There may be persons ready to make a question here, whether it be so
certain that giving the people of the lower order more knowledge, and
sharpening their faculties, will really tend to the preservation of good
order. Would not such improvement elate them, to a most extravagant
estimate of their own worth and importance; and therefore result in
insufferable arrogance, both in the individuals and the class? Would they
not, on the strength of it, be continually assuming to sit in judgment on
the proceedings and claims of their betters, even in the most lofty
stations; and demanding their own pretended rights, with a troublesome and
turbulent pertinacity? Would they not, since their improvement cannot,
from their condition in life, be large and deep, be in just such a half
taught state, as would make them exactly fit to be wrought upon by all
sorts of crafty schemers, fierce declaimers, empirics, and innovators? Is
it not, in short, too probable that, since an increase of mental power is
available to bad uses as well as good, the results would greatly
preponderate on the side of evil?
It would be curious to observe how objections so plausible, so decisive in
the esteem of those who admire them, would sound if expressed in other
terms. Let them be put in the form of such sentences and propositions as
the following:--Though understanding is to be men's guide to right
conduct, the less of it they possess the more safe are we against their
going wrong. The duty of a human being has many branches; there are
connected with all of them various general and special considerations, to
induce and regulate the performance; it must be well for these to be
defined with all possible clearness; and it is also well for the great
majority of men to be utterly incapable of apprehending them with any such
definiteness. It is desirable that the rule, or set of rules, by which the
demeanor of the lower orders toward those above them is to be directed,
should appear to them _reasonable_ as well as distinctly defined; but let
us take the greatest care that their reason shall be in no state of
fitness to perceive this rectitude of the rules. It would be a noble thing
to have a competent understanding of all that belongs to human interest
and duty; and therefore the next best thing is to be retained very nearly
in ignorance of all. It would be a vast advantage to proceed a hundred
degrees on the scale of knowledge; but the advantage is nowhere in the
progress; each of the degrees is in itself worth nothing; nay, less than
nothing; for unless a man could attain all, he had better stop at two or
one, than advance to four, six, or ten. Truths support one another; by the
conjunction of several each is kept the clearer in the understanding, the
more efficient for its proper use, and the more adequate to resist the
pressure of the surrounding ignorance and delusion; therefore let there be
the greatest caution that we do not give to three truths in a man's
understanding the aid of a fourth, or four the aid of a fifth; let the
garrison be so diminutive that its successful resistance to the siege must
be a miracle.----The reader will be in little danger of excess in shaping
into as many forms of absurdity as he pleases a notion which goes to the
depreciation of the desire and use of truth, of all that has been
venerated as wisdom, of the divine revelation of knowledge, and of our
rational nature itself.
If it _be_ a rational nature that the lower ranks possess as well as the
superior, one should have imagined it must be in the highest degree
important that they, as well as their superiors, should habitually make
their duty and conduct _a matter of thought_, of intelligent
consideration, instead of going through it mechanically, or with little
more than a brute accommodation of what they do to a customary and imposed
manner of doing it; but this thoughtful way of acting will never prevail
among them, while they are unexercised in that thinking which (generally
speaking) men will never acquire but in the exercise of gaining knowledge.
It were, again, better, one would think, that they should be capable of
seeing some reason and use in gradations and unequal distributions in the
community, than be left to regard it as all a matter of capricious or
iniquitous fortune, to their allotment under which there is no reason for
submission but a bare necessity. The improvement of understanding by which
we are wishing to raise them in this humble allotment, without carrying
them from the ground where it is placed, will explain to them the best
compensations of their condition, will show them it is no essential
degradation, and point them to the true respectability which may be
obtained in it. And even if they _should_ be a little too much elated with
the supposed attainments, (while the flattering possession is yet new, and
far from general in their class,) what taste would it be in their
superiors not to deem this itself a far better thing than the contented,
or more probably insolent and malignant, grossness of a stupid
vulgarity?--as some little excess of self-complacency in appearing in a
handsome dress is accounted much less disgusting than a careless
self-exposure in filth and rags.
As to their being rendered liable by more knowledge to be caught by
declaimers, projectors, and agitators, we may confidently ask, whether it
be the natural effect of more knowledge and understanding to be less
suspicious of cajoling professions, less discerning of what is practicable
and impracticable, and more credulous to extravagant doctrines, and wild
theories and schemes. Is it the well-instructed and intelligent poor man
that believes the demagogue who may assert or insinuate that, if things
were ordered right, all men might live in the greatest plenty? Or if we
advert to those of the lower order whom a diminutive freehold or other
qualification may entitle to vote for a member of parliament, is it the
well-instructed and intelligent man among them that is duped by the
candidate's professions of kind solicitude for him and his family,
accompanied with smiling equivocal hints that it may be of more advantage
than he is aware for a man who has sons to provide for, to have a friend
who has access and interest in a certain high quarter? Nor is it among the
best instructed and most thinking part of the subordinate class, that we
shall find persons capable of believing that a community might, if those
who govern it so pleased, be rich and prosperous by other means than a
general industry in ordinary employments.
If, again, it is apprehended that a great increase of intelligence among
the people would destroy their deference and respectful deportment toward
their superiors, the ground of this apprehension should be honestly
assigned. If the claim to this respect be definable, and capable of being
enforced upon good reasons, it is obvious that improved sense in the
people will better appreciate them. Especially, if the claim is to owe any
part of its validity to higher mental qualifications in the claimants, it
will so far be incomparably better understood, and if it _be_ valid, far
more respected than it is now. By having a measure of knowledge, and of
the power and practice of thinking, the people would be enabled to form
some notion of what it must be, and what it is worth, to have a great deal
more of these endowments. They would observe and understand the
indications of this ampler possession in the minds of those above them,
and so would be aware of the great disparity between themselves and those
superiors. And since they would value _themselves_ on their comparatively
small share of these mental advantages, (for this is the very point of the
objection against their attaining them,) they would be compelled to
estimate by the same scale the persons dignified by so far surpassing a
share of this admired wealth. Whereas an ignorant populace can understand
nothing at all about the matter; they have no guess at the great
disparity, nor impression of its importance; so that with them the
cultivated superiors quite lose the weight of this grand difference, and
can obtain none of the respect which they may deserve on account of it.
