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Title: An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance

Author: John Foster

Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8940]
                Most recently updated: August 22, 2014

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY ON THE EVILS OF POPULAR IGNORANCE ***




Produced by Distributed Proofreaders









An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance

By John Foster.

Revised and Enlarged Edition.




  "A Work, which, popular and admired as it confessedly is, has never
  met with the thousandth part of the attention which it deserves. It
  appears to me that we are now at a crisis in the state of our country,
  and of the world, which renders the reasonings and exhortations of
  that eloquent production applicable and urgent beyond all power of
  mine to express."

  Dr. J. Pye Smith.




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If the circumstance of a manner of introduction somewhat different from
what would be expected in a composition of the essay class were worth a
very few words of explanation, it might be mentioned, that the
following production has grown out of the topics of a discourse,
delivered at a public anniversary meeting in aid of the British and
Foreign School Society.

When it was thought, a good while after that occasion, that a more
extensive use might be made of some of the observations, the writing was
begun in the form of a Discourse addressed to an assembly, and commencing
with a sentence from the Bible, to serve as a general indication to the
subject. But after some progress had been made, it became evident that
anything like a comprehensive view of that subject would be incompatible
with the proper limits of such a composition.

In relinquishing, however, the form of a public address, the writer
thought he might be excused for leaving some traces of that character to
remain, in both the cast of expression and the theological sentiment; for
reverting repeatedly to the sentence from Scripture; and for continuing
the use of the plural pronoun, so commodious for the modest egotism of
public discoursers.

In the general design and course of observations, the essay retains the
character of the original discourse, which was, in accordance to the
presumed expectations of a grave assembly, an attempt to display the
importance of the education of the people in reference, mainly, to moral
and religious interests. There are special relations in which their
ignorance or cultivation are of great consequence to the welfare of the
community. Some of these are of indispensable consideration to the
legislator, and to the political economist. But it is in that general and
moral view, in which ignorance in the lower orders is beheld the cause of
their vice, irreligion, and consequent misery, that the subject is
attempted, imperfectly and somewhat desultorily, to be illustrated in the
following pages.

Nor was it within the writer's design to suggest any particular plans,
regulations, or instrumental expedients, in promotion of the system of
operations hopefully begun, for raising these classes from their
degradation. His part has been to make such a prominent representation of
the calamitous effects of their ignorance, as shall prove it an aggravated
national guilt to allow another generation to grow up to the same
condition as the present and the past. In the course of attempting this,
occasions have been seized of exposing the absurdity of those who are
hostile to the mental improvement of the people. If any one should say
that this is a mere beating of the air, for that all such hostility is now
gone by, he may be assured there are many persons, of no insignificant
rank in society, who would from their own consciousness smile at the
simplicity with which he can so easily shape men's opinions and
dispositions to his mind whether they will or not. He must have been the
most charitable or the most obtuse of observers.

It is feared the readers of the following essay will find some defect of
distribution and arrangement. To the candor of those who are practised in
literary work it would be an admissible plea, that when, in a preparation
to meet a particular occasion for which but little time has been allowed,
a series of topics and observations has been hastily sketched out, it is
far from easy to throw them afterwards into a different order. The author
has to bespeak indulgence also, here and there, to something too like
repetition. If he qualifies the terms in which this fault is acknowledged,
it is because he thinks that, though there be a recurrence of
similarities, a mere bare iteration is avoided, by means of a diversity
and addition of the matter of illustration and enforcement.

Any benevolent writer on the subject would wish he could treat it without
such frequent use of the phrases, "lower orders," "subordinate classes,"
"inferior portion of society," and other expressions of the same kind;
because they have an invidious sound, and have indeed very often been used
in contempt. He can only say, that he uses them with no such feeling; that
they are employed simply as the most obvious terms of designation; and
that he would like better to employ any less ungracious ones that did not
require an affected circumlocution.

In several parts of the essay, there will be found a language of emphatic
censure on that conduct of states, that predominant spirit and system in
the administration of the affairs of nations, by which the people have
been consigned to such a deplorable condition of intellectual and
consequently moral degradation, while resources approaching to immensity
have been lavished on objects of vanity and ambition. So far from feeling
that such observations can require any apology, the writer thinks it is
high time for all the advocates of intellectual, moral, and religious
improvement, to raise a protesting voice against that policy of the states
denominated Christian, and especially our own, which has, through age
after age, found every conceivable thing necessary to be done, at all
costs and hazards, rather than to enlighten, reform, and refine the
people. He thinks that nothing can more strongly betray a judgment
enslaved, or a time-serving dishonesty, in those who would assume to
dictate to such an advocate and to censure him, than that sort of doctrine
which tells him that it is beside his business, and out of his sphere, as
a Christian moralist, to animadvert on the conduct of national
authorities, when he sees them, during one long period of time after
another, not doing that which is the most important of all things to be
done for the people over whom they preside, but doing what is in substance
and effect the reverse; and doing it on that great scale, which contrasts
so fearfully with the small one, on which the individuals who deplore such
perversion of power are confined to attempt a remedy of the consequences.

This interdiction comes with its worst appearance when it is put forth in
terms affecting a profound reverence of religion; a reverence which
cannot endure that so holy a thing should be defiled, by being brought in
any contact with such a subject as the disastrous effect of bad
government, on the intellectual and moral state of the people. The
advocate of schemes for the improvement of their rational nature _may_,
it seems, take his ground, his strongest ground, on religion, for
enforcing on _individuals_ the duty of promoting such an object. In the
name and authority of religion he may press on their consciences with
respect to the application of their property and influence; and he may
adopt under its sanction a strongly judicial language in censure of their
negligence, their insensibility to their accountableness, and their
lavish expenditures foreign to the most Important uses: in all this he
does well. But the instant he begins to make the like judicial
application of its laws to the public conduct of the governing
authorities, that instant he debases Christianity to politics, most
likely to party-politics; and a pious horror is affected at the
profanation. Christianity is to be honored somewhat after the same manner
as the Lama of Thibet. It is to stay in its temple, to have the
proprieties of homage duly preserved within its precincts, but to be
_exempted_ (in reverence of its sanctity!) from all cognizance of great
public affairs, even in the points where they most interfere with or
involve its interests. It could show, perhaps, in what manner the
administration of those affairs injures these interests; but it would
degrade its sacred character by talking of any such matter. But
Christianity must have leave to decline the sinister compliment of such
pretended anxiety to preserve it immaculate. As to its sacred character,
it can _venture that,_ on the strength of its intrinsic quality and of
its own guardianship, while, regardless of the limits thus attempted in
mock reverence to be prescribed, it steps in a censorial capacity on what
will be called a political ground, so far as to take account of what
concern has been shown, or what means have been left disposable, for
operations to promote the grand essentials of human welfare, by that
public system which has grasped and expended the strength of the
community, Christianity is not so demure a thing that it cannot, without
violating its consecrated character, go into the exercise of this
judicial office. And as to its _right_ to do so,--either it has a right
to take cognizance now of the manner in which the spirit and measures of
states and their regulators bear upon the most momentous interests, or it
will have no right to be brought forward as the supreme law for the final
award on those proceedings and those men. [Footnote: A censure on this
alleged desecration of religious topics, which had been pronounced on the
Essay (first edit.) by a Review making no small pretensions both
religious and literary, was the immediate cause that prompted these
observations. But they were made with a general reference to a
hypocritical cant much in vogue at that time, and long before. That it
_was_ hypocritical appeared plainly enough from the circumstance, that
those solemn rebukes of the profanation of religion, by implicating it
with political affairs, smote almost exclusively on one side. Let the
religious moralist, or the preacher, amalgamate religion as largely as he
pleased with the _proper sort_ of political sentiments, that is, the
servile, and then it was all right.]

It is now more than twenty years since a national plan of education for
the inferior classes, was brought forward by Mr. (now Lord) Brougham. The
announcement of such a scheme from such an Author, was received with hope
and delight by those who had so long deplored the condition of those
classes. But when it was formally set forth, its administrative
organization appeared so defective in liberal comprehension, so
invidiously restricted and accommodated to the prejudices and demands of
one part of the community, that another great division, the one in which
zeal and exertions for the education of the people had been more and
longer conspicuous, was constrained to make an instant and general protest
against it. And at the same time it was understood, that the party in
whose favor it had been so inequitably constructed, were displeased at
even the very small reserve it made from their monopoly of jurisdiction.
It speedily fell to the ground, to the extreme regret of the earnest
friends of popular reformation that a design of so much original promise
should have come to nothing.

All legislative consideration of the subject went into abeyance; and has
so remained, with trifling exception, through an interval in which far
more than a million, in England alone, of the children who were at that
time within that stage of their life on which chiefly a general scheme
would have acted, have grown up to animal maturity, destitute of all that
can, in any decent sense of the word, be called education. Think of the
difference between their state as it is, and what it might have been if
there had at that time existed patriotism, liberality, and moral
principle, enough to enact and carry into effect a comprehensive measure.
The longer the neglect the more aggravated the pressure with which the
subject returns upon us. It is forcing itself on attention with a demand
as peremptory as ever was the necessity of an embankment against the peril
of inundation. There are no indications to make us sanguine as to the
disposition of the most influential classes; but it were little less than
infatuation not to see the necessity of some extraordinary proceeding, to
establish a fortified line between us and--not national dishonor; _that_
is flagrantly upon us, but--the destruction of national safety.

As to national dishonor, by comparison with what may be seen elsewhere, it
is hardly possible for a patriot to feel a more bitter mortification than
in reading the description, as recently given by M. Cousin, of the state
of education in the Prussian dominions, and then looking over the hideous
exhibition of ignorance and barbarism in this country; in representing to
himself the vernal intelligence, (as we may rightly name it,) the
information, the sense of decorum, the fitness for rational converse,
which must quite inevitably diffuse a value and grace throughout the
general youthful character under such a discipline, and then changing his
view to what may be seen all over his own country--an incalculable and
ever-increasing tribe of human creatures, growing up in a condition to
show what a wretched and offensive thing is human nature left to itself.

When neither opprobrium, nor prospective policy, nor sense of duty, can
constrain the attention of the officially and virtually ruling part of
society to an important national interest, it is sure to come on them at
last in some more alarming and imperative manifestation. The present and
very recent times have afforded significant indication of what an ignorant
populace are capable of believing, and of being successfully instigated to
perpetrate. It is not to be pretended that such ignorance, and such
liabilities to mischief, exist only in particular spots of the land, as if
the local outbreaks were merely incidental and insulated facts, standing
out of community with anything widely pervading the mass. Within but very
few years of the present date, we have had the spectacle of millions,
literally millions, of the people of England, yielding an absolute
credence to the most monstrous delusions respecting public questions and
measures, imposed on them by dishonest artifice, and what may be called
moral incendiarism; and these delusions of a nature to excite the passions
of the multitude to crime. It is difficult to believe that all this can be
seen without serious apprehension, by those who sustain the primary
responsibility for devising measures to secure the national _safety_,
(that we may take the lowest term of national welfare;) and that they can
be content to rest that security on expedients which, in keeping the
people in order, make them no wiser or better. It would truly be a
glorious change in our history, if we might at length see the national
power wielded by enlightened, virtuous, and energetic spirits, not only to
the bare effect of withstanding disorder and danger, but in a resolute,
invincible determination to redeem us from the national ignominy of
exhibiting to the world, far in the nineteenth century, a rude,
unprincipled, semi-barbarous populace.

Thus far the hopes which had flattered us with such a change, as a
consequence of a political movement so considerable as to be denominated a
revolution, have been grievously disappointed. We must wait, but with
prognostics little encouraging, to see whether a professed concern for
popular education will result in any effective scheme. That profession has
hitherto been followed up with so little appearance of earnest conviction,
or of high and comprehensive purpose, among the majority of the
influential persons who, perhaps for decorum's sake, have made it, as to
leave cause for apprehension that, if any such scheme were to be proposed,
it would be in the first instance very limited in its compass, indecisive
in its enforcement, and niggardly in its pecuniary appointments. Many of
our legislators have never thought of investigating the condition of the
people, and are unaware of their deplorable destitution of all mental
cultivation; and many have formed but a low and indistinct estimate of the
kind and measure of cultivation desirable to be imparted. Very slowly does
the conviction or the desire make its way among the favorites of fortune,
that the portion of humanity so far below them should be raised to the
highest mental condition compatible with the limitation and duties of
their subordinate allotment.

No doubt, the most genuine zeal for the object would find difficulties in
the way, of a magnitude to require a great and persevering exertion of
power, were they only those opposed by the degraded condition of the
people themselves; by the utter carelessness of one part, and the
intractableness of another. Nor is it to be denied, that the differences
of religious opinion, among the promoters of the design, must create
considerable difficulty as to the mode and extent of religious
instruction, to form a part of a comprehensive system. But we are told,
besides, of we know not what obstruction to be encountered from prejudices
of prescription, privileged and peculiar interests, the jealous pride of
venerable institutions, assumed rights of station and rank, punctilios of
precedence, the tenacity of parties who find their advantage in things as
they are, and so forth; all to be deferentially consulted.

If this mean that the old horror of a bold experimental novelty is still
to be yielded to; that nothing in this so urgent affair is to be ventured
but in a creeping inch-by-inch movement; that the reign of gross
ignorance, with all its attendant vices, is to be allowed a very leisurely
retreat, retaining its hold on a large portion of the present and
following generations of the children, and therefore the adults; that
their condition and fate shall be mainly left at the discretion of
ignorant and often worthless parents; that there shall be no considerable
positive exaction of local provision for the institution, or of attendance
of those who should be benefited by it; that, in short, there shall not be
a comprehensive application of the national power through its organ, the
government, by authoritative, and, we must say, in some degree coercive
measures, to abate as speedily as possible the national nuisance and
calamity of such a state of the juvenile faculties and habits as we see
glaring around us; and all this because homage is demanded to anticipated
prejudices, selfishness of privilege, venerable institutions, pride of
station, jealousy of the well-endowed, and the like:--if this be what is
meant, we may well ask whether these factitious prerogatives, that would
thus interfere to render feeble, partial, and slow, any projected exertion
to rescue the nation from barbarism, turpitude, and danger, be not
themselves among the most noxious things in the land, and the most
deserving to be extirpated.

How readily will the proudest descend to the plea of impotence when the
exhortation is to something which they care not for or dislike, but to
which, at the same time, it would be disreputable to avow any other than
the most favorable sentiments, to be duly expressed in the form of great
regret that the thing is impracticable. Impracticable--and does the case
come at last to be this, that from one cause and another, from the
arrogance of the high and the untowardness of the low, the obstinacy of
prejudice, and the rashness of innovation, the dissensions among friends
of a beneficent design and the discountenance of those who are no better
than enemies, a mighty state, triumphantly boasting of every _other_
kind of power, absolutely _cannot_ execute a scheme for rescuing its
people from being what a great Authority on this subject has pronounced
"the worst educated nation in Europe?" Then let it submit, with all its
pomp, pride, and grandeur, to stand in derision and proverb on the face
of the earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

With a view to a wider circulation than that which is limited by the price
of the volume published in an expensive form and style of printing, it has
been deemed advisable to publish a cheap edition of the "Essay on Popular
Ignorance." It is not in any degree an abridgment of the preceding
edition; the only omission, of the slightest consequence, being in a few
places where changes have been rendered necessary by the subsequent
conduct of our national authorities, as affecting our speculations and
prospects in relation to general education; while, on the other hand,
there are numerous little additions and corrections, in attempts to bring
out the ideas more fully, or with some little afterthought of
discrimination or exception. In some instances the connection and
dependence of the series of thoughts have been rendered more obvious, and
the sentences reduced to a somewhat more simple and compact construction;
but the principal object in this _final revised_ has been literary
correction, without any material enlargement or change.

It is hoped that this reprint in a popular form may serve the purpose of
contributing something, in co-operation with the present exertions, to
expose, and partially remedy, the lamentable and nationally disgraceful
ignorance to which the people of our country have been so long abandoned.




Contents.



Section I.

  Defect of sensibility in the view of the unhappiness of mankind.
  --Ignorance one grand cause of that unhappiness.--Ignorance prevalent
  among the ancient Jewish people.--Its injurious operation--and
  ultimately destructive consequence.--More extended consideration of
  ignorance as the cause of misery among the ancient heathens.


Section II.

  Brief review of the ignorance prevailing through the ages subsequent to
  those of ancient history.--State of the popular mind in Christendom
  during the complete reign of Popery.--Supposed reflections of a
  Protestant in one of our ancient splendid structures for ecclesiastical
  use.--Slow progress of the Reformation, in its effects on the
  understandings of the people.--Their barbarous ignorance even in the
  time of Elizabeth, notwithstanding the intellectual and literary glories
  of this country in that period.--Sunk in ignorance still in what has
  often been called our Augustan age.--Strange insensibility of the
  cultivated part of the nation with regard to the mental and moral
  condition of the rest.--Almost heathen ignorance of religion at the time
  when Whitefield and Wesley began to excite the attention of the
  multitude to that subject.--Signs and means of a change for the better
  in recent times.


Section III.

  Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of the
  popular character.--Entire want, in early life, of any idea of a general
  and comprehensive purpose to be pursued--Gratification of the senses
  the chief good.--Cruelty a subsidiary resource.--Disposition to cruelty
  displayed and confirmed by common practices.--Confirmed especially by
  the manner of slaughtering animals destined for food.--Displayed in the
  abuse of the laboring animals.--General characteristic of the people an
  indistinct and faint sense of right and wrong.--Various
  exemplifications.--Dishonor to our country that the people should have
  remained in such a condition.--Effects of their ignorance as appearing
  in several parts of the economy of life; in their ordinary occupations;
  in their manner of spending their leisure time, including the Sunday; in
  the state of domestic society; consequences of this last as seen in the
  old age of parents.--The lower classes placed by their want of education
  out of amicable communication with the higher.--Unhappy and dangerous
  consequences of this.--Great decline of the respect which in former
  times the people felt toward the higher classes and the existing order
  of the community.--Progress of a contrary spirit.


Section IV.

  Objection, that a material increase of knowledge and intelligence among
  the people would render them unfit for their station, and discontented
  with it; would excite them to insubordination and arrogance toward
  their superiors; and make them the more liable to be seduced by the
  wild notions and pernicious machinations of declaimers, schemers, and
  innovators.--Observations in answer.--Special and striking absurdity
  of this objection in one important particular.--Evidence from matter of
  fact that the improvement of the popular understanding has not the
  tendency alleged.--The special regard meant to be had to _religious_
  instruction in the education desired for the lower classes, a security
  against their increased knowledge being perverted into an excitement to
  insubordination and disorder.--Absurdity of the notion that an improved
  education of the common people ought to consist of instruction
  specifically and almost solely religious.--The diminutive quantity of
  religious as well as other knowledge to which the people would be
  limited by some zealous advocates of order and subordination utterly
  inadequate to secure those objects.--But, question what is to be
  understood by order and subordination.--Increased knowledge and sense
  in the people certainly not favorable to a credulous confidence and a
  passive, unconditional submission, on their part, toward the presiding
  classes in the community.--Advantage, to a wise and upright government,
  of having intelligent subjects.--Great effect which a general
  improvement among the people would necessarily have on the manner of
  their being governed.--The people arrived, in this age, at a state
  which renders it impracticable to preserve national tranquillity
  without improving their minds and making some concession to their
  claims.--Folly and probable calamity of an obstinate resolution to
  maintain subordination in the nations of Europe in the arbitrary and
  despotic manner of former times.--Facility and certain success of a
  better system.


Section V.

  Extreme poverty of religious knowledge among the uneducated people:
  their notions respecting God, Providence, Jesus Christ, the invisible
  world.--Fatal effect of their want of mental discipline as causing an
  inaptitude to receive religious information.--Exemplifications,--in a
  supposed experiment of religious instruction in a friendly visit to a
  numerous uneducated family; in the stupidity and thoughtlessness often
  betrayed in attendance on public religious services; in the
  impossibility of imparting religious truths, with any degree of
  clearness, to ignorant persons, when alarmed into some serious concern
  by sickness; in the insensibility and invincible delusion sometimes
  retained in the near approach to death.--Rare instances of the
  admirable efficacy of religion to animate and enlarge the faculties,
  even in the old age of an ignorant man.--Excuses for the intellectual
  inaptitude and perversion of uncultivated religious
  minds.--Animadversions on religious teachers.


Section VI.

