Again: The whole number of paupers relieved or supported by public charity in the single state of New York, in the year 1849, according to an authentic statement now before me, was, in round numbers, one hundred thousand, and the entire expense of their support during the year was eight hundred and seven thousand dollars, a sum exceeding by three hundred and forty thousand dollars the amount paid on rate-bills for teacher's wages for educating the seven hundred thousand children of that great state! Of fifty thousand of these paupers, the causes of whose destitution have been ascertained, nearly twenty thousand are attributable, directly or indirectly, to intemperance, profligacy, licentiousness, and crime! Had even half the amount that is now expended from year to year in their support been judiciously bestowed upon their early mental and moral culture, who can question that, instead of now being a tax upon the communities in which they reside, and a burden to themselves and a grief to their friends, they would not only have provided for their own maintenance, but would have contributed their due proportion to increase the general prosperity of the state.
Great as is her poor-tax, New York contributes annually an immensely greater sum for the support of her criminal police; for the erection of court-houses, and jails, and penitentiaries, and houses of correction; for the arrest, trial, conviction, and punishment of criminals, and for their support in prison and at the various landing-places on their way to the gallows and to a premature and ignominious death. Now, had one half of the money which this state has expended in these two ways been judiciously bestowed in the early education of these unfortunate persons, who can question that the poor and criminal taxes of that state would have been reduced to less than one tenth of what they now are, to say nothing of the fountains of tears that would be thus dried up, and of the untold happiness that would be enjoyed by persons who, in every generation, lead cheerless lives and die ignoble deaths.
Lest some persons may labor under an erroneous impression in relation to this subject, I will give the statistics of education and crime in New York, as derived from official reports, for the last few years. Of 1122 persons—the whole number reported by the sheriffs of the different counties of the state as under conviction and punishment for crime during the year 1847—22 only had a common education, 10 only had a tolerably good education, and only 6 were well educated. Of the 1345 criminals so returned in the several counties of the state for the year 1848, 23 only had a common school education, 13 only had a tolerably good education, and only 10 were considered well educated! The returns for other years give like results. Had the whole eleven or thirteen hundred of these convicts been well educated instead of only six or ten—and the moral and religious education of even these was defective—how many of them would society be called upon to support in prisons and penitentiaries? In all probability, as we shall hereafter, I hope, be able to show, not one. And what is true of the city and county of Philadelphia and of the State of New York, will apply to other cities, counties, and states of this Union.
Once more, and finally: Education, as we have already seen, enables men to subdue their passions, and to improve themselves in the exercise of all the social virtues. Especially have we seen that the educated portions of community, whose moral culture has been duly attended to, are habitually temperate, while the appetite of the uncultivated for intoxicating drinks is stronger, and their power of resistance less. Cut off from the sources of enjoyment which are ever open to those whose minds and hearts are cultivated, no wonder they seek for happiness in the gratification of appetite! No wonder that forty thousand of the citizens of the United States annually die drunkards, when we consider that this is only one in twenty of the number who are unable to read and write!
The Hon. Edward Everett has expressed the opinion that the expenses of the manufacture and traffic of intoxicating drinks in the United States exceed annually one hundred and fifty millions of dollars. General Cary, in alluding to this statement, says, "This, it is believed, is but an approximation to the cost of these trades to the people. This estimate does not include the money paid by consumers, which is worse than thrown away. An English writer, well versed in statistics, and having access to the most reliable sources of information, says that 'the strong drinks consumed in England alone cost nearly four hundred millions of dollars annually.' The expenditure for these sources of all evil in the United States must be equal, at least, to that of England."[66] Now one half of this sum would maintain a system of common schools in every state of this Union equal in expense and efficiency to that of Massachusetts or New York.
But I need not extend these observations. Enough, I trust, has been said to show that every thing connected with the good of man and the welfare of the race depends upon the attention we bestow in perfecting our systems of public instruction and rendering their blessings universal. I will therefore close what I have to say upon this topic with a summary of the conclusions we have arrived at in the progress of the last two chapters.
We have seen that a good system of common school education—one that is sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all our country's youth in its benevolent design—would free us as a people from a host of evils growing out of popular ignorance; that it would increase the productiveness of labor, as the schools advance in excellence, indefinitely; that it would save to society, in diminishing the number of paupers and criminals, a vast amount of means absorbed in the support of the former, and in bringing the latter to justice, a tax which upon every present generation is more than sufficient for the education of the next succeeding one; that it would prevent the great majority of fatal accidents that are now depopulating communities wherever ignorance prevails; that, by imparting a knowledge of the organic laws, the observance of which is essential to health and happiness, it would save the lives of a hundred thousand children in the United States every year, and that by promoting longevity, in connection with the advantages already enumerated, it would tend more than all other means of state policy to increase at once the wealth and the population of our country; that its legitimate tendency would be to diminish, from generation to generation, not only drunkenness and sensuality in all its Protean forms, but idiocy and insanity, which result from a violation of the laws of our being, which are the laws of God; that it would, in innumerable ways, tend to diminish the sufferings and mitigate the woes incident to human life, while it would acquaint man with the will of the benevolent Creator, and lead him to cherish an habitual desire to yield obedience thereto; and that it is the only possible means of perfecting and perpetuating the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty to the latest generations, and thus securing to the race the maximum of human happiness. Yes, a system of popular education adequate to the requirements of the states of this Union will do all this. None, then, it would seem, can fail to see that true state policy requires the maintenance of improved free schools, good enough for the best, and cheap enough for the poorest, which are a necessary means of universal education.