The objection against enlightening the lower classes appears so remarkably
absurd as viewed in this direction, that it might tempt us to suspect a
motive not avowed. It is just the sort of caveat to be uttered by persons
aware that themselves, or many of their class, might happen to betray to
the sharpened inspection of a more intelligent people, that a higher
ground in the allotments of fortune is no certain pledge for a superior
rank of mind. It _were_ strange, very strange indeed, if persons combining
with superior station a great mental superiority, should be content, while
claiming the deference of the subordinate part of the community around
them, that this high distinction should go for nothing in that claim, and
that the required respect should be paid only in reverence of the number
of their acres, the size of their houses, the elegance of their equipage
and domestic arrangements, and perhaps some official capacity, in which
many a notorious blockhead has strutted and blustered.
We think such considerations as the above, opposed to the objection that
any very material cultivation of the minds of the common people would
destroy their industry in ordinary employments, their contentment with
their station, and their respectful demeanor to their superiors; and would
render them arrogant, disorderly, factious, liable to be caught by wild
notions, misled by declaimers and impostors, and, in short, all the worse
for being able to understand their duty and interest the better, ought to
go far toward convicting that objection of great folly,--not to apply
terms of stronger imputation.
But we need not have dwelt so long on such arguments, since fortunately
there is matter of fact in answer to the objection. To the extent of the
yet very limited experiment, it is proved that giving the people more
knowledge and more sense does not tend to disorder and insubordination;
does not excite them to impatience and extravagant claims; does not spoil
them for the ordinary business of life, the tasks of duty and necessity;
does not make them the dupes of knaves; nor teach them the most profitable
use of their improved faculties is to turn knaves themselves. Employers
can testify, from all sides, that there is a striking general difference
between those bred up in ignorance and rude vulgarity, and those who have
been trained through the well-ordered schools for the humble classes,
especially when the habits at home have been subsidiary; a difference
exceedingly in favor of the latter, who are found not only more apt at
understanding and executing, but more decorous, more respectful, more
attentive to orders, more ready to see and acknowledge the propriety of
good regulations, and more disposed to a practical acquiescence in them;
far less inclined to ebriety and low company; and more to be depended on
in point of honesty. In almost any part of the country, where the
experiment has been zealously prosecuted for a moderate number of years, a
long resident observer can discern a modification in the character of the
neighborhood; a mitigation of the former brutality of manners, a less
frequency of brawls and quarrels, and less tendency to draw together into
rude riotous assemblages. There is especially a marked difference on the
Sabbath, on which great numbers attend public worship, whose forefathers
used on that day to congregate for boisterous sport on the common, or even
within the inclosure vainly consecrated round the church; [Footnote: We
know a church where, within, the remembrance of an immediate ancestor, it
was not unusual, or thought anything amiss, for the foot-ball to be struck
up within the "consecrated ground" at the close of the afternoon service
of the Sunday.] and who would themselves in all probability have followed
the same course, but for the tuition which has led them into a better. In
not a few instances, the children have carried from the schools
inestimable benefits home to their unhappy families; winning even their
depraved, thoughtless parents into consideration and concern about their
most important interests,--a precious repayment of all the long toils and
cares, endured to support them through the period of childhood, and an
example of that rare class of phenomena, in which (as in the instance of
the Grecian Daughter) a superlative beauty arises from an inversion of the
order of nature.
Even the frightful statements of the increase, in recent years, of active
juvenile depravity, especially in the metropolis, include a gratifying
testimony in favor of education--at least did so some years since. The
result of special inquiries, of extensive compass, into the wretched
history of juvenile reprobates, has fortified the promoters of schools
with evidence that it was not from _these_ seminaries that such noxious
creatures were to go out, to exemplify that the improvement of
intelligence may be but the greater aptitude for fraud and mischief. No,
it was found to have been in very different places of resort, that these
wretches had been, almost from their infancy, accomplished for crime; and
that their training had not taken or needed any assistance from an
exercise on literary rudiments, from Bibles, catechisms, or religious and
moral poetry, or from an attendance on public worship. Indeed, as if
Providence had designed that the substantial utility should be accompanied
with a special circumstance to confound the cavillers, the children and
youth of the schools were found to have been more generally preserved from
falling into the class of premature delinquents, than a moral calculator,
keeping in sight the quality of human nature and the immediate pressure of
so much temptation, would have ventured to anticipate, upon the moderate
estimate of the efficacy of instruction.
Experience equally falsifies the notion that knowledge, imparted to the
lower orders, beyond what is necessary to the handling of their tools,
tends to factious turbulence; to an impatience (from the instigation of
certain wild theories,) under law and regular government in society. The
maintainers of which notion should also affirm, that the people of
Scotland have been to this day about the most disaffected, tumultuary,
revolutionary rabble in Europe; and that the Cornish miners, now so
worthily distinguished at once by exercised intellect and religion, are
incessantly on the point of insurrection, against their employers or the
state. And we shall be just as ready to believe them, if they also assert,
that, in those popular irregularities which have too often disturbed, in
particular places, the peace of our country, the clamorous bands or
crowds, collected for purposes of intimidation or demolition, have
consisted chiefly of the better instructed part of the poorer
inhabitants;--yes, or that this class furnished one in twenty or fifty of
the numbers forming such lawless bands; even though many of these more
instructed of the people might be suffering, with their families, the
extremity of want, the craving of hunger, which, no less than
"oppression," may "make a wise man mad." Many of these, in their desolate
abodes, with tears of parents and children mingled together, have been
committing themselves to their Father in heaven, at the time that the
ruder part of the population have been carrying alarm, and sometimes
mischief, through the district, and so confirming the faith, we may
suppose, of sundry magnates of the neighborhood, who had vehemently
asserted, a few years before, the pernicious tendency of educating the
people. [Footnote: What proportion were found to have been educated, in
the very lowest sense of the term, of the burners of ricks and barns in
the south-eastern counties, a few years since? What proportion of the
ferocious, fanatical, and sanguinary rout who, the other day, near the
centre of the metropolitan see of Canterbury, were brought into action by
the madman Thom, _alias_ Sir W. Courtenay; stout, well-fed, proud
Englishmen--Englishmen "the glory of all lands," who were capable of
believing that madman a divine personage, Christ himself, invulnerable,
till the fact happened otherwise, and then were confident he would come to
life again? When will the Government adopt some effectual means to avert
from the nation the infamy of having such a populace in any part of the
country, and especially _such_ a part of it?]