  Supposed method of verifying the preceding representation of the
  ignorance of the people.--Renewed expressions of wonder and
  mortification that this should be the true description of the English
  nation.--Prodigious exertions of this nation for the accomplishment of
  objects foreign to the improvement of the people.--Effects which might
  have resulted from far less exertion and resources applied to that
  object.--The contrast between what has been done, and what might have
  been done by the exertion of the national strength, exposed in a series
  of parallel representations.--Total unconcern, till a recent period, of
  the generality of persons in the higher classes respecting the mental
  state of the populace.--Indications of an important change in the manner
  of estimating them.--Measures attempted and projected for their
  improvement.--Some of these measures and methods insignificant in the
  esteem of projectors of merely political schemes for the amendment of
  the popular condition.--But questions to those projectors on the
  efficacy of such schemes.--Most desirable, nevertheless, that the
  political systems and the governing powers of states _could_ be
  converted to promote so grand a purpose.--But expostulations addressed
  to those who, desponding of this aid, despond therefore of the object
  itself.--Incitement to individual exertion.--Reference to the sublimest
  Example.--Imputation of extravagant hope.--Repelled; first, by a full
  acknowledgment how much the hopes of sober-minded projectors of
  improvement are limited by what they see of the disorder in the
  essential constitution of our nature; and next, by a plain statement, in
  a series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge it rational to
  expect from a general extension of good education.--Answer to the
  question, whether it be presumed that any merely human discipline can
  reduce its subjects under the predominance of religion.--Answer to the
  inquiry, what is the extent of the knowledge of which it is desired to
  put the common people in possession.--Observations on supposed degrees
  of possible advancement of the knowledge and welfare of the community;
  with reflections of astonishment and regret at the actual state of
  ignorance, degradation, and wretchedness, after so many thousand years
  have passed away.--Congratulatory notice of those worthy individuals who
  have been rescued from the consequences of a neglected education by
  their own resolute mental exertions.





Essay on Popular Ignorance.




"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

_Hosea_.




Section I.



It may excite in us some sense of wonder, and perhaps of self-reproach, to
reflect with what a stillness and indifference of the mind we can hear and
repeat sentences asserting facts which are awful calamities. And this
indifference is more than the accidental and transient state, which might
prevail at seasons of peculiar heaviness or languor. The self-inspector
will often be compelled to acknowledge it as a symptom and exemplification
of the _habit_ of his mind, that ideas of extensive misery and
destruction, though expressed in the plainest, strongest language, seem to
come with but a faint glimmer on his apprehension, and die away without
awakening one emotion of that sensibility which so many comparatively
trifling causes can bring into exercise.

Will the hearers of the sentence just now repeated from the sacred book,
give a moment's attention to the effect it has on them? We might suppose
them accosted with the question, Would you find it difficult to say what
idea, or whether anything distinct enough to deserve the name of an idea,
has been impressed by the sound of words bearing so melancholy a
significance? And would you have to confess, that they excite no interest
which would not instantly give place to that of the smallest of your own
concerns, occurring to your thoughts; or would not leave free the tendency
to wander loose among casual fancies; or would not yield to feelings of
the ludicrous, at the sight of any whimsical incident? It would not
probably be unfair to suspect such faintness of apprehension, and such
unfixedness and indifference of thought, in the majority of any large
number of persons, though drawn together ostensibly to attend to matters
of gravest concern. And perhaps many of the most serious of them would
acknowledge it requires great and repeated efforts, to bring themselves to
such a contemplative realization of an important subject, that it shall
lay hold on the affections, though it should press on them, as in the
present instance, with facts and reflections of a nature the most strongly
appealing to a mournful sensibility.

That the "people are destroyed," is perceived to have the sound of a
lamentable declaration. But its import loses all force of significance in
falling on a state of feeling which, if resolvable into distinct
sentiments, would be expressed to some such effect as this:--that the
people's destruction, in whatever sense of the word, is, doubtless, a
deplorable thing, but quite a customary and ordinary matter, the
prevailing fact, indeed, in the general state of this world; that, in
truth, it would seem as if they were made but to be destroyed, for that
they have constantly been, in all imaginable ways, the subjects of
destruction; that, subjected in common with all living corporeal beings to
the doom of death, and to a fearful diversity of causes tending to inflict
it, they have also appeared, through their long sad history, consigned to
a spiritual and moral destruction, if that term be applicable to a
condition the reverse of wisdom, goodness, and happiness; that, in short,
such a sentence as that cited from the prophet, is too merely an
expression of what has been always and over the whole world self-evident,
to excite any particular attention or emotion.

Thus the destruction, in every sense of the word, of human creatures, is
so constantly obvious, as mingled and spread throughout the whole system,
that the mind has been insensibly wrought to that protective obtuseness
which (like the thickness of the natural clothing of animals in rigorous
climates) we acquire in defence of our own ease, against the aggrievance
of things which inevitably continue in our presence. An instinctive policy
to avoid feeling with respect to this prevailing destruction, has so
effectually taught us how to maintain the exemption, by all the requisite
sleights of overlooking, diverting, forgetting, and admitting deceptive
maxims of palliation, that the art or habit is become almost mechanical.
When fully matured, it appears like a wonderful adventitious faculty--a
power of evading the sight, of _not seeing_, what is obviously and
glaringly presented to view on all sides. There is, indeed, a dim general
recognition that such things are; the hearing of a bold denial of their
existence, would give an instant sense of absurdity, which would provoke a
pointed attention to them, the more perfectly to verify their reality; and
the perception how real and dreadful they are, might continue distinct as
long as we were in the spirit of contradicting and exploding that absurd
denial; but, in the ordinary state of feeling, the mind preserves an easy
dulness of apprehension toward the melancholy vision, and sees it as if it
saw it not.

This fortified insensibility may, indeed, be sometimes broken in upon with
violence, by the sudden occurrence of some particular instance of human
destruction, in either import of the word, some example of peculiar
aggravation, or happening under extraordinary and striking circumstances,
or very near us in place or interest. An emotion is excited of pity, or
terror, or horror; so strong, that if the person so affected has been
habitually thoughtless, and has no wish to be otherwise, he fears he shall
never recover his state of careless ease; or, if of a more serious
disposition, thinks it impossible he can ever cease to feel an awful and
salutary effect. This more serious person perhaps also thinks it must be
inevitable that henceforward his feelings will be more alive to the
miseries of mankind. But how obstinate is an inveterate habitual state of
the mind against any single impressions made in contravention to it! Both
the thoughtless and the more reflective man may probably find, that a
comparatively short lapse of time suffices, to relieve them from anything
more than slight momentary reminiscences of what had struck them with such
painful force, and to restore, in regard to the general view of the
acknowledged misery of the human race, nearly the accustomed tranquillity.
The course of feeling resembles a listless stream of water, which, after
being dashed into commotion, by a massive substance flung into it, or by
its precipitation at a rapid, relapses, in the progress of a few fathoms
and a few moments, into its former sluggishness of current.

But is it well that this should be the state of feeling, in the immediate
presence of the spectacle exhibiting the people under a process of being
destroyed? There must be a great and criminal perversion from what our
nature ought to be, in a tranquillity to which it makes no material
difference whether they be destroyed or saved; a tranquillity which would
hardly, perhaps, have been awaked to an effort of intercession at the
portentous sign of destruction revealed to the sight of Ornan; or which
might at the deluge have permitted the privileged patriarch to sink in a
soft slumber, at the moment when the ark was felt to be moving from its
ground. If the original rectitude of that nature had been retained by any
individual, he would be confounded to conceive how creatures having their
lot cast in one place, so near together, so much alike, and under such a
complication of connections and dependences, can yet really be so
insulated, as that some of them may behold, with immovable composure,
innumerable companies of the rest in such a condition, that it had been
better for them not to have existed.

To such a condition a vast multitude have been consigned by "the lack of
knowledge." And we have to appeal concerning them to whatever there is of
benevolence and conscience, in those who deem themselves happy instances
of exemption from this deplorable consignment; and are conscious that
their state of inestimable privilege is the result, under the blessing of
heaven, of the reception of information, of truth, into their minds.

If it were suggested to the well instructed in our companies to take an
account of the benefit they have received through the medium of knowledge,
they would say they do not know where to begin the long enumeration, or
how to bring into one estimate so ample a diversity of good. It might be
something like trying to specify, in brief terms, what a highly improved
portion of the ground, in a tract rude and sterile if left to itself, has
received from cultivation; an attempt which would carry back the
imagination through a progression of states and appearances, in which the
now fertile spots, and picture-like scenes, and commodious passes, and
pleasant habitations, may or must have existed in the advance from the
original rudeness. The estimate of what has ultimately been effected,
rises at each stage in this retrospect of the progress, in which so many
valuable changes and additions still require to be followed by something
more, to complete the scheme of improvement. In thus tracing backward the
condition of a now fair and productive place of human dwelling and
subsistence, it may easily be recollected, what a vast number of the
earth's inhabitants there are whose places of dwelling are in all those
states of worse cultivation and commodiousness, and what multitudes
leading a miserable and precarious life amidst the inhospitableness of the
waste, howling wilderness. Each presented circumstance of fertility or
shelter, salubrity or beauty, may be named as what is wanting to a much
greater number of the occupants of the world, than those to whom the
"lines are fallen in such pleasant places."

When, in like manner, a person richly possessed of the benefits imparted
by means of knowledge, finds, in attempting to recount them, that they
rise so fast on his view, in their variety, combinations, and gradations
from less to greater, as to overpower his computing faculty, he may be
reminded that this account of his wealth is, in truth, that of many other
men's poverty. And if, while these benefits are coming so numerously in
his sight, like an irregular crowd of loaded fruit-trees, one partially
seen behind the offered luxury of another, and others still descried,
through intervals, in the distance, he can imagine them all devastated and
swept away from him, leaving him in a scene of mental desolation,--and if
he shall then consider that nearly such is the state of the great
multitude,--he will surely feel that a deep compassion is due to so
depressed a condition of existence. And how strongly is its infelicity
shown by the very circumstance, that a being who is himself but very
imperfectly enlightened, and who is exposed to sorrow and doomed to death,
is nevertheless in a state to be able to look down upon the victims of the
"lack of knowledge" with profound commiseration. The degree of pity is the
measure of a conscious superiority.

We may say to persons so favored,--If knowledge has been made the cause
that you are, beyond all comparison, better qualified to make the short
sojourn on this earth to the greatest advantage, think what a fatal thing
that must be which condemns so many, whose lot is contemporary and in
vicinity with yours to pass through the most precious possibilities of
good unprofited, and at last to look back on life as a lost adventure. If
through knowledge you have been introduced into a new and superior world
of ideas and realities, and your intellectual being has there been brought
into exercise among the highest interests, and into communication with the
noblest objects, think of that condition of the soul to which this better
economy has no existence. If knowledge rendered efficacious has become, in
your minds, the light and joy of the Christian faith and hope, look at the
state of those, whose minds have never been cultivated to an ability to
entertain the principles of religious truth, even as mere intellectual
notions. You would not for the wealth of an empire consent to descend,
were it possible, from the comparative elevation to which you have been
raised by means of knowledge, into melancholy region of spirits abandoned
to ignorance.

But in this situation have the mass of the people been, from the time of
the prophet whose words we have cited, down to this hour.

The prophets had their exalted privilege of dwelling amidst the
illuminations of heaven effectually countervailed, as to any elation of
feeling it might have imparted, by the grief of beholding the daily
spectacle of the grossest manifestations and mischiefs of ignorance among
the people, for the very purpose of whose exemption from that ignorance it
was that they bore the sacred office. One of the most striking of the
characteristics by which their writings so forcibly seize the imagination
is, a strange continual fluctuation and strife of lustre and gloom,
produced by the intermingling and contrast of the emanations from the
Spirit of infinite wisdom, with those proceeding from the dark, debased
souls of the people. We are tempted to pronounce that nation not only the
most perverse, but the most unintelligent and stupid of all human tribes.
The revealed law of God in the midst of them; the prophets and other
organs of oracular communication; religious ordinances and emblems; facts,
made and expressly intended to embody truths, in long and various series;
the whole system of their superhuman government, constituted as a
school--all these were ineffectual to create so much just thought in their
minds, as to save them from the vainest and the vilest delusions and
superstitions.

But, indeed, this very circumstance, that knowledge shone on them from Him
who knows all things, may in part account for an intellectual perverseness
that appears so peculiar and marvellous. The nature of man is in such a
moral condition, that anything is the less acceptable for coming directly
from God; it being quite consistent, that the state of mind which is
declared to be "enmity against him," should have a dislike to his coming
so near, as to impart his communications by his immediate act, bearing on
them the fresh and sacred impression of his hand. The supplies for man's
temporal being are conveyed to him through an extended medium, through a
long process of nature and art, which seems to place the great First Cause
at a commodious distance; and those gifts are, on that account, more
welcome, on the whole, than if they were sent as the manna to the
Israelites. The manna itself might not have been so soon loathed, had it
been produced in what we call the regular course of nature. And with
respect to the intellectual communications which were given to constitute
the light of knowledge in their souls, there can, on the same principle,
be no doubt that the people would more willingly have opened their minds
to receive them and exercise the thinking faculties on them, if they could
have appeared as something originating in human wisdom, or at least as
something which, though primarily from a divine origin, had been long
surrendered by the Revealer, to maintain itself in the world by the
authority of reason only, like the doctrines worked out from mere human
speculation. But truth that was declared to them, and inculcated on them,
through a continual immediate manifestation of the Sovereign Intelligence,
had a glow of Divinity (if we may so express it) that was unspeakably
offensive to their minds, which therefore receded with instinctive recoil,
They were averse to look toward that which they could not see without
seeing God; and thus they were hardened in ignorance, through a reaction
of human depravity against the too luminous approach of the Divine
presence to give them wisdom.

But in whatever degree the case might be thus, as to the cause, the fact
is evident, that the Jewish people were not more remarkable for their
pre-eminence in privilege, than for their grossness of mental vision under
a dispensation specially and miraculously constituted and administered to
enlighten them. The sacred history of which they are the subject, exhibits
every mode in which the intelligent faculties may evade or frustrate the
truth presented to them; every way in which the decided preference for
darkness may avail to defy what might have been presumed to be
irresistible irradiations; every perversity of will which renders men as
accountable and criminal for being ignorant as for acting against
knowledge; and every form of practical mischief in which the natural
tendency of ignorance, especially wilful ignorance, is shown. A great part
of what the devout teachers of that people had to address to them,
wherever they appeared among them, was in reproach of their ignorance, and
in order, if possible, to dispel it. And were we to indulge our fancy in
picturing the forms and circumstances in which it was encountered by those
teachers, we might be sure of not erring much by figuring situations very
similar to what might occur in much later and nearer states of society. If
we should imagine one of these good and wise instructors going into a
promiscuous company of the people, and asking them, with a view at once to
see into their minds and inform them, say, ten plain questions, relative
to matters somewhat above the ordinary secular concerns of life, but
essential for them to understand, it would be a quite probable supposition
that he did not obtain from the whole company rational answers to more
than three, or two, or even one, of those questions; notwithstanding that
every one of them might be designedly so framed, as to admit of an easy
reply from the most prominent of the dictates of the "law and the
prophets," and from the right application of the memorable facts in the
national history of the Jews. In his earlier experiments he might be
supposed very reluctant to admit the fact, that so many of his countrymen,
in one spot, could have been so faithfully maintaining the ascendency of
darkness in their spirits, while surrounded by divine manifestations of
truth. He might be willing to suspect he had not been happy in the form of
words in which his queries had been conveyed. But it may be believed that
all his changes and adaptations of expression, to elicit from the contents
of his auditors' understandings something fairly answering to his
questions, might but complete the proof that the thing sought was not
there. And while he might be looking from one to another, with regret not
unmingled with indignation at an ignorance at once so unhappy and so
criminal, they probably might little care, excepting some slight feeling
of mortified pride, that they were thus proved to be nearly pagans in
knowledge within the immediate hearing of the oracles of God.

Or we may represent to ourselves this benevolent promoter of improvement
endeavoring to instruct such a company, not in the way of interrogation,
but in the ordinary manner of discourse, and _assuming_ that they actually
had in their minds those principles, those points of knowledge, which
would, on the former supposition of a course of questions, have qualified
them to make the proper replies. It may indeed be too much to imagine a
discerning man to entertain such a presumption; but supposing he did, and
proceeded upon it, you can well conceive what reception the reasonings,
advices, or reproofs, would find among the hearers, according to their
respective temperaments. Some would be content with knowing nothing at all
about the matter, which they would perhaps say, might be, for aught they
knew, something very wise; and, according to their greater or less degree
of patience and sense of decorum, would wait in quiet and perhaps sleepy
dulness for the end of the irksome lecture, or escape from it by a stolen
retreat, or a bold-faced exit. To others it would all seem ridiculous
absurdity, and they would readily laugh if any one would begin. A few,
possessed of some natural shrewdness, would set themselves to catch at
something for exception, with unadroit aim, but with good will for cavil.
While perhaps one or two, of better disposition, imperfectly descrying at
moments something true and important in what was said, and convinced of
the friendly intention of the speaker, might feel a transient regret for
what they would with honest shame call the stupidity of their own minds,
accompanied with some resentment against those to whose neglect it was
greatly attributable. The instructor also, as the signs grew evident to
him of the frustration of his efforts upon the invincible grossness of the
subjects before him, would become animated with indignation at the
incompetence or wicked neglect in the system and office of public
instruction, of which the intellectual condition of such a company of
persons might be taken as a proof and consequence. And in fact there is no
class more conspicuous in reprobation, in the solemn invectives of the
prophets, than those whose special and neglected duty it was to instruct
the Jewish people.

Now if such were the state of their intelligence, how would this friend of
truth and the people find, how would he have _expected_ to find, their
piety, their morals, and their happiness affected by such destitution of
knowledge? Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? We are
supposing them to be in ignorance of four parts out of five, or perhaps of
nine parts out of ten, of what the Supreme Wisdom was maintaining an
extraordinary dispensation to declare to them. Why to declare, but because
each particular in this divine promulgation was pointed to some
circumstance, some propensity, some temptation, in their nature and
condition, and was exactly fitted to be there applied as a rectifier and
guard? The revelations and signs from heaven were the sum of what the
Perfect Intelligence judged indispensable to be sent forth from him to his
subjects, as seen by him liable to be wrong; and could there be one
dictate or fact superfluous in such a communication? If not, consider the
case of minds in which one, and a second, and the far greater number, of
the points of information thus demonstrated to be necessary, had no place
to shine or exist; of which minds, therefore, the estimates, passions,
volitions, principles of action with the actions also, were in so many
instances abandoned to take their chance for good or evil. But _had_ they
any chance for good in such an abandonment? What principle in their nature
was to determine them to good, with an impulse that rendered needless the
rational discrimination of it by the light of truth? It were an
exceedingly probable thing truly, that some happy instinct, or some
guiding star of good fortune, should have beguiled into an unknowing
choice of what is right, that very nature which knowledge itself,
including a recognition of the will of God, is so often insufficient to
constrain to such a choice.

But further; the absence of knowledge is sure to be something more and
worse than simple ignorance. Even were that absence but a mere negation, a
vacancy of truth, (the terms truth and knowledge may be used for our
present purpose as nearly synonymous, for what is not truth is not
knowledge,) it would be by its effect as a _deficiency_, incalculably
injurious. But it could not remain a mere deficiency: the vacancy of truth
would commonly be found replenished with positive error. Not indeed
replenished, (we are speaking of uncultivated persons,) with a
comprehensive and arranged set of false notions; for there would not be
thinking enough to form opinions in any sufficient number to be distinctly
and specifically the opposites to the many truths that were absent; but a
few false notions, such as could hardly fail to take the place of absent
truth in the ignorant mind, however crude they might be, and however
deficient for constituting a full system of error, would be sure to dilate
themselves so as to have an operation at all the points where truth was
wanting. It is frightful to see what a space in an ignorant mind one false
notion can occupy, working nearly the same effect in many distinct
particulars, as if there had been so many distinct wrong principles, each
producing specifically its own bad effect. So that in that mind a few
false notions, and those the ones most likely to establish themselves
there, shall be virtually equivalent to a whole scheme of errors standing
formally in place of so many truths of which they are the reverse. And
thus the dark void of ignorance, instead of remaining a mere negation,
becomes filled with agents of perversion and destruction; as sometimes the
gloomy apartments of a deserted mansion have become a den of robbers and
murderers.

Such a friend of the people, then, as we were supposing to expend his life
and zeal on the object of rescuing them from their ignorance, would see in
that ignorance not only the privation of all direction and impulsion to
good, but a great positive force of determination toward evil.

But it may be alleged, that he would not find them _wholly_ destitute of
right information. True; but he would find that the small portion of
knowledge which an ignorant people did really possess, could be of little
avail. It is not only that, from the narrowness of its scope, knowledge so
scanty as to afford no principles directly adapted for application to a
vast number of matters of judgment and conduct, would of course be of
small use, though it _were_ efficient as far as it reached--of small use
though it _did_ produce that very limited quantity of good which ought to
be its proper share, in a due proportion to the larger amount of good to
be produced by a larger knowledge. This is not the whole of the
misfortune; it would not produce that proportionate share. For the fewer
are the points to which there is knowledge that can be applied, the less
availing is its application even to those few points. It shall be the kind
of knowledge apposite to them, and yet be nearly useless; from the obvious
cause, that a few just notions existing disconnected and confused among
the mass of vain and false ones, which will, like noxious weeds, infest
minds left in ignorance, are not _permitted_ by those bad associates to do
their duty. Weak by being few, insulated, unsupported, and dwelling among
vicious neighbors, they not only cannot perform their own due service, but
are liable to be seduced to that of the evil principles whose company they
are condemned to keep. The _conjunction_ of truths is of the utmost
importance for preserving the genuine tendency, and securing the
appropriate efficacy, of each. It is an unhappy "lack of knowledge" when
there is not enough to preserve, to what there is of it, the honest
beneficial quality of knowledge. How many of the follies, excesses, and
crimes, in the course of the world, have taken their pretended warrant
from some fragment of truth, dissevered from the connection of truths
indispensable to its right operation, and in that detached state easily
perverted into coalescence with the most pernicious principles, which
concealed and gave effect to their malignity under the falsified authority
of a truth.

