CHAPTER I. EDUCATION. Education extensive in U. S.-will test the question-if it improves the tion involves life from its germ to the grave-Religion the true foundation of all education-Toleration of religion in the United States, infinite good. EDUCATION, that which we understand by schooling, is now being fully developed in the United States upon a much broader and more enlightened scale than it has before been tried. This will test the proposition whether the intellectual light obtained by a knowledge of the rudiments of learning will improve both the morals and understanding, and arm the mind against the seductions of sin and ignorance. No man in the United States can plead the want of means to learn how to read and study for himself. The Sunday Schools, Free Schools, and other schools, now embrace almost the entire infant population, and the next age will, perhaps, show a race of men superior in intelligence to any other nation in the world. It must be remembered that this light, like the rain from Heaven, falls upon the just and the unjust, fructifying and nourishing the rank and poisonous weeds as well as the tender grass. Whether this mental amelioration and education of the poor, who are well disposed, will not be counterbalanced by the advantages in like manner given to the wicked and depraved in better fitting them for adroit perpetrations, remains to be seen. There is at this time a very great number of educated and artful knaves in the United States, who hold positions and places of influence and power, and are employed in, and prepared for schemes and plots involving the most pernicious and dangerous consequences to the private pursuits and public welfare of the people. Knowledge is power to the bad as well as to the good. If Napoleon had never known how to read, the carcer of his great genius might have been confined to piratical cruises on the Levant. By learning and knowledge he discovered his mind to be far above the masses. By these means he gained confidence in himself, and in the name of Destiny and Reason skilfully buccaneered upon the lives and treasures of a continent. If the subjects of his venal ambition had been as enlightened as the inhabitants of the North American States now are, he might have shrunk from, or have been foiled in his experi ment. Knowledge cannot be instilled into, or made to improve, or give additional strength to a weak mind-on the contrary it inflates the vain, magnifies fools and dunces, and misleads the ignorant. A mere quack can be shunned, but it is extremely difficult to guard against the imposition of authorized and plausible blockheads. The American experiment of graduating ignorant clowns, and admitting to the practice as doctors and lawyers, unschooled and lazy mechanics and presumptuous and brokendown hostlers and peddlers, and dubbing the highest collegiate degrees for favor and money on every audacious pretender, has turned loose upon society an army of professional vagabonds, who have become a common and notorious nuisance to men of education and to the country at large. Unless oppressed, genius will have light, and to a searching and perspicuous intellect, knowledge then becomes power. If the lion knew his strength, he would not suffer himself to be caged. It is a momentous question big with curious reflections. The United States will soon double the force of the great political maxim, that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," for the enemies of its free institutions, by this system of education, are taught to feel and use their power for bad as well as for honest purposes. Perhaps there is too much expected from education. All men know by observation and experience, that honest labor is productive, and hence some are led to infer that an education must produce similar results. This would seem to be the conclusion by which almost every mechanic and tradesman is governed, who, if able, most resolutely educate and supply all their sons, however numerous, with learned professions. Nothing can be more absurd. Being uneducated themselves, they do not know how to superintend the education of their children, and are therefore imposed upon by their being but half learned. The parents have no appropriate means of starting their sons in their own professions with the advantages of their experience, credit, character and customers, as they could do if their boys were brought up for and began their father's busi ness. And hence such candidates for patronage are compelled to commence life without any paternal or family patronage, to waste years in painful struggles to obtain a foothold, and often. fail in the severe and trying experiment. There is no objection to the education of every man, but the error lies in expecting too much from it, in the supposition that it can make mind or create genius, whereas it takes from a boy's early years the time which should be used for acquiring a practical knowledge of some employment upon which he can depend for subsistence, instead of keeping him at schools where he gets nothing but habits of distaste for honest labor. There is not one man in ten thousand who has vigor of intellect sufficient for a learned profession. Give children sufficient schooling suited for their intended occupations, and set them to work. If they have mental faculties above this sphere, their indications of thought and mind will soon be developed. They will be quiet students, and not brawling dandies; obedient and dutiful pupils; and grateful and respectful to their parents, instead of being blasphemers, rebellious, and dissolute. The community suffers the most incredible and serious injuries by the ignorance and negligence of persons engaged in scientific pursuits and in the professions. Apothecaries, chemists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, publie officers, by favor, presumption, and trick, are permitted to begin without adequate preparation. They, therefore, abandon all research and improvement, and depend upon the plausibilities of address and speech for success. In the army and navy, besides an ascertained previous qualification, there is a board of aged and experienced gentlemen, who, at short intervals, thoroughly examine the surgeons and other officers. Their duties are placed upon the footing of collegiate labor, in which the course of studies is for life, and in which there must be unremitted research, and conclusive evidence of improvement and progress, or the pupil is put back or dismissed. This wholesome discipline should be rigidly applied to all civil, as well as military and naval functionaries. Perhaps there is more reason for it in the former than with the latter class of individuals. There can be no objection to it on the score of disrespect. Gentlemen of moral rank and eminence in their professions could be appointed for the examinations, of whose good opinion any one might be proud. If the result is favorable, it will increase public confidence, and swell the reputation of the examined; and if it is unfavorable, they should be dismissed, and the people undeceived. No harm, and much good may come from it. The country is overrun with persons in all the relations referred to, who never read or study, or keep up with the improvement and progress of the age. Of doctors and apothecaries, who even lose their recollection of technical words; of lawyers, who have no books, and spend their time in debauchery; of judges, who read nothing but newspapers; who loaf, lounge, eat, drink, and smoke perpetually; dabble in politics; deal in lots, stocks, and lottery policies. The baker's bread and the butcher's meat can be tested by every one; but the ability to do this does not apply to, and utterly fails in everything which depends upon art and science. The one is palpable to the senses; and the other is obscured by deep and hidden mysteries. Knowledge and learning may be assumed with impunity by the crafty knave to the ignorant and unskilled, who should be indemnified against such frauds by certain and abundant scrutiny. Nostrums, astrologers, pedagogues, demagogues, quack doctors, pettifogging lawyers, corrupt and ignorant judges, to which add dram-shops, monopolies, and gambling, have defiled the morals, fed upon the earnings, and tortured and slaughtered the people for ages. It is now high time that the good sense of mankind should banish them forever from the face of the earth, and that intellect, genius, true learning, industry, and integrity should everywhere prevail. In the measures used to prevent these abuses, care should be taken not to run into the opposite extreme, by educating indiscriminately the whole mass of society. They should not all of them be educated as scholars; some are required to do the necessary work of society; and there is but a very small proportion who are capable of receiving an education in the arts and sciences, and who have capacities above the dependent occupations of life. The poor school system is carried to an absurd extreme in some places. The law as it originally was, and really should |