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THE

BOSTON QUARTERLY REVIEW.

APRIL, 1840.

ART. I. OBSERVATIONS AND HINTS ON EDUCATION.

EDUCATION is the great problem of the age. The education of the people is held to be the first condition of the stability of free social institutions; the only efficient means of social progress. Especially is the necessity of popular education in democratic communities insisted on. So imperative is this necessity considered, that the want of education is even sometimes held as a sufficient cause of social, political, and personal disfranchisement. To this principle our most democratic of all democracies presents a sublime example of devotion; retaining one sixth of its whole population in hereditary, perpetual slavery, for the want of this indispensable, to them impossible, prerequisite for freedom: so that a man here is not always a man, "endowed by his Creator with certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights." Obviously, then, it is a fundamental maxim, that democratic institutions, as they are the result of, can be made permanent only where a certain degree of intelligence exists in the whole mass of the people. This was once thought to be the especial mission, the peculiar glory of republican governments; the necessity of knowledge widely diffused, for their own preservation. It was also supposed to be an

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equal and inevitable necessity of arbitrary governments, that their subjects should be kept in profound ignorance; not merely of the rights, relations, and destiny of man and society; but ignorance of letters and of all knowledge, not required for the fit discharge of their servile duties and occupations. Ignorance was regarded as both the mother of devotion, and the best security for the unresisting acquiescence of the masses in the domination of the privileged few. Ignorance and slavery were held to be correlative and synony

mous.

But this century witnesses the phenomenon of absolute governments laboring for the education of their subjects, with a zeal and earnestness not yet felt in this community of nations, which professes to rely specially for its continuance upon the popular intelligence. The king of Prussia seems to have exploded completely the old doctrine of the necessary connexion between ignorance and servitude. He has made education the handmaid of despotism. Under his auspices, it prevents, instead of promoting social progress; instead of being the herald of freedom, it is the prime minister of an authority, which allows hardly a figment of political liberty. The House of Hapsburg is repeating the experiment without fear; even in its subjugated Italian dominions, in the scenes. and amid the slumbering but unextinguished memories of old Roman freedom, kindling the lamp of knowledge, in order to impress more deeply and surely the sternest maxims of royalty. Even Nicholas is said to be introducing normal schools into his dominions. The experiments, which his brethren of Austria and Prussia have so successfully carried out, have demonstrated to him, that the A, B, C, by itself, has no spell of intrinsic power to break the chain on the shoulder of the serf. Liberty, it thus appears, is not a necessary concomitant or consequence of any extant system of education; since Prussia, with liberal and enlarged provisions for the instruction of the whole people, remains in the passive apathy of despotism, and is as

stern an opposer of every movement towards popular freedom, under the rule of the third Frederic, as she was under that of the first or the second. Do we not find this seeming paradox corroborated by some recent developments of our American experiment? Within a few years, such things as mobs, usurping the functions of law, trampling upon natural rights guarantied by constitutions, have been events of not unfrequent occurrence. It has been boasted by the parties and vindicators of these anarchical tribunals, that they were honorably distinguished from European, monarchical mobs, that they were not assemblies of the vulgar and ignorant; but that they were composed of gentlemen, respectable men, men of refinement and education; and they have even been placed in honor side by side with the men of the Boston revolutionary tea-party.* If we were not called upon to reverence them as patriots, a sort of qualified admiration seems to have been expected for them as respectable incendiaries, gentlemanly ruffians, educated assassins, the "Dii minores gentium." The schoolmaster, then, may be abroad over the whole land, and the people may be, according to the common forms of expression, an educated people, without communicating, or acquiring the first elements of liberty, or catching a glimpse of the true destiny of man and society.

Nevertheless, without paradox, the schoolmaster must be abroad, or the notion of liberty is a dream. and delusion. Neither self-regulated freedom, nor even liberty under law, can exist without him. None but an educated can be a permanently free people. The question is not of the importance of education; but what is education? that which is the support and safeguard of personal and political freedom? And who is the schoolmaster? I am not about to answer these questions. The subject is too wide and profound to be treated in a brief periodical essay. I shall only

* See Att. Gen. Austin's speech at Faneuil Hall.

put down some desultory thoughts, not claiming them as the most important, or as suggesting a reply to the questions. If I should deal more in negatives than affirmatives, declare what is not education, who is not the schoolmaster, rather than state a system, and describe qualifications; it will readily occur to every one, that it is easier to innovate than to reform, to destroy than to build up. The dullest engineer, with cannon and match, can batter down stone and mortar; but it requires a genius of quite another sort to build a Parthenon, or a St. Peter's. Perhaps, even that, which to the common sight is deformity, may be a grace in the eye of the true seer; what to me seems discord, to the ear of the authentic hearer may be notes of the universal harmony.

It may be true, that every degree of knowledge, however small, does to its extent exercise a beneficial influence upon society; that, other things being equal, even one, who has only learned to read and write, is more likely to be a peaceable citizen, regardful of the laws and of public order, than one who is entirely ignorant of letters. The records of public prisons and penitentiaries have been thought to go far towards proving this position. But reasoning from such premises is extremely doubtful. There is no obvious, or easily traced connexion between the A, B, C, and moral conduct; and it is possible in any case to ascertain but a small part of the influences, which have made any individual a subject of the penal justice of society. It is, therefore, unwise and dangerous to draw general inferences from particular habits or deficiences, between which and the offences for which punishment is inflicted no very direct relation is perceived. Invariable coincidence would hardly be sufficient to establish the relation of cause and effect in such cases; even if a much higher standard of education were supposed than is implied in the popular systems. But the coincidence is not universal. Two remarkable exceptions are before me. In the Coldbath Field's Prison, near London, there were, in 1834,

967 prisoners. The chaplain of the prison ascertained and reported to the Middlesex magistrates, that 104 of these were uneducated, of whom 48 had been imprisoned before; while 863 were educated, 217 of whom were undergoing a second imprisonment. Neither the amount nor the mode of education is stated.

The second exception is presented in the return of 326 prisoners in the Glasgow Bridewell, from June 1834 to June 1835. Of these only 52 could neither read nor write, 143 could read only, and 131 could read and write. These are exceptions to the general current of reported observation on this subject. It is confidently inferred from numerous criminal statistics, that much the largest portion of criminals are uneducated; and that the proportion constantly decreases according to the degree of education. But admitting this proposition in its largest extent, some important particulars are to be considered, before any authentic practical inference can be drawn from it. The greater part of criminal statistics is furnished by those countries where the horizontal division of society exists; that is, where the community is composed of two classes, between which there is no social sympathy, and few common interests; the one, and the least numerous, hereditary proprietors of the land, tracing through endless genealogies, titles, which they deem almost divine, and possessing nearly a monopoly of the political power. The other, and vastly most numerous class, is regarded as an inferior order of being, born for servitude, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. A division of society, in short, where man is unknown and unrecognised; but where man is degraded, on one side of the line into a king or a lord with hereditary honors, traced through robbers, courtezans, and "scoundrels ever since the flood; and on the other into a peasant, villein, serf, vassal, or whatever other name of contumely may be used to cover up and smother Humanity. This class is poor and oppressed, and poverty and oppression beget resistance, and occasion acts which the laws call crime. If we examine,

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