CHAPTER IX.
POLITICAL NECESSITY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION.
In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.—Washington.
I do not hesitate to affirm not only that a knowledge of the true principles of government is important and useful to Americans, but that it is absolutely indispensable to carry on the government of their choice, and to transmit it to their posterity.—Judge Story.
Every succeeding section of the last chapter went to show more and more clearly that, in proportion as the benign influences of a correct education are diffused among and enjoyed by the members of any community, will existing evils of every kind be diminished, and blessings be increased in number and degree. The subject of popular education, then, claims, and should receive, the sympathy and active support of every philanthropist and Christian, without regard to country or clime. We come now to consider a topic in which every patriot, and especially every true American, as such, must feel a lively interest.
Every citizen of our wide-spread country should be fully persuaded that the education of the people is the only permanent basis of national prosperity not only, but of national safety. This, in theory, is now conceded, and the importance of education is very generally admitted among men, especially in our own country. It is evident, however, that the conviction of its importance is not so deeply inwrought into the mind of society as it ought to be, for it does not manifest itself with all the power of earnest feeling in behalf of education which the subject, in view of its acknowledged weightiness, justly demands.
The objects and advantages of education heretofore considered apply equally to men of every nation and clime, under whatever form of government they may chance to dwell. It is otherwise in regard to the political necessity of popular education. Here a particular training is required to fit men for the government under which they are to live. In despotic governments, the object of popular education is to make good subjects, while upon us devolves the higher responsibility of so educating the people that they may become not only good subjects, but good sovereigns—all power originating in and returning to the sovereign people.
Only seventy-four years ago, our fathers of the ever-memorable Revolution pledged "fortune, life, and sacred honor" to establish the independence of these United States. Under the fostering care of republican institutions, the tide of population rolled rapidly inland, crossing the Alleganies, sweeping over the vast Valley of the Mississippi, nor resting in its onward course until it settled on the waters of the Columbia and the shores of the Pacific. Previous to the Revolutionary war, the English settlements were confined to the Atlantic coast; now the tide of immigration seems to be to the shores of the Pacific, where states are multiplying and cities springing up as by magic. In a little more than half a century, the states of the Union have increased in number from thirteen to thirty, and in population in a ratio hitherto unprecedented, from three millions to twenty-five millions of souls.
We stand in the same relation to posterity that our ancestors do to us. Each generation has duties of its own to perform; and our duties, though widely different from those of our forefathers, are not less important in their character or less binding in their obligations. It was their duty to found or establish our institutions, and nobly did they perform it. It is our especial and appropriate duty to perfect and perpetuate the institutions we have received at their hands. The boon they would bequeath to the latest posterity can never reach and bless them except through our instrumentality. Upon each present generation rest the duty and the obligation of educating and qualifying for usefulness that which immediately succeeds, upon which, in turn, will devolve a like responsibility. Each succeeding generation will, in the main, be what the preceding has made it. From this responsible agency there is, there can be, no escape.
Trusts, responsibilities, and interests, vaster in amount and more sacred in character than have ever, in the providence of God, been committed to any people, are now intrusted to us. The great experiment of the capacity of man for self-government is being tried anew—an experiment which, wherever it has been tried, has failed, through an incapacity in the people to enjoy liberty without abusing it. We are, I doubt not, now educating the very generation during whose lifetime this great question will be decided. The present generation will, to a great extent, be responsible for the result, whatever it may be. We are, therefore, called upon, as American citizens and Christian philanthropists, to do all that in us lies to secure to this experiment a successful issue; to make this the leading nation of the earth, and a model worthy of imitation by all others. Never before this has a nation been planted with so hopeful an opportunity for becoming the universal benefactor of the race.