AN ADDRESS ON EDUCATION,
AS CONNECTED WITH THE PERMANENCE OF OUR REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS.
Delivered before the Institute of Education of Hampden Sidney College, at its Anniversary Meeting, September the 24th, 1835, on the invitation of that body,—by Lucian Minor, Esq. of Louisa.
[Published by request of the Institute.]
Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Institute:
I am to offer you, and this large assembly, some thoughts upon EDUCATION, as a means of preserving the Republican Institutions of our country.
The sentiment of the Roman Senate, who, upon their general's return with the shattered remains of a great army from an almost annihilating defeat, thanked and applauded him for not despairing of the Republic, has, in later times, been moulded into an apothegm of political morality; and few sayings, of equal dignity, are now more hackneyed, than that "A good citizen will never despair of the commonwealth."
I shall hope to escape the anathema, and the charge of disloyalty to our popular institutions, implied in the terms of this apothegm, if I doubt, somewhat, its unqualified truth; when you consider how frequently omens of ruin, overclouding the sky of our country, have constrained the most unquestionable republican patriot's heart to quiver with alarm, if not to sink in despair.
When a factious minority, too strong to be punished as traitors, treasonably refuse to rally under their country's flag, in defence of her rights and in obedience to her laws; when a factious majority, by partial legislation, pervert the government to the ends of self-aggrandizement or tyranny; when mobs dethrone justice, by assuming to be her ministers, and rush madly to the destruction of property or of life; when artful demagogues, playing upon the credulity or the bad passions of a confiding multitude, sway them to measures the most adverse to the public good; or when a popular chief (though he were a Washington) contrives so far to plant his will in the place of law and of policy, that the people approve or condemn both measures and men, mainly if not solely, by his judgment or caprice; and when all history shews these identical causes (the offspring of ignorance and vice) to have overthrown every proud republic of former times;—then, surely, a Marcus Brutus or an Algernon Sidney,—the man whose heart is the most irrevocably sworn to liberty, and whose life, if required, would be a willing sacrifice upon her altars—must find the most gloomy forebodings often haunting his thoughts, and darkening his hopes.