There were many and melancholy exemplifications of all we have said of
ignorance, in the conduct of that ancient people at present in our view.
Doubtless a sad proportion of the iniquities which, by their necessary
tendency and by the divine vindictive appointment, brought plagues and
destruction upon them, were committed in violation of what they knew. But
also it was in no small part from blindness to the manifestation of truth
and duty incessantly confronting them, that they were betrayed into crimes
and consequent miseries. This is evident equally from the language in
which their prophets reproached their intellectual stupidity, and from the
surprise which they sometimes seem to have felt on finding themselves
involved in retributive suffering, for what they could not conceive to be
serious delinquencies. It appeared as if they had never so much as dreamed
of such a-consequence; and their monitors had to represent to them, that
it had been through their thoughtlessness of divine dictates and warnings,
if they did not _know_ that such proceedings must provoke such an
infliction.

How one portion of knowledge admitted, with the exclusion of other truths
equally indispensable to be known, may not only be unavailing, but may in
effect lend force to destructive error, is dreadfully illustrated in the
final catastrophe of that favored guilty nation. They were in possession
of the one important point of knowledge, that a Messiah was to come. They
held this assurance not slightly, but with strong conviction, and as a
matter of the utmost interest. But then, that this knowledge might have
its appropriate and happy effect, it was of essential necessity for them
to know also the character of this Messiah, and the real nature of his
great design. But this they closed up their understandings in a fatal
contentment not to know. Literally the whole people, with a diminutive
exception, had failed, or rather refused, to admit, as to that part of the
subject, the inspired declarations.

Now comes the consequence of knowing only one thing of several that
require to be inseparable in knowledge. They formed to themselves a false
idea of the Messiah, according to their own worldly imaginations; and
they extended the full assurance which they justly entertained of his
coming, to this false notion of what he was to be and to accomplish when
he should come. From this it was natural and inevitable that when the
true Messiah should come they would not recognize him, and that their
hostility would be excited against a person who, while demanding to be
acknowledged in that capacity, appeared without the characteristics
pictured in their vain imagination, and with directly opposite ones. And
thus they were placed in an incomparably worse situation for receiving
him with honor when he did appear, than if they had had no knowledge that
a Messiah was to come. For on that supposition they might have regarded
him as a most striking phenomenon, with curiosity and admiration, with
awe of his miraculous powers, and as little prejudice as it is possible
in any case for depravity and ignorance to feel toward sanctity and
wisdom. But this delusive pre-occupation of their minds formed a direct
grand cause for their rejecting Jesus Christ. And how fearful was the
final consequence of _this_ "lack of knowledge!" How truly, in all
senses, the people were destroyed! The violent extermination at length of
multitudes of them from the earth, was but as the omen and commencement
of a deeper perdition. And the terrible memorial is a perpetual
admonition what a curse it is _not to know_. For He, by the rejection of
whom these despisers devoted themselves to perish, while he looked on
their great city, and wept at the doom which he beheld impending, said,
_If_ them hadst _known_, even thou in this thy day.----

So much for that selected people:--we may cast a glance over the rest of
the ancient world, as exemplifying the pernicious effect of the want of
knowledge.

The ignorance which pervaded the heathen nations, was fully equal to the
utmost result that could have been calculated from all the causes
contributing to thicken the mental darkness. The traditional glimmering of
that knowledge which had been originally received by divine communication,
had long since become nearly extinct, having gone out in the act, as it
were, of lighting up certain fantastic inventions of doctrine, by ignition
of an element exhaled from the corruptions of the human soul. In other
words, the primary truths, imparted by the Creator to the early
inhabitants of the earth, gradually losing their clearness and purity, had
passed, by a transition through some delusive analogies, into the vanities
of fancy and notion which sprang from the inventive depravity of man;
which inventions carried somewhat of an authority stolen from the grand
truths they had superseded. And thus, if we except so much instruction as
we may conceive that the extraordinary and sometimes dreadful
interpositions of the Governor of the world might convey, unaccompanied
with declarations in language, (and it was in but an extremely limited
degree that these had actually the effect of illumination,) the human
tribes were surrendered to their own understanding for all that they were
to know and think. Melancholy predicament! The understanding, the
intellect, the reason, which had not sufficed for preserving the true
light from heaven, was to be competent to give light in its absence. Under
the disadvantage of this loss--after the setting of the sun--it was to
exercise itself on an unlimited diversity of important things, inquiring,
comparing, and deciding. All those things, if examined far, extended into
mystery. All genuine thinking was a hard repellent labor. Casual
impressions had a mighty force of perversion. The senses were not a medium
through which the intellect could receive ideas foreign to material
existence. The appetites and passions would infallibly occupy and actuate
the whole man. When by these his imagination was put in activity, its
gleams and meteors would be anything rather than lights of truth. His
interest, according to his gross apprehension of it, would in numberless
instances require, and therefore would gain, false judgments for
justification of the wrong manner of pursuing that interest. And all this
while, there was no grand standard and test to which the notions of things
could be brought. If there were some spirits of larger and purer thought,
that went out in the honest search of truth, they must have felt an
oppression of utter hopelessness in looking round on a world of doubtful
things, on no one of which they could obtain the dictate of a supreme
intelligence. There was no sovereign demonstrator in communication with
the earth, to tell benighted man what to think in any of a thousand
questions which arose to confound him. There were, instead, impostors,
magicians, vain theorists, prompted by ambition and superior native
ability to abuse the credulity of their fellow-mortals, which they did
with such success as to become their oracles, their dictators, or even
their gods. The multitude most naturally surrendered themselves to all
such delusions. If it may be conceived to have been possible that their
feeble and degraded reason, in the absence of divine light and of sound
human discipline, might by earnest exertion have attained in some small
degree to judge better that exertion was precluded by indolence, by the
immediate wants and unavoidable employments of life, by sensuality, by
love of amusement, by subjection, even of the mind, to superiors and
national institutions, and by the tendency of human individuals to fall,
if we may so express it, in dead conformity and addition to the lump.

The result of all these causes, the sum of all these effects, was, that
unnumbered millions of beings, whose value was in their intelligent and
moral nature, were, as to that nature, in a condition analogous to what
their physical existence would have been under a total and permanent
eclipse of the sun. It was perpetual night in their souls, with all the
phenomena incident to night, except the sublimity. While the material
economy, constituting the order of things which belonged to their temporal
existence, was in conspicuous manifestation around them, pressing with its
realities on their senses; while nature presented to them its open and
distinctly-featured aspect; while there was a true light shed on them
every morning from the sun; while they had constant experimental evidence
of the nature of the scene; and thus they had a clear knowledge of one
portion of the things connected with their existence--that portion which
they were soon to leave, and look back upon as a dream when one
awaketh;--all this while there was subsisting, present with them,
unapprehended except in faint and delusive glimpses, another order of
things involving their greatest interest, with no luminary to make that
apparent to them, after the race had willingly forgotten the original
instructions from their Creator.

The dreadful consequences of this "lack of knowledge," as appearing in the
religion and morals of the nations, and through these affecting their
welfare, equalled and even surpassed all that might by theory have been
presaged from the cause.

This ignorance could not annihilate the _principle_ of religion in the
spirit of man; but in taking away the awful repression of the idea of one
exclusive sovereign Divinity, it left that spirit to fabricate its
religion in its own manner. And as the creating of gods might be the most
appropriate way of celebrating the deliverance from the most imposing idea
of one Supreme Being, depraved and insane invention took this direction
with ardor. [Footnote: Those who have read Goethe's Memoirs of Himself,
may recollect the part where that late idolized "patriarch" of German
literature tells of the lively interest he had at one time felt in shaping
out of his imagination and philosophy a theology, beginning with the
fabrication of a god (or gods,) and amplified into a system of principles,
existences, and relations.] The mind threw a fictitious divinity into its
own phantasms, and into the objects in the visible world. It is amazing to
observe how, when one solemn principle was taken away, the promiscuous
numberless crowd of almost all shapes of fancy and of matter became, as it
were, instinct with ambition, and mounted into gods. They were alternately
the toys and the tyrants of their miserable creator. They appalled him
often, and often he could make sport with them. For overawing him by their
supposed power, they made him a compensation by descending to a fellowship
with his follies and vices. But indeed this was a condition of their
creation; they _must_ own their mortal progenitor by sharing his
depravity, even amidst the lordly domination assigned to them over him and
the universe. We may safely affirm, that the mighty artificer of
deifications, the corrupt soul of man, never once, in its almost infinite
diversification of device in their production, struck out a form of
absolute goodness. No, if there were ten thousand deities, there should
not be one that should be authorized by perfect rectitude in itself to
punish _him_; not one by which it should be possible for him to be rebuked
without having a right to recriminate.

Such a pernicious creation of active delusions it was that took the place
of religion in the absence of knowledge. And to this intellectual
obscuration, and this legion of pestilent fallacies, swarming like the
locusts from the smoke of the bottomless pit in the vision of St. John,
the fatal effect on morals and happiness corresponded. Indeed the mischief
done there, perhaps even exceeded the proportion of the ignorance and the
false theology; conformably to the rule, that anything wrong in the mind
will be the _most_ wrong where it comes the nearest to its ultimate
practical effect--except when in this operation outward it is met and
checked by some foreign counteraction.

The people of those nations (and the same description is applicable to
modern heathens) did not know the essential nature of perfect goodness, or
virtue. How should they know it? A depraved mind would not find in itself
any native conception to give the bright form of it. There were no living
examples of it. The men who held the pre-eminence in the community were
generally, in the most important points, its reverse. It was for the
_Divine_ nature to have presented, in a manifestation of itself, the
archetype of perfect rectitude, whence might have been derived the
modified exemplar for human virtue. And so _would_ the idea of perfect
moral excellence have come to dwell and shine in the understanding, if it
had been the True Divinity that men beheld in their contemplations of a
superior existence. But when the gods of their heaven were little better
than their own evil qualities, exalted to the sky to be thence reflected
back upon them invested with Olympian charms and splendors, their ideas of
deity would evidently combine with the causes which made it impossible for
them to conceive a perfect model for human excellence. See the mighty
labor of human depravity to confirm its dominion! It would translate
itself to heaven, and usurp divinity, in order to come down thence with a
sanction for man to be wicked,--in order, by a falsification of the
qualities of the Supreme Nature, to preclude his forming the true idea of
what would be perfect rectitude in his own.

A system which could thus associate all the modes of turpitude with the
most lofty and illustrious forms of existence, would go far toward
vitiating essentially the entire theory of moral good and evil. And it
would in a great measure defraud of their practical efficacy any just
principles that might, after all, maintain their place in the convictions
of the understanding, and assert at times their claim with a voice which
not even all this ruination could silence.

But, how small was the number of pure moral principles, (if indeed any,)
that among the people of the heathen nations _did_ maintain themselves in
the convictions of the understanding. The privation of divine light gave
full freedom, if there was any disposition to take such license, for every
perverse speculation which could operate toward abolishing those
principles in the natural reason of the species. What disposition there
would be to take it may be imagined, when the abolishing of those
principles was evidently to be also the destruction of all intrinsic
authority in the practical rules founded on them, which destruction would
confer an exemption infinitely desirable. The freedom for such thinking
would infallibly be taken, in its utmost extent; and in fact the
speculation was stimulated by so mighty a force of the depraved passions,
that it went beyond the primary intention: it not only annulled the right
principles and rules, but, not stopping at such negation, presumed to set
forth opposite ones, so that the name and repute of virtues was given to
iniquities without number. It is deplorable to consider how large a
proportion of all the vices and crimes of which mankind were ever guilty,
have actually constituted, in some or other of their tribes and ages, a
part of the approved moral and religious system. It is questionable
whether we could select from the worst forms of turpitude any one which
has not been at least admitted among the authorized customs, if not even
appointed among the institutes of the religion, of some portion of the
human race. And depravities thus become licensed or sacred would have a
fatal facility of communicating somewhat of their quality to all the other
parts of the moral system. For this sanction both would reinforce their
own power of infection, and would so beguile away all repugnance and
counteraction, that the rest of the customs and institutes would readily
admit the contamination, and become assimilated in evil; as the Mohamedans
have no care to avoid contact with their neighbors who are ill of the
plague, since the plague has the warrant of heaven. Wherever, therefore,
in the imperfect notices afforded us of ancient nations, we find any one
virulent iniquity holding an authorized place in custom or religion, we
may confidently make a very large inference, though record were silent, as
to the corresponding quality that would pervade the remainder of the moral
system of those nations. Indeed the inference is equally justified whether
we regard such a sanction and establishment of a flagrant iniquity as a
cause, or as an effect. Suppose this sanction of some one enormity to
_precede_ the general and equal corruption of morals,--how powerfully
would it tend to bear them all down to a conformity in depravation.
Suppose it to be (the more natural order) the result and completion of
that corruption--how vicious must have been the previous state which could
go easily and consistently to such a consummation.

Everything that, under the advantage given by this destitution of
knowledge, operated to the destruction of the true morality, both in
theory and practice, must have had a fatal augmentation of its power in
that part especially of this ignorance which respected hereafter. The
doctrine of a future existence and retribution did not, in any rational
and salutary form, interfere in the adjustment of the economy of life. The
shadowy notion of a future state which hovered about the minds of the
pagans, a vague apparition which alternately came and vanished, was at
once too fantastic and too little of a serious belief to be of any avail
to preserve the rectitude, or to maintain the authority, of the
distinction between right and wrong. It was not denned enough, or noble
enough, or convincing enough, or of judicial application enough, either to
assist the efficacy of such moral principles as might be supposed to be
innate in a rational creature, and competent for prescribing to it some
virtues useful and necessary to it even if its present brief existence
were all; or to enjoin effectually those higher virtues to which there can
be no adequate inducement but in the expectation of a future life.

Imagine, if you can, the withdrawment of this doctrine from the faith of
those who have a solemn persuasion of it as a part of revealed truth.
Suppose the grand idea either wholly obliterated, or faded into a dubious
trace of what it had been, or transmuted into a poetic dream of classic or
barbarian mythology,--and how many moral principles will be found to have
vanished with it. How many things, before rendered imperative by this
great article of faith, would have ceased to be duties, or would continue
such only on the strength, and to the extent of the requirement, of some
very minor consideration which might remain to enforce them, and that
probably in a most deteriorated practical form. The sense of obligation,
if continuing to recognize the nature of duty in things which could then
no longer retain any such quality, otherwise than as looking to the most
immediate and tangible benefit or harm, the lowest of moral calculations,
would be reduced to a vulgar and reptile principle. The best of its
strength, and all its dignity, would be departed from it when it could
refer no more to eternity, an invisible world, and a judgment to come. It
would therefore have none of that emphasis of impression which can
sometimes dismay and quell the most violent passions, as by the mysterious
awe of the presence of a spirit. It would be deprived of that which forms
the chief power of conscience. And it would be impotent in any attempt--if
so absurd an attempt could be dreamed of--to uphold, in the more dignified
character of _principle_, that care of what is right which would be
constantly degenerating into mere policy, and rationally justifying itself
in doing so.

The withdrawment, we said, of the grand truth in question, from a man's
faith, (together with everything of taste and _habit_ which that faith
might have created,) would necessarily break up the government over his
conscience. How evident then is it, that among the people of the heathen
lands, under a disastrous ignorance of this and all the other sublime
truths, that are the most fit to rule an immortal being during his sojourn
on earth, no man could feel any peremptory obligation to be universally
virtuous, or adequate motives to excite an endeavor to approach that high
attainment, even were there not a perfect inability to form the true
conception of it. And then how much of course it was that the general mass
would be dreadfully depraved. Though a momentary surprise may at times
have seized us on the occurrence, in their history, of some monstrous form
of flagitiousness, we do not wonder at beholding a state of the people
such in its general character as the sacred writers exhibit, in
descriptions to which the other records of antiquity add their confirming
testimony and ample illustrations. For while the immense aggregate is
displayed to the mental view, as pervaded, agitated, and stimulated, by
the restless forces of appetites and passions, and those forces operating
with an impulse no less perverted than strong, let it be asked what kinds
and measure of restraint there could be upon such a world of creatures so
actuated, to keep them from rushing in all ways into evil. Conceive, if
you can, the fiction of such a multitude, so actuated, having been placed
under an adjustment of restraints competent to withhold them. And then
take off, in your imagination, one after another of these, to see what
will follow. Take off, at last, all the coercion that can be applied
through the belief of a judgment to come, and a future state of
retribution;--by doing which you would also empower the race to defy, if
any recognition of him remained, the Supreme Governor, whose possible
inflictions, being confined to the present life, might at any time be
escaped by shortening it. All these sacred bonds being thus dissolved,
behold this countless multitude abandoned to be carried or driven the
whole length to which the impulses of their appetites and passions would
go,--or could go before they were arrested by some obstruction opposed to
them from a quarter foreign to conscience. And the main and final thing in
reserve to limit their career, after all the worthier restraints were
annihilated, would be only this,--the resistance which men's self-interest
opposes to one another's bad inclinations. A gloomy and humiliating
spectacle truly it is, to be offered by a world of rational and moral
agents, if we see that, instead of a repression of the propensity to
wickedness by reverence of the Sovereign Judge, and the anticipation of a
future life, there is merely a restraint put on its external activity, and
that by the force of men's fears of one another. But nearly to this it
was, as the only strong restraint, that those heathens were left by their
ignorance, or a notion so slight as to be little better, of a future
existence and judgment.

Not but that it has been, in all nations and times, of infinite practical
service that there is involved in the constitution of the world a law by
which a coarse self-interest thus interposes to obstruct in a degree the
violent propensity to evil; for it has prevented, under Providence, more
actual mischief, beyond comparison more, than all other causes together.
The man inclined to perpetrate an iniquity, of the nature of a wrong to
his fellow-mortals, is apprized that he shall provoke a reaction, to
resist or punish him; that he shall incur as great an evil as that he is
disposed to do, or greater; that either a revenge regardless of all
formalities of justice will strike him, or a process instituted in
organized society will vindictively reach his property, liberty, or life.
This defensive array, of all men against all men, compels to remain shut
up within the mind an immensity of wickedness which is there burning to
come out into action. But for this, Noah's flood had been rendered
needless. But for this, our planet might have been accomplishing its
circles round the sun for thousands of years past without a human
inhabitant. Through the effect of this essential law, in the social
economy, it was possible for the race to subsist, notwithstanding all that
ignorance of the Divine Being, of heavenly truth, and of uncorrupt
morality, in which we are contemplating the heathen nations as benighted.
But while thus it prevented utter destruction, it had no corrective
operation on the depravity of the heart. It was not through a judgment of
things being essentially evil that they were forborne; it was not by the
power of conscience that wicked propensity was kept under restraint. It
was only by a hold on the meaner principles of his nature, that the
offender in will was arrested in prevention of the deed. And so the race
were such virtually, as they would have hastened to become actually, could
they have ceased to be afraid of one another's strength and retaliation.'
[Footnote: It is not very uncommon to hear credit given to human nature
apparently in sober simplicity, for the whole amount of the negation of
bad actions _thus_ prevented, as just so much genuine virtue, by some
dealers in moral and theological speculation.] But even this restraint
imposed by mutual apprehension, important as its operation was in the
absence of nobler influences, was yet of miserably partial efficacy. Men
were continually breaking through this protective provision, and committed
against one another a stupendous amount of crimes. And no wonder, when we
consider that the evil passions, endowed as they seem to be with a
portentous excess of vigor by the very circumstance of _being_ evil, (as
the demoniacs were the strongest of men,) are exasperated the more by a
certain degree of awe impressed on them by the defensive attitude of their
objects. When strength so great might thus be irritated to greater, and
when there were no "powers of the world to come," to invade the dreadful
cavern of iniquity in the mind, and there combat and subdue it, there
would often be no want of the audacity to send it forth into action at all
hazards, and in defiance and contempt of the restraining force which
operated through mutual fear of vindictive reaction.

But it may be said, perhaps, that in thus representing the people who were
destitute of divine knowledge, as left with hardly any other control on
their bad dispositions than one of a quality little more dignified than
fetters literally binding the limbs, we are underrating what there still
was among them to take effect in the way of _instruction_. Even this
coarse principle of control itself, it may be alleged, this prudence of
reciprocal fear became refined into something worthier of moral agents.
For it passed, by a compromise among the species, from the form of
individual self-defence and revenge into that of institutions of _law_;
and legislation, it will be said, is a teacher of morals. Retaining,
indeed, the rough expedient of physical force, in readiness to coerce or
punish where it cannot deter by warning, it yet strongly endeavors the
repression of evil emotions by means of right _principles_, marked out,
explained, and inculcated. It _teaches_ these principles as dictates of
reason and justice, while it embodies them in the menacing authority of
enactments. There was therefore, it may be pleaded, as much _instruction_
among the ancient heathen as there was legislation.

