Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

AN ADDRESS ON EDUCATION,

AS CONNECTED WITH THE PERMANENCE OF OUR REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS.

Delivered before the Institute of Education of Hampden Sidney College, at its Anniversary Meeting, September the 24th, 1835, on the invitation of that body,-by Lucian Minor, Esq. of

Louisa.

[Published by request of the Institute.]

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Institute:

I am to offer you, and this large assembly, some thoughts upon EDUCATION, as a means of preserving the Republican Institutions of our country.

The sentiment of the Roman Senate, who, upon their general's return with the shattered remains of a great army from an almost annihilating defeat, thanked and applauded him for not despairing of the Republic, has, in later times, been moulded into an apothegm of political morality; and few sayings, of equal dignity, are now more hackneyed, than that "A good citizen will never despair of the commonwealth.”

I shall hope to escape the anathema, and the charge of disloyalty to our popular institutions, implied in the terms of this apothegm, if I doubt, somewhat, its unqualified truth; when you consider how frequently omens of ruin, overclouding the sky of our country, have constrained the most unquestionable republican patriot's heart to quiver with alarm, if not to sink in despair. When a factious minority, too strong to be punished as traitors, treasonably refuse to rally under their country's flag, in defence of her rights and in obedience to her laws; when a factious majority, by partial legislation, pervert the government to the ends of self-aggrandizement or tyranny; when mobs dethrone justice, by assuming to be her ministers, and rush madly to the destruction of property or of life; when artful demagogues, playing upon the credulity or the bad passions of a confiding multitude, sway them to measures the most adverse to the public good; or when a popular chief (though he were a Washington) contrives so far to plant his will in the place of law and of policy, that the people approve or condemn both measures and men, mainly if not solely, by his judgment or caprice; and when all history shews these identical causes (the offspring of ignorance and vice) to have overthrown every proud republic of former times ;-then, surely, a Marcus Brutus or an Algernon Sidney,-the man whose heart is the most irrevocably sworn to liberty, and whose life, if required, would be a willing sacrifice upon her altars-must find the most gloomy forebodings often haunting his thoughts, and darkening his hopes.

[ocr errors]

supported by all the powers of reasoning and persuasion, in discussing not only systems of measures, but their minutest details, year after year, before successive councils, in successive generations: and supposing the machinery of Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary to be so simple or so happily adjusted, that an idiot might propel it, and a school-lad with the first four rules of arithmetic or even "a negro boy with his knife and tally stick"-might regulate its movements and record their results; still, those other objects demand all the comprehension and energies of no contracted or feeble mind. Nor are these qualities needful only to the actual administrators of the government. Its proprietors, the people, must look both vigilantly and intelligently to its administration: for so liable is power to continual abuse; so perpetually is it tending to steal from them to their steward or their agent; that if they either want the requisite sagacity to judge of his acts, or substitute a blind confidence in him for that wise distrust, which all experience proves indispensable to the preservation of power in the people,—it will soon be their power no longer. A tame surrender of it to him is inevitable, unless they comprehend the subjects of his action well enough to judge the character of his acts: unless they know something of that vast and diversified field of policy, of duty, and of right, in which they have set him to labor. Yes--in its least perplexed form, on its most diminutive scale, the task of selfgovernment is a perilously difficult one; difficult, in proportion to its nobleness: calling for the highest attributes of the human character. What, then, myst it be, in a system so complex as ours? Two sets of public functionaries, to appoint and superintend: two sets of machinery to watch, and keep in order: each of them not only complicated within itself, but constantly tending to clash with the other. Viewing the State government alone, how many fearful dissensions have arisen, as to the extent of its powers, and the propriety of its acts! Turning then to the Federal government, how much more awful and numerous controversies, respecting both the constitutionality and expediency of its measures, have, within half a century, convulsed the whole Union! No less than three conjunctures within that time, threatening us with disunion and civil war; not to mention the troubles of the elder Adams' administration, the conspiracy of Burr, the Missouri dispute, or the cloud (now, I trust, about to disperse) which has just been lowering in our northern sky. To the complexity of our two governments, separately considered, add the delicate problems daily springing from their relations with one another, and from the mutual relations of the twenty-four states-disputes concerning territory; claims urged by citizens of one, against another state; or wrongs done to some states, by citizens and residents of others-all these, and innumerable other questions, involving each innumerable ramifications, continually starting up to try the wisdom and temper, if not to mar the peace, of our country;—and say, if there are words forcible and emphatic enough to express the need, that the POPULAR WILL, which supremely controls this labyrinthine complication of diffi culties, should be enlightened by knowledge, tempered by kindness, and ruled by justice?

