly the whole expense of their schools; and the
organization is in other respects less perfect than in New York. In
each, however, about ONE-FOURTH _of the whole population_ is receiving
instruction for a considerable part of the year; and in Massachusetts,
in 1832, there were _but_ TEN _persons between the ages of 14 and 21,
who could not read and write_.
Connecticut, with a school fund yielding 180,000 dollars annually, and
with common schools established by law in every township, finds their
efficacy in a great degree marred by a single error in her plan. This
error is, that _the whole expense is defrayed by the state_. In
consequence of this, the people take little interest in the schools;
and the children are sent so irregularly, as to derive a very
insignificant amount of beneficial instruction: so clearly is it
shewn, that a _gratuity_, or _what seems_ to be one, is but lightly
valued. The statesmen of Connecticut, convinced that the only method
of rousing the people from their indifference, is to make them
contribute something for the schools in their own immediate
neighborhood, and so become solicitous to _get the worth of their
money_, are meditating the adoption of a plan like that of New York.
Even in Europe, we may find admirable, nay wonderful examples, for our
imitation.
{19} PRUSSIA has a system, strikingly analogous to that of New York;
and in some respects, superior to it. As in New York, the
superintendence of popular education is entrusted to a distinct branch
of the government; to a gradation of salaried officers, whose whole
time is employed in regulating the courses of study, compiling or
selecting books, examining teachers, and inspecting the schools. At
suitable intervals, are schools expressly _for the instruction of
teachers_: of which, in 1831, there existed thirty-three--supplying a
stock of instructors, accomplished in all the various knowledge taught
in the Prussian schools. In no country on earth--little as we might
imagine it--is there probably so well taught a population as in
Prussia. Witness the fact, that in 1831, out of 2,043,000 children in
the kingdom, 2,021,000 regularly attended the common schools: leaving
but 22,000 to be taught at their homes or in private academies.[4]
France, in 1833, adopted the Prussian plan, with effects already
visible in the habits and employments of her people; and similar
systems have long existed in Germany, and even in Austria. The schools
for training teachers (called, in France and Germany, _normal_
schools) pervade all these countries.
[Footnote 4: The enumeration in Prussia, is of children between 7 and
14 years of age; in New York, of those between 5 and 16. In Prussia,
the sending of all children to school is ensured by legal penalties
upon parents, guardians, and masters, who fail to send. New York
approximates remarkably to the same result, by simply enlisting the
_interest_ of her people in their schools.]
In England, government has yet done little towards educating the
common people: but Scotland has long[5] enjoyed _parish schools_
equalled only by those of Prussia, Germany, and some of our own
states, in creating a virtuous and intelligent yeomanry. Throughout
Great Britain, voluntary associations for the diffusion of useful
knowledge, in which are enrolled some of the most illustrious minds
not only of the British empire but of this age, have been for years in
active and salutary operation; and, by publishing cheap and simple
tracts upon useful and entertaining subjects, and by sending over the
country competent persons to deliver plain and popular lectures,
illustrated by suitable apparatus, they have, as the North American
Review expresses it, "poured floods of intellectual light upon the
lower ranks of society."
[Footnote 5: Ever since 1646, except 36 years, embracing the
tyrannical and worthless reigns of Charles II and James II.]
From a comparison with no one of the eight American and European
states that I have mentioned, can Virginia find, in what she has done
towards enlightening her people, the slightest warrant for that
pre-eminent self-esteem, which, in some other respects, she is so well
entitled to indulge. Except England, she is far behind them all: and
even England (if her Societies for diffusing knowledge have not
already placed her before us) is now preparing, by wise and beneficent
legislation, to lead away with the rest.
Let me not be deemed unfilial or irreverent, if I expose, somewhat
freely, the deficiencies of our venerable commonwealth in this one
particular. It is done in a dutiful spirit, with a view purely to
their amendment: and may not children, in such a spirit and with such
a view, commune frankly with one another?