In answering this, we may forego any rigorous examination of the quality
of principles and precepts enunciated by legislators who themselves, in
common with the people, looked on human existence and duty through a worse
than twilight medium; who had no divine oracles to impart wisdom, and
were, some of them, reduced to begin their operations with the lie that
pretended they had such oracles; from all which it was inevitable that
some of their maxims and injunctions would even in their efficacy be
noxious, as being at variance with eternal rectitude. It is enough to
observe, on the claims of legislation to the character of a moral
preceptor, that it retained so palpably, after all, the nature of the
gross element from which it was a refinement or transfusion, that even
what it might teach right, as to the matter, it was unable to teach with
the right moral impression. With all its gravity, and phrases of wisdom,
and show of homage to virtue, it was, and was plainly descried to be, that
very same _Noli me tangere,_ in a disguised form; a less provoking and
hostile manner only of keeping up the state of preparation for defensive
war. Every one knew right well that the pure approbation and love of
goodness were not the source of law; but that it was an arrangement
originating and deriving all its force from self-interest; a contrivance
by which each man was glad to make the collective strength of society his
guarantee against his neighbor's interest and wish to do him wrong. While
pleased that others were under this restraint, he was often vexed at being
under it also himself; but on the whole deemed this security worth the
cost of suffering the interdict on his own inclinations,--perhaps as
believing other men's to be still worse than his, or seeing their strength
to be greater. We repeat that a preceptive system thus estimated could
not, even had the principles to which it gave expression in the mandates
of law been no other than those of the soundest morality, have impressed
them with the weight of sanctity on the conscience. And all this but tends
to show the necessity that the rules and sanctions of morality, to come
with simplicity and power on the human mind, should primarily emanate, and
be acknowledged as emanating, from a Being exalted above all implication
and competition of interest with man.

Thus we see, that the pagan ignorance precluded one grand requisite for
crushing the dominion of iniquity; for there was nothing to insinuate or
to force its way into the recesses of the soul, to apply _there_ a
repressive power to the depraved ardor which glowed in the passions. That
was left, inaccessible and inextinguishable, as the subterranean fires in
a volcanic region. And in the mighty impulse to evil with which it was
continually operating as an energy of feeling, it compelled the
subservience of the intellect; and thus combined the passions with a
faculty skilful to guide their direction, to diversify their objects, to
invent expedients, and to seize and create occasions. What was it that
this intelligent depravity would stop short of accomplishing? Reflect on
the extent of human genius, in its powers of invention, combination, and
adaptation; and then think of all this faculty, in an immense number of
minds, through many ages, and in every imaginable variety of situation,
exerted with unremitting activity in aid of the wrong propensities.
Reflect how many ideas, apt and opportune for this service, would spring
up casually, or be suggested by circumstances, or be attained by the
earnest study of beings goaded in pursuit of change and novelty. The
simple modes of iniquity were put under an active ministry of art, to
combine, innovate, and augment. And so indefatigable was its exercise,
that almost all conceivable forms of immorality were brought to
imagination, most of them into experiment; and the greater number into
prevailing practice, in those nations: insomuch that the sated monarch
would have imposed as difficult a task on ingenuity in calling for the
invention of a new vice, as of a new pleasure. They would perhaps have
been nearly identical demands when he was the person to be pleased.

Such are some of the most obvious illustrations that the absence of
knowledge was a cause, and added in an unknown measure to the strength of
all other causes, of the excessive corruption in the heathen nations. And
if this depravity of a world of moral agents did not, contemplated simply
as a destruction of their _rectitude_, appear equivalent to the gravest
import of the terms "the people are destroyed," the _misery_ inseparable
from the depravity instantly comes in our view to complete their
verification.

We are aware that the wickedness and misery of the ancient world, as
asserted in illustration of the natural effect of estrangement from divine
truth, are apt to be regarded as of the order of topics which have
dwindled into insignificance, worn out by being repeated just because they
have often been repeated before; a sort of exhausted quarries and dried-up
wells. There is a certain class of vain and sneering mortals, in whose
conceit nothing is such proof of superior sense as discarding the
greatest number of topics and arguments as obsolete or impertinent. It is
to be reckoned on that some of these, on hearing again the old maxims,
that a people without divine instruction must be a vicious one, and that a
vicious people must be an unhappy one,--and those maxims accompanied with
a description of the old pagan world as illustrative evidence,--will be
prompt to let forth their comments in some such strain as the
following:--"The state of the ancient heathens, thus brought upon us in
one cheap declamation more, is now a matter of trivial import, just fit to
give some show and exaggeration to the stale common-place, that ignorance
is likely to produce depravity, and that depravity and misery are likely
enough to go together. The pagans might be wretched enough; and perhaps
also the matter has been extravagantly magnified for the service of a
favorite theme, or to make a rhetorical show. At any rate, it is not now
worth while to go so far back to concern ourselves about it. The ancient
heathens had their day and their destiny, and it is of little importance
to us what they were or suffered."

It is fortunate, we may reply, to be "wiser than the ancients," without
the trouble of _learning_ anything by means of them. It is fortunate,
also, to have ascertained how much of all that ever existed can teach us
nothing. We have a signal improvement in the fashion of wisdom, when that
high endowment may be possessed as a thing distinct from compass of
thought, from study of causes and effects as illustrated on the great
scale, from aptitude to be instructed by the past, and from contemplation
of the divine government as carried over a wide extent of time. But indeed
this is not a privilege peculiar to this later day. In any former age
there were men in sufficient number who were wise enough to be indifferent
to all but immediate passing events, as knowing no lessons that persons
like them had to learn from remoter views, looking either into the past or
the future; who could even have before them the very monuments of awful
events that were gone by, without perceiving inscribed on them any
characters for contemplation to read. It is not impossible there might be
persons who could plan their schemes, and debate their questions, and even
follow their amusements, quite exempt from solemn reflections, within view
of the ruins of Jerusalem, after the Roman legions had left it and its
myriads of dead to silence. Any reference to that dreadful spectacle, as
an example of the consequences of the ignorance and wickedness of a
people, might have been heard with unconcern, and lightly passed over as
foreign to the matters requiring their attention: it was all over with the
people dead, and the people alive had their own concerns to mind. But
would not exactly such as these have been the men most likely to fall into
the vices and impieties which would provoke the next avenging visitation,
and to perish in it? In all times, the triflers with the great
exemplifications of the connection of depravity with misery and ruin, who
thought it but an impertinent moralizing that attempted to recall such
funereal spectacles for admonition, were fools, whatever self-complacency
they might feel in a habit of thinking more fitted, they would perhaps
say, for making our best advantage of the world as we find it. And we of
the present time are convicted of exceeding stupidity, if we think it not
worth while to go a number of ages back to contemplate the mass of
mankind, the wide world of beings such as ourselves, sunk in darkness and
wretchedness, and to consider what it is that is taught by so melancholy
an exhibition. What is to give fulness of evidence to an instruction, if a
world be too narrow; what is to give it weight, if a world be too light?

It is to be acknowledged, that the mental darkness which we are
representing as so greatly the cause of the wickedness and unhappiness of
those nations of old, had the effect of protecting them, in a measure,
from some kinds of suffering. They had not, as we have been observing,
illumination enough, to have conscience enough, for inflicting the
severest pains of remorse; and for oppressing them with a distinct
alarming apprehension of a future account. But that they were unhappy,
was practically acknowledged in the very quality of what they ardently
and universally sought as the highest felicities of existence. Those
delights were violent and tumultuous, in all possible ways and degrees
estranged from reflection, and adverse to it. The whole souls of great
and small, in the most barbarous and in the more polished state, were
passionately set on revelry, on expedients for inflaming licentiousness
to madness; or concourses of multitudes for pomps, celebrations, shows,
games, combats; on the riots of exultation and revenge after victories.
The ruder nations had, in their way, however pitiable on the score of
magnificence, their grand festive, triumphal, and demoniac confluxes and
revellings. To these joys of tumult, the people of the savage and the
more cultivated nations sacrificed everything belonging to the peaceful
economy of life, with a desperate, frantic fury. All this was the
confession that there was little felicity in the heart or in the home.
Nor was it found in these resources; if the wild elation might be
mistaken for happiness while it lasted, it was brief in each instance,
and it subsided in an aggravated dreariness of the soul.

The fact of their being unhappy had a still more gloomy attestation in the
mutual enmity which seems to have been of the very essence of life so
vital a principle, that it could not be spared for an hour. No, they could
not live without this luxury drawn from the fountains of death! What is
the most conspicuous material of ancient history, what is it that glares
out the most hideously from that darkness and oblivion in which the old
world is veiling its aspect, but the incessant furies of miserable mortals
against their fellow-mortals, "hateful and hating one another?" We cannot
look that way but we see the whole field covered with inflicters and
sufferers, not seldom interchanging those characters. If that field widens
to our view, it is still, to the utmost line to which the shade clears
away, a scene of cruelty, oppression, and slavery; of the strong trampling
on the weak, and the weak often attempting to bite at the feet of the
strong; of rancorous animosities and murderous competitions of persons
raised above the mass of the community; of treacheries and massacres; and
of war between hordes, and cities, and nations, and empires; war _never_,
in spirit, intermitted, and suspended sometimes in act only to acquire
renewed force for destruction, or to find another assemblage of hated
creatures to cut in pieces. Powerful as "the spirit of the first-born
Cain" has continued, down to our age, and in the most improved divisions
of mankind, there was, nevertheless, in the ancient pagan race, (as there
is in some portions of the modern,) a more complete, uncontrolled
actuation of the all-killing, all-devouring fury, a more absolute
possession of Moloch.

Now it is _as misery_ that we are exhibiting all this depravity. To be
thus, _was suffering_. The disease and the pain are inseparable in the
description, and they were so in the reality. And both together,
inevitably seizing on beings who had rejected or lost divine knowledge,
maintained a hold as fatal and invincible as that of the intervolved
serpents of Laocoon.

It is true, that a comprehensive estimate of the state of the people we
are contemplating, would bring in view several minor circumstances which,
though not availing to change materially the effect of the picture, are
themselves of less gloomy color. But at the same time such an estimate
would include other forms also of infelicity, besides those which were at
once the result and punishment of depravity, the stings with which sin
rewarded the infatuation that loved it. If the design had been to exhibit
anything like a general view, we must have taken account of such
particulars as these: the unhappiness of being without an assurance of an
all-comprehending and merciful Providence, and of wanting therefore the
best support in sorrow and calamity; the insuppressible impatience, or the
deep melancholy, with which the more thoughtful persons must have seen
departing from life, leaving them hopeless of ever meeting again in a life
elsewhere, the relations or associates who were dear to them in spite of
the prevailing effect of paganism to destroy philanthropy; and the gloomy
sentiment with which they must have thought of their own continual
approach toward death; a sentiment not always unaccompanied with certain
intimidating hints and hauntings of possibilities in the darkness beyond
that confine. But the more limited intention in the preceding description
has been to illustrate their unhappiness as inflicted by their depravity,
necessarily consequent on their ignorance. And what words so true, so
irresistibly prompted at the view of such a scene, as those pronounced of
a nation that at once despised the pagans and imitated them,--"The people
are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us not be suspected of having lost sight of the fact, that vice and
misery have, in our nature, a deeper source than ignorance; or of being so
absurd as to imagine that if the inestimable truths unknown to the heathen
world had been, on the contrary, in all men's knowledge, but a slight
portion of the depravity and wretchedness we have described could then
have had an existence. To say, that under long absence of the sun any
tract of terrestrial nature _must infallibly_ be reduced to desolation, is
not to say or imply, that under the benignant influence of that luminary
the same region must, as necessarily and unconditionally, be a scene of
beauty; but the only hope, for the only possibility, is for the field
visited by much of that sweet influence. And it were an absurdity no less
gross in the opposite extreme to the one just mentioned, to assert the
uselessness, for rectifying the moral world, of a diffusion of the
knowledge which shall compel men to see what is wrong; to deny that the
impulses of the corrupt passions and will must suffer some abatement of
their force and daring when encountered, like Balaam meeting the angel, by
a clear manifestation of their bad and ruinous tendency, by a convinced
judgment, a protesting conscience, and the aspect of the Almighty
Judge,--instead of their being under the tolerance of a judgment not
instructed to condemn them, or, (as ignorance is sure to quicken into
error,) perverted to abet them.




Section II.



From this view of the prevalence and malignant effects of ignorance among
the people of the ancient world, both Jews and Gentiles, we may come
down, with a few brief notices in passing over the long subsequent
periods, towards our own times. For any attempt to prosecute the object
through the ages and regions of later heathenism, (with the infatuated
Judaism still more destructive to its subjects,) would be to lose
ourselves in a boundless scene of desolation, an immense amplitude of
darkness, frightfully alive throughout with the activity of all noxious
and hideous things.

But by this time we are become aware how continually we are driven upon
what will be in hazard of appearing an exaggerated phraseology; insomuch
that we are almost afraid of accepting the epithets of description and
aggravation which offer themselves as most appropriate to the subject.
There are some self-complacent persons whose minds are so unapt to
recognize the magnitude of a subject, or so averse perhaps to the
contemplation of it if it be of tragical aspect, that strong terms
accumulated to exhibit even what surpasses in its plain reality all the
powers of language, offend them as declamatory exaggeration. Let it then
be just observed, without one ambitious epithet, that since that period
when ancient history, strictly so named, left off describing the state of
mankind, more than a myriad of millions of our race have been on earth,
and quitted it without one ray of the knowledge the most important to
spirits sojourning here, and going hence.

But while any attempt to carry the representation of the fatal effects of
ignorance over the extent of so dreary a scene is declined, let it not be
forgotten that they have been an awful reality; that they have actually
existed, in time, and place, and number of victims; that there actually
_were_ the men, and so many men, who exemplified, and in so many ways, the
truth we are illustrating. And a truth which has its demonstration in
facts ought to come with the weight of all the facts that we believe ever
_did_ demonstrate it. When they are not presented in breadth and detail
prominently in our view, we are apt to lose the due effect of our knowing
them to have existed.

It will be enough to advert very briefly to the Mohammedan imposture,
though that is perhaps the most signal instance within all time, of a
malignant delusion maintained directly and immediately by ignorance, by an
absolute determination and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one new
idea. Tenets involving the most palpable impossibilities, and asserted in
self-contradictory terms, must stand inviolable to all question or
controversy; literature must be scouted as a profane folly; not a
principle of true philosophy is to be admitted; hardly is an application
of the plainest mechanics to improve a machine or implement to be
tolerated; or an infidel is to be only _pardoned_, through contempt, for a
successful obtrusion of science to render the most important service,--to
save, for instance, a Mussulman ship-with its proud, besotted commander
and crew from destruction, [Footnote: There is a very curious example of
this related in Dr Clarke's Travels.] lest an acknowledgment made to
science should allow one momentary surmise of imperfection to insult the
all-sufficiency and sanctity of the unalterable creed and institutes; lest
any diminutive crevice should be made on any side of the temple of the
vile superstition, for the passage of one glimpse of true light to annoy
the foul fiend that dwells there, invested "in the dunnest smoke of hell."
Not, however, that this is the policy of doubt and apprehension, the
evading and repelling caution of men who suspect themselves to be wrong
and dread being forced to meet the proof. For the subjects of this
execrable usurpation on the human understanding have, in general, the
firmest assurance that all things in the system are right: it has itself
secured them against _knowing_ anything that could discompose their sense
of certainty. No fell savage, or serpent, or monster, ever had a more
perfect instinct to avail itself of an impervious obscurity for its
lurking-place, than this imposture has shown to keep out all mental light
from its realm. The delusion is so strong and absolute in ignorance, is so
identified with it, and so systematically repels at all points the
approach of knowledge, that it is difficult to conceive a mode of its
extermination that shall not involve some fearful destruction, in the most
literal sense, of the people whom it possesses. And such a catastrophe it
is probable the great body of them, in the temper of mind prevailing among
them at this hour, would choose to incur by preference, we do not say to a
serious, patient consideration of the true religion, but even to the
admission among them of a system merely favoring knowledge in general, an
order of measures which should urge upon the adults, and peremptorily
enforce for the children, a discipline of intellectual improvement. There
would be little national hesitation of choice, (at least in the central
regions of the dominion of this hateful imposture,) between the
introduction of any general system of expedients for driving them from
their stupefaction into something like thinking and learning, and a
general plague, to rage as long as any remained for victims. [Footnote: In
the interval since this was written, some change has taken place in favor
of the admission of the elements of knowledge, in the capital, and in the
second city of the Mohammedan regions; but with very slight alterative
influence on the mass; and with respect to the faith, probably none at
all. Within this interval, also, the central power has been hastening
rapidly to its catastrophe.]

       *       *       *       *       *

But let us now look, for a moment, at the intellectual state of the people
denominated Christian, during the ages preceding the Reformation. The best
of all the acquisitions by earth from heaven, Christianity, might have
seemed to bring with it an inevitable necessity of a great and permanent
difference soon to be effected, in regard to the competence of men's
knowledge to prevent their destruction. It was as if, in the physical
system, some one production, far more salutary to life than all the other
things furnished from the elements, had been reserved by the Creator to
spring up in a later age, after many generations of men had been
languishing through life, and prematurely dying, from the deficient virtue
of their sustenance and remedies. The image of the inestimable plant had
been shown to the prophets in their visions, but the reality was now given
to the world; it was of "wholly a right seed," "had the seed in itself,"
and claimed to be cultivated by the people, who in every land were
suffering the maladies which it had the properties to heal. But, while by
the greater part of mankind it was not accounted worth admission to a
place on their blasted, desolated soil, the manner in which its virtue was
frustrated among those who pretended to esteem it, as it was, the best
gift of the divine beneficence, is recorded in eternal reproach of the
Christian nations.

As the hostility of heathenism, in the direct endeavors to extirpate the
Christian religion, became evidently hopeless, in the nations within the
Roman empire, there was a grand change of the policy of evil; and all
manner of reprobate things, heathenism itself among them, rushed as by
general conspiracy into treacherous conjunction with Christianity,
retaining their own quality under the sanction of its name, and by a rapid
process reducing it to surrender almost everything distinctive of it but
that dishonored name: and all this under protection of the "gross darkness
covering the people." There were indeed in existence the inspired oracles,
and these could not be essentially falsified. But there was no lack of
expedients and pre-texts for keeping them in a great measure secreted. It
might be done under a pretence that reverence for their sanctity required
they should be secluded as within the recesses of a temple, nor be there
consulted but by consecrated personages; a pretence excellently contrived,
since it was its own security against exposure, the people being thus kept
unaware that the sacred writings themselves expressly invited popular
inspection, by declaring themselves addressed to mankind at large. The
deceivers were not worse off for the other facilities. In the progress of
translation, the holy Scriptures could be intercepted and stopped short in
a language but little less unintelligible than the original ones to the
bulk of the people, in order that this "profane vulgar" might never hear
the very words of God, but only such report as it should please certain
men, at their discretion, to give of what he had said; men, however, of
whom the majority were themselves too ignorant to cite it in even a
falsified import. But though the people had understood the language, in
the usage of social converse, there was a grand security against them in
keeping them so destitute of the knowledge of letters, that the Bible, if
such a rare thing ever could happen to fall into any of their hands, would
be no more to them than a scroll of hieroglyphics. When to this was added,
the great cost of a copy of so large a book before the invention of
printing, it remained perhaps just worth while, (and it would be a matter
of no difficulty or daring,) to make it, in the maturity of the system, an
offence, and sacrilegious invasion of sacerdotal privilege, to look into a
Bible. If it might seem hard thus to constitute a new sin, in addition to
the long list already denounced by the divine law, amends were made by
indulgently rescinding some articles in that list, and qualifying the
principles of obligation with respect to them all.

In this latency of the sacred authorities, withdrawn from all
communication with the human understanding, there were retained still many
of the terms and names belonging to religion. They remained, but they
remained only such as they could be when the departing spirit of that
religion was leaving them void of their import and solemnity, and so
rendered applicable to purposes of deception and mischief. They were as
holy vessels, in which the original contents might, as they were escaping,
be clandestinely replaced by the most malignant preparations. And as
crafty and wicked men had a direct interest in this substitution, the
pernicious operation went on incessantly; and with an ability, and to an
extent to evince that the utmost barbarism of the times cannot extinguish
genius, when it is iniquity that sets it on fire. How prolific was the
invention of the falsehoods and absurdities of notion, and of the vanities
and corruptions of practice, which it was devised to make the terms and
names of religion designate and sanction! while it was also managed, with
no less sedulity and success, that the inventors and propagators should be
held in submissive reverence by the community, as the oracular
depositaries of truth. That community had not knowledge enough of any
other kind, to create a resisting and defensive power against this
imposition in the concern of religion. A sound exercise of reason on
subjects out of that province, a moderate degree of instruction in
literature and science rightly so called, might have produced, in the
persons of superior native capacity, somewhat of a competency and a
disposition to question, to examine, to call for evidence, and to detect
some of the fallacies imposed for Christian faith. But in such
completeness of ignorance, the general mind was on all sides pressed and
borne down to its fate. All reaction ceased; and the people were reduced
to exist in one huge, unintelligent, monotonous substance, united by the
interfusion of a vile superstition, which permitted just enough mental
life in the mass to leave it capable of being actuated to all the purposes
of cheats, and tyrants,--a proper subject for the dominion of "our Lord
God the Pope," as he was sometimes denominated; and might have been
denominated without exciting indignation, in the hearing of millions of
beings bearing the form of men and the name of Christians.

