she has had no quarrel but of her own making. Such is our enterprise and
our strength, that few nations would, carelessly, engage in war with us;
none, without great provocation. In the midst of us, is our danger; not
in foreign arms, but in the ignorance and the wickedness of our own
children, the ignorance of the many, the wickedness of the few who will
lead the many to their ruin. The bulwark of America is not the army and
navy of the United States, with all the men at public cost instructed
in the art of war; it is not the swords and muskets idly bristling in
our armories; it is not the cannon and the powder carefully laid by; no,
nor is it yet the forts, which frown in all their grim barbarity of
stone along the coast, defacing the landscape, else so fair: these might
all be destroyed to-night, and the nation be as safe as now. The more
effectual bulwark of America is her schools. The cheap spelling-book, or
the vane on her school-house is a better symbol of the nation than "The
star-spangled banner;" the printing press does more than the cannon; the
press is mightier than the sword. The army that is to keep our
liberties--you are part of that, the noble army of teachers. It is you,
who are to make a great nation greater, even wise and good,--the next
generation better than their sires.
Europe shows us, by experiment, that a republic cannot be made by a few
well-minded men, however well-meaning. They tried for it at Rome, full
of enlightened priests; in Germany, the paradise of the scholar, but
there was not a people well educated, and a democracy could not stand
upright long enough to be set a-going. In France, where men are better
fitted for the experiment than elsewhere in continental Europe, you see
what comes of it--the first step is a stumble, and for their president,
the raw republicans chose an autocrat, not a democrat; not a mere
soldier, but only the name of a soldier; one that thinks it an insult
if liberty, equality, and fraternity be but named!
Think you a democracy can stand without the education of all; not barely
the smallest pittance thereof which will keep a live soul in a live
body, but a large, generous cultivation of mind and conscience, heart
and soul? A man, with half an eye, can see how we suffer continually in
politics for lack of education among the people. Some nations are
priest-ridden, some king-ridden, some ridden of nobles; America is
ridden by politicians, a heavy burden for a foolish neck.
Our industrial interests demand the same education. The industrial
prosperity of the North, our lands yearly enriching, while they bear
their annual crop; our railroads, mills and machines, the harness with
which we tackle the elements,--for we domesticate fire and water, yes,
the very lightning of heaven--all these are but material results of the
intelligence of the people. Our political success and our industrial
prosperity, both come from the pains taken with the education of the
people. Halve this education, and you take away three fourths of our
political welfare, three fourths of our industrial prosperity; double
this education, you greaten the political welfare of the people, you
increase their industrial success fourfold. Yes, more than that, for the
results of education increase by a ratio of much higher powers.
It seems strange that so few of the great men in politics have cared
much for the education of the people; only one of those, now prominent
before the North, is intimately connected with it. He, at great personal
sacrifice of money, of comfort, of health, even of respectability,
became superintendent of the common schools of Massachusetts, a place
whence we could ill spare him, to take the place of the famous man he
succeeds. Few of the prominent scholars of the land interest themselves
in the public education of the people. The men of superior culture think
the common school beneath their notice; but it is the mother of them
all.
None of the States of the North has ever given this matter the attention
it demands. When we legislate about public education, this is the
question before us:--Shall we give our posterity the greatest blessing
that one generation can bestow upon another? Shall we give them a
personal power which will create wealth in every form, multiply ships,
and roads of earth, or of iron; subdue the forest, till the field, chain
the rivers, hold the winds as its vassals, bind with an iron yoke the
fire and water, and catch and tame the lightning of God? Shall we give
them a personal power which will make them sober, temperate, healthy,
and wise; that shall keep them at peace, abroad and at home, organize
them so wisely that all shall be united, and yet, each left free, with
no tyranny of the few over the many, or the little over the great?
