CHAPTER XI.

EDUCATION AS AN ELEMENT OF PUBLIC ECONOMY IN THE

UNITED STATES.

Education a Thing of Commercial Value.-The American People the Original Statesmen of the Country.-The American Republic an Experiment for the World -Difference between the European and American Theory of Society.-Knowledge makes the Distinction between Freemen and Slaves -Character of the First Settlers of this Country.— They were Men of high Culture.-General Education made the Basis of their New State of Society.-Education the Power that achieved American Independence. It is the most Important of all the Elements of an American System of Public Economy.A System of Universal Education may not at first Produce Examples of the highest Culture. The American System gives Equal Chances to All-System of American Schools and Colleges.-A Protective System of Public Economy indispensable to the American System of Education.-Education and Virtue Concomitants in a Nation.Comparative Condition of European and American Population, Physical and Moral.— Education makes the Difference.

It has already been shown that the rights of the people fall within the range of public economy, because there is a commercial value in them; that it is on account of this value that they become important and worthy of being asserted and maintained; that it was commercial value alone that constituted the ground of controversy between the American fathers and the British crown; and that, but for this species of value, wrested from the colonists and appropriated by the crown, there would never have been any controversy. It has also been shown, that these rights are not sordid or less worthy of respect on that account; but, on the contrary, that no rights in political society, which are of any consequence, can be shown to have any intrinsic or palpable value which is not of this kind. Even the honorary rights of monarchical and aristocratical forms of society, such as those of Great Britain, lose all their importance, and become contemptible, when stripped of the commercial values which sustain them in their position, such as the estates of the nobility.

It is for the same reason that education becomes one of the most important elements of public economy in the United States-of so great importance as to make it worthy of a separate and special consideration.

It is an old and well-recognised maxim, running back to the earliest date of our history, that a republican or democratic state

The

of society-we use these terms as synonymous and interchangeable -must rest on the intelligence and virtue of the people. reasons are obvious. The people being, directly or indirectly, immediately or mediately, the source of power, the originators of the government, and the electors of rulers, legislators, judges, and magistrates of all branches of the supervising power-must be qualified by their intelligence to discern the fitness of those in whose hands they commit these important trusts, and have need also of a corresponding amount of virtue to discharge these duties with fidelity to that state of society which is, by such means, entirely in their hands. In a democratic community, the people are the original and fundamental statesmen. It is impossible that the government should be better, or in any essential degree more intelligent than they are. The ancient and inspired maxim, "like people, like priest," can not be more true in church than in state. In a republic, the character of the government uniformly exhibits a reflex image of the character of its electors, and vice versa.

It is admitted on all hands, and all the world over, that the North American republic is a grand experiment to determine whether a people can have intelligence and virtue enough to govern themselves, and that the final solution of this problem will decide the fate of the world, for or against a democratic state of society, for centuries to come, if not for ever.

It need not be said, that the intelligence and virtue of the people depend upon education. It remains to show, in what respects, and how far, education becomes an element of public economy in the United States. We are not prescribing rules for European or other foreign nations. The withholding or lack of popular education among them—for it is the education of the people generally of which we speak—may be as necessary to their theory of society, as the enjoyment of it is to ours. It has already and frequently been stated, and should be constantly borne in mind, that Adam Smith and his school have adapted their system of public economy to the state of society with which they were surrounded, and not to that which exists among us. It is impossible, under their system, that general education should prevail-as much so as that it should prevail among slaves. There is no provision for it. It is the bare subsistence only of those who do the labor of society which they have provided for. In the first place, they have not a democratic state of society; next, they do not propose to have it; thirdly, they make no calculation for it; and lastly, as the working classes, under

their system, have little or nothing to do with government, their education is not deemed important. On the contrary it is systematically suppressed, because it is reckoned dangerous. It must be seen, therefore, that the condition of society in the United States, in these particulars, is diametrically opposite.*

But how is education here an element of public economy?" How does it appear, that it has a commercial value in it? First, because it costs something. Next, because it is really worth something. It is capital, and capital of the most productive kind. But thirdly, and above all, because, in the United States, the education of the people is the only secure guardian of all their other rights, which, so far as they are worth maintaining, are so only because they have a commercial value in them, as before shown.

Knowledge is power. There is little difficulty in holding the ignorant and debased slave fast in his chains. He does not know how to gain his rights- how to devise ways and means; and being depressed, dejected, demoralized, he has not the courage to assert them. The fact that one master, as is often the case, knows how and is able to hold ten, or twenty, or fifty, or a hundred slaves in subjection, and to keep them in fear of himself, so that they dare not disobey him, is the simplest and most forcible illustration of the power of knowledge, in the application now under consideration. The difference is chiefly in knowledge; though it is not to be denied that some of it is to be ascribed to the moral force of the machinery of society. If every one of these slaves were equal to his master in knowledge, and in the growth and vigor of the social qualities, it is not to be supposed they could long be held in bondage, without other and foreign forces not required in their present condition.