Reflect that all this took place under the nominal ascendency of the best
and brightest economy of instruction from heaven. Reflect that it was in
nations where even the sovereign authority professed homage to the
religion of Christ, and adopted and enforced it as a grand national
institution, that the popular mass was thus reduced to a material fit for
all the bad uses to which priestcraft could wish to put the souls and
bodies of its slaves. And then consider what _should_ have been the
condition of this great aggregate, wherever Christianity was acknowledged
by all as the true religion. The people _should_ have consisted of so many
beings having each, in some degree, the independent, beneficial use of his
_mind_; all of them trained with a reference to the necessity of their
being apprized of their responsibility to their Creator, for the exercise
of their reason on the matters of belief and choice; all of them
capacitated for improvement by being furnished with the rudiments and
instrumental means of knowledge; and all having within their reach, in
their own language, the Scriptures of divine truth, some by immediate
possession, the rest by means of faithful readers, while the book existed
only in manuscript; all of them after it came to be printed.

Can any doubt arise, whether there were in the Christian states resources
competent, if so applied, to secure to all the people an elementary
instruction, and the possession of the printed Bible? Resources competent!
All nations, sufficiently raised above barbarism to exist as states, have
consumed, in uses the most foreign and pernicious to their welfare, an
infinitely greater amount of means than would have sufficed, after due
provision for comfortable physical subsistence, to afford a moderate share
of instruction to all the people. And in those popish ages, that
expenditure alone which went to ecclesiastical use would have been far
more than adequate to this beneficent purpose. Think of the boundless cost
for supporting the magnificence and satiating the rapacity of the
hierarchy, from its triple-crowned head, down through all the orders
branded with a consecration under that head to maintain the delusion and
share the spoil. Recollect the immense system of policy for jurisdiction
and intrigue, every agent of which was a devourer. Recollect the pomps and
pageants, for which the general resources were to be taxed: while the
general industry was injured by the interruption of useful employment, and
the diversion of the people to such dissipation as their condition
qualified and permitted them to indulge in. Think also of the incalculable
cost of ecclesiastical structures, the temples of idolatry as in truth
they were. One of the most striking situations for a religious and
reflective Protestant is, that of passing some solitary hour under the
lofty vault, among the superb arches and columns, of any one of the most
splendid of these edifices remaining at this day in our own country. If he
has sensibility and taste, the magnificence, the graceful union of so many
diverse inventions of art, the whole mighty creation of genius that
quitted the world without leaving even a name, will come with magical
impression on his mind, while it is contemplatively darkening into the awe
of antiquity. But he will be recalled--the sculptures, the inscriptions,
the sanctuaries enclosed off for the special benefit, after death, of
persons who had very different concerns during life from that of the care
of their salvation, and various other insignia of the original character
of the place, will help to recall him--to the thought, that these proud
piles were in fact raised to celebrate the conquest, and prolong the
dominion, of the Power of Darkness over the souls of the people. They were
as triumphal arches, erected in memorial of the extermination of that
truth which was given to be the life of men.

As he looks round, and looks upwards, on the prodigy of design, and skill,
and perseverance, and tributary wealth, he may image to himself the
multitudes that, during successive ages, frequented this fane in the
assured belief, that the idle ceremonies and impious superstitions, which
they there performed or witnessed, were a service acceptable to heaven,
and to be repaid in blessings to the offerers.

He may say to himself, Here, on this very floor, under that elevated and
decorated vault, in a "dim religious light" like this, but with the
darkness of the shadow of death in their souls, they prostrated themselves
to their saints, or their "queen of heaven;" nay, to painted images and
toys of wood or wax, to some ounce or two of bread and wine, to fragments
of old bones, and rags of cast-off vestments. Hither they came, when
conscience, in looking back or pointing forward, dismayed them, to
purchase remission with money or atoning penances, or to acquire the
privilege of sinning with impunity in a certain manner, or for a certain
time; and they went out at yonder door in the perfect confidence that the
priest had secured, in the one case the suspension, in the other the
satisfaction, of the divine law. Here they solemnly believed, as they were
taught, that, by donatives to the church, they delivered the souls of
their departed sinful relations from their state of punishment; and they
went out of that door resolved, such as had possessions, to bequeath some
portion of them, to operate in the same manner for themselves another day,
in the highly probable case of similar need. Here they were convened to
listen in reverence to some representative emissary from the Man of Sin,
with new dictates of blasphemy or iniquity promulgated in the name of the
Almighty: or to witness the trickery of some farce, devised to cheat or
frighten them out of whatever remainder the former impositions might have
left them of sense, conscience, or property. Here, in fine, there was
never presented to their understanding, from their childhood to their
death, a comprehensive, honest declaration of the laws of duty, and the
pure doctrines of salvation. To think! that they should have mistaken for
the house of God, and the very gate of heaven, a place where the Regent of
the nether world had so short a way to come from his dominions, and his
agents and purchased slaves so short a way to go thither. If we could
imagine a momentary visit from Him who once entered a fabric of sacred
denomination with a scourge, because it was made the resort of a common
traffic, with what aspect and voice, with what infliction but the "rebuke
with flames of fire," would he have entered this mart of iniquity,
assuming the name of his sanctuary, where the traffic was in delusions,
crimes, and the souls of men? It was even as if, to use the prophet's
language, the very "stone cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the
timber answered it," in denunciation; for a portion of the means of
building, in the case of some of these edifices, was obtained as the price
of dispensations and pardons. [Footnote: That most superb Salisbury
Cathedral, for example.]

In such a hideous light would the earlier history of one of these mighty
structures, pretendedly consecrated to Christianity, be presented to the
reflecting Protestant; and then would recur the idea of its cost, as
relative to what that expenditure might really have done for Christianity
and the people. It absorbed in the construction, sums sufficient to have
supplied, costly as they would have been, even manuscript Bibles, in the
people's own language, (as a priesthood of truly apostolic character would
have taken care the Scriptures should speak,) to all the families of a
province; and in the revenues appropriated to its ministration of
superstition, enough to have provided men to teach all those families to
read those Bibles.

In all this, and in the whole constitution of the Grand Apostasy,
involving innumerable forms of abuse and abomination, to which our object
does not require any allusion, how sad a spectacle is held forth of the
people destroyed for lack of knowledge. If, as one of their plagues, an
inferior one in itself, they were plundered as we have seen, of their
worldly goods, it was that the spoil might subserve to a still greater
wrong. What was lost to the accommodation of the body, was to be made to
contribute to the depravation of the spirit. It supplied means for
multiplying the powers of the grand ecclesiastical machinery, and
confirming the intellectual despotism of the usurpers of spiritual
authority. Those authorities enforced on the people, on pain of perdition,
an acquiescence in notions and ordinances which, in effect, precluded
their direct access to the Almighty, and the Saviour of the world;
interposing between them and the Divine Majesty a very extensive,
complicated, and heathenish mediation, which in a great measure
substituted itself for the real and exclusive mediation of Christ,
obscured by its vast creation of intercepting vanities the glory of the
Eternal Being, and thus almost extinguished the true worship. But how
calamitous was such a condition!--to be thus intercepted from direct
intercourse with the Supreme Spirit, and to have the solemn and elevating
sentiment of devotion flung downward, on objects to some of which even the
most superstitious could hardly pay homage without a sense of degradation.

It was, again, a disastrous thing to be under a directory of practical
life framed for the convenience of a corrupt system; a rule which enjoined
many things wrong, allowed a dispensation from nearly everything that was
right, and abrogated the essential principle and ground-work of true
morality. Still again, it was an unhappy thing, that the consolations in
sorrow and the view of death should either be too feeble to animate, or
should animate only by deluding. And it was the consummation of evil in
the state of the people of those dark ages, it was, emphatically to be
"destroyed," that the great doctrines of redemption should have been
essentially vitiated or formally supplanted, so that multitudes of people
were betrayed to rest their final hopes on a ground unauthorized by the
Judge of the world. In this most important matter, the spiritual
authorities might themselves be subjects of the fatal delusion in which
they held the community; and well they deserved to be so, in judicial
retribution of their wickedness in imposing on the people, deliberately
and on system, innumerable things which they knew to be false.

We have often mused, and felt a gloom and dreariness spreading over the
mind while musing, on descriptions of the aspect of a country after a
pestilence has left it in desolation, or of a region where the people are
perishing by famine. It has seemed a mournful thing to behold, in
contemplation, the multitude of lifeless? forms, occupying in silence the
same abodes in which they had lived, or scattered upon the gardens,
fields, and roads; and then to see the countenances of the beings yet
languishing in life, looking despair, and impressed with the signs of
approaching death. We have even sometimes had the vivid and horrid picture
offered to our imagination, of a number of human creatures shut up by
their fellow mortals in some strong hold, under an entire privation of
sustenance; and presenting each day their imploring, or infuriated, or
grimly sullen, or more calmly woful countenances, at the iron and
impregnable gates; each succeeding day more haggard, more perfect in the
image of despair; and after awhile appearing each day one fewer, till at
last all have sunk. Now shall we feel it as a _relief_ to turn in thought,
as to a sight of less portentous evil, from the inhabitants of a country,
or from those of such an accursed prison-house, thus pining away, to
behold the different spectacle of national tribes, or any more limited
portion of mankind, on whose _minds_ are displayed the full effects of
knowledge denied; who are under the process of whatever destruction it is,
that spirits can suffer from want of the vital aliment to the intelligent
nature, especially from "a famine of the words of the Lord?"

To bring the two to a close comparison, suppose the case, that some of the
persons thus doomed to perish in the tower were in the possession of the
genuine light and consolations of Christianity, perhaps even had actually
been adjudged to this fate, (no extravagant supposition,) for zealously
and persistingly endeavoring the restoration of the purity of that
religion to the deluded community. Let it be supposed that numbers of that
community, having conspired to obtain this ad-judgment, frequented the
precincts of the fortress, to see their victims gradually perishing. It
would be quite in the spirit of the popish superstition, that they should
believe themselves to have done God service, and be accordingly pleased at
the sight of the more and more deathlike aspect of the emaciated
countenances. The while, they might be themselves in the enjoyment of
"fulness of bread," We can imagine them making convivial appointments
within sight of the prison gates, and going from the spectacle to meet at
the banquet. Or they might delay the festivity, in order to have the
additional luxury of knowing that the tragedy was consummated; as Bishop
Gardiner would not dine till the martyrs were burnt.--Look at these two
contemporary situations, that of the persons with truth and immortal hope
in their spirits, enduring this slow and painful reduction of their bodies
to dissolution,--and that of those who, while their bodies fared
sumptuously, were thus miserably perishing in soul, through its being
surrendered to the curse of a delusion which envenomed it with such a
deadly malignity: and say which was the more calamitous predicament.

If we have no hesitation in pronouncing, let us consider whether we have
ever been grateful enough to God for the dashing in pieces so long since
in this land, of a system which maintains, to this hour, much of its
stability over the greater part of Christendom. If we regret that certain
fragments of it are still held in veneration here, and that so tedious a
length of ages should be required, to work out a complete mental rescue
from the infatuation which possessed our ancestors, let us at the same
time look at the various states of Europe, small and great, where this
superstition continues to hold the minds of the people in its odious
grasp; and verify to ourselves what we have to be thankful for, by
thinking what reception _our_ minds would give to an offer of subsistence
on their mummeries, masses, absolutions, legends, relics, mediation of
saints, and corruptions, even to complete reversal of the evangelic
doctrines.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was, however, but very slowly that the people of our land realized the
benefits of the Reformation, glorious as that event was, regarded as to
its progressive and its ultimate consequences. Indeed, the thickness of
the preceding darkness was strikingly manifested by the deep shade which
still continued stretched over the nation, in spite of the newly risen
luminary, whose beams lost their brightness in pervading it to reach the
popular mind, and came with the faintness of an obscured and tedious dawn.

A long time there lingered enough of night for the evil spirit of popery
to be at large and in power, not abashed, as Milton represents the Evil
Angel on his being surprised by the guardians of paradise. Rather the case
was that the vindicator itself of truth and holiness, the true Lucifer,
shrunk at the rencounter and defiance of the old possessor of the gloomy
dominion. The Reformation was not empowered to speak with a voice like
that which said, "Let there be light--and there was light." Consider what,
on its avowed national adoption in our land, were its provisions for
acting on the community, and how slow and partial must have been their
efficacy, for either the dissipation of ignorance in general, or the
riddance of that worst part of it which had thickened round the Romish
delusion, as malignant a pestilence as ever walked in darkness. There was
an alteration of formularies, a curtailment of rites, a declaration of
renouncing, in the name of the church and state, the most palpable of the
absurdities; and a change, in some instances of the persons, but in very
many others of the professions merely, of the hierarchy. Such were the
appointments and instrumentality, for carrying an innovation of opinions
and practices through a nation in which the profoundest ignorance and the
most inveterate superstition fortified each other. And we may well imagine
how fast and how far they would be effective, to convey information and
conviction among a people whose reason had been just so much the worse,
with respect to religion at least, as it had not been totally dormant; and
who were too illiterate to be ever the wiser for the volume of inspiration
itself, had it been in their native language, in every house, instead of
being scarcely in one house in five thousand.

Doubtless some advantage was gained through this change of institutions,
by the abolition of so much of the authority of the spiritual despotism as
it possessed in virtue of being the imperative national establishment. And
if, under this relaxation of its grasp, a number of persons declined and
escaped into the new faith, they hardly knew how or why, it was happy to
make the transition on _any_ terms, with however little of the exercise of
reason, with however little competence to exercise it. Well was it to be
on the right ground, though a man had come thither like one conveyed while
partly asleep. To have grown to a state of mind in which he ceased and
refused to worship relics and wafers, to rest his confidence on penance
and priestly absolution, and to regard the Virgin and saints as in effect
the supreme regency of heaven, was a valuable alteration _though_ he could
not read, and _though_ he could not assign, and had not clearly
apprehended, the arguments which justified the change. Yes, this would be
an important thing gained; but not even thus much _was_ gained to the
passive slaves of popery but in an exceedingly limited extent, during a
long course of time after it was supplanted as a national institution. It
continued to maintain in the faith, feelings, and more private habits of
the people, a dominion little enfeebled by the necessity of dissimulation
in public observances. As far as to secure this exterior show of
submission and conformity, it was an excellent argument that the state had
decreed, and would resolutely enforce, a change in religion,--that is to
say, till it should be the sovereign pleasure of the next monarch, readily
seconded by a majority of the ecclesiastics, just to turn the whole affair
round to its former position.

But the argument would expend nearly its whole strength on this policy of
saving appearances. For what was there conveyed in it that could strike
inward to act upon the fixed tenets of the mind, to destroy there the
effect of the earliest and ten thousand subsequent impressions, of
inveterate habit and of ancient establishment? Was it to convince and
persuade by authority of the maxim, that the government in church and
state is wiser than the people, and therefore the best judge in every
matter? This, as asserted generally, was what the people firmly believed:
it has always, till lately, been the popular faith. But then, was the
benefit of this obsequious faith to go exclusively to the government of
just that particular time,--a government which, by its innovations and
demolitions, was exhibiting a contemptuous dissent from all past
government remembered in the land? Were the people not to hesitate a
moment to take this innovating government's word for it that all their
forefathers, up through a long series of ages, had been fools and dupes in
reverencing, in their time, the wisdom and authority of _their_ governors?
The most unthinking and submissive would feel that this was too much:
especially after they had proof that the government demanding so
prodigious a concession might, on the substitution of just one individual
for another at its head, revoke its own ordinances, and punish those who
should contumaciously continue to be ruled by them. You summon us, they
might have said to their governors, at your arbitrary dictate to renounce,
as what you are pleased to call idolatries and abominations, the faith and
rites held sacred by twenty generations of our ancestors and yours. We are
to do this on peril of your highest displeasure, and that of God, by whose
will you are professing to act; now who will ensure us that there may not
be, some time hence, a vindictive inquisition, to find who among us have
been the most ready of obedience to offer wicked insult to the Holy
Catholic Apostolic Church?

This deficiency of the moral power of the government, to promote the
progress of conviction in the mind of the nation, would be slenderly
supplied by the authority of the class next to the government in the claim
to deference, and even holding the precedence in actual influence,--that
is, the families of rank and consequence throughout the country. For the
people well knew, in their respective neighborhoods, that many of these
had never in reality forsaken the ancient religion, consulting only the
policy of a time-serving conformity; and that some of them hardly
attempted or wished to conceal from their inferiors that they preserved
their fidelity. And then the substituted religion, while it came with a
great diminution of the pomp which is always the delight of the ignorant,
acknowledged,--proclaimed as one of its chief merits,--a still more fatal
defect for attracting converts from among beings whose ignorance had never
been suffered to doubt, till then, that men in ecclesiastical garb could
modify, or suspend, or defeat for them the justice of God; it proclaimed
itself unable to give any exemptions or commutations in matters of
conscience.

When such were the recommendations which the new mode of religion _not_,
and when the recommendation which it _had_ was simply, (the royal
authority set out of the question,) an offer of evidence to the
understanding _that it was true_, no wonder that many of a generation so
insensate through ignorance should never become its proselytes. But even
as to those who did, while it was a happy deliverance, as we have said, to
escape almost any way from the utter grossness of popery, still they would
carry into their better faith much of the unhappy effect of that previous
mental debasement. How should a man in the rudeness of an intellect left
completely ignorant of truth in general, have a luminous apprehension of
its most important division? There could not be in men's minds a
phenomenon similar to what we image to ourselves of Goshen in the
preternatural night of Egypt, a space of perfect light, defined out by a
precise limit amidst the general darkness.

Only consider, that the new ideas admitted into the proselyte's
understanding as the true faith, were to take their situation there in
nearly those very same encompassing circumstances of internal barbarism
which had been so perfectly commodious to the superstition recently
dwelling there; and that which had been favorable and adapted in the
utmost degree, that which had afforded much of the sustenance of life, to
the false notions, could not but be most adverse to the development of the
true ones. These latter, so environed, would be in a condition too like
that of a candle in the mephitic air of a vault. The newly adopted
religion, therefore, of the uncultivated converts from popery, would be
far from exhibiting, as compared with the renounced superstition, a
magnitude of change, and force of contrast, duly corresponding to the
difference between the lying vanities of priestcraft and a communication
from the living God. The reign of ignorance combined with imposture had
fixed upon the common people of the age of the Reformation, and of several
generations downward, the doom of being incapable of admitting genuine
Christianity but with an excessively inadequate apprehension of its
attributes;--as in the patriarchal ages a man might have received with
only the honors appropriate to a saint or prophet, the visitant in whom he
was entertaining an angel unawares. Happy for both that ancient
entertainer of such a visitant, and the ignorant but honest adopter of the
reformed religion, when that which they entertained rewarded them
according to its own celestial quality, rather than in proportion to their
inadequate reception. We may believe that the Divine Being, in special
compassion to that ignorance to which barbarism and superstition had
condemned inevitably the greater number of the early converts to the
reformed religion, did render that faith beneficial to them beyond the
proportion of their narrow and still half superstitious conception of it.
And this is, in truth, the consideration the most consolatory in looking
back to that tenebrious period in which popery was slowly retiring, with a
protracted exertion of all the craft and strength of an able and veteran
tyrant contending to the last for prolonged dominion.

It is, however, no consideration of a portion of the people sincere,
inquiring, and emerging, though dimly enlightened, from the gloom of so
dreary a scene, that is most apt to occur to our thoughts in extenuation
of that gloom. Our unreflecting attention allows itself to be so engrossed
by far different circumstances of that period of our history, that we are
imposed upon by a spectacle the very opposite of mournful. For what is it
but a splendid and animating exhibition that we behold in looking back to
the age of Elizabeth?

And _was_ not that, it may be asked, an age of the highest glory to our
nation? Why repress our delight in contemplating it? How can we refuse to
indulge an inspiring sympathy with the energy of those times, an elation
of spirit at beholding the unparalleled allotment of her reign, of
statesmen, heroes, and literary geniuses, but for whom, indeed, "that
bright occidental star" would have left no such brilliant track of fame
behind her?

Permit us to answer by inquiring, What should the intellectual condition
of the _people_, properly so denominated, have been in order to correspond
in a due proportion to the magnificence of these their representative
chiefs, and complete the grand spectacle as that of a _nation_? Determine
that; and then inquire what actually _was_ the state of the people all
this while. There is evidence that it was, what the fatal blight and blast
of popery might be expected to have left it, generally and most wretchedly
degraded. What it was is shown by the facts, that it was found impossible,
even under the inspiring auspices of the learned Elizabeth, with her
constellation of geniuses, orators, scholars, to supply the churches
generally with officiating persons capable of going with decency through
the task of the public service, made ready, as every part of it was, to
their hands; and that to be able to read, was the very marked distinction
of here and there an individual. It requires little effort but that of
going low enough, to complete the general estimate in conformity to these
and similar facts.