Shall we enable them to keep, to improve, to double manifold the
political, social, and personal blessings they now possess; shall we
give them this power to create riches, to promote order, peace,
happiness--all forms of human welfare, or shall we not? That is the
question. Give us intelligent men, moral men, men well developed in mind
and conscience, heart and soul, men that love man and God, industrial
prosperity, social prosperity, and political prosperity, are sure to
follow. But without such men, all the machinery of this threefold
prosperity is but a bauble in a child's hand, which he will soon break
or lose, which he cannot replace when gone, nor use while kept.
Rich men, who have intelligence and goodness, will educate their
children, at whatever cost. There are some men, even poor men's sons,
born with such native power that they will achieve an education, often a
most masterly culture; men whom no poverty can degrade, or make vulgar,
whom no lack of means of culture can keep from being wise and great.
Such are exceptional men; the majority, nine tenths of the people, will
depend, for their culture, on the public institutions of the land. If
there had never been a free public school in New England, not half of
her mechanics and farmers would now be able to read, not a fourth part
of her women. I need not stop to tell what would be the condition of her
agriculture, her manufactures, her commerce; they would have been,
perhaps, even behind the agriculture, commerce and manufactures of South
Carolina. I need not ask what would be the condition of her free
churches, or the republican institutions which now beautify her rugged
shores and sterile soil; there would be no such churches, no such
institutions. If there had been no such schools in New England, the
Revolution would yet remain to be fought. Take away the free schools,
you take away the cause of our manifold prosperity; double their
efficiency and value, you not only double and quadruple the prosperity
of the people, but you will enlarge their welfare--political, social,
personal--far more than I now dare to calculate. I know men object to
public schools; they say, education must be bottomed on religion, and
that cannot be taught unless we have a State religion, taught "by
authority" in all our schools; we cannot teach religion, without
teaching it in a sectarian form. This objection is getting made in New
York; we have got beyond it in New England. It is true, all manly
education must be bottomed on religion; it is essential to the normal
development of man, and all attempts at education, without this, must
fail of the highest end. But there are two parts of religion which can
be taught in all the schools, without disturbing the denominations, or
trenching upon their ground, namely, piety, the love of God, and
goodness, the love of man. The rest of religion, after piety and
goodness are removed, may safely be left to the institutions of any of
the sects, and so the state will not occupy their ground.
It is often said that superior education is not much needed; the common
schools are enough, and good enough, for it is thought that superior
education is needed for men as lawyers, ministers, doctors, and the
like, not for men as men. It is not so. We want men cultivated with the
best discipline, everywhere, not for the profession's sake, but for
man's sake. Every man with a superior culture, intellectual, moral, and
religious, every woman thus developed, is a safeguard and a blessing. He
may sit on the bench of a judge or a shoemaker, be a clergyman or an
oysterman, that matters little, he is still a safeguard and a blessing.
The idea that none should have a superior education but professional
men--they only for the profession's sake--belongs to dark ages, and is
unworthy of a democracy.
* * * * *
It is the duty of all men to watch over the public education of the
people, for it is the most important work of the state. It is
particularly the duty of men who, hitherto, have least attended to it,
men of the highest culture, men, too, of the highest genius. If a man
with but common abilities has attained great learning, he is one of the
"public administrators," to distribute the goods of men of genius, from
other times and lands, to mankind, their legal heirs. Why does God
sometimes endow a man with great intellectual power, making, now and
then, a million-minded man? Is that superiority of gift solely for the
man's own sake? Shame on such a thought. It is of little value to him
unless he use it for me; it is for your sake and my sake, more than for
his own. He is a precious almoner of wisdom; one of the public guardians
of mankind, to think for us, to help us think for ourselves; born to
educate the world of feebler men. I call on such men, men of culture,
men of genius, to help build up institutions for the education of the
people. If they neglect this, they are false to their trust. The culture
which hinders a man from sympathy with the ignorant, is a curse to both,
and the genius which separates a man from his fellow-creatures, lowlier
born than he, is the genius of a demon.
