"The God of nature," he observes, "has designed the body for action; and all efforts to counteract this design, end of course in disappointment, sooner or later. The same God has designed that men should cultivate their minds; and I never can believe that this is deleterious in itself; it is so only when we neglect what he has bidden us to observe, i.e. daily discipline and effort to preserve health.
"Students want vacations, journeys, remission from employment, &c. &c. and this at a great expense of time and money. Why? Because they will not be faithful, every day, to watch over their health, and to use all the requisite means for its preservation. Why should the farmer, the mechanic, the merchant, the physician, the lawyer, support a never ceasing round of employment, and the student not? Is there any curse laid by heaven upon study? No; it is inaction—laziness—that makes all the mischief, and occasions all the expense. This is my full persuasion from thirty years experience, and somewhat extensive observation."
To these selections others of similar interest and importance might be added from the Report from which they have been derived, particularly the numerous and harmonious opinions of literary men, on the necessity and utility of regular systematic exercise to the student; but our time forbids the indulgence, and the maxim of Festina ad finem admonishes us to cut short this address.
From the view that has been taken, we perceive then, with a clearness which cannot be mistaken, that the manual labor system of education is applauded by "a cloud of witnesses," and commended to our patronage and attention by arguments and facts innumerable, palpable, and unanswerable. Will the inquiry be misplaced, when we ask, Shall it here, (on this consecrated ground, this literary high place, which is destined to send forth a mighty stream of influence for good or ill, to an extent which no arithmetic can calculate,) shall it here receive the countenance and patronage which it so richly deserves? Manual labor schools are already in successful operation in this southern country, and the prosperity that has attended them has been such as to silence the cavils of opposers, and remove the apprehensions of the distrustful. With all enlightened and candid persons there can be but one mind respecting their practicability and their peculiar importance in this southern region. It is the very section perhaps, of all others, within the limits of our republic, that is best adapted to their growth, both on account of its soil and climate, and in which, from its peculiar situation, their influence is most imperiously demanded.
Again, then, I ask, will "the ancient and honorable Dominion" consent to be outstripped by her neighbors in an enterprise of so much grandeur and promise? Will parents, instructors, and pupils, repose in inglorious ease, and cry a little more sleep, a little more folding of the hands to sleep, while others in the race of competition press forward and bear off the prize? Will the young men of Hampden Sidney and Union Seminary sit still; or will they "awake, arise, and put on their strength?" Interests that are dear as honor and life, are suspended on the practical reply which this inquiry receives.
It is stated, as is probable on good authority, that in years that have gone by, "some of the Virginian philanthropists offered to educate some of the Indians, and that they received from the shrewd savages the following reply." (He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the savages have said to the civilized!)
"Brothers of the white skin! You must know that all people do not have the same ideas upon the same subjects; and you must not take it ill that our manner of thinking in regard to the kind of education which you offer us does not agree with yours. We have had in this particular some experience. Several of our young men were some time since educated at the Northern Colleges, and learned there all the sciences. But when they returned to us, we found they were spoiled. They were miserable runners. They did not know how to live in the woods. They could not bear hunger and cold. They could not build a cabin, nor kill a deer, nor conquer an enemy. They had even forgotten our language; so that not being able to serve us as warriors, or hunters, or counsellors, they were absolutely good for nothing."
The calamities which are here set forth in such graphic terms have by no means been confined to the fathers and the sons of the forest. The white young men of Virginia, in great numbers, have since been educated in like manner "at Northern Colleges," or nearer home: and when restored to their parents and guardians have been found, for the most part, like the sons of the red men, to be "absolutely good for nothing." They have proved to be "miserable runners." Not one in twenty of them has risen to eminence in professional life. They could "bear neither hunger nor cold." They were practically ignorant of mechanical and agricultural employments, and strongly averse to them; too high minded and indolent to labor, and too weak and effeminate to "serve as warriors, and hunters, and counsellors." Will Virginian parents learn a lesson from their own past experience and that of their savage predecessors? The corrective which we propose for the evil complained of, (and it is too serious for merriment,) is the immediate introduction of the manual labor system into all our institutions of learning. If this feature is introduced and kept up in them, with a prominence proportioned to its importance, our youth, who are educated in them, if not fitted for usefulness and distinction in the departments of law, medicine and theology, will not be utterly "spoiled" as the sons of the red men were; but will be good "runners," useful and respectable laborers, mechanics, planters, and farmers. This, after all, is the population, of which, more than any other, Virginia needs an increase. The low state of mechanic arts and of agriculture among us, or rather the prevailing vice of indolence, is the true source of the present disasters which are so often made the theme of popular declamation by stump orators and upstart politicians. It is indolence, more than any or every thing else, that checks the spirit of enterprise; that covers this fairest portion of our continent with sackcloth, and spreads over it the sable shroud of desolation. Let then a revolution be effected in our system of education. Let our youth be trained for the duties of practical life. Let them be instructed in what is useful, as well as ornamental; and let them bring minds stored with the riches of learning and science, to bear and act on the subject of most absorbing temporal interest to the American people, I mean the neglected subject of agriculture, and all will yet be well. The citizens of the South will then be independent indeed, and not in boast. Labor, like "marriage," will be "honorable in all." The work which misguided abolitionists are laboring, with a zeal that would be becoming in a better cause, to perform by a meddlesome and violent interference, will be effected by the gradual and voluntary agency of her own inhabitants. Her population will multiply. Commerce will thrive. Barren fields will be clothed with verdure. The productions of the earth will be increased. Crowded cities and smiling villages will spring up. The halls of legislation will be occupied by the hardy and virtuous cultivators of the soil, the men of all others the most safe to be entrusted with the enactment and administration of laws. Colleges, academies, and schools, will prove the nurseries of enlightened, healthful, industrious, and happy freemen; and Christianity, untrammelled by the obstacles that now so powerfully impede its progress, with a field wide and waving with a luxuriant harvest open and inviting before her, will send abroad her genial and regenerating influences, and render this the Paradise of lands.
We will conclude this, perhaps too protracted performance, in the language of an Indian Cazique.
"Would you know," he asked, "how I would have my children instructed in the ways of men? Look at this handful of dust gathered from the golden bed of the silver-flowing Aracara. What an infinite number of particles—yet how few the grains of ore which we prize; how great the toil which is necessary to sift out and separate them from the worthless heap in which they are concealed; even so it is with the history of the generations of men, from the creation downwards. Events have passed which no tongue can number; but the events which mark the character of human nature, and which are worthy of being treasured up in our memories, are but few, and only by the eye of wisdom to be distinguished.