It would be less than what is due to suffering humanity, to leave this
topic without observing, that if a numerous division of the community
should be sinking under severe, protracted, unmitigated distress,
distress on which there appears to them no dawn of hope from ordinary
causes, it is not to be held a disparagement to the value of education,
if some of those who have enjoyed a measure of that advantage, in common
with a greater number who have not, should become feverishly agitated
with imaginations of great sudden changes in the social system; and be
led to entertain suggestions of irregular violent expedients for the
removal of insupportable evils. It must, in all reason, be acknowledged
the last lesson which education could be expected to teach with practical
effect, that one part of the community should be willing to resign
themselves to a premature mortality, that the others may live in
sufficiency and tranquillity. Such heroic devotement might not be
difficult in the sublime elation of Thermopylae; but it is a very
different matter in a melancholy cottage, and in the midst of famishing
children. [Footnote: This was almost the desperate condition of
numberless families in this country at a period of which they, or the
survivors of them, retain in memory an indelible record; and we think it
right to retain _here_ also that record. While thankful for all
subsequent amendment, we say again, Look at Ireland.]
After thus referring to matter of fact, for contradiction of the notion,
that the mental cultivation of the lower classes might render them less
subject to the rules of good order, we have to say, in further reply, that
we are not heard insisting on the advantages of increased knowledge and
mental invigoration among the people, _unconnected with the inculcation of
religion._
Undoubtedly, the zealous friends of popular education account knowledge
valuable absolutely, as being the apprehension of things as they are; a
prevention of delusion; and so far a fitness for right volitions. But
they consider religion, (besides being itself the primary and infinitely
the most important part of knowledge,) as a principle indispensable for
securing the full benefit of all the rest. It is desired, and endeavored,
that the understandings of these opening minds may be taken possession of
by just and solemn ideas of their relation to the Eternal Almighty Being;
that they may be taught to apprehend it as an awful reality, that they
are perpetually under his inspection; and as a certainty, that they must
at length appear before him in judgment, and find, in another life, the
consequences of what they are in spirit and conduct here. It is to be
impressed on them, that his will is the supreme law; that his
declarations are the most momentous truth known on earth; and his favor
and condemnation the greatest good and evil. Under an ascendency of this
divine wisdom it is, that their discipline in any other knowledge is
designed to be conducted; so that nothing in the mode of their
instruction may have a tendency contrary to it, and everything be taught
in a manner recognizing the relation with it, as far as shall consist
with a natural, unforced way of keeping this relation in view. Thus it is
sought to be secured that, as the pupil's mind grows stronger and
multiplies its resources, and he therefore has necessarily more power and
means for what is wrong, there may be luminously presented to him, as if
celestial eyes visibly beamed upon him, the most solemn ideas that can
enforce what is right.
* * * * *
Such is the discipline meditated, for preparing the subordinate classes to
pursue their individual welfare, and act their part as members of the
community.--They are to be trained in early life to diligent employment of
their faculties, tending to strengthen them, regulate them, and give their
possessors the power of effectually using them. They are to be exercised
to form clear, correct notions, instead of crude, vague, delusive ones.
The subjects of these ideas will be, a very considerable number of the
most important facts and principles; which are to be presented to their
understandings with a patient repetition of efforts to fix them there as
knowledge that cannot be forgotten. By this measure of actual acquirement,
and by the habit formed in so acquiring, they will be qualified for making
further attainment in future time, if disposed to improve their
opportunities. During this progress, and in connection with many of its
exercises, their duty is to be inculcated on them in the various forms in
which they will have to make a choice between right and wrong, in their
conduct toward society. There will be reiteration of lessons on justice,
prudence, inoffensiveness, love of peace, estrangement from the counsels
and leagues of vain and bad men; hatred of disorder and violence, a sense
of the necessity of authoritative public institutions to prevent these
evils, and respect for them while honestly administered to this end. All
this is to be taught, in many instances directly, in others by reference
for confirmation, from the Holy Scriptures, from which authority will also
be impressed, all the while, the principles of religion. And religion,
while its grand concern is with the state of the soul towards God and
eternal interests, yet takes every principle and rule of morals under its
peremptory sanction; making the primary obligation and responsibility be
towards God, of everything that is a duty with respect to men. So that,
with the subjects of this education, the sense of _propriety_ shall be
_conscience_; the consideration of how they ought to be regulated in their
conduct as a part of the community, shall be the recollection that their
Master in heaven dictates the laws of that conduct, and will judicially
hold them amenable for every part of it.
And is not a discipline thus addressed to the purpose of fixing religious
principles in ascendency, as far as that difficult object is within the
power of discipline, and of infusing a salutary tincture of them into
whatever else is taught, the right way to bring up citizens faithful to
all that deserves fidelity in the social compact?
But perhaps far less of sacred knowledge than all this pleading admits and
assumes to be indispensable to them, will answer the end. For it is but a
slender quantity of it that is, in effect, proposed to be imparted to them
by those who would give them very little other knowledge. They will talk
of giving the people an education specifically religious; a training to
conduct them on through a close avenue, looking straight before them to
descry distant spiritual objects, while shut out from all the scene right
and left, by fences that tell them there is nothing that concerns them
there. There may be rich and beautiful fields of knowledge, but they are
not to be trampled by vulgar feet.
Now, may we presume that by knowledge, or information, is meant a clear
understanding of a subject? If so, it is but little religious information
that _can_ be imparted while that of a more general nature is withheld.
