land, which is ready to continue registration and efficient protection to any ship which Americans may purchase from British owners.

In fine, we have absolute Free Trade in the matter of merchant marine. It is to this, in great measure, that we owe the decline in American shipbuilding-a decline which began in 1855, six years before the Morrill Tariff was enacted. We are almost the only country which has acted on the laissez faire maxim in this matter. Great Britain built up hers by a system of subsidies, at first paid openly, afterward under the cover of payment for carrying the mails. France has a subsidy system more thorough and extensive than any other country of Europe. In America the same method was followed until 1855, when, on recommendation of the Senate Committee of Commerce-Mr. Jefferson Davis was chairman-subsidies were discontinued. Their resumption is demanded now by many of the most influential commercial bodies in America, and is expected from the Congress in session at this writing.

§ 313. Protection corresponds to the purpose of the American people to be a complete and entire nation, at peace with every other in so far as in us lies, desiring no advantage at the expense of any other, wishing for them that fulness of national life which we desire for ourselves, but as independent of their good or ill will as the resources of the national domain will permit us to be. It sometimes is denounced as irreligious and selfish, but only by those who have taken no pains to understand it. There is a religion, The Saturday Review says, which became current in England about 1851, made up of "Free Trade and the pleasanter parts of Christianity;" with that religion Protection comes into conflict. But there is nothing in it which is inconsistent with the Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.

THE SCIENCE AND ECONOMY OF INTELLIGENCE AND

EDUCATION.

§ 314. In presenting what have been found to be wise methods of national economy, and in attempting the solution of economic problems, it has again and again been pointed out in the foregoing chapters, that the education and the consequent high intelligence of the people is essential to the prosperity of a nation.

We have seen that an agriculture that is not directed by scientific knowledge is wasteful in itself, and will at last be unable to meet-much less to outrun-the ever-increasing demand of the people upon its productiveness. Experience also shows that, so long as farming is conducted in an unintelligent way, it will never be anything but a distasteful drudgery, which will drive the best young men of the agricultural class into the cities, and to occupations that employ mind as well as muscle.

We have seen that the notion that labor will always leave an illrewarded employment for one that is better paid, is disproved by facts. The uneducated farm-hand of Dorsetshire, with his mental horizon no larger than the visible one, shrinks from pushing out into an unknown and untried world to seek his fortune, and puts up with ten shillings a week, when a few shires farther north he might earn a competence. The Flemish boer works for a half or a third what he might get a dozen miles to the south, because he has never had the chance to pick up the small amount of French that would fit him to labor in Brabant or Brussels.

We have also seen that improvements in methods and in machinery, by discontinuing the employment of some class of workmen, inflicts great injury upon that class if its average of intelligence be low, and its power of adapting itself to a new set of conditions be slight. And we have also seen that all these

improvements make a larger demand upon the workman's intel lectual gifts, and can only be carried out to the best advantage where these receive a fair measure of cultivation.

It has also been seen that the condition of the working classes is capable of very great improvement, through the adoption of certain methods of economy-labor-banks, coöperative societics, building societies, and the like-which demand the diffusion of a considerable measure of knowledge if they are to be well supported and wisely managed.

We have seen that the sanatory condition of a community is capable of very great improvement only when the conditions of life and health are understood by the people. And upon this, as has been said, depends in large measure the industrial capacity and efficiency of the people. English statists estimate that every death represents one hundred and sixty-six days' illness, during which the sufferer, if a working man, is thrown upon the charity of his friends or of society for his support. The consequent total to be subtracted from the productive and accumulalative powers of the people is immense.

We have seen that the protective policy is vindicated by its friends and conceded by its enemies to be a measure of national education, whereby special advantages are given to the home producer until he has learnt the habit of manufacture and acquired skill in its methods. A natural accompaniment of such a policy is an active national effort for the technical training of those who are competent to receive it.

§ 315. These and other considerations like them lead us to see the importance of education as a part of a wise national economy. The small outlay of the national resources that is necessary to train every citizen to the highest rank in industrial efficiency that is possible to him, is well expended in the purchase of a larger gain to all classes. It is one of those wise sacrifices of present for future advantage, which distinguish progressive societies from those that are stagnant.

But a national education can never be a merely industrial education,—can never be even first and chiefly industrial. The

NATIONAL EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY.

367

industrial state is but one aspect of the national life, and an education that could contemplate only its ends would come far short of the training required to fit the citizen for his place in the body politic. It would also defeat its own ends by leaving the man undisciplined in many duties and in right methods of thought, which very greatly influence his industrial worth. On the other hand, there is especial need to call attention to this part of national education, since the conception of the nation as an industrial state is quite a modern one. Napoleon among the men of practice and Fichte among the thinkers-closely followed by Saint Simon-were the first to recognise its truth. And as in earlier theories of national life, so in earlier methods of education, other things were regarded and this neglected.

§ 316. A National Education, limited in its range indeed, but broad enough to embrace the whole scope of the nation's vocation, was enjoined upon the Jews by the Mosaic legislation. Especially of the moral law it is said: "These words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart [i. e., thine understanding, thy thoughts;] and thou shalt press them upon thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." The later Jews, at a time when the industrial life of their nation had attained a larger development, required that every father, however wealthy, should teach his son a trade, so as to provide against all contingencies of fortune and enable him to avoid becoming either a pauper or a thief.

In Greece we have two great methods of national education standing in very sharp contrast. The Spartan was a system of military discipline, of stern and unnatural restraint. It was the drill of an armed garrison who gave up their individual tastes, ideas and impulses, and submitted to an all-constraining law. The death of the three hundred at Thermopylæ, "in obedience to the laws," was the crown and the flower of the life of the city, which produced no great men of letters, and indeed few great men of any sort. The Athenian method was a full and free development of human nature, especially on its intellectual

and æsthetic sides. In Athens, more than in any other land or time, we have the results of the extension of the finest culture of mind to the whole free population of a state. Of formal teaching and learning there was comparatively little, except the memorizing of Homer and other poets in the schools; the new science of mathematics seems to have taken its name from the fact that it was the first branch of knowledge that was not picked up-like reading, writing, grammar, politics, the arts-from one's fellow-citizens, from being at the theatre, or from the daily contemplation of great works of art, the sight of inscriptions, &c. ; but needed to be learned by direct and formal application. Yet their intellectual education was perfect; no accumulations of knowledge or improvement of methods have enabled any people or class to attain a higher or more balanced cultivation of the mind. But they lacked moral balance and self-restraint, and so became the victims of their own cleverness, as Socrates saw and told them.

If the New Testament teaching be true, both these opposite methods were right and capable of being united, because there is in man a higher or spiritual nature which education is to awaken into life and call forth into activity and vigor; while there is also in man a lower or animal nature, by which he must not be governed, and which must be brought under restraint and discipline.

§ 317. The Roman inherited the Greek method of education, but never gave such prominence to it. The Greek governments were systems of education; Roman education was a branch of the civil service. The great university of Alexandria, the Mouseion, was not only cherished by the new rulers, but reproduced in other chief cities, especially by the Athenæum at Rome. In lesser places, what we might call colleges, professional chairs and schools were founded, and considerable zeal displayed for the education of the higher class of citizens. But the learning chiefly cultivated had no relation to the practical life of the times. Much attention, for instance, was given to rhetoric and oratory, although all real use of these had disappeared with the cessation of free popular assemblages.