Education makes the man; that alone is the parent of every virtue; it is the most sacred, the most useful, and, at the same time, the most neglected thing in every country. MONTESQUIEU.

It is not for the sake of a parish only, nor for the mere local interests, that the law wills that every native of France shall acquire the knowledge necessary to social and civilized life, without which human intelligence sinks into stupidity, and often into brutality. It is for the sake of the state also, and for the interests of the public at large. It is because liberty can never be certain and complete, unless among a people sufficiently enlightened to listen on every emergency to the voice of reason.

Universal education is henceforth one of the guarantees of liberty, and social stability. As every principle in our Government is founded on justice and reason, to diffuse education among the people, to develop their understandings, and enlighten their minds, is to strengthen our constitutional government, and secure its stability. M. GUIZOT.

The education required for the people is that which will give them the full command of every faculty, both of mind and of body; which will call into play their powers of observation and reflection; which will make thinking and reasonable beings of the mere creatures of impulse, prejudice and passion; that which in a moral sense will give them objects of pursuits and habits of conduct favorable to their own happiness, and to that of the community of which they will form a part; which, by multiplying the means of rational and intellectual enjoyment, will diminish the temptations of vice and sensuality; which, in the social relations of life, and as connected with objects of legislation, will teach them the identity of the individual with the general interest; that which, in the physical sciences-especially those of chemistry and mechanics-will make them masters of the secrets of nature, and give them powers which even now tend to elevate the moderns to a higher rank than that of the demi-gods of antiquity. All this, and more, should be embraced in that scheme of education which would be worthy of a statesman to give, or of a great nation to receive; and the time is near at hand, when the attainment of an object, thus comprehensive in its character, and leading to results, the practical benefits of which it is impossible for even the imagination to exaggerate, will not be considered an Utopian scheme.

Did I know the name of the legislator, who first conceived and suggested the idea of common schools, I should pay to his memory the highest tribute of reverence and regard. I should feel for him a much higher veneration and respect, than I do for Lycurgus and Solon, the celebrated lawgivers of Sparta and Athens. I should revere him as the greatest benefactor of the human race; because he has been the author of a provision, which, if it should be adopted in every country, would produce a happier and more important influence on the human character, than any institution which the wisdom of man has devised.

JUDGE SWIFT.

If you suffer your people to be ill educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for their crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves, and then punish them?

Though there be not nfany in every city which be exempt and discharged of all other labors, and appointed only to learning-that is to say, such in whom, even from their very childhood, they have perceived a singular towardness, a fine wit, and a mind apt to good learning—yet all in their childhood be instructed in learning. And the better part of the people, both men and women, throughout all their whole life, do bestow in learning those spare hours which we said they have vacant from bodily labors. SIR THOMAS MOORE. Utopia.

To make the people fittest to choose, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to mend our corrupt and faulty education; to teach the people faith, not without virtue, temperance, modesty, sobriety, economy, justice; not to admire wealth, or honor; to hate turbulence and ambition; to place every one his private welfare and happiness in the public peace, liberty and safety. MILTON. Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.

The discipline of slavery is unknown

Among us-hence the more do we require

The discipline of virtue; order else

Can not subsist, nor confidence, nor peace.
Thus, duties rising out of good precept,

And prudent caution needful to avert

Impending evil, equally require

That the whole people should be taught and train'd.

So shall licentiousness and black resolve

Be rooted out, and virtuous habits take
Their place; and genuine piety descend
Like an inheritance, from age to age.

WORDSWORTH.

Train up thy children, England! in the way
Of righteousness, and feed them with the bread
Of wholesome doctrine. Where hast thou thy mines
But in their industry?

Thy bulwarks where but in their breast?
Thy might but in their arms?

Shall not their numbers therefore be thy wealth,

Thy strength, thy power, thy safety, and thy pridė?

Oh grief then, grief and shame,

If in this flourishing land

There should be dwellings where the new-born babe
Doth bring unto its parent's soul no joy!

Where squalid poverty

Receives it at its birth,

And on her wither'd knees

Gives it the scanty food of discontent!

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune. *

They have little time to spare for education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them even in infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so simple and uniform, as to give little exercise to the understanding; while, at the same time, their labor is both so constant and so severe, that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or even to think of any thing else.

For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring these most essential parts of education.

The public can facilitate this acquisition, by establishing in every parish or district a little school where children may be taught for a reward so moderate, that even a common laborer may afford it; the master being partly but not wholly paid by the public; because if he was wholly, or even principally paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect his business.

The

A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part of the character of human nature. Though the state was to derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people it would still deserve its attention, that they should not be altogether uninstructed. The state, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from their instruction. more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition; and they are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favorable judgment which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it.

ADAM SMITH. Wealth of Nations, Book V., Education of Youth.

