Popular Education. [Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: Report of the Rev. James Fraser. Blackwood's Magazine, Jan. 1868.]
At no period of the world's history have nations and their governments seemed to be in such a feverish state of uncertainty and apprehension. From all quarters of Christendom we hear the cry of change. The last vestiges of the ancient order are disappearing. The rule of caste is everywhere confronted by self-asserting populations, who are no longer willing to bear the patient yoke of servitude, even though consecrated by the traditions of centuries. Russia has abolished her serfdom, so long and so deeply rooted in her soil; and the more advanced nations of Europe, whilst yet retaining their accustomed forms of government, are heaving with the volcanic fires of revolution. We speak not of violent revolution, mainly; but of that other more radical and enduring change, which is the inevitable result of the wonderful mechanical inventions of this age. It is simply impossible in the dread presence of steam and the electric cable, for nations to continue to be what the Greek republics and the Roman empire were, or what mediaeval Europe was, centuries ago. The Christian world is now, for all great practical purposes, one nation. Even that "despotism tempered by assassination" is not now the thing that Talleyrand described in his witty aphorism; for the Czar himself bows to the censure of the world. Napoleon prosecutes the Parisian editors, and sends them to prison; but it avails nothing toward the suppression of the power of opinion. He, to-day, has greater fear of the sentiment of France, than ever his terrible uncle felt for the combined armies of Europe. In England, the House of Peers has become a gloomy pageant, and the Commons, under the new Reform Bill, will henceforth represent, not the gentry, nor even the moneyed lords of the loom, but the toiling millions of Great Britain. In a word, power is passing from the few to the many, from the hereditary rulers to the multitude. We have nothing to do, in this article, with the merits of this vast revolution, as to the manner of change, its good or evil, its probable success or failure. We accept it as a fact, and propose to deal with it as such. It is very possible that all this would have occurred if America had never been discovered; but it is absolutely certain that the achievements of Christopher Columbus and George Washington have been the chief, immediate causes of its rapid consummation. When a Bourbon king, to gratify the traditional policy and animosities of his house, sent his fleets and armies to help the glorious work of building up the independence of this people, little did either he or his enraged and maniac foe, King George, imagine what the end of it all would be! Little did they dream that this land would, in ninety years, contain thirty millions of men of European blood, and that the whole European population would learn new principles, catch new inspirations, and be filled with new longings, new hopes, and stern resolves by intercourse with this young republic. Those pampered kings could not foresee the advent of steam-ships and the telegraph! They could not foretell the power of emigration—how it would people a continent, build up its commerce, fortify it with the materials for armies and navies, ready to be called into existence more magically than the palace of Aladdin, and, above and beyond all, how its sweeping currents of democratic ideas would rush back upon the father-lands everywhere, washing away the old dikes of royalty and caste, and floating the populations over the battlements of feudal castles, musket in hand, and with loud cries for "change;" that is, for the all-essential change which shall see that governments be henceforth established and conducted for the benefit for the governed, and not that the governed shall be held, as they have been for many thousand years heretofore, as the property of the ruler, existing solely for his glory and profit. Europe sends her millions hither, and they in turn send back by every ship to those they left behind, the wonderful record of what they see here; and these inspiring testimonies are read at the firesides of ten thousand hamlets by kindred men whose awakening intelligence and energies are stirring the foundations of European society and shaking all thrones to inevitable ruin, unless they speedily plant themselves on more solid ground than the divine right of kings. It is now very certain that no government anywhere can be said to rest on a sure basis, unless it stand upon the love and confidence of the people. Any other basis is the lawful prey of time and fortune, and will go with the opportunity that may arise for its destruction.