The case is so, partly because, in order to a clear conception of the
principal things in the doctrine of religion, the mind wants facts,
principles, associations of ideas, and modes of applying its thoughts,
which are to be acquired from the consideration of various other subjects;
and partly because, even though it did _not_, and though it _were_
practicable to understand religious truths clearly without the subsidiary
ideas, and the disciplined mental habit acquired in attention to other
subjects, _it is flatly contrary to the radical disposition of human
nature_ that youthful spirits should yield themselves to a bare
exclusively religious discipline. It were supposing a reversal of the
natural taste and tendency, to expect them to apply their attention so
patiently, so willingly, so long, and with such interest, to this one
subject, as to be brought to an intelligent apprehension through the
almost sole exercise of thinking on this. By thinking on this!--which is
the subject on which they are by their very nature the least of all
inclined to think; the subject on which it is the most difficult as well
as the most important point in education to induce them to think; the
subject which, while it is essential to give it the ascendency in the
instruction of both the lower classes and all others, it requires so much
care and address to present in an attractive light; and which it is so
desirable to combine with other subjects naturally more engaging, in order
to bring it oftener by such associations into the thoughts, in that
secondary manner, which causes somewhat less of recoil.
It is curious to see what some persons can believe, or affect to believe,
when reduced to a dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot endure the idea of
any considerable raising of the common people by mental improvement, in
the general sense: that were ruin to social order. But then on the other,
if it must not be plainly denied, that the said common people are of the
very same rational nature as the most elevated divisions of the race; and
that their essential worth must be in this spiritual thinking being, which
worth is lost to them, if that being is sunk and degraded in gross
ignorance, it follows that some kind of cultivation is required. Well
then; we must give them some religious knowledge, unaccompanied by such
other knowledge as would much more attractively invite them to exercise
their minds, and _it will be practicable and easy enough_ to engage their
habitual attention to that very subject, almost exclusively, to which the
natural taste of the species is peculiarly averse.
In exposing the absurdity of any scheme of education for the inferior
classes, which should propose to make them intelligent about religion
while intelligent about nothing else except their ordinary employments, we
do not forget the instances now and then met with of pious poor men who,
while very uncultivated in the general sense, evince a remarkable
clearness of conception on religious topics, and in the application of
these topics to their duties as men and citizens. But "remarkable" we
involuntarily call these phenomena, whenever adverting to them. We
naturally use some expression importing a degree of wonder at such a fact.
We think it a striking illustration of the power of _religion itself_, and
not of the power of religious instruction. The extreme force with which
the vital spirit has seized and actuated his faculties, has in a measure
remedied the incapacity he had otherwise been under of forming clear ideas
of the subject. Even, however, while acknowledging and admiring this
effect of a special influence from heaven, we still find ourselves
involuntarily surmising, in such an instance, that the man must also have
been superior in natural capacity to the generality of ignorant persons;
so much out of the common course of things we account it for a man who
knows so few things to know this one thing so well. We account it so from
the settled conviction received through experience, that it is very
unlikely a man ignorant of almost all other things _should_ well
understand _one_ subject, of a nature quite foreign to that of his
ordinary occupations.
It is superfluous to observe, that such instances of a very considerable
comprehension of religious truth, obtained in spite of what naturally
makes so much against its being attainable, cannot affect the calculation
when we are devising schemes which can only work according to natural laws
and with ordinary powers. They who devise and apply them will rejoice at
these evidences that there is an Agent who can open men's minds to the
light of religion independently and in the absence of other intellectual
advantages. But the question being how to bring the people, by the
ordinary means of education, to a competent knowledge of religious truth,
we have to consider what way of attempting to impart that knowledge may be
the best fitted, at once to obviate the natural indisposition to the
subject, and to provide that when it does obtain a place in their
understanding, it shall not be a meagre, diminutive, insulated occupant
there, but in its proper dimensions and relations. And if, in attentively
studying this, there be any who come to ascertain, that the right
expedient is a bare inculcation of religious instruction, disconnected, on
system, from the illustrative aid of other knowledge, divested of the
modification and attraction of associated ideas derived from subjects less
uncongenial with the natural feelings,--they really may take the
satisfaction of having ascertained one thing more, namely, that human
nature has become at last so mightily changed, that it may be left to work
itself right very soon, as to the affair of religion, with little further
trouble of theirs.
* * * * *
The special view in which we were pleading, on behalf of popular
education, that religious instruction would form a material part of it,
was, that this essential ingredient would be a security against its being
injurious to the good order and subordination in society. It is the more
necessary to be particular on this, as some of those who have professed
to lay much stress on the _religious_ instruction of the people have
seemed to have little further notion of the necessity or use of religion
to the lower classes, than as merely a preserver of good order. In this
character it has been insisted on by persons who avowed their aversion to
every idea of an education in a more enlarged sense. We have heard it so
insisted on, no such long while past, by members of the most learned
institutions, at the same moment that they expressed more than a doubt of
the prudence of enabling the common people to read, literally to _read_,
the Bible. But assuredly the good order of a populace left in the stupid
general ignorance to which some of these good friends of theirs would
have doomed them, cannot be preserved by any such feeble infusion of
religious knowledge as these same good friends would instil into their
mental grossness. As long as they are in this condition, there must be
some far stronger power acting on them to preserve that good order. And
if there actually _has_ been such a power, hitherto competent to preserve
it, with only such an impotent scantling of religious knowledge in the
majority of the mass, and competent still to preserve it, a great deal of
hypocritical canting might have been spared, on the part of those whose
chief or only argument for teaching the people religion is the
maintenance of that good order.
But all this while we are forgetting to inquire how much is to be
understood as included in that good order, that deference and
subordination, which the possession of more mind and knowledge by the
people might disturb or destroy. May not the notion of it, as entertained
by some persons, be rather an image of the polity of an age long past, or
of that which remains unaltered as if it were a part of eternal nature in
the dominions of the East, than a model for the conformation of society
here in the present times? Is it required, that there should be a
sentiment of obsequiousness in the people, affecting them in a manner like
the instinct by which a lower order of animals is in awe of a higher, by
which the common tribe of beasts would cower at the sight of lions? Or, is
the deference expected to be paid, not on any understanding of reciprocal
advantage, but absolutely and unconditionally, as to a claim founded in
abstract or divine right? Is it to be held a criminal presumption in the
people, to think of examining their relations to the community any further
than the obligation of being industrious in the employments to which it
assigns them, and dutiful to its higher orders? Are they to entertain no
question respecting the right adjustment of their condition in the
arrangements of the great social body? Are they forbidden ever to admit a
single doubt of its being quite a matter of course, that everything which
could be done for the interests of their class, consistently with the
welfare of the whole, _is_ done; or, therefore, to pretend to any such
right as that of examining, representing, complaining, remonstrating, or
an ultimate recourse, perhaps, in a severe necessity, to stronger
expedients?