Indeed, at the best, it is no trivial task, to conduct the affairs of a great people. Even in the tiny republics of antiquity, some twenty of which were crowded into a space less than two-thirds of Virginia,-government was no such simple machine, as some fond enthusiasts would have us believe it might be. The only very simple form of government, is despotism. There, every question of policy, every complicated problem of state economy, every knotty dispute respecting the rights or interests of individuals or of provinces, is at once solved by the intelligible and irreversible sic volo of a Nicholas or a Mohammed. But in republics, there are passions to soothe; clashing interests to reconcile; jarring opinions to mould into one result, for the general weal. To effect this, requires extensive and accurate knowledge, ber, 1829.

Mr. Randolph's Speech in the Virginia Convention, Novem.

VOL. II.-3

Gentlemen, when such dangers hedge our politically relied upon, to save her from the dangers that hem edifice; when we recollect the storms which have already burst upon it, and that, although it has survived them, we have no guarantee for its withstanding even less furious ones hereafter-as a ship may ride out many a tempest safely, and yet be so racked in her joints as to go down at last under a capful of wind; above all, when we reflect that the same cankers which have destroyed all former commonwealths, are now at work within our own;-it would betoken, to my view, more of irrational credulity than of patriotism, to feel that sanguine, unconditional confidence in the durableness of our institutions, which those profess, who are perpetually making it the test of good citizenship"never to despair of the republic."

But is it ever to be thus? Were then the visions of liberty for centuries on centuries, which our fathers so fondly cherished, all deceitful? Were the toil, and treasure, and blood they lavished as that liberty's price, all lavished in vain? Is there no deliverance for man, from the doom of subjection which kings and their minions pronounce against him? No remedy for the diseases which, in freedom's apparently most healthful state, menace her with death?

round a democracy, unsupported by popular knowledge and virtue. Cyrus the Great, when a boy, among his play fellows, avoided contests with his inferiors in strength and swiftness; always challenging to the race or the wrestling match, those fleeter and stronger than himself: by which means, observes Xenophon, he soon excelled them. Imitating this wise magnanimity of Cyrus, let us, in looking around to find how we may attain an excellence, worthy of Virginia's early and long illustrious but now paling fame, compare ourselves not with States that have been as neglectful as we, of popu lar education, but with some which have outstript us in that march of true glory.*

The Common-school system of New York, which has been in operation since the year 1816, is in substance this: The counties having been already laid off into tracts of five or six miles square, called townships,—each of these, upon raising one half the sum needed there for teachers' wages, is entitled to have the other half furnished from the state treasury: and each neighborhood in the township, before it can receive any part of this joint sum, must organize itself as a school district, build and furnish a school house, and cause a school to be If it is not ever to be thus; if the anticipations of taught there for at least three months, by a teacher who our revolutionary patriots were not all delusive dreams, has been examined and found duly qualified, by a standand their blood fell not in vain to the ground; if man's ing committee, appointed for that purpose. To the general doom is not subjection, and the examples of his schools thus established, all children, rich and poor freedom are not mere deceitful glimmerings up of hap-alike, are admitted without charge. Mark the fruits of piness above the fixed darkness which enwraps him, this system. In 1832, there were in the state 508,878 designed but to amuse his fancy and to cheat his hopes;|children; of whom 494,959 were regular pupils at the if there is a remedy for the diseases that poison the common-schools: leaving fewer than 14,000 for private health of liberty; the reason-that remedy-can be found only in one short precept-ENLIGHTEN THE PEOPLE!