Now, if these be facts with which we have to deal, then a very grave question meets us right here, and it is this: Can any such solid foundation for government be found in a self-governing community? In other words, can the people govern themselves for their own weal, and maintain institutions solely by the force of their own will, which shall accomplish the purposes of good government, and for ever secure the approval of all wise and virtuous citizens? If nay, then, royalty and aristocracy being repudiated, whither shall we fly for refuge and hope? If yea, then how is this most precious end to be attained? We Americans, by birth and blood, and still more so by passionate love of country, say most emphatically that we have never doubted that the way to such a consummation is plain, if only the nation will pursue it. It is nothing new; simply the old and trite aphorism, that a free, self-governing nation can only be so upon the conditions precedent of a clear intelligence and a well-established virtue; the latter (if we may separate the two) must always take precedence, and be regarded as the indispensable prerequisite. It follows, therefore, that education without morality would be at least futile. It is very certain that it would be absolutely fatal; because the intelligent man of vice is armed with keen weapons, which are greatly blunted by ignorance, and are consequently then less dangerous to society. Catiline, the polished patrician, was a greater object of alarm to Cicero and the Roman senate than the rude assassins whom he had hired to do his treason. Before and during the first French revolution, France was ablaze with genius; but, like the high intelligence of the "Archangel ruined," it brought death in its fiery track. Education without morality is more terrible than the sword in the hands of men or a nation. It is not the part of patriotism to deny that we have seen some instances of this in our own favored country, and that the tendency to that perilous condition is very apparent even now. This has resulted from the too prevalent idea, taught by the infidel or indifferent press, and accepted by the unreflecting or equally indifferent citizen, that morality can be maintained without formal or doctrinal religion; that one morality is as good as another; that Plato would answer as well as Christ; that what even the pagans taught—to deal honestly by your neighbor and perform the domestic and public duties of life with reasonable decency—is quite sufficient; and that all else is nothing more than priestly dogmatism and controversial jargon. So that, indeed, the prevailing opinion of the country would almost seem to be (if we judge it by the secular press and multitudes of very honest and intelligent citizens) that America, as a Christian democratic nation, may be satisfied to be as moral, and consequently as grand and powerful, as was pagan Rome in the days of her republican simplicity of manners. They forget or ignore the history of the Decline and Fall, and fail to see in that tremendous catastrophe of the most extraordinary people of the ancient world, the logical development of the certain causes of destruction which were inherent in the nation from the day that Romulus slew his brother upon the wall of the rising city. It cannot be that Christ came for a delusion and a snare, or even as a simple fatuity. If his coming was necessary, then it was to teach a new religion and a new morality; the one inseparable from the other. If this be indisputable, then all education which is not based expressly and clearly upon religion is heathenish, and will prove destructive in the end. It will destroy the very people whom it was expected to save. It will consume them as a fire. Pride and lust of power will burn out the public conscience. The nation will drip with the blood of unjustifiable conquest, as did pagan Rome, or be given up to the ferocious struggle for individual aggrandizement, as seen in later revolutionary times. The father of our country fully recognized these principles, and in the foregoing we have but echoed his words of warning in his Farewell Address to the American People:
"Of all dispositions and habits," he says, "which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. A volume could not trace all their connection with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for regulation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."
To this it will be replied, by some well-meaning persons, "How can we place education in the United States upon the basis of doctrinal religion, when we have innumerable sects, none of which absolutely agree?" And now we approach the marrow of the subject.