* * * * *
Men and women, practical teachers now before me, a great trust is in
your hands; nine tenths of the children of the people depend on you for
their early culture, for all the scholastic discipline they will ever
get; their manly culture will depend on that, their prosperity thereon,
all these on you. When they are men, you know what evils they will
easily learn from state and church, from business and the press. It is
for you to give them such a developing and such a furnishing of their
powers, that they will withstand, counteract and exterminate that evil.
Teach them to love justice better than their native land, truth better
than their church, humanity more than money, and fidelity to their own
nature better than the public opinion of the press. As the chief thing
of all, teach them to love man and God. Your characters will be the
inspiration of these children; your prayers their practice, your faith
their works.
The rising generation is in your hands, you can fashion them in your
image, you will, you must do this. Great duties will devolve on these
children when grown up to be men; you are to fit them for these duties.
Since the Revolution, there has not been a question before the country,
not a question of constitution or confederacy, free trade or protective
tariff, sub-treasury or bank, of peace or war, freedom or slavery, the
extension of liberty, or the extension of bondage--not a question of
this sort has come up before Congress, or the people, which could not
have been better decided by seven men, honest, intelligent, and just,
who loved man and God, and looked, with a single eye, to what was right
in the case. It is your business to train up such men. A representative,
a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vote. Ballots can make
a president out of almost any thing; the most ordinary material is not
too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions,
all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of
self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head
of a single man. You are to do that. You are the "Sacred Legion," the
"Theban Brothers" to repel the greatest foes that can invade the land,
the only foes to be feared; you are to repel ignorance, injustice,
unmanliness, and irreligion. With none else to help you, in ten years'
time you can double the value of your schools; double the amount of
development and instruction you annually furnish. So doing, you shall
double, triple, quadruple, multiply manifold the blessings of the land.
You can, if you will. I ask If you will? If your works say "Yes," then
you will be the great benefactors of the land, not giving money, but a
charity far nobler yet, education, the greatest charity. You will help
fulfil the prophecy which noble men long since predicted of mankind, and
help found the kingdom of heaven on earth; you will follow the steps of
that noblest man of men, the Great Educator of the human race, whom the
Christians still worship as their God. Yes, you will work with God
himself; He will work with you, work for you, and bless you with
everlasting life.
V.
THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA AND THE SIGNS OF THE
TIMES.--DELIVERED BEFORE SEVERAL LITERARY SOCIETIES, 1848.
Every nation has a peculiar character, in which it differs from all
others that have been, that are, and possibly from all that are to come;
for it does not yet appear that the Divine Father of the nations ever
repeats himself and creates either two nations or two men exactly alike.
However, as nations, like men, agree in more things than they differ,
and in obvious things too, the special peculiarity of any one tribe does
not always appear at first sight. But if we look through the history of
some nation which has passed off from the stage of action, we find
certain prevailing traits which continually reappear in the language and
laws thereof; in its arts, literature, manners, modes of religion--in
short, in the whole life of the people. The most prominent thing in the
history of the Hebrews is their continual trust in God, and this marks
them from their first appearance to the present day. They have
accordingly done little for art, science, philosophy, little for
commerce and the useful arts of life, but much for religion; and the
psalms they sung two or three thousand years ago are at this day the
hymns and prayers of the whole Christian world. Three great historical
forms of religion, Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, all have
proceeded from them.
He that looks at the Ionian Greeks finds in their story always the same
prominent characteristic, a devotion to what is beautiful. This appears
often to the neglect of what is true, right, and therefore holy. Hence,
while they have done little for religion, their literature,
architecture, sculpture, furnish us with models never surpassed, and
perhaps not equalled. Yet they lack the ideal aspiration after religion
that appears in the literature and art, and even language of some other
people, quite inferior to the Greeks in elegance and refinement.
Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks
for truth is one form of loveliness.