A great and obvious difference between our primary school system, and
the _common_-school systems of the northern states, is, that _they_
take in ALL children: while we aim to instruct only the children of
the _poor; literary paupers_. We thus at once create two causes of
failure: first, _the slight value which men set upon what costs them
nothing_, as was evinced in the case of Connecticut; second, _the
mortification to pride_ (an honest though mistaken pride,) in being
singled out as an object of charity.[6] As if these fatal errors had
not sufficiently ensured the impotence of the scheme, the schools
themselves are the least efficient that could be devised. Instead of
teachers retained expressly for the purpose,--selected, after strict
examination into their capacities, and vigilantly superintended
afterwards, by competent judges--the poor children are _entered_ by
the neighboring commissioner (often himself entirely unqualified
either to teach or to direct teaching,) in the private school which
chance, or the teacher's unfitness for any other employment, combined
always with cheapness of price, may have already established nearest
at hand. There, the little _protegé_ of the commonwealth is thrown
amongst pupils, whose parents pay for them and give some heed to their
progress; and having no friend to see that he is properly
instructed--mortified by the humiliating name of _poor
scholar_--neglected by the teacher--and not rigorously urged to school
by any one--he learns nothing, slackens his attendance, and soon quits
the temple of science in rooted disgust.
[Footnote 6: "What you say here, is verified" (said a venerable friend
to me, on reading these sheets as they were preparing for the press--a
friend who at the age of 72, has taken upon him to teach 12 or 14
boys; more than half of them without compensation--) "what you say
here, is verified in my school. Those who do not pay, attend hardly
half their time; and one, who is anxious to learn, and would learn if
he came regularly, is kept by his father to work at home, and has not
_been to school_ now for more than a fortnight. And it was just so,"
continued he, "when I managed the W. trust fund for a charity school,
20 odd years ago. The parents could not be induced to send their
children. Sometimes they were wanted at home: sometimes they were too
ragged to go abroad: sometimes they had no victuals to carry to
school. And when we offered to furnish them provisions if they would
attend, the parents said 'no, _that_ was being too dependent.' In
short, the school produced not half the good it might have done. There
was the most striking difference between the charity scholars, and
those who paid." Similar testimony as to such schools may be obtained
of hundreds.]
Observe now, I pray you, how precisely the results agree with what
might have been foretold, of such a system. In 1833, nearly 33,000
_poor children_ (literary paupers) were found in 100 counties of
Virginia; of whom but 17,081 _attended school at all: and these 17,081
attended on an average, but_ SIXTY-FIVE DAYS OF THE YEAR, EACH! The
average of _learning_ acquired by each, during those 65 days, would be
a curious subject of contemplation: but I know of no arithmetical
rule, by which it could be ascertained. That it bears a much less
proportion to the _reasonable_ attainments of a full scholastic year,
than 65 bears to the number of days in that year, there can be no
doubt.
Ranging, out of the schools, through the general walks of society, we
find among our poorer classes, and not seldom in the middling, an
ignorance equally deplorable and mortifying. Judging by the number met
with in _business_ transactions, who cannot write their names or read,
and considering how many there are whose poverty or sex debars them
from such transactions, and lessens their chances of scholarship; we
should scarcely exceed the truth, in estimating the _white adults of
Virginia who cannot read or write, at twenty or thirty thousand_. {20}
And of many who can read, how contracted the range of intellect! The
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, all unexplored, though
presented hourly to the eye; the glorious heavens, their grandeur,
their distances, and the laws of their motion, unthought of; man
himself--his structure, so fearful and so wonderful--those traits in
his bodily and mental frame, attention to which would the most
essentially conduce to bodily and mental health--all unnoted; History,
Geography, _tabulæ rasæ_ to them! And for political knowledge, upon
which we of Virginia mainly pride ourselves--choose, at random, a man
from the throng in any court-house yard, and question him touching the
division of power between our two governments, and its distribution
among the departments of each: the probabilities are ten to one, that
he will not solve one in ten of your questions--even of those which
are to be answered from the mere faces of the two constitutions. Take
him then into that wild, where _construction_ has been wont to
expatiate, and you will find him just able to declare _for_ or
_against_ this or that controverted power or measure: not because his
reason has discerned it to be constitutional or otherwise, but because
it is approved or disapproved by a chief of his own party, or by the
leader of a hostile one. And the aggregate of opinions thus caught by
accident, is the basis of the _popular will_: and it is the voice
prompted by this will, that is called "_The voice of God!_"
Do not misapprehend me. Never would I have the voice of the people
other than "the voice of God"--other than all-powerful--within its
appropriate sphere. I am as loyal to their sovereignty as the most
devout of their flatterers can be: and it is from my desire to see it
perpetuated, that I speak out these unpalatable truths. Some roughness
of handling is often necessary to heal a wound. The people, like other
sovereigns, are sometimes misled by flattery: they should imitate also
the wisdom of those monarchs we occasionally meet with in history, who
can hear unwelcome truths, and let the speaker live; nay, hearken
kindly to his discourse, and let it weigh upon their future conduct.