or other instruction, and reducing the number who are unschooled, to an inappreciable point. In Massachusetts, the townships are compelled by law to defray nearly the whole expense of their schools; and the or

York. In each, however, about ONE-FOURTH of the whole population is receiving instruction for a considerable part of the year; and in Massachusetts, in 1832, there were but TEN persons between the ages of 14 and 21, who could not read and write.

Nothing-I scruple not to avow-it has been my thought for years-nothing but my reliance on the effi-ganization is in other respects less perfect than in New cacy of this precept, prevents my being, at this instant, a monarchist. Did I not, with burning confidence, beHeve that the people can be enlightened, and that they may so escape the dangers which encompass them, I should be for consigning them at once to the calm of hereditary monarchy. But this confidence makes me Connecticut, with a school fund yielding 180,000 dolno monarchist: makes me, I trust, a true whig; not in lars annually, and with common schools established by the party acceptation of the day, but in the sense, em- law in every township, finds their efficacy in a great ployed by Jefferson, of one who trusts and cherishes the degree marred by a single error in her plan. This error people. Throughout his life, we find that great states-is, that the whole expense is defrayed by the state. In conman insisting upon popular instruction as an inseparable requisite to his belief in the permanency of any popular government: "Ignorance and bigotry," said he, "like other insanities, are incapable of self-government." His authority might be fortified by those of Sidney, Montesquieu, and of all who have written extensively or luminously upon free government: but this is no time for elaborate quotations; and indeed why cite authorities, to prove what is palpable to the glance?

Immense is the chasm to be filled, immeasurable the space to be traversed, between the present condition of mental culture in Virginia, and that which can be safe

sequence of this, the people take little interest in the schools; and the children are sent so irregularly, as to derive a very insignificant amount of beneficial instruction: so clearly is it shewn, that a gratuity, or what seems to be one, is but lightly valued. The statesmen of Connecticut, convinced that the only method of rousing the people from their indifference, is to make them contribute something for the schools in their own immediate neighborhood, and so become solicitous to get the worth of their money, are meditating the adoption of a plan like that of New York.

Even in Europe, we may find admirable, nay wonderful examples, for our imitation.

"The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names, or by those * Montesquieu, mentioning the adoption, by the Romans, of of Aristocrats and Democrats-Côté droite and côté gauche an improved buckler from a conquered nation, remarks, that the Ultras and Radicals-Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weak-chief secret of Roman greatness was, their renouncing any

ly, timid man, fears the people, and is a tory by nature. The healthy, strong, and bold, cherishes them, and is a whig by nature." Jefferson.

usage of their own, the moment they found a better one. ["Ils ont toujours renoncé à leurs usages, sitot qu'ils en ont trouvé de meilleurs."] Grandeur et Decadence des Romains— Chap. 1.

*

PRUSSIA has a system, strikingly analogous to that of we aim to instruct only the children of the poor; literary New York; and in some respects, superior to it. As in New York, the superintendence of popular education is entrusted to a distinct branch of the government; to a gradation of salaried officers, whose whole time is employed in regulating the courses of study, compiling or selecting books, examining teachers, and inspecting the schools. At suitable intervals, are schools expressly for the instruction of teachers: of which, in 1831, there existed thirty-three-supplying a stock of instructors, accomplished in all the various knowledge taught in the Prussian schools. In no country on earth-little as we might imagine it-is there probably so well taught a population as in Prussia. Witness the fact, that in 1931, out of 2,043,000 children in the kingdom, 2,021,000 regularly attended the common schools: leaving but 22,000 to be taught at their homes or in private academies.* France, in 1833, adopted the Prussian plan, with effects already visible in the habits and employments of her people; and similar systems have long existed in Germany, and even in Austria. The schools for training teachers (called, in France and Germany, normal schools) pervade all these countries.