A subordination founded in such principles, and required to such a degree,
it is true enough that the communication of knowledge is not the way to
perpetuate. For the first use which men will infallibly make of an
enlargement of their faculties and ideas, will be, to take a larger view
of their interests; and they may happen, as soon as they do so, to think
they discover that it was quite time; and the longer they do so, to retain
still less and less of implicit faith that those interests will be done
justice to, without their own vigilance and intervention. An educated
people must be very slow indeed in the application of what they learn, if
they do not soon grow out of all belief in the _necessary_ wisdom and
rectitude of any order of human creatures whatever. They will see how
unreasonable it were to expect, that any sort of men will fail in fidelity
to the great natural principle, of making their own advantage the first
object; and therefore they will not be apt to listen, with the gravity
which in other times and regions may have been shown in listening, to
injunctions of gratitude for the willingness evinced by the higher orders
to take on them the trouble of watching and guarding the people's welfare,
by keeping them in due submission.
But neither will it necessarily be in the spirit of hostility, in the
worst sense of the word, that a more instructed people will thus show a
diminished credulity of reverence toward the predominant ranks in the
social economy; and will keep in habitual exercise upon them a somewhat
suspicious observation, and a judicial estimate; with an honest freedom in
sometimes avowing disapprobation, and strongly asserting any right which
is believed to be endangered or withheld. This will only be expressing
that, since all classes naturally consult by preference their own
interests, it is plainly unfit, that one portion of the community should
be trusted with an unlimited discretion in ordering what affects the
welfare of the others; and that, in all prudence, the people must refuse
an entire affiance, and unconditional, unexamining acquiescence; "except
the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh," would come to harmonize, and
then administer, interests which are so placed unappeasably at strife;--at
strife; for, what is so often asserted of those interests being in reality
the same, is true only on that comprehensive theory which neither party is
prompt to understand, or willing to make sacrifices of a more immediate
self-interest to realize; and it is evidently impossible for either, even
if believing it true, to concede to the other the exclusive adjustment of
the practical mode of identification.
But only let the utmost that is possible be done, to train the people,
from their early years, to a sound use of their reason, under a discipline
for imparting a valuable portion of knowledge, and assiduously inculcating
the principles of social duty and of religion; and then something may be
said, to good purpose, to their understanding and conscience, while they
are maintaining the competition of claims with their superiors. They will
then be capable of seeing put in a fair balance, many things which
headlong ignorance would have taken all one way. They will be able to
appreciate many explanations, alleged causes of delay, statements of
difficulty between opposing reasons, which would be thrown away on an
ignorant populace. And it would be an inducement to their making a real
exertion of the understanding, that they thus found themselves so formally
put upon their responsibility for its exercise; that they were summoned to
a rational discussion, instead of being addressed in the style of Pharaoh
to the Israelites. The strife of interests would thus come to be carried
on with less fierceness and malice, in the spirit and manner, on the part
of the people. And the ground itself of the contention, the substance of
the matters in contest, would be gradually diminished, by the concessions
of the higher classes to the claims of the lower; for there is no
affecting to dissemble, that a great mental and moral improvement of the
people would necessitate, though there were not a single movement of rude
force in the case, important concessions to them, on the part of the
superior orders. A people advanced to such a state, would make its moral
power felt in a thousand ways, and every moment. This general augmentation
of sense and right principle would send forth, against all arrangements
and inveterate or more modern usages, of the nature of invidious
exclusion, arbitrary repression, and the debasement of great public
interests into a detestable private traffic, an energy, which could no
more be resisted than the power of the sun, when he advances in the spring
to annihilate the relics and vestiges of the winter. This plastic
influence would modify the institutions of the national community, to a
state better adapted to secure all the popular rights; and to convey the
genuine, collective opinion, to bear directly on the counsel and
transaction of national concerns. That opinion would be so unequivocally
manifested, as to leave no pretence for a doubtful interpretation of its
signs; and with such authority as to preclude any question whether to set
it at defiance.
That such effects _would_ be inseparable from a great general advancement
of the people in knowledge and corrected character, must be freely
acknowledged to its disapproves. And is it _because_ these would be the
consequences, that they disapprove it? Then let them say, what it is that
_they_ would expect from an opposite system. _What_ is it, that they could
seriously promise themselves, from the conservative virtue of all the
ignorance, that can henceforward be retained among the people of this part
of the world? It is true, the remaining ignorance is so great that they
cannot well overrate its _general_ amount; but how can they fail to
perceive the importance of those _particulars_ in which its dominion has
been broken up? There is indeed a hemisphere of "gross darkness over the
people;" it may be possible to withhold from it long the illumination of
the sun; but in the mean time it has been rent by portentous lights and
flashes, which have excited a thought and agitation not to be stilled by
the continuance of the gloom. There have come in on the popular mind some
ideas, which the wisest of those who dread or hate their effect there,
look around in vain for the means of expelling. And these glimpses of
partial intelligence, these lights of dubious and possibly destructive
direction amidst the night, will continue to prompt and lead that mind,
with a hazard which can sease only with the opening upon it of the true
daylight of knowledge. That knowledge should have been antecedent to the
falling of these inflammatory ideal among the people; and if they have
come before the proper time, that is to say, before the people were
prepared to judge rationally of their rights, and to apprehend clearly the
duties inseparable from them as a condition of their enjoyment, the
calamitous consequences to the higher classes, as seen in the recent
history of Europe, may be regarded as a righteous judgment of heaven upon
them, for having suffered it to be _possible_ for these new ideas of
liberty and rights to come to the people in a state so unprepared. What
were all their commanding authorities of government, their splendid
ecclesiastical establishments, their great personal wealth and
influence,--all their lofty powers and distinctions which even their
basest sycophants, sacerdotal or poetical, told them, as one topic of
adulation, that they were not entrusted with for their own sole
gratification,--what were all these for, if the great body of the
communities over which they presided were to be retained in a state in
which they could not be touched by a few bold speculations in favor of
popular rights, without exploding as with infernal fire? How appropriate a
retribution of Sovereign Justice, that those who were wickedly the cause
should be the victims of the effect.