Do I overrate the portion of the people I now address, in classing
them with such monarchs?
Sagacious men have not been wanting among us, to see the radical
defects of our primary school system: and in 1829, the late Mr.
Fitzhugh[7] of Fairfax, stimulated the Legislature to a feeble effort
towards correcting them, by _empowering_ the school commissioners of
any county to lay it off into districts of not less than three nor
more than seven miles square; and to pay, out of the public fund,
_two-fifths_ of the sum requisite for building a school house, and
half a teacher's salary, for any one of those districts, whenever its
inhabitants, by _voluntary subscription_, should raise the residue
necessary for these purposes: and the schools thus established were to
be open, gratuitously, alike to rich and poor. But the _permissive_
phraseology of this statute completely neutralized its effect. It
might have been foreseen, and it _was_ foreseen, that _empowering_ the
commissioners to act, and leaving the rest to _voluntary
contributions_, would be unavailing, where the workings of the school
system had so long been regarded with apathy. The statute has been
acted upon, so far as I have learned, in but _three_ counties of the
State; remaining, as to the other 107, a dead letter. I have the
strongest warrant--that of _actual experiment_, in New York and in
Massachusetts--for saying, that had the law _commanded_ the
commissioners to lay off districts in all counties where the census
shewed a sufficiently dense white population; and had it then
organized in the districts some local authorities, whose _duty_ it
should be to levy the needful amount upon their people;--I should have
been saved the ungracious task of reproaching my country with her want
of parental care; and Virginia would now be striding onward, speedily
to recover the ground she has lost in the career of true greatness.
[Footnote 7: William H. Fitzhugh--whose death cannot yet cease to be
deplored as a public calamity; cutting short, as it did, a career,
which his extraordinary means and his devoted will alike bade fair to
make a career of distinguished usefulness.]
If a sense of interest, and of duty, do not prompt her people, and her
legislature, immediately, to supply defects so obvious, to correct
evils so glaring; surely, very shame at the contemplation of her
inferiority to those, above whom she once vaunted herself so highly,
will induce measures which cannot be much longer deferred without
disgrace as well as danger.
In addition to _normal schools_ (for training teachers,) an able
writer in the Edinburgh Review (to which[8] I owe the particulars of
the Prussian, German, and French school systems) suggests, in my
opinion very judiciously, the attaching of a Professorship to
Colleges, for lecturing upon the _art of instruction_; to be called
the professorship of _Didactics_. Such a chair, ably filled, would be
invaluable for multiplying enlightened teachers, and for enhancing the
dignity of that under-estimated pursuit. Conjointly with the normal
schools, it would soon ensure an abundant supply of instructors for
all the common schools.
[Footnote 8: Nos. 116, 117--July and October, 1833--reviewing several
works of _M. Cousin_, who went as commissioner from France, to explore
and report upon the Prussian and German systems of public
instruction.]
_The kinds of knowledge_ which should be studied in the schools, and
diffused by books, tracts, and oral lectures, among the people, form
an important topic of consideration. It is not for me, at least now
and here, to obtrude an inventory of my favorite subjects, or favorite
books: but the claims of a few subjects upon our regard are so
overshadowing, as to make dissent scarcely possible, and their
omission wholly unpardonable, in any extensive view of the connexion
between _popular education_, and _popular government_.