In England, government has yet done little towards educating the common people: but Scotland has long enjoyed parish schools equalled only by those of Prussia, Germany, and some of our own states, in creating a virtuous and intelligent yeomanry. Throughout Great Britain, voluntary associations for the diffusion of useful knowledge, in which are enrolled some of the most illustrious minds not only of the British empire but of this age, have been for years in active and salutary operation; and, by publishing cheap and simple tracts upon useful and entertaining subjects, and by sending over the country competent persons to deliver plain and popular lectures, illustrated by suitable apparatus, they have, as the North American Review expresses it, "poured floods of intellectual light upon the lower ranks of society."

From a comparison with no one of the eight American and European states that I have mentioned, can Virginia find, in what she has done towards enlightening her people, the slightest warrant for that pre-eminent self-esteem, which, in some other respects, she is so well entitled to indulge. Except England, she is far | behind them all: and even England (if her Societies for diffusing knowledge have not already placed her before us) is now preparing, by wise and beneficent legislation, to lead away with the rest.

Let me not be deemed unfilial or irreverent, if I expose, somewhat freely, the deficiences of our venerable commonwealth in this one particular. It is done in a dutiful spirit, with a view purely to their amendment: and may not children, in such a spirit and with such a view, commune frankly with one another?

A great and obvious difference between our primary school system, and the common-school systems of the northern states, is, that they take in ALL children: while

* The enumeration in Prussia, is of children between 7 and 14 years of age; in New York, of those between 5 and 16. In Prussia, the sending of all children to school is ensured by legal penalties upon parents, guardians, and masters, who fail to send. New York approximates remarkably to the same result, by simply enlisting the interest of her people in their schools.

Ever since 1646, except 36 years, embracing the tyrannical and worthless reigns of Charles II and James II.

paupers. We thus at once create two causes of failure : first, the slight value which men set upon what costs them nothing, as was evinced in the case of Connecticut; second, the mortification to pride (an honest though mistaken pride,) in being singled out as an object of charity. As if these fatal errors had not sufficiently ensured the impotence of the scheme, the schools themselves are the least efficient that could be devised. Instead of teachers retained expressly for the purpose,➖➖ selected, after strict examination into their capacities, and vigilantly superintended afterwards, by competent judges--the poor children are entered by the neighboring commissioner (often himself entirely unqualified either to teach or to direct teaching,) in the private school which chance, or the teacher's unfitness for any other employment, combined always with cheapness of price, may have already established nearest at hand. There, the little protegé of the commonwealth is thrown amongst pupils, whose parents pay for them and give some heed to their progress; and having no friend to see that he is properly instructed--mortified by the humiliating name of poor scholar-neglected by the teacher--and not rigorously urged to school by any one--he learns nothing, slackens his attendance, and soon quits the temple of science in rooted disgust.

Observe now, I pray you, how precisely the results agree with what might have been foretold, of such a system. In 1833, nearly 33,000 poor children (literary paupers) were found in 100 counties of Virginia; of whom but 17,081 attended school at all: and these 17,081 attended on an average, but SIXTY-FIVE DAYS OF THE YEAR, EACH! The average of learning acquired by each, during those 65 days, would be a curious subject of contemplation: but I know of no arithmetical rule, by which it could be ascertained. That it bears a much less proportion to the reasonable attainments of a full scholastic year, than 65 bears to the number of days in that year, there can be no doubt.

Ranging, out of the schools, through the general walks of society, we find among our poorer classes, and not seldom in the middling, an ignorance equally deplorable and mortifying. Judging by the number met with in business transactions, who cannot write their names or read, and considering how many there are whose poverty or sex debars them from such transactions, and lessens their chances of scholarship; we should scarcely exceed the truth, in estimating the white adults of Virginia who cannot read or write, at twenty or thirty thousand.