Where such a consequence has not followed, but where, nevertheless, these
notions of popular rights have come into the minds of the people very much
in precedence and disproportion to the general cultivation of their
intelligence and moral sense, it is most important that all diligence
should be given to bring up these neglected improvements to stand in rank
with those too forward speculations.
Whether this shall be done or not, these notions and feelings are not
things come into life without an instinct of what they have to do. The
disapproves of schemes for throwing the greatest practicable measure of
sound corrective knowledge into the minds of the multitude, may take
instruction or may decline it from seeing that, both in this country and
other states of Europe, there has gone forth among the mass of the people
a spirit of revolt from the obligation, which would retain their reverence
to institutions on the strength simply of their being established or being
ancient; a spirit that reacts, with deep and settled antipathy, against
some of the arrangements and claims of the order into which the national
community has been disposed by institutions and the course of events; a
spirit which regards some of the appointments and requirements of that
order, as little better than adaptations of the system to the will and
gratification of the more fortunate divisions of the species. And it has
shown itself in a very different character from that of a mere pining
despondency, or the impotent resentment excited sometimes in timidity
itself by severe grievance, but quelled by alarm at its own rashness. The
element and the temperament of its nature, and the force of its action,
have been displayed in the tremendous concussions attending its conflict
with the power arrayed in behalf of the old order of things to crush it.
And _is_ this spirit crushed? Is it subdued? Is it in the least degree
reduced?--reduced, we mean, in its internal power, as a combination of the
most absolute opinion with the impulse of some of the strongest passions.
Is it, we repeat, repressed? There may have been persons who could not,
"good easy men," conceive a possibility of its surviving the fiery storm
of the whole resources of the world converted into the materials of war,
to be poured on it, and followed by the mightiest leagues and the most
systematic legislation, all aimed at its destruction; surviving to come
forth with unabated vigor at the opportune junctures in the future
progress of events; like some great serpent, coming out again to glare on
the sight, with his appalling glance and length of volume, after a volley
of missiles had sent him to his retreat. The old approved expedients
against unreasonable discontents, and refractory tempers, and local
movements of hostility excited by some worthless competitor for power, had
been combined and applied on the grand scale; and henceforward all was to
be still. It was not given to these spell-bound understandings to
apprehend that the spirit to be repressed might be of a nature impassive
to these expedients, possibly to be confirmed by their application.
Repressed! What is it that is manifesting itself in the most remarkable
events in the old, and what has been called the new world, at the present
time? And what are the measures of several of the great state authorities
of Europe, whether adopted in deliberate policy, or in a fitful mood
between rashness and dismay; what are, especially, the meetings,
conferences, and military preparations, of the mightiest despots of the
globe, assembled at this very hour against a small and unoffending nation,
[Footnote: The meeting of imperial and royal personages at Troppau and
Laybach, for the detestable purpose of crushing the newly acquired liberty
of the kingdom of Naples.--January, 1821.]--what are these but a
confession or proclamation, that the spirit which the most enormous
exertions had been made to overwhelm, has preserved its life and energy;
like those warring immortal powers whom Milton describes as having
mountains thrown on them in vain? The progress of time renders it but more
evident, that the principle in action is something far different from a
superficial transient irritation; that it has gone the whole depth of the
mind; has possessed itself of the very judgment and conscience of an
innumerable legion, augmented by a continual and endless accession. No
doubt is permitted to remain of the direction which has been taken by the
current of the popular feeling,--to be recovered to its ancient obsequious
course when some great river which has farced a new channel shall resume
that which it has abandoned. For when once the great mass, of the lower
and immensely larger division of the community, shall have become filled
with an absolute, and almost unanimous conviction, that they, the grand
physical agency of that community; that they, the operators, the
producers, the preparers, of almost all it most essentially wants; that
they, the part, therefore, of the social assemblage so obviously the most
essential to its existence, and on which all the rest must depend; that
they have their condition in the great social arrangement so disposed as
not to acknowledge this their importance, as not to secure an adequate
reward of these their services;--we say, when this shall have become the
pervading intense conviction of the millions of Europe, we put it as a
question to any rational thinker, whether and how this state of feeling
can be reversed or neutralized, if the economy which has provoked it shall
yield to no modification. But it _is_ no question, he will confess. Then
will he pretend not to foresee any material change in an order of things
obnoxious to so vast a combination of wills and agents? This may indeed be
seriously avowed by some, who are so walled up in old prejudice and
presumption that they really have no look out; who, because a thing has
been long established, mistake its artificial substruction of crumbling
materials for the natural rock; and it will be pretended by others, who
think the bravado of asserting the impossibility of the overthrow may be a
good policy for deterring the attempt. There has not been one of the great
alterations effected by the popular spirit within the last half-century,
that was not preceded by professions of contemptuous incredulity, on the
part of the applauders of things as they were, toward those who calculated
on the effects of that spirit. There were occasionally betrayed, under
these shows of confidence and contempt, some signs of horror at the
undeniable excitement and progress of popular feeling; but the scorn of
all serious and monitory predictions of its ultimate result was at all
events to be kept up,--in whatever proportions a time-serving interest and
an honest fatuity might share in dictating this elated and contemptuous
style. Should the latter of these ingredients at present predominate in
the temper which throws off the fume of this high style, it will not leave
much faculty in the defiers of all revolution, for explaining what it is
they have to trust to as security against such consequences as we should
anticipate from the progress of disapprobation and aversion in the people;
unless indeed the security mainly relied on is just that plain, simple
expedient--force, for all nations on earth--downright force. It is plainly
this that is meant, when persons disinclined to speak out give us a
circumlocution of delicate phrases, "the conservative energies of the
public institutions," "the majesty of the law," perhaps, and others of
similar cast;--which fine phrases suggest to one's imagination the
ornamented fashion of the handle and sheath of the scimitar, which is not
the less keen, nor the less ready to be drawn, for all this finery that
hides and garnishes so menacing a symbol of power.