The original settlers of this country from Europe-especially those from Great Britain-were men of intelligence and strong virtue. Many of them were persons of as high culture, and of as much chivalry of character, as any that were left behind them. It may be said, that they were men of the strongest character of the times that produced them; and those who followed in their train, were men of the same stamp. The motives of emigration then were of a high and social character, and not such as now pour

Notwithstanding the changes which are taking place in Europe, since the French revolution of 1848, with an apparent approximation toward a democratic state of society, our argument with the European economists generally, of the Free-Trade school, in particular, remains in full force.

upon this continent the floods of European paupers and culprits. It was mind of the highest order, which could not endure the chains of European despotism, and which came here for freedom. The object of their coming, and the qualifications which fitted them for the enterprise, are directly in point of the argument in which we are now engaged. It was their high culture and eminent virtues which enabled them to lay the foundation of that stupendous system of political society and of public economy, which has subsequently and gradually grown up on their endeavors and their plan. Freedom was their end, and the means which they ordained to secure it, were schools and religion, education and the virtues of Christianity. The history of the colonies, from the earliest settlements, down to the revolution and establishment of American. independence, is replete with proof of this assertion. There arose, therefore, from the first, a state of society not before known in Europe or elsewhere-a republican or democratic society in which there were no uneducated classes, and no laboring classes which did not comprehend the whole community. All went to school, and all worked when old enough; and on no point were the people more thoroughly educated than on the principles of free governThe oppressions of the old world drove out its own sons from its own bosom, and under its own charters, to set up a school, which must necessarily, in a course of time, subvert its authority, and become independent, because the emigrants brought away all that was good, and left behind all that was bad. The elements of this new state of society were all healthy, and full of infant purity. While the old world, from a vitiated and decrepit constitution, tended to decay, the new, purged of parental diseases, sprang up, with giant strides, to giant vigor. Instead of the old leaven of European economists, that intellectual and moral culture belongs only to the higher classes, and that the working classes require nothing but bare subsistence like cattle, schools were provided for all—all were educated-trained to knowledge and virtue as a preparation for the working time of life. It was a republican or democratic state of society from the first, and continued to be such, till the struggle arose between the colonies and the mother-country, which resulted in American independence.

ment.

It is to this point of American history that attention is especially challenged to elucidate our argument. And in answer to the question, what was it that prompted, sustained, and finally achieved American independence? - we say, it was the diffusion of general

education among the people, and nothing else. Suppose the people had been as ignorant and debased as the working classes of Europe, what could they have done? Besides the moral impotency of such a condition of society, poverty is an invariable concomitant. The people generally could not have been as ignorant without being as poor; and along with this poverty of the mass of the people, would have existed rich and dominant masters, allied by interest to the British crown, in the same manner as they are now in Great Britain and other European nations. Nothing could have been hoped for, and nothing achieved, in such a state of things, by declaring independence; but the result would have been an easy and speedy victory on the part of the crown, and a tighter riveting of the chains of slavery. Such invariably, in all history, has been the end of all such struggles between such parties.

But the American people were educated; they were men of full stature, intellectual and moral; they were for the most part men of substantial, though of moderate independence; they had imbibed the principles of freedom, and understood them; and when the British crown asserted its oppressive, tyrannical claims, and began to put them in force, it was soon found that the colonists were not of that mean and debased class who know not how to assert and maintain their rights. It was their intellectual and moral training—a training of more than a century-which qualified them to rise at once from the condition of dependent colonies, to that of an independent nation, and which enabled them to sustain a contest for seven long years against the most powerful nation of the world, to be acknowledged in the end as an equal and a rival.

There is a great principle arising out of this history, which applies to the subject now under consideration. This was not a chance triumph of the American arms-of the weak against the strong; but it was the result of the operation of a potent element inherent in American society, viz., the intellectual and moral culture of the people. The physical odds against them was immense; but having to contend against this moral power, it was shivered and subdued. Nor does it detract at all from the force of this reasoning to say, that the warlike barbarians of the north of Europe once overran and reduced the cultivated and refined nations of the south; for the latter, as admitted by all, were ready to perish through their own debauchery and effeminacy. Besides that general education did not prevail among them, the seeds of decay had been sown for many centuries, and the final dissolution