"What you say here, is verified" (said a venerable friend to

me, on reading these sheets as they were preparing for the press -a friend who at the age of 72, has taken upon him to teach 12 or 14 boys; more than half of them without compensation--) what you say here, is verified in my school. Those who do not pay, attend hard!y half their time; and one, who is anxious to learn, and would learn if he came regularly, is kept by his father to work at home, and has not been to school now for more than a fortnight. And it was just so," continued he, "when I managed the W. trust fund for a charity school, 20 odd years ago. The parents could not be induced to send their children. Sometimes they were wanted at home: sometimes they were too ragged to go abroad: sometimes they had no victuals to carry to school. And when we offered to furnish them provisions if they would attend, the parents said no, that was being too dependent.' In short, the school produced not half the good it might have done. There was the most striking difference between the charity scho. lars, and those who paid." Similar testimony as to such schools may be obtained of hundreds.

And of many who can read, how contracted the range | school system had so long been regarded with apathy. of intellect! The mineral, vegetable, and animal king- The statute has been acted upon, so far as I have doms, all unexplored, though presented hourly to the learned, in but three counties of the State; remaining, eye; the glorious heavens, their grandeur, their dis-as to the other 107, a dead letter. I have the strongtances, and the laws of their motion, unthought of; est warrant-that of actual experiment, in New York man himself-his structure, so fearful and so wonder- and in Massachusetts--for saying, that had the law ful-those traits in his bodily and mental frame, atten- commanded the commissioners to lay off districts in all tion to which would the most essentially conduce to counties where the census shewed a sufficiently dense bodily and mental health-all unnoted; History, Geo- white population; and had it then organized in the disgraphy, tabulæ rase to them! And for political knowl-tricts some local authorities, whose duty it should be to edge, upon which we of Virginia mainly pride our-levy the needful amount upon their people;-1 should selves--choose, at random, a man from the throng in any have been saved the ungracious task of reproaching my court-house yard, and question him touching the division country with her want of parental care; and Virginia of power between our two governments, and its distri- would now be striding onward, speedily to recover the bution among the departments of each: the probabilities ground she has lost in the career of true greatness. are ten to one, that he will not solve one in ten of your questions-even of those which are to be answered from the mere faces of the two constitutions. Take him then into that wild, where construction has been wont to expatiate, and you will find him just able to declare for or against this or that controverted power or measure: not because his reason has discerned it to be constitutional or otherwise, but because it is approved or disapproved by a chief of his own party, or by the leader of a hostile one. And the aggregate of opinions thus caught by accident, is the basis of the popular will: and it is the voice prompted by this will, that is called "The voice of God!"

If a sense of interest, and of duty, do not prompt her people, and her legislature, immediately, to supply defects so obvious, to correct evils so glaring; surely, very shame at the contemplation of her inferiority to those, above whom she once vaunted herself so highly, will induce measures which cannot be much longer deferred without disgrace as well as danger.

In addition to normal schools (for training teachers,) an able writer in the Edinburgh Review (to which* I owe the particulars of the Prussian, German, and French school systems) suggests, in my opinion very judiciously, the attaching of a Professorship to Colleges, for lecturing upon the art of instruction; to be called the professorship of Didactics. Such a chair, ably filled, would be invaluable for multiplying enlightened teachers, and for enhancing the dignity of that under-estimated pursuit. Conjointly with the normal schools, it would soon ensure an abundant supply of instructors for all the common schools.

Do not misapprehend me. Never would I have the voice of the people other than "the voice of God"other than all-powerful-within its appropriate sphere. I am as loyal to their sovereignty as the most devout of their flatterers can be: and it is from my desire to see it perpetuated, that I speak out these unpalatable truths. Some roughness of handling is often necessary to heal The kinds of knowledge which should be studied in the a wound. The people, like other sovereigns, are some-schools, and diffused by books, tracts, and oral lectures, times misled by flattery: they should imitate also the wisdom of those monarchs we occasionally meet with in history, who can hear unwelcome truths, and let the speaker live; nay, hearken kindly to his discourse, and let it weigh upon their future conduct. Do I overrate the portion of the people I now address, in classing them with such monarchs ?

among the people, form an important topic of consideration. It is not for me, at least now and here, to obtrude an inventory of my favorite subjects, or favorite books: but the claims of a few subjects upon our regard are so overshadowing, as to make dissent scarcely possible, and their omission wholly unpardonable, in any extensive view of the connexion between popular education, and popular government.