If we take the Romans, from Romulus their first king, to Augustulus the
last of the Caesars, the same traits of national character appear, only
the complexion and dress thereof changed by circumstances. There is
always the same hardness and materialism, the same skill in organizing
men, the same turn for affairs and genius for legislation. Rome borrowed
her theology and liturgical forms; her art, science, literature,
philosophy, and eloquence; even her art of war was an imitation. But
law sprung up indigenous in her soil; her laws are the best gift she
offers to the human race,--the "monument more lasting than brass," which
she has left behind her.
We may take another nation, which has by no means completed its history,
the Saxon race, from Hengist and Horsa to Sir Robert Peel: there also is
a permanent peculiarity in the tribe. They are yet the same bold, handy,
practical people as when their bark first touched the savage shores of
Britain; not over religious; less pious than moral; not so much upright
before God, as downright before men; servants of the understanding more
than children of reason; not following the guidance of an intuition, and
the light of an idea, but rather trusting to experiment, facts,
precedents, and usages; not philosophical, but commercial; warlike
through strength and courage, not from love of war or its glory;
material, obstinate, and grasping, with the same admiration of horses,
dogs, oxen, and strong drink; the same willingness to tread down any
obstacle, material, human or divine, which stands in their way; the same
impatient lust of wealth and power; the same disposition to colonize and
reannex other lands; the same love of liberty and love of law; the same
readiness in forming political confederations.
In each of these four instances, the Hebrews, the Ionians, the Romans,
and the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a nationality so strong, that while
they have mingled with other nations in commerce and in war, as victors
and vanquished, they have stoutly held their character through all; they
have thus modified feebler nations joined with them. To take the last,
neither the Britons nor the Danes affected very much the character of
the Anglo-Saxons; they never turned it out of its course. The Normans
gave the Saxon manners, refinement, letters, elegance. The Anglo-Saxon
bishop of the eleventh century, dressed in untanned sheep-skins, "the
woolly side out and the fleshy side in;" he ate cheese and flesh, drank
milk and mead. The Norman taught him to wear cloth, to eat also bread
and roots, to drink wine. But in other respects the Norman left him as
he found him. England has received her kings and her nobles from
Normandy, Anjou, the Provence, Scotland, Holland, Hanover, often seeing
a foreigner ascend her throne; yet the sturdy Anglo-Saxon character held
its own, spite of the new element infused into its blood: change the
ministries, change the dynasties often as they will, John Bull is
obstinate as ever, and himself changes not; no philosophy or religion
makes him less material. No nation but the English could have produced a
Hobbes, a Hume, a Paley, or a Bentham; they are all instantial and not
exceptional men in that race.
* * * * *
Now this idiosyncrasy of a nation is a sacred gift; like the genius of a
Burns, a Thorwaldsen, a Franklin, or a Bowditch, it is given for some
divine purpose, to be sacredly cherished and patiently unfolded. The
cause of the peculiarities of a nation or an individual man we cannot
fully determine as yet, and so we refer it to the chain of causes which
we call Providence. But the national persistency in a common type is
easily explained. The qualities of father and mother are commonly
transmitted to their children, but not always, for peculiarities may lie
latent in a family for generations, and reappear in the genius or the
folly of a child--often in the complexion and features: and besides,
father and mother are often no match. But such exceptions are rare, and
the qualities of a race are always thus reproduced, the deficiency of
one man getting counterbalanced by the redundancy of the next: the
marriages of a whole tribe are not far from normal.