Foremost of these, is the subject of Constitutional Law, and Political
Right: something of which might be taught, even in childhood. If the
children of Rome were obliged, at school, to lay up in memory the laws
of the Twelve Tables, with all their ferocious absurdities; how much
more should the children of our country learn those fundamental laws,
which guarantee to them the noble inheritance of a rational and
virtuous freedom! Even to very young minds, the structure and powers
of our two governments may be rendered intelligible by familiar and
impartial treatises, with clear oral explanations. The merit of
impartiality in these political lessons, is illustrated by the
odiousness of a departure from it, which startled me the other day, in
reading the THIRTY-FIFTH EDITION of a popular and in other respects an
excellent History of the United States,[9] {21} designed for schools;
where that section[10] of the Federal Constitution which declares the
powers of Congress, is presented thus: "The Congress of the United
States shall have power to make and enforce _all laws which are
necessary to_ THE GENERAL WELFARE--AS to lay and collect taxes,"
&c.--going on to enumerate the specified powers, as _mere examples_ of
Congressional omnipotence! And the myriads of tender minds, which
probably already owe all their knowledge of the Constitution to the
abstract where this precious morsel of political doctrine occurs, can
hardly fail to carry through life the impression, that the powers of
Congress are virtually as unbounded as those of the British
Parliament. Now, to make patriots, and not partisans--upholders of
vital faith, not of sectarian doctrine--treatises for the political
instruction of youth should quote the _letter_ of every such
controverted passage, with a brief and fair statement of the opinions
and reasonings on both sides. The course of political study would be
very incomplete, without the Declaration of Independence, and
Washington's Farewell Address: and occasion might readily be found to
correct or guard against some fallacies, afloat among mankind, and
often mischievously used as axioms. "That the majority should govern,"
is an instance of them: a saying, which, by being taken unqualifiedly
as at all times placing _the majority_ above the Constitution and
Laws, has repeatedly caused both to be outraged. Witness the "New
Court Law" of Kentucky, in 1825; and a very similar act passed by
Congress, in 1801. The prevalent opinions, that parties, and party
spirit, are salutary in a republic; that every citizen is in duty
bound to join one or the other party; and that he ought to _go with
his party_, in all measures, whether they be intrinsically proper or
otherwise; if not fallacies so monstrous as to make their currency
wonderful, are at least propositions so questionable and so important,
as to make them worthy of long and thorough investigation before they
be adopted as truths.
[Footnote 9: By Charles A. Goodrich. The abstract of the Constitution
is taken, he says, from "Webster's Elements of General Knowledge."]
[Footnote 10: Article 1 § 8.]
Without expending a word upon that trite theme, the _utility of
history_ to all who have any concern in government, I may be allowed
to remark, that works for historical instruction, instead of being
filled with sieges and battles, should unfold, as much as possible,
those occult and less imposing circumstances, which often so
materially influence the destinies of nations: the well-timed
flattery--the lap-dog saved--the favorite's intrigue--the priest's
resentment or ambition--to which field marshals owe their rise,
cabinets their dissolution, massacres their carnage, or empires their
overthrow. Yet the reader need not be denied the glow he will
experience at the story of Thermopylæ, Marathon, Leuctra, or Bunker
Hill. All those incidents, too, whether grand or minute, which may
serve as warnings or as encouragements to posterity, should be placed
in bold relief, and their influence on the current of events, clearly
displayed. Numberless opportunities will occur, for impressing upon
the minds of young republicans, truths which deeply concern the
responsibilities involved in that name: the artifices of
demagogues--the danger, in a democracy, of _trusting_ implicitly to
the honesty and skill of public agents--the worthlessness of
popularity, unless it be "the popularity which _follows_, not that
which is _run after_"[11]--the importance of learning to resist the
erring impulses of a misguided multitude, not less than the
unrighteous mandates of a frowning tyrant[12]--the ease, so often
exemplified, with which a people may be duped by the _forms_ of
freedom, long after the substance is gone--the incredible aptitude of
_example_ to become _precedent_, and of _precedent_ to ripen into
_law_, until usurpation is established upon the ruins of liberty--and
the difference between _true_ and _false_ GREATNESS, so little
appreciated by the mass of mankind. This last point could not be
better illustrated, than by a fair comparison of Washington with
Bonaparte: a task which Dr. Channing, of Boston, has executed, in an
essay among the most elegant and powerful in the English or any other
language.
[Footnote 11: Lord Mansfield.]