The economy of states _shall_ not be modified in favor of the great body
of those who constitute them.--And are, then, the higher and privileged
portions of the national communities to have, henceforward, just this one
grand object of their existence, this chief employment for their
knowledge, means, and power, namely, to keep down the lower orders of
their fellow-citizens by stress of coercion? Are they resolved and
prepared for a rancorous, interminable hostility in prosecution of such a
benign purpose; with a continual exhaustion upon it of the resources which
might be applied to diminish that wretchedness of the people, which is the
grand inflamer of those principles that have caused an earthquake under
the foundations of the old social systems? But, "interminable" is no
proper epithet to be applied to such a course. This policy of a bare
uncompromising rigor, exerted to keep the people just where they are, in
preference to adjustments formed on a calculation of a material change,
and adapted to prepare them for it--how long could it be successful--not
to ask what would be the value or the glory of that success? With the
light of recent history to aid the prognostication, by what superstitious
mode of estimating the self-preserving, and self-avenging competence of
any artificial form of social order, can we believe in its power to throw
back the general opinions, determinations, and efforts, of the mass of
mankind in endless recoil on themselves? That must be a very firm
structure, must be of gigantic mass or most excellent basis and
conformation, against which the ocean shall unremittingly wear and foam in
vain. And it does not appear what there can be of such impregnable
consistence in any particular construction of the social economy which is,
by the supposition, resolved to be maintained in sovereign immutability,
in permanent frustration of the persevering, ever-growing aim and impulse
of the great majority, pressing on to achieve important innovations in
their favor; innovations in those systems of institution and usage, under
which they will never cease to think they have had far less happiness, or
means of happiness, than they ought to have had. We cannot see how this
impulse can be so repelled or diverted that it shall not prevail at
length, to the effect of either bearing down, or wearing away, a portion
of the order of things which the ascendant classes in every part of Europe
would have fondly wished to maintain in perpetuity, without one particle
of surrender.
But though they cannot preserve its entireness, the manner in which it
shall yield to modification is in a great measure at their command. And
here is the important point on which all these observations are meant to
bear. If a movement has really begun in the general popular mind of the
nations, and if the principle of it is growing and insuppressible, so that
it must in one manner or another ultimately prevail, what will the state
be of any national community where it shall be an unenlightened,
half-barbarous people that so prevails?--a people no better informed,
perhaps, than to believe that all the hardship and distress endured by
themselves and their forefathers were wrongs, which they suffered from the
higher orders; than to ascribe to bad government, and the rapacity and
selfishness of the rich, the very evils caused by inclement seasons; and
than to assume it as beyond question, that the whole accumulation of their
resentments, brought out into action at last, is only justice demanding
and inflicting a retribution.
In such an event, what would not the superior orders be glad to give and
forego, in compromise with principles, tempers, and demands, which they
will know they should never have had to encounter, to the end of time, if,
instead of spending their vast advantages on merely their own state and
indulgence, they had applied them in a mode of operation and influence
tending to improve, in every way, the situation and character of the
people? It is true, that such a wild triumph of overpowering violence
would necessarily be short. A blind, turbulent monster of popular power
never can for a long time maintain the domination of a political
community. It would rage and riot itself out of breath and strength,
succumb under some strong coercion of its own creating, and lie subject
and stupified, till its spirit should be recovered and incensed for new
commotion. But this impossibility of a very prolonged reign of confusion,
would be little consolation for the classes against whose privileged
condition the first tremendous eruption should have driven. It would not
much cheer a man who should see his abode carried away, and his fields and
plantations devastated, to tell him that the agent of this ruin was only a
transient mountain torrent. A short prevalence of the overturning force
would have sufficed for the subversion of the proudest, longest
established state of privilege; and most improbable would it be, that
those who lost it in the tumult, would find the new authority, of whatever
shape or name it were, that would arise as that tumult subsided, either
able or disposed to restore it. They might perhaps, (on a favorable
supposition,) survive in personal safety, but in humiliated fortunes, to
ruminate on their manner of occupying their former elevated situation, and
of employing its ample means of power, a due share of which, exerted for
the improvement of the general condition, both intellectual and civil,
with an accompanying liberal yet gradual concession of privileges to the
people, would have prevented the catastrophe.
Let us urge, then, that a zealous endeavor to render it absolutely
impossible that, in any change whatever, the destinies of a nation should
fall under the power of an ignorant infuriated multitude, may take place
of the presumption that there _is_ no great change to be ever effected by
the progressive and conscious importance of the people; a presumption than
which nothing can appear more like infatuation, when we look at the recent
scenes and present temperament of the moral world. Lay hold on the myriads
of juvenile spirits, before they have time to grow up through ignorance
into a reckless hostility to social order; train them to sense and good
morals: inculcate the principles of religion, simply and solemnly _as_
religion, as a thing directly of divine dictation, and not as if its
authority were chiefly in virtue of human institutions; let the higher
orders generally make it evident to the multitude that they are desirous
to raise them in value, and promote their happiness; and then _whatever_
the demands of the people as a body, thus improving in understanding and
the sense of justice, shall come to be, and _whatever_ modification their
preponderance may ultimately enforce on the great social arrangements, it
will be infallibly certain that there never _can_ be a love of disorder,
an insolent anarchy, a prevailing spirit of revenge and devastation. Such
a conduct of the ascendant ranks would, in this nation at least, secure
that, as long as the world lasts, there never would be any formidable
commotion, or violent sudden changes. All those modifications of the
national economy to which an improving people would aspire and would
deserve to obtain, would be gradually accomplished, in a manner by which
no party would be wronged, and all would be the happier.
[Footnote: The considerations in the latter part of this section (so
plainly on the surface of the subject that they would occur to any
thoughtful and observant man) have been verified in part by the course of
events in our country, since the time they were written. At that, time the
superior, and till then irresistibly and invariably predominant, portion
of the community, felt themselves in perfect security against any
comprehensive and radical change within the ensuing twelve or fourteen
years. There might indeed be one or two subordinate matters in the
established national system in which they might deem it not unlikely that
the advocates and laborers for innovation would be successful; but such an
amount of innovation did not come within the view of even a feverish
dream. Any man who should have predicted, especially, the recent greatest
achievement against the inveterate system, [Footnote: The Reform Bill.]
would have been laughed at as an incorrigible visionary; so proudly
confident were they that the structure would be kept compact and
impregnable in all its essential parts, by the cement of ancient
institution, national veneration, opulence, and the inherence of actual
power, possessed from generation to generation.