Sagacious men have not been wanting among us, to see the radical defects of our primary school system: Foremost of these, is the subject of Constitutional and in 1829, the late Mr. Fitzhugh* of Fairfax, stimu-Law, and Political Right: something of which might lated the Legislature to a feeble effort towards correct-be taught, even in childhood. If the children of Rome ing them, by empowering the school commissioners of were obliged, at school, to lay up in memory the laws any county to lay it off into districts of not less than of the Twelve Tables, with all their ferocious absurdithree nor more than seven miles square; and to pay, ties; how much more should the children of our country out of the public fund, two-fifths of the sum requisite for learn those fundamental laws, which guarantee to them building a school house, and half a teacher's salary, for the noble inheritance of a rational and virtuous freedom! any one of those districts, whenever its inhabitants, by Even to very young minds, the structure and powers of voluntary subscription, should raise the residue necessary our two governments may be rendered intelligible by for these purposes: and the schools thus established familiar and impartial treatises, with clear oral explawere to be open, gratuitously, alike to rich and poor. nations. The merit of impartiality in these political But the permissive phraseology of this statute com- lessons, is illustrated by the odiousness of a departure pletely neutralized its effect. It might have been fore- from it, which startled me the other day, in reading the seen, and it was foreseen, that empowering the commis- THIRTY-FIFTH EDITION of a popular and in other ressioners to act, and leaving the rest to voluntary contribu-pects an excellent History of the United States,† detions, would be unavailing, where the workings of the

* William H. Fitzhugh-whose death cannot yet cease to be deplored as a public calamity; cutting short, as it did, a career, which his extraordinary means and his devoted will alike bade fair to make a career of distinguished usefulness.

*Nos. 116, 117-July and October, 1833-reviewing several works of M. Cousin, who went as commissioner from France, to explore and report upon the Prussian and German systems of public instruction.

By Charles A. Goodrich. The abstract of the Constitution is

sist the erring impulses of a misguided multitude, not less than the unrighteous mandates of a frowning tyrantfthe ease, so often exemplified, with which a people may be duped by the forms of freedom, long after the substance is gone-the incredible aptitude of example to become precedent, and of precedent to ripen into law, until usurpation is established upon the ruins of liberty--and the difference between true and false GREATNESS, SO little

could not be better illustrated, than by a fair comparison of Washington with Bonaparte: a task which Dr. Channing, of Boston, has executed, in an essay among the most elegant and powerful in the English or any other language.

signed for schools; where that section* of the Federal | which is run after”*—the importance of learning to reConstitution which declares the powers of Congress, is presented thus: "The Congress of the United States shall have power to make and enforce all laws which are necessary to THE GENERAL WELFARE-AS to lay and collect taxes," &c.—going on to enumerate the specified powers, as mere examples of Congressional omnipotence! And the myriads of tender minds, which probably already owe all their knowledge of the Constitution to the abstract where this precious morsel of political doc-appreciated by the mass of mankind. This last point trine occurs, can hardly fail to carry through life the impression, that the powers of Congress are virtually as unbounded as those of the British Parliament. Now, to make patriots, and not partisans-upholders of vital faith, not of sectarian doctrine--treatises for the political instruction of youth should quote the letter of To render Political Economy intelligible to a moderate every such controverted passage, with a brief and fair capacity, dissertations sufficiently plain and full might statement of the opinions and reasonings on both sides. easily be extracted from the writings of Smith and Say, The course of political study would be very incomplete, and from the many luminous discussions, oral and writwithout the Declaration of Independence, and Wash- ten, which it has undergone in our own country. Miss ington's Farewell Address: and occasion might readily Martineau has shewn how well its truths may be set be found to correct or guard against some fallacies, afloat | forth in the captivating form of tales: and the writings among mankind, and often mischievously used as axioms. of Mr. Condy Raguet teem with felicitous illustrations. That the majority should govern," is an instance of Practical Morals-I mean that department, which them: a saying, which, by being taken unqualifiedly | teaches, and habituates us, to behave justly and kindly as at all times placing the majority above the Constitution and Laws, has repeatedly caused both to be outraged. Witness the "New Court Law” of Kentucky, in 1825; and a very similar act passed by Congress, in 1801. The prevalent opinions, that parties, and party spirit, are salutary in a republic; that every citizen is in duty bound to join one or the other party; and that he ought to go with his party, in all measures, whether they be intrinsically proper or otherwise; if not fallacies so monstrous as to make their currency wonderful, are at least propositions so questionable and so important, as to make them worthy of long and thorough investigation before they be adopted as truths.