And here we cannot help remarking what a deception we suffer to pass on us
from history. It celebrates some period in a nation's career, as
pre-eminently illustrious, for magnanimity, lofty enterprise, literature,
and original genius. There was, perhaps, a learned and vigorous monarch,
and there were Cecils and Walsinghams, and Shakspeares and Spensers, and
Sidneys and Raleighs, with many other powerful thinkers and actors, to
render it the proudest age of our national glory. And we thoughtlessly
admit on our imagination this splendid exhibition as in some manner
involving or implying the collective state of the people in that age! The
ethereal summits of a tract of the moral world are conspicuous and fair in
the lustre of heaven, and we take no thought of the immensely greater
proportion of it which is sunk in gloom and covered with fogs. The general
mass of the population, whose physical vigor, indeed, and courage, and
fidelity to the interests of the country, were of such admirable avail to
the purposes, and under the direction, of the mighty spirits that wielded
their rough agency,--this great assemblage was sunk in such mental
barbarism, as to be placed at about the same distance from their
illustrious intellectual chiefs, as the hordes of Scythia from the finest
spirits of Athens. It was nothing to this debased, countless multitude
spread over the country, existing in the coarsest habits, destitute, in
the proportion of thousands to one, of cultivation, and still in a great
degree enslaved by the popish superstition,--it was nothing to them, in
the way of direct influence to draw forth their minds into free exercise
and acquirement, that there were, within the circuit of the island, a
profound scholarship, a most disciplined and vigorous reason, a masculine
eloquence, and genius breathing enchantment. Both the actual possessors of
this mental opulence, and the part of society forming, around them, the
sphere immediately pervaded by the delight and instruction imparted by
them, might as well, for anything they diffused of this luxury and benefit
among the general multitude, have been a Brahminical caste, dissociated by
an imagined essential distinction of nature. While they were exulting in
this elevation and free excursiveness of mental existence, the prostrate
crowd were grovelling through a life on a level with the soil where they
were at last to find their graves. But this crowd it was that constituted
the substance of the _nation_; to which, nation, in the mass, the
historian applies the superb epithets, which a small proportion of the men
of that age claimed by a striking _exception_ to the general state of the
community. History too much consults our love of effect and pomp, to let
us see in a close and distinct manner anything

  "On the low level of th' inglorious throng;"

and our attention is borne away to the intellectual splendor exhibited
among the most favored aspirants of the seats of learning, or in councils,
courts, and camps, in heroic and romantic enterprises, and in some
immortal works of genius. And thus we are gazing with delight at a fine
public bonfire, while, in all the cottages round, the people are shivering
for want of fuel.

Our history becomes very bright again with the intellectual and literary
riches of a much later period, often denominated a golden age,--that which
was illustrated by the talents of Addison, Pope, Swift, and their numerous
secondaries in fame; and could also boast its philosophers, statesmen, and
heroes. And in the lapse of four or five ages, according to the average
term of human life, since the earlier grand display of mind, what had been
effected toward such an advancement of intelligence in the community, that
when this next tribe of highly endowed spirits should appear, they would
stand in much loss opprobrious contrast to the main body of the nation,
and find a much larger portion of it qualified to receive their
intellectual effusions. By this time, the class of persons who sought
knowledge on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ordinary affairs of
life, who took an interest in literature, and constituted the _Authors'
Public_, had indeed extended a little, extremely little, beyond the people
of condition, the persons educated in learned institutions, and those
whose professions involved some necessity, and might create some taste for
reading. Still they _were a class_, and that with a limitation marked and
palpable, to a degree very difficult for us now to conceive. They were in
contact, on the one side, with the great thinkers, moralists, poets, and
wits, but very slightly in communication with the generality of the people
on the other. They received the emanations from the assemblage of talent
and knowledge, but did not serve as conductors to convey them down
indefinitely into the community. The national body, regarded in its
intellectual character, had an inspirited and vigorous superior part, as
constituted of these men of eminent talents and attainments, and this
small class of persons in a measure assimilated to them in thinking and
taste; but it was in a condition resembling that of a human frame in
which, (through an injury in the spinal marrow,) some of the most
important functions of vitality have terminated at some precise limit
downward, leaving the inferior extremities devoid of sensation and the
power of action.

It is on record, that works admirably adapted to find readers and to make
them, had but an extremely confined and slowly widening circulation,
according to _our_ standard of the popular success of the productions of
distinguished talents. Nor did the writers _reckon_ on any such popular
success. In the calculations of their literary ambition, it was a thing of
course that the people went for nothing. It is apparent in allusions to
the people occurring in these very works, that "the lower sort," "the
vulgar herd," "the canaille," "the mob," "the many-headed beast," "the
million," (and even these designations generally meant something short of
the lowest classes of all,) were no more thought of in any relation to a
state of cultivated intelligence than Turks or Tartars. The readers are
habitually recognized as a kind of select community, conversed with on
topics and in a language with which the vulgar have nothing at all to
do,--a converse the more gratifying on that account. And any casual
allusions to the bulk of the people are expressed in phrases unaffectedly
implying, that they are a herd of beings existing on quite other terms and
for essentially other ends, than we, fine writers, and you, our admiring
readers. It is evident in our literature of that age, (a feature still
more prominent in that of France, at the same and down to a much later
period,) that the main national population, accounted as creatures to
which souls and senses were given just to render their limbs mechanically
serviceable, were regarded by the intellectual aristocracy with hardly so
active a sentiment as contempt; they were not worth that; it was the easy
indifference toward what was seldom thought of as in existence.

Wickedly wrong as such a feeling was, there is no doubt that the actual
state of the people was quite such as would naturally cause it, in men
whose large and richly cultivated minds did not contain philanthropy or
Christian charity enough to regret and pity the popular debasement as a
calamity. For while they were indulging their pride in the elevation, and
their taste in all the luxuries and varieties, of that ampler higher range
of existence enjoyed by such men, in what light must they view the bulk of
a nation, that knew nothing of their wit, genius, or philosophy, could not
even read their writings, but as a coarse mass of living material, the
mere earthy substratum of humanity, not to be accounted of in any
comparison or even relation to what man is in his higher style? While they
of that higher style were revelling in their mental affluence, the vast
majority of the inhabitants of the island were subsisting, and had always
subsisted, on the most beggarly pittance on which mind could be barely
kept alive. Probably they had at that time still fewer ideas than the
people of the former age which we have been describing. For many of those
with which popery had occupied the faith and fancy of that earlier
generation, had now vanished from the popular mind, without being replaced
in equal number by better ideas, or by ideas of any kind. And then their
vices had the whole grossness of vice, and their favorite amusements were
at best rude and boisterous, and a large proportion of them savage and
cruel. So that when we look at the shining wits, poets, and philosophers,
of that age, they appear like gaudy flowers growing in a putrid marsh.

And to a much later period this deplorable ignorance, with all its
appropriate consequences, continued to be the dishonor and the plague of
the intellectual and moral condition of the inhabitants of England. Of
England! which had through many centuries made so great a figure in
Christendom; which has been so splendid in arms, liberty, legislation,
science, and all manner of literature: which has boasted its universities,
of ancient foundation and proudest fame, munificently endowed, and
possessing, in their accumulations of literary treasure, nearly the whole
results of all the strongest thinking there had been in the world: and
which has had also, through the charity of individuals, such a number of
minor institutions for education, that the persons intrusted to see them
administered have, in very numerous instances, not scrupled to divert
their resources to total different purposes, lest, perchance, the cause of
damage to the people should change from a lack of knowledge to a repletion
of it. Of England! so long after the Reformation, and all the while under
the superintendence and tuition of an ecclesiastical establishment for
both instruction and jurisdiction, co-extended with the entire nation, and
furnished for its ministry with men from the discipline of institutions
where everything the most important to be known was professed to be
taught. Thus endowed had England been, thus was she endowed at the period
under our review, (the former part of the last century,) with the
facilities, the provisions, the great intellectual apparatus, to be
wielded in any mode her wisdom might devise, and with whatever strength of
hand she chose to apply, for promoting her several millions of rational,
accountable, immortal beings, somewhat beyond a state of mere physical
existence. When therefore, notwithstanding all this, an awful proportion
of them were under the continual process of destruction for want of
knowledge, what a tremendous responsibility was borne by whatever part of
the community it was that stood, either by office and express vocation, or
by the general obligation inseparable from ability, in the relation of
guardianship to the rest.

But here the voice of that sort of patriotism which is in vogue as well in
England as in China, may perhaps interpose to protest against malicious
and exaggerated invective. As if it were a question of what might
beforehand be reasonably expected, instead of an account of what actually
exists, it may be alleged that surely it is a representation too much
against antecedent probability to be true, that a civilized, Christian,
magnanimous, and wealthy state like that of England, can have been so
careless and wicked as to tolerate, during the lapse of centuries, a
hideously gross and degraded condition of the people.

But besides that the fact is plainly so, it were vain to presume, in
confidence on any supposed consistency of character, that it _must_ be
otherwise. There is no saying _what_ a civilized and Christian nation, (so
called,) may not tolerate. Recollect the Slave Trade, which, with the
magnitude of a national concern, continued its abominations while one
generation after another of Englishmen passed away; their intelligence,
conscience, humanity, and refinement, as quietly accommodated to it, as if
one portion of the race had possessed an express warrant from Heaven to
capture, buy, sell, and drive another. This is but one of many mortifying
illustrations how much the constitution of our moral sentiments resembles
a Manichæan creation, how much of them is formed in passive submission to
the evil principle, acting through prevailing custom; which determines
that it shall but very partially depend on the real and most manifest
qualities of things present to us, whether we shall have any right
perception of their characters of good and evil. The agency which works
this malformation in our sentiments needs no greater triumph, than that
the true nature of things should be disguised to us by the very effect of
their being constantly kept in our sight. Could any malignant enchanter
wish for more than this,--to make us insensible to the odious quality of
things not only _though_ they stand constantly and directly in our view,
but _because_ they do so? And while they do so, there may also stand as
obviously in our view, and close by them, the truths which _expose_ their
real nature, and might be expected to make us instantly revolt from them;
and these truths shall be no other than some of the plainest principles of
reason and religion. It shall be as if men of wicked designs could be
compelled to wear labels on their breasts wherever they go, to announce
their character in conspicuous letters; or nightly assassins could be
forced to carry torches before them, to reveal the murder in their
visages; or, as if, according to a vulgar superstition, evil spirits could
not help betraying their dangerous presence by a tinge of brimstone in the
flame of the lamps. Thus evident, by the light of reason and religion,
shall have been the true nature of certain important facts in the policy
of a Christian nation; and nevertheless, even the cultivated part of that
nation, during a series of generations, having directly before their sight
an enormous nuisance and iniquity, shall yet never be struck with its
quality, never be made restless by its annoyance, never seriously think of
it. And so its odiousness shall never be decidedly apprehended till some
individual or two, as by the acquisition of a new moral sense, receive a
sudden intuition of its nature, a disclosure of its whole essence and
malignity,--the essence and malignity of that very thing which has been
exposing its quality, without the least reserve, by the most flagrant
signs, to millions of observers.

Thus it has been with respect to the barbarous ignorance under which
nine-tenths of the population of our country have continued, through a
number of ages subsequent to the Reformation, surrendered to everything
low, vicious, and wretched. This state of national debasement and dishonor
lay spread out, a wide scene of moral desolation, in the sight of
statesmen, of dignified and subordinate ecclesiastics, of magistrates, of
the philosophic speculators on human nature, and of all those whose rank
and opulence brought them hourly proofs what great influence they might
have, in any way in which, they should choose to exert it, on the people
below them. And still it was all right that the multitudes, constituting
the grand living agency through the realm, should remain in such a
condition that, when they died, the country should lose nothing but so
much animated body, with the quantum of vice which helped to keep it in
action. When at length some were beginning to apprehend and proclaim that
all this was wrong, these classes were exceedingly slow in their assent to
the reformed doctrine. A large proportion of them even declared, on
system, against the speculations and projects for giving the people, at
last, the use and value of their souls as well as their hands. The earnest
and sanguine philanthropists might be pardoned the simplicity of not
foreseeing such an opposition, though they ought, perhaps, to have known
better than to be surprised at the phenomenon. They were to be made wiser
by force, with respect to men's governing prejudices and motives. And from
credulity mortified is a short transit to suspicion. So ungracious a
manner of having the insight into motives sharpened, does not tend to make
its subsequent exercise indulgent, when it comes to inspect the altered
appearances assumed by persons and classes who have previously been in
decided opposition. What arguments have prevailed with you, (the question
might be,) since you have never frankly retracted your former contempt of
those which convinced _us_? May any sinister thought have occurred, that
you might defeat our ends by a certain way of managing the means? Or do
you hope to deter mine and limit to some subordinate purposes, what we
wish to prosecute for the most general good? Or would you rather impose on
yourselves the grievance of promoting an object which you dislike, than
that we should have the chief credit of promoting it? Do you sometimes
accompany your working in the vineyard with maledictions on those who have
reduced you to such a necessity? Would you have been glad to be saved the
unwelcome service by _their_ letting it alone?

Those friends of man and their country who were the earliest to combine
in schemes for enlightening the people, and who continue to prosecute the
object on the most liberal and comprehensive principle, have to
acknowledge surmises like these. Nevertheless, they are willing to forego
any shrewd investigation into the causes of the later silence and
apparent acquiescence of former opposers; and into the motives which have
induced some of them, though in no very amicable mood, to take a part in
measures tending in their general effect to the same end. Whatever were
their suspicion of those motives, they would be reminded of an example,
not altogether foreign to the nature of their business, and quite in
point to their duty,--that of the magnanimous principle through which the
great Apostle disappointed his adversaries, by finding his own triumph in
that of his cause, while he saw that cause availing itself of these foes
after the manner of some consummate general, who has had the art to make
those who have come into the field as but treacherous auxiliaries,
co-operate effectually in the battle which they never intended he should
gain. Some preached Christ of envy, and strife, and contention, supposing
to add affliction to his bonds; but, says he, What then? notwithstanding
every way, whether in pretence or truth, Christ is preached--_the thing
itself is done_--and I therein rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. When
animated by this high principle, this ambition absolutely _for the cause
itself_, its servant is a gainer, because _it_ is a gainer, by all things
convertible into tribute, whatever may be the temper or intention of the
officers, either as towards the cause or towards himself. He may say to
them, I am more pleased by what you are actually doing, be the motive
what it will, in advancement of the object to which I am devoted, than it
is possible for you to aggrieve me by letting me see that you would not
be sorry for the frustration of _my_ schemes and exertions for its
service; or even by betraying, though I should lament such a state of
your minds, that you would be content to sacrifice _it_ if that might be
the way to defeat _me_.

We revert but for a moment to the review of past times.--We said that long
after the brilliant show of talent, and the creation of literary supplies
for the national use, in the early part of the last century, the
deplorable mental condition of the people remained in no very great degree
altered. To pass from beholding that bright and sumptuous display, in
order to see what there was corresponding to it in the subsequent state of
the popular cultivation, is like going out from some magnificent apartment
with its lustres, music, refections, and assemblage of elegant personages,
to be beset by beggars in the gloom and cold of a winter night.

Take a few hours' indulgence in the literary luxuries of Addison, Pope,
and their secondaries, and then turn to some authentic plain
representation of the attainments and habits of the mass of the people, at
the time when Whitefield and Wesley commenced their invasion of the
barbarous community. But the benevolent reader, (or let him be a
patriotically proud one,) is quite reluctant to recognize his country, his
celebrated Christian nation, "the most enlightened in the world," (as song
and oratory have it,) in a populace for the far greater part as perfectly
estranged from the page of knowledge, as if printing, or even letters, had
never been invented; the younger part finding their supreme delight in
rough frolic and savage sports, the old sinking down into impenetrable
stupefaction with the decline of the vital principle.

If he would eagerly seek to fix on something as a counterbalance to this,
and endeavor to modify the estimate and relieve the feeling, by citing
perhaps the courage, and a certain rudimental capacity of good sense, in
which the people are deemed to have surpassed the neighboring nations, he
will be compelled to see how these native endowments were overrun and
befooled by a farrago of contemptible superstitions;--contemptible not
only for their stupid absurdity, but also as having in general nothing of
that pensive, solemn, and poetical character which superstition is capable
of assuming.--It is an exception to be made with respect to the
northernmost part of the island, that superstition did there partake of
this higher character. It seems to have had somewhat of the tone imitated,
but in a softer mode, in the poetry, denominated of Ossian.

As to religion, there is no hazard in saying, that several millions had
little further notion of it than that it was an occasional, or, in the
opinion of perhaps one in twenty, a regular appearance at church, hardly
taking into the account that they were to be taught anything there. And
what _were_ they taught--those of them who gave their attendance and
attention? What kind of notions it was that had settled in their minds
under such ministration, would be, so to speak, brought out, it would be
made apparent what they were or were not taught, when so strong and
general a sensation was produced by the irruption among them of the two
reformers just named, proclaiming, as they both did, (notwithstanding very
considerable differences of secondary order,) the principles which had
been authoritatively declared to be of the essence of Christianity, in
that model of doctrine which had been appointed to prescribe and conserve
the national faith. If such doctrine _had_ been imparted to a portion of
the popular mind, even though with somewhat less positive statement, less
copiousness of illustration, and less cogency of enforcement than it
ought; if it had been but in crude _substance_ fixed in the people's
understanding, by the ministry of the many thousand authorized
instructors, who were by their institute solemnly enjoined and pledged not
to teach a different sort of doctrine, and not to fail of teaching this;
if, we repeat, this faith, so conspicuously declared in the articles,
liturgy, and homilies, had been in any degree in possession of the people,
they would have recognized its main principles, or at least a similarity
of principles, in the addresses of these two new preachers. They would
have done so, notwithstanding a peculiarity of phraseology which
Whitefield and Wesley carried to excess; and notwithstanding certain
specialities which the latter did not, even supposing them to be truths,
keep duly subordinate in exhibiting the prominent essentials of
Christianity. The preaching, therefore, of these men was a test of what
the people had been previously taught or allowed to repose in as Christian
truth, under the tuition of their great religious guardian, the national
church. What it was or was not would be found, in their having a sense of
something like what they had been taught before, or something opposite to
it, or some thing altogether foreign and unknown, when they were hearing
those loud proclaimers of the old doctrines of the Reformation. Now then,
as carrying with them this quality of a test, how were those men received
in the community? Why, they were generally received, on account of the
import of what they said, still more than from their zealous manner of
saying it, with as strong an impression of novelty, strangeness, and
contrariety to everything hitherto heard of, as any of our voyagers and
travellers of discovery have been by the barbarous tribes who had never
before seen civilized man, or as the Spaniards on their arrival in Mexico
or Peru. They might, as the voyagers have clone, experience every local
difference of moral temperament, from that which hailed them with
acclamations, to that which often exploded in a volley of mud and stones;
but through all these varieties of greetings, there was a strong sense of
something then brought before them for the first time. "Thou bringest
certain strange things to our ears," was an expression not more
unaffectedly uttered by any hearer of an apostle, preaching in a heathen
city. And to many of the auditors, it was a matter of nearly as much
difficulty as it would to an inquisitive heathen, and required as new a
posture of the mind, to attain an understanding of the evangelical
doctrines, though they were the very same which had been held forth by the
fathers and martyrs of the English Church.

We have alluded to the violence, which sometimes encountered the endeavor
to restore these doctrines to the knowledge and faith of the people. And
if any one should have thought that, in the descriptions we have been
giving, too frequent and willing use has been made of the epithet
"barbarous," or similar words, as if we could have a perverse pleasure in
degrading our nation, we would request him to select for himself the
appropriate terms for characterizing that state of the people, in point of
sense and civilization, to say nothing of religion, which could admit such
a fact as this to stand in their history--namely, that, in a vast number
of instances and places, where some person unexceptionable in character as
far as known, and sometimes well known as a worthy man, has attempted to
address a number of the inhabitants, under a roof or under the sky, on
what it imported them beyond all things in the world to know and consider,
a multitude have rushed together, shouting and howling, raving and
cursing, and accompanying, in many of the instances, their furious cries
and yells with loathsome or dangerous missiles; dragging or driving the
preacher from his humble stand, forcing him, and the few that wished to
encourage and hear him, to flee for their lives, sometimes not without
serious injury before they could escape. And that such a history of the
people may show how deservedly their superiors were denominated their
"betters," it has to add, that these savage tumults were generally
instigated or abetted, sometimes under a little concealment, but often
avowedly, by persons of higher condition, and even by those consecrated to
the office of religious instruction; and this advantage of their station
was lent to defend the perpetrators against shame, or remorse, or just
punishment, for the outrage.