In the next place, they were obstinately resolute against all material
concessions. When at intervals the complaints, claims, and remonstrances
of the people sought to be heard, they treated them as unreasonable,
absurd, factious; and asserted that none of the good sense and right
feeling of the nation went that way. They declared that the existing order
of things was on the whole so superlatively excellent that, if there were,
perhaps, any trifling defects, it were far better to let them alone than
to presume to touch with an innovating hand the integrity of so noble a
system, the admiration and envy of all the world. As it was, it had
"worked well" for our happiness and glory; and who could say, if a
tampering of alteration were once suffered to begin, where it might end?
Order the people to be quiet; let their factious demands and seditious
movements be promptly and firmly repressed by authority; and they would
sink into insignificance and silence. To think of such a thing as
condescending to conciliate by moderate concessions would be weakness, and
might eventually bring a hazard which otherwise could have no existence.
And now for the consequence: the popular spirit, thus set at naught in
present account and in calculation for the future, was discouraged from
active outward manifestation, by the invetorate, perfectly organized, and,
for the present, resistless domination. But under the pressure of
wide-spread and unabating grievance, which quickened and envenomed every
sentiment previously entertained regarding the rights and wrongs of the
people, it was gradually acquiring, throughout the country, a more
determinate sense of being absolved from all submissive respect toward the
ascendant party, a more entire conviction of its right to vindicate its
claims in any manner that should become practicable, and a hostility, but
the more deep and intense for its being kept under by despondency of
present success, against those who were rejecting and contemptuously
defying those claims. It wanted, then, only some occurrence that should
present a possibility and a hope of success to burst out in sudden ardor.
It was thus in collective power and readiness for action, when several
events of prodigious excitement came close together; and then, like a
stream in one of the Swiss valleys, dammed up by a mound of earth or ice
fallen across, to a lake deepening without noise, till its vast weight
breaks away the obstruction with a tremendous tumult, the popular will
bore down the aristocratic embankment, consolidated through so many years
or ages. The overpowered party found the consequence of their obstinate
and _entire_ resistance; and had to reflect with unmixed mortification how
much less than they had lost, and without mitigating by the loss the
hostile feeling of those who had taken it from them, would have been
received with gratitude if yielded in the way of gradual voluntary
concession. Happily the change was not left to be accomplished by physical
force, as all such changes must be in purely despotic states; but the
people fully believe that they chiefly owe the forced surrender to the
alarm which their demonstrations excited lest they should bring the
question ere long to that arbitrament.
But in the last place, there is a deplorable circumstance, attending this
sudden rising of the popular spirit into power, and which throws a strong
light on the criminal infatuation of a State that suffers the commonalty
of its citizens to remain grossly uncultivated and uncivilized--perhaps
even fancies it sees in that ignorance a main security for its own
stability. The fact is, that the people have acquired their power and
privileges, before they are (speaking as to many of them) qualified for a
wise and useful exercise of them. A large proportion of those who are now
brought into what may be called political existence have grown up so
destitute of all means and habits for a right use of their minds, that
their notions, wishes, expectations, and determinations, respecting public
interests, will exemplify anything rather than a competent judgment. And
the proportion so raised is but perhaps a minor part of the multitude in
which the popular spirit is embodied and vehemently excited. Great numbers
on a lower level, and having no formal political capacity to act in, are
nevertheless pervaded by a spirit which will bring the rude impulse of
mass and combination into the movement of the popular will.
If alarmed at such a view, will not they who have so long held the
sovereign control over the national economy feel the bitterest regret
that it had not been given them to obviate the possible dangers of such a
crisis and such a change, or rather to prevent such a crisis and a change
so abrupt, by exertions in every way, and on the widest scale, to rescue
the people from their ignorance and barbarism, instead of trusting to it
for an uncontested undisturbed continuance of their own domination? But
they scorned the idea, if it ever occurred, that the many-headed,
many-handed "monster," (so named in the dialect of some of them,) after
lying prone, and inert, and submissive, from time immemorial, should at
last become instinct with spirit, and rise up roaring in defiance of
their power.
It is now for them to consider whether, by maintaining a temper and
attitude of sullen, vindictive, pugnacious alienation from the people,
they shall wilfully aggravate whatever injurious consequences may be
threatened by so sudden a revolution; or endeavor to intercept them by
giving their best assistance to every plan and expedient for rescuing the
lower orders from the curse and calamity of ignorance and debasement.
Other remedial measures, besides that of education, are imperiously
demanded by the miserable and formidable condition of the populace, but no
other, nor all others together, can avail without it.
* * * * *
Since the date of the above note, the spirit and policy of the ascendant
class have been just that which a philanthropist would have deprecated,
and a cynic predicted.
Their moral chagrin at the acquisition by the people of a new political
rank, an event by which they, (the ascendant class,) had for a while
appeared amazed and stunned, has soon recovered to a prodigious activity
of device and exertion to nullify that rightful acquisition. For this
purpose have been brought into play, on the widest scale, that of the
whole kingdom, all the means and resources of wealth, station, and power;
with the utmost recklessness of equity, honor, and even humanity; deluding
the ignorant, corrupting the venal, and intimidating and punishing the
conscientious: insomuch that the nominally conceded right or privilege is
practically reduced to an inconsiderable proportion of its pre-estimated
worth; while aristocratic tyranny has rendered it to many of the most
deserving to possess it no better than an inflicted grievance. One
important measure for the improvement of the condition of the lower orders
has been effected, because the anti-popular party saw it advantageous also
to their own interests. But for the general course of their policy, we
have witnessed a systematic determination to frustrate measures framed in
recognition of the rights and wants of the people. As to their education,
it continues abandoned to the efforts and totally inadequate means of
private individuals and societies; except a comparative trifle from the
State, not so much for the whole nation for the whole year as the cost of
some useless, gaudy, barbaric pageant of one day.--It is evident the
predominant portion of the higher classes trouble themselves very little
about the mental condition of the populace. It is even understood that a
chief obstacle in the way of any comprehensive legislation on the subject
is found or apprehended in the repugnance of those classes to any liberal
scheme: any scheme that, aiming simply at the general good, should boldly
set aside invidious restrictions and a jealous, parsimonious limitation; a
scheme that should not work in subjection to the mean self-interest of
this party or that, but for the one grand purpose of raising millions from
degradation into rational existence.]