[Footnote 12: The "_ardor civium prava jubentium_," not less than the
"_vultus instantis tyranni_."]
To render _Political Economy_ intelligible to a moderate capacity,
dissertations sufficiently plain and full might easily be extracted
from the writings of Smith and Say, and from the many luminous
discussions, oral and written, which it has undergone in our own
country. Miss Martineau has shewn how well its truths may be set forth
in the captivating form of tales: and the writings of Mr. Condy Raguet
teem with felicitous illustrations.
_Practical Morals_--I mean that department, which teaches, and
_habituates_ us, to behave justly and kindly to our fellow
creatures--will ever be poorly taught by dry precepts and formal
essays. No vehicle of moral instruction is comparable to the striking
narrative. How is it possible for any school-boy to rob an orchard,
after having read Miss Edgeworth's "Tarlton?"--or to practise
unfairness in any bargain, when he has glowed at the integrity of
Francisco, in purposely shewing the _bruised side_ of his melon to a
purchaser? or not to loathe party spirit, when he has been early
imbued with the rational sentiments contained in the "Barring Out?" In
short, to be familiar with the mass of that lady's incomparable
writings for youth, and not have the principles and feelings of
economy, industry, courage, honor, filial and fraternal love,
engrained into his very soul? Or how can he fail to find, in "Sandford
and Merton," for the daily occasions of life, the happiest lessons of
duty and humanity, and for those great conjunctures which never occur
in many a life time, the most resistless incentives to a more than
Roman heroism?
Other branches of knowledge are desirable for the republican citizen,
less from any peculiar appositeness to his character as such, than
from their tendency to enlarge his mind; and especially because, by
affording exhaustless stores of refined and innocent pleasure, they
win him away from the haunts of sensuality. "I should not think the
most exalted faculties a gift worthy of heaven," says Junius, "nor any
assistance in their improvement a subject of gratitude to man, if I
were not satisfied, that _to inform the understanding, corrects and
enlarges the heart_." Felix Neff, the Alpine pastor, whose ardent,
untiring benevolence, ten years ago, wrought what the indolent would
deem miracles, in diffusing knowledge, and a love of knowledge,
amongst an untutored peasantry, found their indifference towards
_foreign missions_ immovable, until they had learned something of
_geography_: but so soon as they had read the {22} description of
distant countries, and seen them upon the map, they conceived an
interest in the people who dwelt there; and entered warmly into the
scheme of beneficence, which before had solicited their attention in
vain. "Their new acquirements," observes Neff, "enlarged their spirit,
and made new creatures of them; seeming to triple their very
existence." Geometry, he remarked, also "produced a happy moral
development:" doubtless by the beauty of its unerring march to truth.
Arithmetic it is superfluous to recommend: but its adjunct, Algebra,
deserves cultivation as an exercise to the analyzing faculties; as an
implement, indispensable to the prosecution of several other studies;
and as opening a unique and curious field of knowledge to the view.
The _physical sciences_, shewing the composition and defects of soils,
and the modes of remedying those defects--the natures and properties
of minerals and vegetables--the modes in which different bodies affect
each other--the mechanical powers--the structure of man's own frame,
and the causes which benefit or injure it--the utility of these cannot
escape any mind.
For _books_, and _tracts_, and _oral lectures for the people_, there
will be no want of materials or models, or even of the actual fabrics
themselves. The publications of the British and American Societies for
the Diffusion of Knowledge, are mines, in which selection,
compilation, and imitation, may work with the richest results to this
great cause. Many of these productions, and still more eminently, the
scientific writings of Dr. Franklin, afford most happy specimens of
the style, suited to treatises for popular use: no parade of learning;
no long word, where a short will serve the turn; no Latin or Greek
derivative, where an Anglo-Saxon is at hand; no technical term, where
a popular one can be used. By presenting, in a form thus brief,
simple, and attractive, subjects which in their accustomed guise of
learned and costly quartos or octavos, frighten away the common gaze,
as from a Gorgon upon which none might look, and live, you may
insinuate them into every dwelling, and every mind: the school urchin
may find them neither incomprehensible, nor wearisome; and the
laboring man be detained from the tippling house, and even for an
hour, after the day's toil is over, from his pillow, to snatch a few
morsels from the banquet of instruction.