he fail to find, in "Sandford and Merton," for the daily occasions of life, the happiest lessons of duty and humanity, and for those great conjunctures which never occur in many a life time, the most resistless incentives to a more than Roman heroism?

to our fellow creatures--will ever be poorly taught by dry precepts and formal essays. No vehicle of moral instruction is comparable to the striking narrative. How is it possible for any school-boy to rob an orchard, after having read Miss Edgeworth's "Tarlton ?"-or to practise unfairness in any bargain, when he has glowed at the integrity of Francisco, in purposely shewing the bruised side of his melon to a purchaser? or not to loathe party spirit, when he has been early imbued with the rational sentiments contained in the "Barring Out?" In short, to be familiar with the mass of that lady's incomparable writings for youth, and not have the principles and feelings Without expending a word upon that trite theme, of economy, industry, courage, honor, filial and fraterthe utility of history to all who have any concern in go-nal love, engrained into his very soul? Or how can vernment, I may be allowed to remark, that works for historical instruction, instead of being filled with sieges and battles, should unfold, as much as possible, those occult and less imposing circumstances, which often so materially influence the destinies of nations: the welltimed flattery-the lap-dog saved-the favorite's in- Other branches of knowledge are desirable for the trigue—the priest's resentment or ambition--to which republican citizen, less from any peculiar appositeness field marshals owe their rise, cabinets their dissolution, to his character as such, than from their tendency to massacres their carnage, or empires their overthrow. enlarge his mind; and especially because, by affording Yet the reader need not be denied the glow he will ex- exhaustless stores of refined and innocent pleasure, they perience at the story of Thermopyla, Marathon, Leuc-win him away from the haunts of sensuality. "I should tra, or Bunker Hill. All those incidents, too, whether not think the most exalted faculties a gift worthy of grand or minute, which may serve as warnings or as heaven," says Junius, "nor any assistance in their imencouragements to posterity, should be placed in bold provement a subject of gratitude to man, if I were not relief, and their influence on the current of events, satisfied, that to inform the understanding, corrects and clearly displayed. Numberless opportunities will occur, enlarges the heart." Felix Neff, the Alpine pastor, for impressing upon the minds of young republicans, whose ardent, untiring benevolence, ten years ago, truths which deeply concern the responsibilities involv-wrought what the indolent would deem miracles, in ed in that name: the artifices of demagogues—the dan- diffusing knowledge, and a love of knowledge, amongst ger, in a democracy, of trusting implicitly to the honesty and skill of public agents-the worthlessness of popularity, unless it be "the popularity which follows, not that

taken, he says, from "Webster's Elements of General Knowledge."

* Article 1 § 8.

an untutored peasantry, found their indifference towards foreign missions immovable, until they had learned something of geography: but so soon as they had read the

* Lord Mansfield.

The "ardor civium prava jubentium," not less than the "vultus instantis tyranni."

« ZurückWeiter »