Some nations, it seems, perish through defect of this national
character, as individuals fail of success through excess or deficiency
in their character. Thus the Celts, that great flood of a nation which
once swept over Germany, France, England, and, casting its spray far
over the Alps, at one time threatened destruction to Rome itself, seem
to have been so filled with love of individual independence that they
could never accept a minute organization of human rights and duties, and
so their children would not group themselves into a city, as other
races, and submit to a strong central power, which should curb
individual will enough to insure national unity of action. Perhaps this
was once the excellence of the Celts, and thereby they broke the
trammels and escaped from the theocratic or despotic traditions of
earlier and more savage times, developing the power of the individual
for a time, and the energy of a nation loosely bound; but when they came
in contact with the Romans, Franks and Saxons, they melted away as snow
in April--only, like that, remnants thereof yet lingering in the
mountains and islands of Europe. No external pressure of famine or
political oppression now holds the Celts in Ireland together, or gives
them national unity of action enough to resist the Saxon foe. Doubtless
in other days this very peculiarity of the Irish has done the world some
service. Nations succeed each other as races of animals in the
geological epochs, and like them, also, perish when their work is done.
The peculiar character of a nation does not appear nakedly, without
relief and shadow. As the waters of the Rhone, in coming from the
mountains, have caught a stain from the soils they have traversed which
mars the cerulean tinge of the mountain snow that gave them birth, so
the peculiarities of each nation become modified by the circumstances to
which it is exposed, though the fundamental character of a nation, it
seems, has never been changed. Only when the blood of the nation is
changed by additions from another stock is the idiosyncrasy altered.
Now, while each nation has its peculiar genius or character which does
not change, it has also and accordingly a particular work to perform in
the economy of the world, a certain fundamental idea to unfold and
develop. This is its national task, for in God's world, as in a shop,
there is a regular division of labor. Sometimes it is a limited work,
and when it is done the nation may be dismissed, and go to its repose.
_Non omnia possumus omnes_ is as true of nations as of men; one has a
genius for one thing, another for something different, and the idea of
each nation and its special work will depend on the genius of the
nation. Men do not gather grapes of thorns.
In addition to this specific genius of the nation and its corresponding
work, there are also various accidental or subordinate qualities, which
change with circumstances, and so vary the nation's aspect that its
peculiar genius and peculiar duty are often hid from its own
consciousness, and even obscured to that of the philosophic looker-on.
These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar
genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient
circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which
the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of
the present age, and they the character of the men now living. Thus new
modifications of the national type continually take place; new
variations are played, but on the same old strings and of the same old
tune. Once circumstances made the Hebrews entirely pastoral, now as
completely commercial; but the same trust in God, the same national
exclusiveness appear, as of old. As one looks at the history of the
Ionians, Romans, Saxons, he sees unity of national character, a
continuity of idea and of work; but it appears in the midst of variety,
for while these remained ever the same to complete the economy of the
world, subordinate qualities--sentiments, ideas, actions--changed to
suit the passing hour. The nation's _course_ was laid towards a certain
point, but they stood to the right hand or the left, they sailed with
much canvas or little, and swift or slow, as the winds and waves
compelled: nay, sometimes the national ship "heaves to," and lies with
her "head to the wind," regardless of her destination; but when the
storm is overblown resumes her course. Men will carelessly think the
ship has no certain aim, but only drifts.
* * * * *
The most marked characteristic of the American nation is Love of
Freedom; of man's natural rights. This is so plain to a student of
American history, or of American politics, that the point requires no
arguing. We have a genius for liberty: the American idea is freedom,
natural rights. Accordingly, the work providentially laid out for us to
do seems this,--to organize the rights of man. This is a problem
hitherto unattempted on a national scale, in human history. Often
enough attempts have been made to organize the powers of priests, kings,
nobles, in a theocracy, monarchy, oligarchy, powers which had no
foundation in human duties or human rights, but solely in the
selfishness of strong men. Often enough have the mights of men been
organized, but not the rights of man. Surely there has never been an
attempt made on a national scale to organize the rights of man as man;
rights resting on the nature of things; rights derived from no
conventional compact of men with men; not inherited from past
generations, nor received from parliaments and kings, nor secured by
their parchments; but rights that are derived straightway from God, the
Author of Duty and the Source of Right, and which are secured in the
great charter of our being.