Many will cavil at the attempt to disseminate generally, so extended a
round of knowledge: and if, to escape the charge of
_impracticability_, we say, that our aim is to impart merely a slight
and general acquaintance with the proposed subjects,--then,
_sciolism_, and _smattering_, will be imputed to the plan; and Pope's
clever lines, so often misapplied, about the _intoxicating effect of
shallow draughts from the Pierian Spring_, will be quoted upon us.
Come the objection in prose or in verse, it is entirely fallacious.
Learning, either superficial or profound, intoxicates with vanity,
only when it is confined to a few. It is by seeing or fancying himself
wiser than those around him, that the pedant is puffed up. But now,
all the community, male and female, are proposed to be made partakers
of knowledge; and cannot be vain, of what all equally possess.
Besides--the sort of knowledge that naturally engenders conceit and
leads to error, is the _partial_ knowledge of _details_; not a
comprehensive acquaintance with _outlines_, and _general principles_.
A quack can use the lancet, and knows it to have been successfully
employed for severe contusions and excessive heat; but does not know
the _general_ fact, that under extreme exhaustion, indicated by a
suspended pulse, stimulants, and not depletives, are proper. Seeing a
man just fallen from a scaffold, or exhausted with heat and fatigue in
the harvest field--his pulse gone--the quack bleeds him, and the
patient dies. Again--a lounger at judicial trials, having picked up a
few legal doctrines and phrases--perhaps being master of a "Hening's
Justice"--conceives himself a profound jurisprudent; and besides
tiring the ears of all his acquaintance with technical pedantry, he
persuades a credulous neighbor, or plunges himself, into a long,
expensive, and ruinous law-suit. The worthy Mr. Saddletree, and Poor
Peter Peebles,[13] are masterly pictures of such a personage:
pictures, of which few experienced lawyers have not seen originals.
The storm so lately (and perhaps even yet) impending from the north,
and several other conspicuous ebullitions of fanaticism, are clearly
traceable to the perversion of a text[14] in our Declaration of
Independence and Bills of Rights, detached from its natural connexion
with kindred and qualifying truths, by minds uninstructed in the
_general principles_ of civil and political right. The mind which has
been accustomed only to a microscopic observation of one subject, or
one set of subjects, is necessarily contracted, fanatical, and
intolerant: as the wrinkled crone, who, during a long life, has never
passed the hills environing her cabin, or heard of any land besides
her own province, believes her native hamlet the choicest abode of
wisdom and goodness, and its humble church the grandest specimen of
architectural magnificence, in the world; and hears with incredulity
or horror, of distant countries, containing mountains, rivers,
climates, and cities, such as her thoughts never conceived, and people
with complexions, customs, language, and religion, different from all
that she has ever known. But the intellect, that has surveyed the
outlines and observed the relations of many various subjects (even
though not thoroughly familiar with any,) resembles the man who by
travelling, or even on a map, has traced the boundaries and marked the
relative positions of different countries. Knowing that _they exist_,
and _are peopled_, he readily forms distinct ideas of their surfaces,
and their moral traits: their mountains, rivers, and cities, their
arts, commerce, manners, institutions, and wars, rise before his
imagination, or are grasped by his knowledge: and whatever he hears,
he is prepared rationally to credit or reject, to approve or censure,
as it comports well or ill with probability and with reason. Now, to
counteract the one, and to promote the other, of these two conditions
of mind, are precisely what is proposed by the advocates of popular
instruction. They propose to teach _outlines_; and carefully to
impress the fact, that _only outlines are taught_: so as to shew the
learner, plainly, the precise extent of his knowledge, and (what is
yet more important) of his _ignorance_. It is thus, that, being not
"proud that he hath learned so much," but rather "humble that he knows
no more," vanity and self-conceit will be most certainly prevented:
{23} that a wise doubt of his own infallibility will make him tolerant
of dissent from his opinions: that he will be prepared at all times to
extend his acquisitions easily and judiciously, and to connect them
well with previous acquisitions--proving how truly Blackstone has
said, in paraphrase of Cicero,[15] "the sciences are _social_, and
flourish best in the neighborhood of each other:" in short, that he
will approach most nearly to that "healthful, well proportioned"
expansion of intellect and liberality of character, which Locke[16]
terms a _large, sound, roundabout sense_. In this point of view, it
will be found that "a little learning is" _not_ "a dangerous thing."