There would be no hazard in affirming, that since Wesley and Whitefield
began the conflict with the heathenism of the country, there have been in
it hundreds of occurrences answering in substance to this description.
From any one, therefore, who should be inclined to accuse us of harsh
language, we may well repeat the demand in what terms _he_ would think he
gave the true character of a mental and moral condition, manifested in
such uproars of savage violence as the Christian missionaries among
eastern idolaters never had the slightest cause to apprehend. These
outrages were so far from uncommon, or confined to any one part of the
country, some time before, and for a very long while after, the middle of
the last century, that they might be fairly taken as indicating the depth
at which the greatest part of the nation lay sunk in ignorance and
barbarism. Yet the good and zealous men whose lot it was to be thus set
upon by a depraved, infuriate rabble, the foremost of them active in
direct assault, and the rest venting their ferocious delight in a hideous
blending of ribaldry and execration, of joking and cursing, were taxed
with a canting hypocrisy, or a fanatical madness, for speaking of the
prevailing ignorance and barbarism in terms equivalent to our sentence
from the Prophet, "The people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," and
for deploring the hopelessness of any revolution in this empire of
darkness by means of the existing institutions, which seemed indeed to
have become themselves its strong-holds.

But they whom serious danger could not deter from renewing and
indefinitely repeating such attempts at all hazards, were little likely to
be appalled by these contumelies of speech. To the persons so abusing them
they might coolly reply, "Now really you are inconsiderately wasting your
labor. Don't you know, that on the account of this same business we have
sustained the battery of stones, brickbats, and the contents of the ditch?
And can you believe we can much care for mere _words_ of insult, after
that? Albeit the opprobrious phrases _have_ the fetid coarseness befitting
the bluster of property without education, or the more highly inspirited
tone of railing learnt in a college, they are quite another kind of thing
to be the mark for, than such assailments as have come from the brawny
arms of some of your peasants, set on probably by broad hints or plain
expressions how much you would be pleased with such exploits."--It is
gratifying to see thus exemplified, in the endurance of evil for a good
cause, that provision in our nature for economizing the expense of
feeling, through which the encountering of the greater creates a hardihood
which can despise the less.

       *       *       *       *       *

That our descriptive observations do not exaggerate the popular
ignorance, with its natural concomitants, as prevailing at the middle of
the last century and far downward, many of the elderly persons among us
can readily confirm, from what they remember of the testimony of their
immediate ancestors. It will be recollected what pictures they gave of
the moral scene spread over the country when they were young. They could
convey lively images of the situations in which the vulgar notions and
manners had their free display, by representing the assemblages, and the
fashion of discourse and manners, at fairs, revels, and other rendezvous
of amusement; or in the field of rural employment, or on the village
green, or in front of the mechanic's workshop. They could recount various
anecdotes characteristic of the times; and repeat short dialogues, or
single sayings, which expressed the very essence of what was to the
population of the township or province instead of law and prophets, or
sages or apostles. They could describe how free from all sense of shame
whole families would seem to be, from grand-sires down to the third rude
reckless generation, for not being able to read; and how well content,
when there was some one individual in the neighborhood who could read an
advertisement, or ballad, or last dying speech of a malefactor, for the
benefit of the rest. They could describe the desolation of the land, with
respect to any enlightening and impressive religious instruction in the
places of worship; in the generality of which, indeed, the whole spirit
and manner of the service tended to what we just now described as the
fact--that religion, in its proper sense, was absolutely _a thing not
recognized at all_. To most of the persons there the forms attended to
were _representative_ of literally nothing--they were _themselves_ the
all. [Footnote: None of the anecdotes, that have come down in traditions
now fading away, are more illustrative of those times, than those which
show both people and priest satisfied with the observances at church as
_constituting_ religion, never thinking of them as but the means to
_teach_ and _inspire_ it. Such anecdotes must have been heard by every
one who has conversed much with such aged persons as remember the most of
former times. Some traditions of this kind may be recalled to mind,
through similarity of character, by hearing such an instance as the
following. A friend of the writer mentions, that he heard his father,
whose veracity was above all question, relate as one of the recollections
of the time when he was a young man, that in the parish church where he
attended, the service was one Sunday morning performed with a somewhat
unusual despatch, and every abbreviation that depended on the discretion
of the minister; who at the conclusion explained the circumstance
publicly, by saying, that as neighbor such-a-one (mentioning the name)
was going to bait his bull in the afternoon, he had been as short as
possible that the congregation might have good time for the sport.--It is
on the same principle that the Catholics on the continent, having
attended mass in the morning, never think of doubting their license for
every frivolity the rest of the day.] And as to those who really did in
the course of their attendance acquire something assignable as their
creed, our supposed reporters could tell what wretched and delusive
notions of religion, or rather instead of religion, they were permitted
and authorized, by their appointed spiritual guides, to carry with them
to their last hour. At which hour, some ceremonial form was to be a
passport to heaven: a little bread and wine, converted into a mysterious
object of superstition, by receiving an ecclesiastical name of unknown
import, accompanied with some sentences regarded much in the nature of an
incantation--and all was safe! The sinner expiring believed so, and the
sinners surviving were left to go on in their thoughtless way of life, on
a calculation of the same final resource.

Thus the past age has left an image of its character in the minds of the
generation now themselves grown old, received by immediate tradition from
persons who lived in it. Here and there, indeed, there still lingers, so
long after the departure of the great company to which he belonged, an
ancient who retains a trace of this image immediately from the reality, as
having become of an age to look at the world, and take a share in its
activities, about the middle of the last century. [Footnote: They are here
supposed to be looking back from about the year 1820.] And it might be an
employment of considerable though rather melancholy interest, for a person
visiting many parts of the land, to put in requisition, in each place, for
a day or two, the most faithful of the memories of the most narrative of
the oldest people, for materials toward forming an estimate of the mental
and moral state of the main body of the inhabitants, of town or country,
in the period of which they themselves saw the latter part, and remember
it in combination with what their progenitors related of the former. After
these few retainers of the original picture from the life shall have left
the world, it will be comparatively a faint conception that can be formed
of that age from written memorials, which exist but in a very imperfect
and scattered state.

But supposing the scene could be brought back to the mental eye, in full
verity and distinctness, as in a vision supernaturally imparted, are we
sure we should not have the mortification of perceiving that the change,
from the condition of the people then to their condition now, has been in
but poor proportion to the amount of the advantages, which we are apt to
be elated in recounting as the boast and happiness of later times? To
assume that we should _not_, is to impute to that former age still more
ignorance and debasement than appear in the above description. For what
could, what must that condition have been, if it was worse than the
present by anything near the difference made by what would be a tolerably
fair improvement of the additional means latterly afforded? An estimate
being made of the measure of intelligence and worth found among the
descendants, let so much be taken out as we would wish to attribute to the
effect of the additional means, and what will that remainder be which is
to represent the state of the ancestors, formed under a system of means
wanting all those which we are allowing ourselves to think important
enough to warrant the frequent expression, "This new era?"

The means wanting to the former generation, and that have sprung into
existence for the latter, may be briefly noted; and those of a religious
nature may be named first. It is the most obvious of public expedients,
that good men who wish to make others _so should preach_ to them. And
there has been a wonderful extension of this practice since the zealous
exertions of Whitefield, Wesley, and their co-operators awakened other
good men to a sense of their capacity and duty. The spirit actuating the
associated followers of the latter of those two great agitators, has
impelled forth their whole disposable force (to use a military phrase) to
this service; and they have sent preachers into many parts of the land
where preaching itself, in any fair sense of the term, was wholly a
novelty; and where there was roused as earnest a zeal to crush this
alarming innovation, as the people of Iceland are described to feel on the
occasion of the approach of a white bear to invade their folds or poorly
stocked pastures. [Footnote: The writer had just been reading that
description.] To a confederacy of Christians so well aware of their own
strength and progress, it may seem a superfluous testimony that they are
doing incalculable good among our population, more good probably than any
other religious sect. This tribute is paid not the less freely for a
material difference in theological opinion; nor for a wish, a quite
friendly one, that they may admit some little modification of a spirit
perhaps rather too sectarian in religion, and rather less than independent
in politics.

An immense augmentation has been brought to the sum of public instruction,
by the continually enlarging numbers of dissenters of other denominations.
Whatever may be thought of some of the consequences of the great extension
of dissent, it will hardly be considered as a circumstance tending to
prolong the reign of _ignorance_ that thus, within the last fifty years,
there have been put in activity to impart religious ideas to the people
not fewer (exclusively of the Wesleyans) than several thousand minds that
would, under a continuance of the former state of the nation, have been
doing no such service; that is to say, the service would not have been
done at all. Let it be considered, too, that the doctrines inculcated as
of the first importance, in the preaching of far the greatest number of
them, were exactly those which the Established Church avowed in its
formularies and disowned in its ministry,--one of the circumstances which
contributed the most to _make_ dissenters of the more seriously disposed
among the people.--It is to be added, that so much public activity in
religious instruction could not be unaccompanied by an increase of
exertion in the more private methods of imparting it.

It is another important accession to the enlarged system of operations
against religious ignorance, that a proportion of the Established Church
itself has been recovered to the spirit of its venerable founders, by the
progressive formation in it of a zealous evangelical ministry; dissenters
within their own community, if we may believe the constant loud
declarations of the bulk of that community, and especially of the most
dignified, learned, and powerful classes in it. But in spite of whatever
discredit they may suffer from being thus disowned, these worthy and
useful men have still, in their character of clergymen, a material
advantage above other faithful teachers, for influence on many of the
people, by being invested with the credentials of the ancient institution,
from which the popular mind has been slow and reluctant in withdrawing its
veneration; and for which that sentiment, when not quite extinct, is ready
to revive at any manifestation in it of the quickening spirit of the
Gospel. We say, if the sentiment be not quite extinct; for we are aware
what a very large proportion of the people are gone beyond the possibility
of feeling it any more. But still the number is great of those who
experience, at this new appearance, a reanimation of their affection for
the Church; and so fondly identify the partial change with the whole
institution, that they feel as if a parent, who had for a long while
neglected or deserted them, but for whom they could never cease to cherish
a filial regard, were beginning to be restored to them, with a renewal of
the benignant qualities and cares of the parental character.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus far the account of the means which England was not to furnish for its
people till the latter part of the eighteenth century, relates to their
better instruction in religion. This will not be thought beside the
purpose of an enumeration of expedients for lessening their _ignorance_,
by any one who can allow that religion, regarded as a subject of the
understanding, is the most important part of knowledge, and who has
observed the fact that religion, when it begins to _interest_ uncultivated
minds, works surprisingly in favor of the intellectual faculties; an
effect exactly the reverse of that of superstition, and produced by the
contrary operation; for while superstition represses, and even curses any
free action of the intellect, genuine religion both requires and excites
it. Though it is too true that the great Christian principles, when
embraced with conviction and seriousness by a very uneducated man, must
greatly partake, by contractedness of apprehension, the ill fortune which
has confined his mental growth, yet they will often do more than any other
thing within the same space of time to avenge him of it.

In addition to the great extension of instruction in a form specifically
religious, there have been various causes and means contributing to the
increase of knowledge among the people. After it had been seen for
centuries in what manner the children of the poor were suffered to spend
the Sunday, it struck one observer at last, that they might on that day
be taught to read!--a possibility which had never been suspected; a
disclosure as of some hitherto hidden power of nature. And then the
schools which taught the children to read made some of the parents so
much better pleased with their children for their first steps in so new
an attainment, that they could not be indifferent to the opening of other
schools of a humble order to continue that instruction through the week.
It was within the same period that there was a large circulation of
tracts, by some of which many who might be little desirous of
instruction, were beguiled into it by the amusing vehicle ingeniously
contrived to convey it; and the most popular of which will remain a
monument of the talent, knowledge, and benevolence, of that distinguished
benefactor of her country and age, Mrs. H. More, perhaps even pre-eminent
above her many excellent works in a higher strain. Later and continual
issues of this class of papers, of every diversity of composition, and
diffused by the activity of numberless hands, have solicited perhaps a
fourth part of the thoughtless beings in the nation to make at least one
short effort to think.

The enormous flight of periodical miscellanies, and of newspapers, must be
taken as both the indication and the cause that hundreds of thousands of
persons were giving some attention to the matters of general information,
where their grandfathers had been, during the intervals of time allowed by
their employments, prating, brawling, sleeping, or drinking their hours
away. [Footnote: Since this was written there has been a prodigious
augmentation of all such means of general excitement; and happily a
diversified multiplication of a class of them calculated to benefit the
inferior people, at once by giving them a new and enlarged range of ideas,
and by bringing them on some tracts of common ground with the liberally
educated; thus abating the former almost total incapacity, on the part of
those inferiors, for intelligent intercommunication.]

It is perhaps an item of some small value in the account, that a new class
of ideas was furnished by the many wonderful effects of science, in the
application of the elements and mechanical powers. The people saw human
intelligence so effectually inspiriting inanimate matter, as to create a
new and mighty order of agency, appearing in a certain degree independent
of man himself, and in its power immensely surpassing any simple immediate
exertion of _his_ power. They saw wood and iron, fire, water, and air,
actuated to the production of effects which might vie with what their rude
ancestors had been accustomed to believe, (those of them who had heard of
such beings,) of giants, magicians, alchymists, and monsters; effects, the
dream of which, if any one could so have dreamed, would have been scoffed
at by even the more intelligent of the former race.

It is true that very ignorant persons can wonder at such things without
deriving much instruction from them; and that much sooner than the more
cultivated ones they become so familiarized with them as not to think of
them. All _effects_, however astonishing, are apt, if they are but regular
in their recurrence, to become soon insignificant to those who have never
learnt to inquire into _causes_. But still, it would be some little
advantage to the people's understanding to see what prodigious effects
could be produced without any preternatural interference. Though not
comprehending the science employed, they could comprehend that what they
saw _was_ purely a matter of science, and that the cause and the effect
were natural and definite; unlike the present race of Egyptians, who not
long since regarded the very mechanics of an European as an operation of
magic; and were capable of suspecting that a machine constructed by a man
from England, for raising water from the Nile, should inundate the country
in an hour. These wonders of science and art must therefore have
contributed somewhat to rid our people of the impression of being at every
turn beset by occult powers, under the name perhaps of witchcraft, and to
expel the notions of a vague and capricious agency interfering and
sporting with events throughout the system around them. Their rationality
thus obtained an improvement, which may be set against the injury
undoubtedly done them through that diminished exercise of the
understanding which accompanied the progressive division of labor; an
alteration rendered inevitable, and in other respects so advantageous.

When we come down to a comparatively recent time, we see the Bible "going
up on the breadth of the land." In passing by any given number of houses
of the inferior class, we may presume there are in them four or five times
as many copies of that sacred book as there were in the same number thirty
or forty years since. And when we consider how many more persons in those
houses can read, and that in some of them the book may be _more_ read for
having come there as a novelty, than it is in many others where it has
been an old article of the furniture, we may fairly presume that the
increased reading is in a greater proportion than the increased number of
Bibles.--This late period has also brought into action a new expedient,
worthy to stand, in the province of education, parallel and rival to the
most useful modern inventions in the mechanical departments; an
organization for schools, by which, instead of one or two overlabored
agents upon a mass of reluctant subjects, that whole mass itself shall be
animated into a system of reciprocal agency. It has all the merit of a
contrivance which associates with mental labor a pleasure never known to
young learners before.

One more distinction of our times has been, that effect which missionary
and other philanthropic societies have had, to render familiar to common
knowledge, by means of their meetings and publications, a great number of
such interesting and important facts, in the state of other countries and
our own, as were formerly quite beyond the sphere of ordinary information.

In aid of all these means at work in the trial to raise the people from
the condition in which they had been so many ages sunk and immovable,
there has been of late years the unpretending but important ministration
of an incessant multifarious inventiveness in making almost every sort of
information offer itself in brief, familiar, and attractive forms, adapted
to youth or to adult ignorance; so that knowledge, which was formerly a
thing to be searched and dug for "as for hid treasures," has seemed at
last beginning to effloresce through the surface of the ground on all
sides of us.

The statement of what recent times have produced for effecting an
alteration among the people, must include the prodigious excitement in the
political world. It were absurd, it is true, to name this in the simple
character of a _cause_, when we speak of the rousing of the popular mind
from a long stagnation; it being itself a proof and result of some
preceding cause beginning to pervade and disturb that stagnation. But
whatever may be assigned as the true and sufficient explanation of its
origin, we have to look on the mighty operation of its progress, forcing a
restlessness, instability, and tendency to change, into almost every part
of the social economy. In the whole compass of time there has been no
train of events, that has within so short a period stirred to the very
bottom the mind of so vast a portion of the race. And the power of this
great commotion has less consisted in what may be termed its physical
energy, evinced in grand exploits and catastrophes, than in its being an
intense activity of _principles_. It was as different from other
convulsions in the moral world, as would be a tempest attributed to the
direct intervention of a mighty spirit, whether believed celestial or
infernal, from one raised in the elements by mere natural causes. The
people were not, as in other instances of battles, revolutions, and
striking alternations of fortune, gazing a at mere show of wonderful
events, but regarded these events as the course of a great practical
debate of questions affecting their own interests.

And now, when we have put all these things together, we may well pause to
indulge again our wonder what _could_ have been the mental situation of a
majority of the inhabitants of this country, antecedently to this creation
and conjunction of so many means and influences for awaking them to
something of an intelligent existence.




Section III.



The review of the past may here be terminated. And how welcome a change
it would be if we might here completely emerge from the gloom which has
overspread it. How happy were it if in proceeding to an estimate of the
people of the present times, we found so rich a practical result of the
means for forming a more enlightened race, that we should have no further
recollection of that sentence from the Prophet, which has hitherto
suggested itself again at every step in prosecution of the survey. But we
are compelled to see how slow is the progress of mankind toward thus
rendering obsolete any of the darker lines of the sacred record. So
completely, so desperately, had the whole popular body and being been
pervaded by the stupifying power of the long reign of ignorance, with
such heavy reluctance, at the best, does the human mind open its eyes to
admit light,--and so incommensurate as yet, even on the supposition of
its having much less of this reluctance, has been in quantity the whole
new supply of means for a happy change,--that a most melancholy spectacle
still abides before us. Time, in sweeping away successive generations,
has preserved, in substance, the sad inheritance to that which is as yet
the latest.

Even that portion of beneficial effect which actually has resulted from
this co-operation of new forces, has served to make a more obvious
exposure of the unhappiness and offensiveness of what is still the
condition of the far greater part of our population; as a dreary waste is
made, to give a more sensible impression how dreary it is, by the little
inroads of cultivation and beauty in its hollows, and the faint advances
of an unwonted green upon its borders. The degradation of the main body of
the lower classes is exposed by a comparison with the small reclaimed
portion within those classes themselves. It is not with the philosophers,
literati, and most accomplished persons in higher life, that we should
think of placing in immediate comparison the untutored rustics and workmen
in stones and timber, for the purpose of showing how much is wanting to
them. These extreme orders of society would seem less related in virtue of
their common nature, than separated by the wide disparity of its
cultivation. They would appear so immeasurably asunder, such antipodes in
the sphere of human existence, that the state of the one could afford no
standard for judging of the defects or wants of the other. It was not in a
speculation which amused itself, as with a curious fact, in seeing that
the same material can be made into scholars, legislators, sages, and
models of elegance--and also into helots; and then went into a fanciful
question of how near they might possibly be brought together: it was in a
speculation which, instead of dwelling on the view of what was impossible
to the common people in a comparative reference to the highest classes of
their fellow-men, considered what was left practicable to them within
their own narrow allotment, that the schemes originated which have
actually imparted to a proportion of them an invaluable share of the
benefits of knowledge. There has thus been formed a small improved order
of people amidst the multitude; and it is the contrast between these and
the general state of that multitude that most directly exposes the popular
debasement. It certainly were ridiculous enough to fix on a laboring man
and his family, and affect to deplore that he is doomed not to behold the
depths and heights of science, not to expatiate over the wide field of
history, not to luxuriate among the delights, refinements, and infinite
diversities of literature; and that his family are not growing up in a
training to every high accomplishment, after the pattern of some family in
the neighborhood, favored by fortune, and high ability and cultivation in
those at their head. But it is a quite different thing to take this man
and his family, hardly able, perhaps, even to read, and therefore sunk in
all the grossness of ignorance,--and compare them with another man and
family in the same sphere of life, but who have received the utmost
improvement within the reach of that situation, and are sensible of its
value; who often employ the leisure hour in reading, (sometimes socially
and with intermingled converse,) some easy work of instruction or innocent
entertainment; are detached, in the greatest degree that depends on their
choice, from society with the absolute vulgar; have learnt much decorum of
manners; can take an intelligent interest in the great events of the
world; and are prevented, by what they read and hear, from forgetting that
there is another world. It is, we repeat, after thus seeing what may, and
in particular instances does exist, in a humble condition, that we are
compelled to regard as really a dreadful spectacle the still prevailing
state of our national population.

We shall endeavor to exhibit, though on a small scale, and perhaps not
with a very strict regularity of proportion and arrangement, a faithful
representation of the most serious of the evils conspicuous in an
uneducated state of the people. Much of the description and reflections
must be equally applicable to other countries; for spite of all their
mutual antipathies and hostilities, and numberless contrarieties of
customs and fashions, they have been wonderfully content to resemble one
another in the worst national feature, a deformed condition of their
people. But it is here at home that this condition is the most painfully
forced on our attention; and here also of all the world it is, that such a
wretched exhibition is the severest reproach to the nation for having
suffered its existence.

