reward of an occupation increases almost in the same ratio with its inutility. Mark how one class is doomed to toil for bread, and another privileged to wanton in luxurious idleness. Observe how poor and dependent are the producers, and how rich and powerful the consumers of wealth. And ask your selves, how many men and women ye have found in the course of your lives-among the rich or the poor, the oppressors or the oppressed-truly honest, truly consistent, truly independent, or truly happy in their generation. How shall a mass of abuses like these be remedied by piecemeal? How shall they be remedied at all, if we reach not the seat of the disease-the human heart? What avails it that our present monopolies are destroyed, if the ignorance remain that first permitted and may again be cajoled to permit them? What would it profit us that all pecuniary inequality ceased in a moment, if the ignorance remain that first produced, and would soon reproduce it. How should we be advantaged by razing to the ground our banks, our law courts, and our gin-shops, if the spirit of speculation, of quarrelling, and of drunkenness, which at first erected, were still there to rebuild them? In a word, how shall the abuses that mar all the beauty of our national institutions, the vices that stain the. fame of our national character, and the miseries that depress or destroy our national happiness-how shall these be removed, but only by an equal, national, intellectual and practical education for all the young citizens of our republic? We have had enough of declarations; let us have realities. We have said we are free and equal; let us become so. It needs not the chain or the manacle to constitute the slave. There is a slavery beyond that of fetters and dungeons-the slavery that bends not the body only, but the mind, to oppression; that puts man's reason in irons, and shuts out from his reach common sense and practical knowledge. This is the oppression we must destroy; and in the human mind, where it dwells and reigns, there we must destroy it. Had but equal education been spread over the nations of modern Europe, how altered should we read the annals of the dark middle ages. Where did the feudal barons find their power to enslave, if not in the cowed spirit and loyal ignorance of their degraded vassals? How did the Catholic clergy, that proud spiritual aristocracy, that set its sandaled feet on the necks of kings, and in its robes of sackcloth, entered unushered the cabinets of the masters of the world-how did these proud pretenders to holy humility, obtain their despotic sway? Was it not because science had retreated to the cell of the monk, and opened her treasures only within the walls of the monastery? Could feudal or spiritual tyranny have lasted for one year beyond the time that all serfs and all catholics had been taught to find in real knowledge at once their safety, their freedom, and their happiness. Let us leave the branches then, and strike at the root. They will wither and die of themselves, when the sources are cut off whence they have derived their nourishment. My second reason, therefore, for proposing equal national education as the first measure of reform, is because it is a remedy, and the only remedy commensurate with the abuses we purpose to remove. There are other reasons, though of less weight than those I have already adduced, why we may regard a state education as the measure which it behoves the people, as they value their own happiness and their children's independence, first to unite to carry. However omnipotent that measure may be, in revolutionizing the character and remodelling all the institutions of society, it is less startling and obnoxious, even to the most orthodox defenders of the things and the powers that be, than are many other far less effective measures. Propose to abolish all banking charters; and, though this could produce but a trifling benefit compared to those resulting from national education, yet while effecting much less, it could irritate much more. Propose an immediate equalization of property; and though you could have no security that in a single year from the date of that equalization, there would not be rich and poor, oppressors and oppressed, as at present, yet this partial and ineffective reform would create a hundred enemies and opposers, for one that is created against a universal reform by means of education. So, in medicine, are the gentlest remedies often the most efficacious, and come to us doubly recommended, at once by their immediate and by their ultimate effects. I shall perhaps be told, that the relief afforded to suffering industry by means of instruction to the coming generation, is but prospective and afar off; and that, while promising much in the future, it affords no alleviation for the present. But this objection is surely invalid. If a system of National Education be established, providing at once for the instruction and maintenance of all the children of the republic, and the expenses be defrayed by means of a property tax, and in addition perhaps, as suggested by my co-editor, in her lecture on Existing Evils, by a light tax on each parent-if, I say, such a system of education and support were carried for the children of all, how would the miseries and difficulties of poor families be instantly lightened or removed! When is the sting of poverty the sharpest, if it be not when a father or a mother looks on the sufferings of their offspring-when they see them neglected in body and mind, without power of remedy-and bitterly anticipate for them future hardships and future degradation? Let those poor and hard worked widows of Philadelphia, whom an iniquitous system of trade has doomed to exist and support their helpless children on sixteen dollars a year, or to brave infamy and punishment for a small additional pittance-let them reply. How would it lighten not the expenses only, but the cares and the sorrows of indigent parents, to know that, whatever they themselves might endure, their children, safe under the parental guardianship of the nation, were secure from the privations of poverty, and participating in the same advantages, mental, moral, and physical, as the wealthiest children in the land! Where is, at this moment, the great difficulty to the working classes in obtaining just laws, such as shall defend their rights and advance their interest? Their difficulty may be traced to the fact that they can hardly find suitable representatives. And why not find them? Because men in other ranks of life have interests opposed to those of the working man, and men in his own rank have not the educational advantages that enable them easily to compete with the sophistry of the learned student, or the eloquence of the classic scholar. And will not this difficulty remain, until a National Education remove it? Had equal instruction been accorded in the last generation to the child of the mechanic as of the president, how could there now exist the slightest difficulty in selecting from among the producers of all wealth intelligent representatives of their own class— men who, taken from among the people, would legislate for the people; and who, uniting common sense to literary acquirements, and practical knowledge to theoretical refinement, would act with the plain dealing of an honest republican, think with the enlarged and liberal views of a disciple of science, and speak with the eloquent perspicuity of a man of letters. Thus are our immediate difficulties, equally with all the thousand evils which ignorance has ever produced, to be traced to the carelessness of mankind in neglecting to train up children when young, in the way they should go, that, when they are old, they may not depart from it. Lastly, National Education is a measure involving no dangerous revolution to rouse the passions, and perhaps to blind the judgment, of mankind. It presupposes no violent change in the structure of society. It is like the silent flowing of the rising tide, not like the impetuous whirl of the engulphing storm. Even if, by mismanagement in its details, it might fail at first to effect all the good we anticipate, experience would soon correct these minor errors: so that with much and increasing good in prospect, there is neither danger to be encountered, nor loss to be incurred. They "Lycurgus," says Plutarch, "resolved the whole business of legislation into the bringing up of youth." When our legislators shall have learnt wisdom from the Spartan, they will acquire, as he acquired, the power of remoulding the national character. At present they do not possess it. can punish, but they have yet to learn how to prevent. have jails and penitentiaries, handcuffs and treadmills, lawyers and constables, solemn oaths and penal codes; they have yet to learn that these form not men to virtue, though they often make them hypocrites in vice. They have yet to learn the impotence of fear, and the omnipotence of reason. Let our representatives learn all this, or let us change our representatives. He who knows not the reforming power of National Education, is unqualified to sit in the councils of a nation: and he who knows its power, yet seeks to withhold its benefits from the humblest of his fellow-citizens, still less deserves their confidence or their suffrages. I have stated the reasons that induce me to regard a State Education as the first object to obtain which the people should combine their exertions and unite their votes. If these reasons be good, let the people awake to action. As they value the noble institutions of America, as they would save their country from the convulsions of a bloody revolution, as they would reform the crying abuses of inequality, as they would check the frightful enormities of vice, as they would build up virtue in the human heart, cherish kindness in the human bosom, and cultivate intelligence in the human mind—in a word, as they value their own and their children's enduring welfare, let them awake to action. Let them unite for action. The struggle is for no paltry prize; it is for the reality of those blessings which were declared ours half a century ago. This is the time and this the country for such a struggle. Soon may it commence, and speedily as happily may it terminate! در |