[Footnote 13: In "The Heart of Mid Lothian," and "Redgauntlet."]
[Footnote 14: "All men are created equal," &c. This principle is, in
substance, asserted in the Bill of Rights or Constitution of almost
every State in the Union.]
[Footnote 15: ----"omnes artes, quae ad humanitatem pertinent, habent
quoddam commune vinculum, et quasi cognatione quadam inter sese
continentur." _Orat. pro Arch. Poet._]
[Footnote 16: Conduct of the Understanding.]
I am deeply sensible, that I have left untouched many topics, even
more important and more pertinent to the main theme of my remarks,
than some which I have discussed. Indeed, so wide and so varied is
that main theme, that I have found myself greatly embarrassed in
selecting from the numerous particulars which solicited my regard on
every hand. I have not presumed to offer any fully rounded plan, of
that legislative action which is so imperiously demanded by the public
weal, and soon will be, I trust, by the public voice. A few hints, are
all that seemed to become me, or indeed that could well be crowded
into my brief share of this day's time. For a plan, both in outline
and in detail, I point to our sister states and to the European
countries, that have taken the lead of us: and to the virtues and
wisdom, by which our statesmen will be able to supply the defects,
avoid the errors, and even, I trust, surpass the excellences, of those
states and countries. That the Legislature may be wrought up to act,
individual influence, and the more powerful influence of associations
for the purpose--of whom I deem you, gentlemen, the chief, because the
first--must be exerted. You must draw the minds of the constituent
body forcibly to the subject. It must be held up in every light;
supported by every argument; until the people shall be persuaded but
to _consider_ it. Then, half the work will have been done. And in its
further progress towards consummation--when the illuminating process
shall have fairly begun--still it will be for you, gentlemen, and for
those whom your example shall call into this field of usefulness with
and after you, to exert, with no slumbering energy, the endowments
wherewith you and they, are entrusted. You, and they, must become
authors, and the prompters of authors. Books, for use in the schools,
and cheap, simplifying tracts as well as books for circulation among
the people, must be composed, compiled, and selected. Lectures, plain
and cheap, and suitably illustrated, must be delivered through town
and country. After the example of the good Watts, and of our own many
illustrious contemporaries in Britain and America, learned men must
oblige Science to lay aside the starched dignity and grand attire, by
which hitherto she has awed away the vulgar; and to render herself
universally amiable, by being humbly useful: as the wisest[17] of
heathens is said to have "brought Philosophy down from the skies,
placed her in human haunts, and made her discourse on the daily
concerns of human life."
[Footnote 17: Socrates. "Primus ille Philosophiam devocavit e coelo,
et in urbibus collocavit, et in domus introduxit; et coegit de vita et
moribus, rebusque bonis et malis quærere." _Cic. Tuscul. 5_.]
In this whole enterprise, its undertakers should resolve to be
convinced by no sneers, daunted by no difficulties, arrested by no
obstacles. Difficulties and obstacles enough, indeed, will present
themselves to the timid or superficial glance; but they will vanish,
before calm scrutiny and brave determination. Even where the means of
solving or removing them may not occur before hand to the mind, what
was lately said in a worse cause, will prove to be true: "Where there
is a WILL, there is a WAY." In such a cause as ours, and in reference
to the epithets of "visionary," "impracticable," "chimerical,"
"Quixotic," and all the other imaginary lions which will be discovered
in our path, well may we say, with the generous confidence of Lord
Chatham, that we "_trample upon impossibilities_."
Has not our success, indeed, been already demonstrated? Demonstrated,
in the first place, by unnumbered instances of parallel, and more
stupendous enterprises, accomplished under circumstances less
favorable than those which attend our undertaking? Such enterprises as
the Reformation of Luther--the settlement of America--her deliverance
from a foreign yoke--the teaching of the blind and the dumb[18] to
read and to write? Demonstrated, again, by actual _experiment_, that
sovereign test of practicability--experiment, seven times repeated,
with extensive, if not complete success--in New York, in Connecticut,
in Massachusetts, in Austria, in Germany, in Prussia, in Scotland?