But there are other things, of the worth of which the demand of the market is by no means a test; things of which the utility does not consist in ministering to inclinations, nor in serving the daily uses of life, and the want of which is least felt where the need is greatest. This is peculiarly true of those things which are chiefly useful as tending to

raise the character of human beings. The uncultivated can not be competent judges of cultivation. Those who most need to be made wiser and better, usually desire it least; and if they desired it, would be incapable of finding the way to it by their own lights. It will continually happen, on the voluntary system, that, the end not being desired, the means will not be provided at all, or that the persons requiring improvement having an imperfect or altogether erroneous conception of what they want, the supply called forth by the demand of the market, will be any thing but what is really required. Now any well-intentioned and tolerably civilized government may think without presumption that it does or ought to possess a degree of cultivation above the average of the community which it rules, and that it should, therefore, be capable of offering better education and better instruction to the people, than the greater number of them would spontaneously select.

Education, therefore, is one of those things, which it is admissible in principle that a government should provide for the people. The case is one to which the reasons of the non-interference principle do not necessarily or universally extend.

With regard to elementary education, the exception to ordinary rules may, I conceive, justifiably be carried still further. There are certain primary elements and means of knowledge, which it is in the highest degree desirable that all human beings born into the community should acquire during childhood. If their parents, or those on whom they depend, have the power of obtaining for them this instruction, and fail to do it, they commit a double breach of duty; toward the children themselves, and toward the members of the community generally, who are all liable to suffer seriously from the consequences of ignorance and want of education in their fellow-citizens. It is therefore an allowable exercise of government, to impose on parents the legal obligation of giving elementary instruction to children. This, however, can not fairly be done, without taking measures to insure that such instruction shall always be accessible to them, either gratuitously or at a trifling expense.

JOHN STUART MILL. Political Economy, v. 9, § 8.

That the people should be well educated is in itself a good thing: and the state ought therefore to promote this object, if it can do so without any sacrifice of its primary object. The education of the people, conducted on those principles of morality which are common to all the forms of Christianity, is highly valuable as a means of promoting the main end for which government exists; and is on this ground an object well deserving the attention of rulers.

THOMAS BABBINGTON MACAULEY. Church and State.

Athens, by this discipline and good ordering of youth, did breed up, within the circuit of that one city, within the compass of one hundred years, within the memory of one man's life, so many notable captains in war, for worthiness, wisdom, learning, as scarce to be matchable, no not in the state of Rome, in the compass of those seven hundred years, when it flourished much. ASCHAM. Schoolmaster.

It is certain, that as things now stand, the two great parties into which the community is unhappily split upon this mighty question, are resolved that we should have no system of education at all-no National Plan for Training Teachers, and thereby making the schools that stud the country all over, deserve the name they bear-no national plan for training young children to virtuous habits, and thereby rooting out crimes from the land. And this interdict, under which both parties join in laying their country, is by each pronounced to be necessary for the sacred interests of religion. Of religion! Oh, gracious God! Was ever the name of thy holy ordinances so impiously profaned before? Was ever before, thy best gift to man-his reason-so bewildered by blind bigotry, or savage intolerance, or wild fanaticism; bewildered so as to curse the very light thou hast caused to shine before his steps; bewildered so as not to perceive that any and every religion must flourish best in the tutored mind, and that by whomsoever instructed in secular things, thy word can better be sown in a soil prepared, than in one abandoned through neglect to the execrable influence of the evil Spirit?

And shall civilized, shall free, shall Christian rulers, any longer pause, any more hesitate, before they mend their ways, and attempt, though late yet seriously, to discharge the first of their duties? Or shall we, calling ourselves the friends to human improvement balance any longer, upon some party interest, some sectarian punctillo, or even some refined scruple, when the means are within our reach to redeem the time and do that which is most blessed in the sight of God, most beneficial to man? Or shall it be said that between the claims of contending factions in church or in State, the Legislature stands paralyzed, and puts not forth its hand to save the people placed by Providence under its care, lest offense be given to some of the knots of theologians who bewilder its ears with their noise, as they have bewildered their own brains with their controversies? Lawgivers of England! I charge ye, have a care! Be well assured, that the contempt lavished for centuries upon the cabals of Constantinople, where the council disputed on a text, while the enemy, the derider of all their texts, was thundering at the gate, will be as a token of respect compared with the loud shout of universal scorn which all mankind in all ages will send up against you, if you stand still and suffer a far deadlier foe than the Turcoman-suffer the parent of all evil, all falsehood, all hypocrisy, all discharity, all self-secking-him who cov ers over with pretexts of conscience the pitfalls that he digs for the souls on which he preys-to stalk about the fold and lay waste its inmatesstand still and make no head against him, upon the vain pretext, to soothe your indolence, that your action is obstructed by religious cabals—upon the far more guilty speculation, that by playing a party game, you can turn the hatred of conflicting professors to your selfish purposes !

Let the soldier be abroad, if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad, a person less imposing-in the eyes of some insignificant. THE SCHOOLMASTER IS ABROAD; and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full uniform array.

LORD BROUGHAM.