First, let us clear away one difficulty. Let it be very distinctly comprehended that nowhere can the state find its commission as exclusive educator of the people. That is a duty and a privilege belonging, of original right, to the family; it is domestical and not political, though it may be always, and is most frequently, wise and politic that the state should lend efficient aid to assist, but not arbitrarily to control the training of the free citizen's child. The parent is placed over the child by the Creator, and is the natural guardian, primarily responsible for the training which is to lead through this valley of probation to the eternal home. Religious freedom, freedom of conscience, is not a right granted by constitutions, but is the result of the relation of man as a free, moral agent to the Creator who thought fit to make him the master of his own destiny here and hereafter. To coerce the conscience of the child by an educational system, actively or passively, (for there may be effective coercion by negative means,) is to violate the sacred rights of the parent, vested in him by the divine appointment. There is not a religious man, following any form of worship, professing to be a Christian and an American, who can seriously deny this proposition, or who would accept any other in a question involving his rights and duties in regard to his own off-spring. No such man, we are sure, would tolerate any assumption of the authority on the part of the state to step between him and his child in the matter of religious belief and instruction. No other form of tyranny would arouse so quickly the indignant resistance of an American citizen and father; and every upright man feels in his heart that what would be so grievous to him should not be imposed upon any other of his fellow-citizens, directly or indirectly. Actuated by such views in the main, the state provides a system of public schools from which, theoretical (and it may be practically in most cases,) all forms of doctrinal religion are excluded, and education is based upon a vague, undefined, generalized moral teaching which very many eminent men of different religious denominations have pronounced to be "godless," because the doctrines of Christ (the foundation of his moral law) are not taught in such schools according to any interpretation whatever, for the plain reason that it could not be done without such manifest injustice and wrong as we have already protested against. To read the Bible, without note or comment, to young children is, in reality, to lead them to the fountain of living waters and forbid them to drink; whereas, "to expound the word" is, at once, to violate the absolute neutrality which the state is bound to maintain in the presence of conflicting interpretations and dissenting consciences. Such is the precise difficulty. Hence it is, that the Catholic Church has set its face against the peril with which such a system of education threatens its youth; and the Catholic pastors and their flocks, though struggling with poverty, and harassed by ten thousand pressing claims upon their charity, have strained every nerve to establish parochial and other denominational schools where secular education could be imparted without sacrificing religious instruction.
There is no doubt but that there are many strong and marked doctrinal differences between the various Protestant denominations which have led some of their most eminent men to argue against the possibility of a perfect or desirable system of public schools upon the mixed or non-intervention basis. Nevertheless, it is also true that in the fundamental point, essentially characteristic of Protestantism, and in which it especially differs from the Catholic Church (private interpretation and the rejection of tradition) all Protestant churches agree; and herein we find the reason why they can conform to the necessities of such a public-school system as we have described, with some degree of amalgamation; whereas their Catholic fellow-citizens cannot avail themselves of the secular advantages of such schools without a total sacrifice of religious training. We are told by the Rev. James Fraser, despatched on an official mission for the purpose of reporting on the whole subject to the commissioners appointed by her Majesty Queen Victoria, and who visited the United States in 1865, that one of the influences adverse to the success of our American common-school system is, "the growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required, and that even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to;" and another "influence" is "the very lukewarm support that it receives from the clergy of any denomination, and the languid way in which its claims on support and sympathy are rested on the higher motives of Christian duty;" from which, and other causes, the Rev. Mr. Fraser reluctantly augurs misfortune to the system itself in the future. There can be no doubt but that such "lukewarmness" does exist, and that it is produced solely by the "growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required." No accord of the Protestant sects upon what they call "essentials," can permanently reconcile them to either a doctrinal teaching at the public schools, in which it would be impossible for them all to agree, or to the alternative necessity of excluding from the schools all manner of "distinct religious teaching," without which "even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to." Hence springs not only the lukewarmness, but the affirmative opposition of distinguished Protestant clergymen to the "godless system."
It is altogether erroneous, however, to suppose, and unjust to charge, that Catholics are hostile to the continuance of the present schools. FAR FROM IT. They rejoice to see their Protestant fellow-citizens availing themselves freely of those great opportunities to instruct the future self-governing citizens of the young republic. They appreciate, nay, they insist upon the absolute necessity of raising the standard of popular intelligence, so as to insure the wisest possible administration of public affairs through the agency of the elective franchise. That their church is profoundly solicitous for the secular education of her people is too manifest for dispute, since she has, by the instrumentality of her various religious orders, established universities, colleges, academies, and innumerable preparatory schools in every great city, and throughout the rural districts of the country, wherever it was possible to do so. A glance at the Catholic Register or Directory, for 1868, will satisfy the most sceptical upon that point. The Roman Catholic Church has covered Europe with such institutions, grand in design, and magnificent in endowment; and it is not her purpose to permit her children in America to fall behind the age for the want of similar advantages, if she can supply their necessities. She is ever appealing to their public spirit, their patriotism, their religious sentiment, to obtain the means to build and conduct her educational establishments; and most nobly have they ever responded; for it was by the steady contributions of the poor mainly, that nearly all of those great works were begun and perfected.