Yes--it is no untried path we are called to tread: scarcely a step of
the way, but has been explored and smoothed before us. All that we
have to do, is to look around--see what others have done--correct our
own procedure by what we perceive defective in theirs--and forthwith
open the floodgates of light, and bid the torrent pour.
[Footnote 18: Dr. Johnson, after having witnessed the surprising
performances of the pupils in a College for the deaf and dumb at
Edinburgh in 1773, concluded that such a triumph over an infirmity
apparently irremediable, left nothing hopeless to human resolution.
"After having seen the deaf taught arithmetic," says he, "who would be
afraid to cultivate the Hebrides?" _Journey to the Western Islands_.]
Young gentlemen, foster-sons of the venerable institution near us!
Some, if not all of you, are destined by your opportunities, and by
bosoms glowing with honorable ambition, and beating high with the
consciousness of talent, for a conspicuous part in the drama of life.
Your eyes, doubtless, have already often glanced around, to see in
what field you shall reap the harvest of wealth, respect, and fame,
which hope represents as awaiting you. The buzz of notoriety, the palm
of eloquence, the gorgeousness of office--those glittering bribes,
which have lured onward their tens of thousands to mere splendid
misery or to a shameful end after all--have, no doubt, displayed their
attractions to you: but permit me to suggest, that if you will devote
the powers with which nature and education have gifted you, to the
patriot task of purifying and expanding the minds of your
countrymen--besides enjoying in your latter days that sweetest of
earthly thoughts, the thought of a life spent in usefulness--you may
have gathered laurels of glory, compared with which, all the chaplets
ever won in the tilt-yard of vulgar ambition are paltry weeds.
My wealthy fellow citizens! remember, that where {24} suffrage is
nearly universal and the majority rules, if the great body of the
people be ignorant or immoral, property is never secure from assaults,
under the disguise of law: either agrarian schemes, or oppressive
protecting systems, or advantages to certain classes, or some form of
unequal taxation; all, the result of ill-informed minds, or of
depraved dispositions. And if lawlessness assume not the garb of
legislation, still it is always banded with ignorance in the firing of
barns, the destruction of labor-saving machinery,[19] conspiracies to
raise wages, and all the terrific outrages that spring from the fury
of mobs. Thus, by a wise Providence, are you, who are the most _able_
to promote the education of the people, also by far the most
_interested_ in doing so. If there can be a case, in which a judicious
liberality is the truest economy, that case is now yours: and never
may the _ill husbandry of niggardliness_ be more awfully exemplified,
than by your grudging a small particle of your wealth, to place the
remainder beyond the reach of this peril.
[Footnote 19: No one can have forgotten the ravages committed, a year
or two since, by the ignorant poor of Kent, and some others of the
southern and middle counties of England, chiefly under the delusive
idea, that their sufferings were caused by labor-saving machinery.]
My fellow citizens (if any such are before me) who do not possess
wealth, and who have scarcely tasted of the cup of knowledge! You
surely need no exhortation to quaff freely of that cup, when it shall
come within your grasp: but I do exhort you to employ your influence
as men, and your constitutional power as voters, in persuading your
fellow citizens, and in prompting your public agents, to adopt the
requisite measures for dispelling, now and forever, the clouds and
darkness in which republican freedom can never long live.
And if, at the remotest point of future time, to which we may look
forward as witnessing the existence of human government any where, our
democratic forms shall still retain, unimpaired, even their present
purity, and present fertility of substantial freedom and happiness;
much more, if they shall have waxed purer, and stronger, and more
fruitful of good, with each revolving century,--defying the power or
conciliating the love of foreign states--maintaining domestic
harmony--oppressing none, protecting all--and so fully realizing the
fondest hopes of the most sanguine statesman, that no "despair of the
republic" can trouble the faintest heart:--all will be owing (under
Providence,) to the hearkening of this generation and the succeeding
ones, to that voice--not loud, but solemn and earnest--which, from the
shrine of Reason and the tombs of buried commonwealths, reiterates and
enforces the momentous precept--"ENLIGHTEN THE PEOPLE!"