Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions

by George S. Boutwell

[An Address delivered at Montague, July 4th, 1857.]

I congratulate you upon the auspicious moments of this, the eighty-first anniversary of our National Independence; and its return, now and ever, should be the occasion of gratitude to the Author of all good, that He hath vouchsafed to our fathers and to their descendants the wisdom to establish and the wisdom to preserve the institutions of Liberty in America.

And I congratulate you that you accept this anniversary as the occasion for considering the subject of education. Ignorant and blind worshippers of Liberty can do but little for its support; but, whatever of change or decay may come to our institutions, Liberty itself can never die in the presence of a people universally and thoroughly educated. It is not, then, inappropriate nor unphilosophical for us to connect Education and Liberty together; and I therefore propose, after presenting some thoughts upon the Declaration of Independence, and its relations to the American Union, to consider the value of political learning, its neglect, and the means by which it may be promoted.

The events and epochs of life are logical in their nature, and are harmonious or inharmonious as the affairs of men are controlled by principle, policy, or accident. Humboldt, Maury, and Guyot, Arago, Agassiz, and Pierce, by observation, philosophy, and mathematics, demonstrate the harmony of the physical creation. In the microscopic animalculæ; in the gigantic remains, whether vegetable or animal, of other ages and conditions of life; in the coral reef and the mountain range; in the hill-side rivulet that makes "the meadows green;" in the ocean current that bathes and vivifies a continent; in the setting of the leaf upon its stem, and the moving of Uranus in its orbit, they trace a law whose harmony is its glory, and whose mystery is the evidence of its divinity.

National changes, the movements and progress of the human race, as a whole and in its parts, are obedient, likewise, to law; and are, therefore, logical in their character, though generally lacking in precision of connection and order of succession. Or it may be, rather, that we lack power to trace the connection between events that depend in part, at least, upon the prejudices, passions, vices, and weaknesses, of men. The development of the logic of human affairs waits for a philosopher who shall study and comprehend the living millions of our race, as the philosophers now study and comprehend the subjects of physical science. We have no guaranty that this can ever be done. As mind is above matter, the mental philosopher enters upon the most varied and difficult field of labor.

Keeping this fact in mind, it appears to be true that every person of observation, reading, and reflection, is something of a mental philosopher, though much the larger number have no knowledge of physical science. And especially must the student of history have a system of mental philosophy; but often, no doubt, his system is too crude for general notice. Every historian connects the events of his narrative by some thread of philosophy or speculation; every reader observes some connection, though he may never develop it to himself, between the events and changes of national and ethnological life; and even the observer whose vision is limited by his own horizon in time and space marks a dependence, and speaks of cause and effect. All this follows from the existence and nature of man. Man is not inert, nor even passive, merely; and his activity will continually organize itself into facts and forms, ever changing in character, it may be, yet subject to a law as wise and fixed as that of planetary motion.

The Independence of the British Colonies in America, declared on the 4th of July, 1776, is not an isolated fact; nor is the Declaration itself a hasty and overwrought production of a young and enthusiastic adventurer in the cause of liberty.

The passions and the reason of men connected the Declaration of Independence with the massacre in King-street, of March 5th, 1770; with the passage and repeal of the Stamp Act; with the attempt to enforce the Writs of Assistance; with the act to close the port of Boston; with the peace of 1763; with the Act of Settlement of 1688; with the execution of Charles I., and the Protectorate of Cromwell; with the death of Hampden; with the confederation of 1643; with the royal charters granted to the respective colonies; with the compact made on board the Mayflower; and, finally, and distinctly, and chiefly,—as the basis of the greatest legal argument of modern times, made by the Massachusetts House of Representatives, from 1765 to 1775,—with the events at Runnymede, and the grant of the Great Charter to the nobles and people of England in 1215, which is itself based upon the concessions of Edward the Confessor, and the affirmation of the Saxon laws in the eleventh century. Our Independence is, then, one logical fact or event in a long succession, to the enumeration of which we may yet add the confederation of 1778, the constitution of 1787, the French Revolution of 1789, the rapid increase of American territory and States, the revolutionary spirit of continental Europe, the reforms in the British government at home, the wise modifications of its colonial policy, and for us a long career of prosperity based upon the cardinal doctrine of the equality of all men before the law.

Nor can any reader of the Declaration itself assume that it contains one statement, proposition, idea, or word, not carefully considered, and carefully expressed. It was not the production of hasty, thoughtless, or reckless men. The country had been gradually prepared for the great event. States, counties, and towns, had made the most distinct expressions of opinion upon the relations of the colonies to the mother country. On the 7th of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, moved, in the Congress of the United Colonies, a resolution declaring, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. The subject was considered on the tenth; and, on the eleventh instant, the committee, consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston, was appointed. On the twenty-fifth of June, a Declaration of the Deputies of Pennsylvania, in favor of Independence, was read. On the twenty-eighth, the credentials of the delegates from New Jersey, in which they were instructed to favor Independence, were presented; and on the first of July similar instructions to the Maryland delegates were laid before Congress. At this time Congress proceeded to consider the Declaration and resolution reported by the committee. The Declaration was carefully considered, and materially amended in committee of the whole, on the first, second, third, and fourth, when it was finally adopted. It was then signed by the president and secretary, and copies were transmitted to the several colonies. The order for its engrossment, and for the signature by every member, was not passed until the nineteenth of July, and it was not really signed until the second of August following. It is not likely, considering the circumstances, and the known character of the members of Congress, among whom may be mentioned John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Rush, Robert Morris, Benjamin Harrison, Elbridge Gerry, John Witherspoon, a descendant of John Knox, the Scottish Reformer, Charles Carroll, and Samuel Huntington,—all distinguished for coolness, probity, and patriotism,—that the immortal document can contain one thought or word unworthy its sacred associations, and the character of the American people!

And it is among the alarming symptoms of public sentiment that the Declaration of Independence is by some publicly condemned, and by others quietly accepted as entitled to just the consideration, and no more, that is given to an excited advocate's speech to a jury, or a demagogue's electioneering harangue, or the daily contribution of the partisan editor to the stock of political capital that aids the election of his favorite candidates. And upon this evidence is the nation and the world to be taught that but little was meant by the assertions, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"? Would it not be wiser to test the government we have, by a statesmanlike application of the principles of the Declaration of Independence in the management of public affairs?