The subject is to the last degree unattractive, except to a misanthropic
disposition; or to that, perhaps, of a stern theological polemic, when
tempted to be pleased with every superfluity of evidence for overwhelming
the opposers of the doctrine which asserts the radical corruption of our
nature. As spread over a coarse and repulsive moral and physical scenery,
it is a subject in the extreme of contrast with that susceptibility of
magnificent display, on account of which some of the most cruel evils that
have preyed on mankind have ever been favorite themes with writers
ambitious to shine in description. Nor does it present a wild and varying
spectacle, where a crowd of fantastic shapes (as in a view of the pagan
superstitions,) may stimulate and beguile the imagination though we know
we are looking on a great evil. It is a gloomy monotony; Death without his
dance. Moreover, the representation which exhibits one large class
degraded and unhappy, reflects ungraciously, and therefore repulsively, by
an imputation of neglect of duty, on the other classes who are called upon
to look at the spectacle. There is, besides, but little power of arresting
the attention in a description of familiar matter of fact, plain to every
one's observation. Yet ought it not to be so much the better, when we are
pleading for a certain mode of benevolent exertion, that every one can
see, and that no one can deny, the sad reality of all that forms the
object, and imposes the duty, of that exertion?

Look, then, at the neglected ignorant class in their childhood and youth.
One of the most obvious circumstances is the _perfect non-existence in
their minds of any notion or question what their life is for, taken as a
whole._ Among a crowd of trifling and corrupting ideas that soon find a
place in them, there is never the reflective thought,--For what purpose am
I alive? What is it that I should be, more than the animal that I am? Does
it signify _what_ I may be?--But surely, it is with ill omen that the
human creature advances into life without such a thought. He should in the
opening of his faculties receive intimations, that something more belongs
to his existence than what he is about to-day, and what he may be about
to-morrow. He should be made aware that the course of activity he is
beginning ought to have a leading principle of direction, some predominant
aim, a general and comprehensive purpose, paramount to the divers
particular objects he may pursue. It is not more necessary for him to
understand that he must in some way be employed in order to live, than to
be apprized that life itself, that existence itself, is of no value but as
a mere capacity of something which he should realize, and of which he may
fail. He should be brought to apprehend that there is a something
essential for him to _be_, which he will not _become_ merely by passing
from one day into another, by eating and sleeping, by growing taller and
stronger, seizing what share he can of noisy sport, and performing
appointed portions of work; and that if he do _not_ become that which, he
_cannot_ become without a general and leading purpose, he will be
worthless and unhappy.

We are not entertaining the extravagant fancy that it is possible, except
in some rare instances of premature thoughtfulness, to turn inward into
deep habitual reflection, the spirit that naturally goes outward in these
vivacious, active, careless beings, when we assert that it _is_ possible
to teach many of them with a degree of success, in very juvenile years, to
apprehend and admit somewhat of such a consideration. We have many times
seen this exemplified in fact. We have found some of them appearing
apprized that _life is for something as a whole_; and that, to answer this
general purpose, a mere succession of interests and activities, each gone
into for its own sake, will not suffice. They could comprehend, that the
multiplicity of interests and activities in detail, instead of
constituting of themselves the purpose of life, were to be regarded as
things subordinate and subservient to a general scope, and judged of,
selected, and regulated, in reference and amenableness to it.--By the
presiding comprehensive purpose, we do not specifically and exclusively
mean a direction of the mind to the _religious_ concern, viewed as a
separate affair, and in _contradistinction_ to other interests; but a
purpose formed upon a collective notion of the person's interests, which
shall give one general right bearing to the course of his life; an aim
proceeding in fulfilment of a scheme, that comprehends and combines with
the religious concern all the other concerns for the sake of which it is
worth while to dispose the activities of life into a _plan_ of conduct,
instead of leaving them to custom and casualty. The scheme will look and
guide toward ultimate felicity: but will at the same time take large
account of what must be thought of, and what may be hoped for, in relation
to the present life.

Now, we no more expect to find any such idea of a presiding purpose of
life, than we do the profoundest philosophical reflection, in the minds of
the uneducated children and youth. They think nothing at all about their
existence and life in any moral or abstracted or generalizing reference
whatever. They know not any good that it is to have been endowed with a
rational rather than a brute nature, excepting that it affords more
diversity of action, and gives the privilege of tyrannizing over brutes.
They think nothing about what they shall become, and very little about
what shall become of them. There is nothing that tells them of the
relations for good and evil, of present things with future and remote
ones. The whole energy of their moral and intellectual nature goes out as
in brute instinct on present objects, to make the most they can of them
for the moment, taking the chance for whatever may be next. They are left
totally devoid even of the thought, that what they are doing is the
beginning of a life as an important adventure for good or evil; their
whole faculty is engrossed in the doing of it; and whether it signify
anything to the next ensuing stage of life, or to the last, is as foreign
to any calculation of theirs, as the idea of reading their destiny in the
stars. Not only, therefore, is there an entire preclusion from their minds
of the faintest hint of a monition, that they should live for the grand
final object pointed to by religion, but also, for the most part, of all
consideration of the attainment of a reputable condition and character in
life. The creature endowed with faculties for "large discourse, looking
before and after," capable of so much design, respectability, and
happiness, even in its present short stage, and entering on an endless
career, is seen in the abasement of snatching, as its utmost reach of
purpose, at the low amusements, blended with vices, of each passing day;
and cursing its privations and tasks, and often also the sharers of those
privations, and the exactors of those tasks.

When these are grown up into the mass of mature population, what will it
be, as far as their quality shall go toward constituting the quality of
the whole? Alas! it will be, to that extent, just a continuation of the
ignorance, debasement, and misery, so conspicuous in the bulk of the
people now. And to _what_ extent? Calculate _that_ from the unquestionable
fact that hundreds of thousands of the human beings in our land, between
the ages, say of six and sixteen, are at this hour thus abandoned to go
forward into life at random, as to the use they shall make of it,--if,
indeed, it can be said to be at random, when there is strong tendency and
temptation to evil, and no discipline to good. Looking at this proportion,
does any one think there will be, on the whole, wisdom and virtue enough
in the community to render this black infusion imperceptible or innoxious?

But are we accounting it absolutely inevitable that the sequel must be in
full proportion to this present fact,--_must_ be everything that this fact
threatens, and _can_ lead to,--as we should behold persons carried down in
a mighty torrent, where all interposition is impossible, or as the Turks
look at the progress of a conflagration or an epidemic? It is in order to
"frustrate the tokens" of such melancholy divination, to arrest something
of what a destructive power is in the act of carrying away, to make the
evil spirit find, in the next stages of his march, that all his enlisted
host have not followed him, and to quell somewhat of the triumph of his
boast, "My name is legion, for we are many;"--it is for this that the
friends of improvement, and of mankind, are called upon for efforts
greatly beyond those which are requisite for maintaining in its present
extent of operation the system of expedients for intercepting, before it
be too late, the progress of so large a portion of the youthful tribe
toward destruction.

Another obvious circumstance in the state of the untaught class is, _that
they are abandoned, in a direct, unqualified manner, to seize recklessly
whatever they can of sensual gratification_. The very narrow scope to
which their condition limits them in the pursuit of this, will not prevent
its being to them the most desirable thing in existence, when there are so
few other modes of gratification which they either are in a capacity to
enjoy, or have the means to obtain. By the very constitution of the human
nature, the mind seems half to belong to the senses, it is so shut within
them, affected by them, dependent on them for pleasure, as well as for
activity, and impotent but through their medium. And while, by this
necessary hold which they have on what would call itself a spiritual
being, they absolutely will engross to themselves, as of clear right, a
large share of its interest and exercise, they will strive to possess
themselves of the other half too. And they will have it, if it has not
been carefully otherwise claimed and pre-occupied. And when the senses
have thus usurped the whole mind for their service, how will you get any
of it back? Try, if you will, whether this be a thing so easy to be done.
Present to the minds so engrossed with the desires of the senses, that
their main action is but in these desires and the contrivances how to
fulfil them,--offer to their view nobler objects, which are appropriate to
the spiritual being, and observe whether that being promptly shows a
sensibility to the worthier objects, as congenial to its nature, and,
obsequious to the new attraction, disengages itself from what has wholly
absorbed it.

Nor would we require that the experiment be made by presenting something
of a precisely religious nature, to which there is an innate aversion on
account of its _divine_ character, separately from its being an
intellectual thing,--an aversion even though the mental faculties _be_
cultivated. It may be made with something that ought to have power to
please the mind as simply a being of intelligence, imagination, and
sentiment,--a pleasure which, in some of its modes, the senses themselves
may intimately partake; as when, for instance, it is to be imparted by
something beautiful or grand in the natural world, or in the works of art.
Let this refined solicitation be addressed to the grossly uncultivated, in
competition with some low indulgence--with the means, for example, of
gluttony and inebriation. See how the subjects of your experiment,
(intellectual and moral natures though they are,) answer to these
respective offered gratifications. Observe how these more dignified
attractives encounter and overpower the meaner, and reclaim the usurped,
debased spirit. Or rather, observe whether they can avail for more than an
instant, so much as to divide its attention. But indeed you can foresee
the result so well, that you may spare the labor. Still less could you
deem it to be of the nature of an experiment, (which implies uncertainty,)
to make the attempt with ideal forms of nobleness or beauty, with
intellectual, poetical, or moral captivations.

Yet this addiction to sensuality, beyond all competition of worthier modes
and means of interest, does not altogether refuse to admit of some
division and diversion of the vulgar feelings, in favor of some things of
a more mental character, provided they be vicious. A man so neglected in
his youth that he cannot spell the names of Alexander, Cæsar, or Napoleon,
or read them if he see them spelt, may feel the strong incitement of
ambition. This, instead of raising him, may only propel him forward on the
level of his debased condition and society; and it is a favorable
supposition that makes him "the best wrestler on the green," or a manful
pugilist; for it is probable his grand delight may be, to indulge himself
in an oppressive, insolent arrogance toward such as are unable to maintain
a strife with him on terms of fair rivalry, making his will the law to all
whom he can force or frighten into submission.

Coarse sensuality admits, again, an occasional competition of the
gratifications of cruelty; a flagrant characteristic, generally, of
uncultivated degraded human creatures, both where the whole community
consists of such, as in barbarian and savage tribes, and where they form a
large portion of it, as in this country.--It is hardly worth while to put
in words the acknowledgment of the obvious and odious fact, that a
considerable share of mental attainment is sometimes inefficient to
extinguish, or even repress, this infernal principle of human nature, by
which it is gratifying to witness and inflict suffering, even separately
from any prompting of revenge. But why do we regard such examples as
peculiarly hateful, and brand them with the most intense reprobation, but
_because_ it is judged the fair and natural tendency of mental cultivation
to repress that principle, insomuch that its failure to do so is
considered as evincing a surpassing virulence of depravity? Every one is
ready with the saying of the ancient poet, that liberal acquirements
suppress ferocious propensities. But if the whole virtue of such
discipline may prove insufficient, think what must be the consequence of
its being almost wholly withheld, so that the execrable propensity may go
into action with its malignity unmitigated, unchecked, by any remonstrance
of feeling or taste, or reason or conscience.

And such a consequence is manifest in the lower ranks of our self-extolled
community; notwithstanding a diminution, which the progress of education
and religion has slowly effected, in certain of the once most favorite and
customary practices of cruelty; what we might denominate the classic games
of the rude populace. These very practices, nevertheless, still keep their
ground in some of the more heathenish parts of the country; and if it were
possible, that the more improved notions and taste of the more respectable
classes could admit of any countenance being given to their revival in the
more civilized parts, it would be found that, even there, a large portion
of the people is to this hour left in a disposition which would welcome
the return of savage exhibitions. It may be, that some of the most
atrocious forms and degrees of cruelty would not please the greater number
of them; there have been instances in which an English populace has shown
indignation at extreme and _unaccustomed_ perpetrations, sometimes to the
extent of cruelly revenging them; very rarely, however, when only brute
creatures have been the sufferers. Not many would be delighted with such
scenes as those which, in the _Place de Grève_, used to be a gratification
to a multitude of all ranks of the Parisians. But how many odious facts,
characteristic of our people, have come under every one's observation.

Who has not seen numerous instances of the delight with which advantage is
taken of weakness or simplicity, to practise upon them some sly mischief,
or inflict some open mortification; and of the unrepressed glee with which
the rude spectators can witness or abet the malice? And if, in such a
case, an indignant observer has hazarded a remark or expostulation, the
full stare, and the quickly succeeding laugh and retort of brutal scorn,
have thrown open to his revolting sight the state of the recess within,
where the moral sentiments are; and shown how much the perceptions and
notions had been indebted to the cares of the instructor. Could he help
thinking what was deserved somewhere, by individuals or by the local
community collectively, for suffering a being to grow up to quite or
nearly the complete dimensions and features of manhood, with so vile a
thing within it in substitution for what a soul should be? We need not
remark, what every one has noticed, how much the vulgar are amused by
seeing vexatious or injurious incidents, (if only not quite disastrous or
tragical,) befalling persons against whom they can have no resentment; how
ferocious often their temper and means of revenge when they _have_ causes
of resentment; or how intensely delighted, (in company, it is true, with
many that are called their betters,) in beholding several of their
fellow-mortals, whether in anger or athletic competition, covering each
other with bruises, deformity, and blood.

Our institutions, however, protect, in some considerable degree, man
against man, as being framed in a knowledge of what would else become of
the community. But observe a moment what are the dispositions of the
vulgar as indulged, and with no preventive interference of those
institutions, on the inferior animals. To a large proportion of this class
it is, in their youth, one of the most vivid exhilarations to witness the
terrors and anguish of living beings. In many parts of the country it
would be no improbable conjecture in explanation of a savage yell heard at
a distance, that a company of rationals may be witnessing the writhings,
agonies, and cries, of some animal struggling for escape or for life,
while it is suffering the infliction, perhaps, of stones, and kicks, or
wounds by more directly fatal means of violence. If you hear in the clamor
a sudden burst of fiercer exultation, you may surmise that just then a
deadly blow has been given. There is hardly an animal on the whole face of
the country, of size enough, and enough within reach to be a marked object
of attention, that would not be persecuted to death if no consideration of
ownership interposed. The children of the uncultivated families are
allowed, without a check, to exercise and improve the hateful disposition,
on flies, young birds, and other feeble and harmless creatures; and they
are actually encouraged to do it on what, under the denomination of
vermin, are represented in the formal character of enemies, almost in such
a sense as if a moral responsibility belonged to them, and they were
therefore not only to be destroyed as a nuisance, but deserving to be
punished as offenders.

The hardening against sympathy, with the consequent carelessness of
inflicting pain, combined as this will probably be, with the _love_ of
inflicting it, must be confirmed by the horrid spectacle of slaughter; a
spectacle sought for gratification by the children and youth of the lower
order; and in many places so publicly exhibited that they cannot well
avoid seeing it, and its often savage preliminary circumstances, sometimes
directly wanton aggravations; perhaps in revenge of a struggle to resist
or escape, perhaps in a rage at the awkward manner in which the victim
adjusts itself to a convenient position for suffering. Horrid, we call the
prevailing practice, because it is the infliction, on millions of sentient
and innocent creatures every year, in what calls itself a humane and
Christian nation, of anguish unnecessary to the purpose. Unnecessary--what
proof is there to the contrary?--To _what_ is the present practice
necessary?--Some readers will remember the benevolent (we were going to
say _humane_, but that is an equivocal epithet,) attempt made a number of
years since by Lord Somerville to introduce, but he failed, a mode of
slaughter, without suffering; a mode in use in a foreign nation with which
we should deem it very far from a compliment to be placed on a level in
point of civilization. And it is a flagrant dishonor to such a country,
and to the class that virtually, by rank, and formally, by official
station, have presided over its economy, one generation after another,
that so hideous a fact should never, as far as we know, have been deemed
by the highest state authorities worth even a question whether a
mitigation might not be practicable. An inconceivable daily amount of
suffering, inflicted on unknown thousands of creatures, dying in slow
anguish, when their death might be without pain as being instantaneous, is
accounted no deformity in the social system, no incongruity with the
national profession of religion of which the essence is charity and mercy,
nothing to sully the polish, or offend the refinement, of what demands to
be accounted, in its higher portions, a pre-eminently civilized and
humanized community. Precious and well protected polish and refinement,
and humanity, and Christian civilization! to which it is a matter of easy
indifference to know that, in the neighborhood of their abode, those
tortures of butchery are unnecessarily inflicted, which could not be
actually witnessed by persons in whom the pretension to these fine
qualities is anything better than affectation, without sensations of
horror; which it would ruin the character of a fine gentleman or lady to
have voluntarily witnessed in a single instance.

They are known to be inflicted, and yet this is a trifle not worth an
effort toward innovation on inveterate custom, on the part of the
influential classes; who may be far more worthily intent on a change in
the fashion of a dress, or possibly some new refinement in the cookery of
the dead bodies of the victims. Or the _living_ bodies; as we are told
that the most delicious preparation of an eel for exquisite palates is to
thrust the fish alive into the fire: while lobsters are put into water
_gradually_ heated to boiling. The latter, indeed, is an old practice,
like that of _crimping_ another fish. Such things are allowed or required
to be done by persons pretending to the highest refinement. It is a matter
far below legislative attention; while the powers of definition are
exhausted under the stupendous accumulation of regulations and
interdictions for the good order of society. So hardened may the moral
sense of a community be by universal and continual custom, that we are
perfectly aware these very remarks will provoke the ridicule of many
persons, including, it is possible enough, some who may think it quite
consistent to be ostentatiously talking at the very same time of Christian
charity and benevolent zeal. [Footnote: This was actually done in a
religious periodical publication.] Nor will that ridicule be repressed by
the notoriety of the fact, that the manner of the practice referred to
steels and depraves, to a dreadful degree, a vast number of human beings
immediately employed about it; and, as a spectacle, powerfully contributes
to confirm, in a greater number, exactly that which it is, by eminence,
the object of moral tuition to counteract--men's disposition to make-light
of all suffering but their own. This one thing, this not caring for what
may be endured by other beings made liable to suffering, is the very
essence of the depravity which is so fatal to our race in their social
constitution. This selfish hardness is moral plague enough even in an
inactive state, as a mere carelessness what other beings may suffer; but
there lurks in it a malignity which is easily stimulated to delight in
seeing or causing their suffering. And yet, we repeat it, a civilized and
Christian nation feels not the slightest self-displacency for its allowing
a certain unhappy but necessary part in the economy of the world to be
executed, (by preference to a harmless method,) in a manner which probably
does as much to corroborate in the vulgar class this essential principle
of depravity, as all the expedients of melioration yet applied are doing
to expel it.

Were it not vain and absurd to muse on supposable new principles in the
constitution of the moral system, there is one that we might have been
tempted to wish for, namely, that, of all suffering _unnecessarily_ and
wilfully inflicted by man on any class of sentient existence, a bitter
intimation and participation might be conveyed to him through a mysterious
law of nature, enforcing an avenging sympathy in severe proportion to that
suffering, on all the men who are really accountable for its being
inflicted.

After children and youth are trained to behold with something worse than
hardened indifference, with a gratifying excitement, the sufferings of
creatures dying for the service of man, it is no wonder if they are
barbarous in their treatment of those that serve him by their life. And
in fact nothing is more obvious as a prevailing disgrace to our nation,
than the cruel habits of the lower class toward the laboring animals
committed to their power. These animals have no security in their best
condition and most efficient services; but generally the hateful
disposition is the most fully exercised on those that have been already
the greatest sufferers. Meeting, wherever we go, with some of these
starved, abused, exhausted figures, we shall not unfrequently meet with
also another figure accompanying them--that of a ruffian, young or old,
who with a visage of rage, and accents of hell, is wreaking his utmost
malevolence on a wretched victim for being slow in performing, or quite
failing to perform, what the excess of loading, and perhaps the
feebleness of old age, have rendered difficult or absolutely
impracticable; or for shrinking from an effort to be made by a pressure
on bleeding sores, or for losing the right direction through blindness,
and that itself perhaps occasioned by hardship or savage violence. Many
of the exacters of animal labor really seem to resent it as a kind of
presumption and insult in the slave, that it would be anything else than
a machine, that the living being should betray under its toils that it
suffers, that it is pained, weary, or reluctant. And if, by outrageous
abuse, it should be excited to some manifestation of resentment, that is
a crime for which the sufferer would be likely to incur such a fury and
repetition of blows and lacerations as to die on the spot, but for an
interfering admonition of interest against destroying such a piece of
property, and losing so much service. When that service has utterly
exhausted, often before the term of old age, the strength of those
wretched animals, there awaits many of them a last short stage of still
more remorseless cruelty; that in which it is become a doubtful thing
whether the utmost efforts to which the emaciated, diseased, sinking
frame can be forced by violence, be worth the trouble of that violence,
the delays and accidents, and the expense of the scanty supply of
subsistence. As they must at all events very soon perish, it has ceased
to be of any material consequence, on the score of interest, how grossly
they may be abused; and their tormentors seem delighted with this release
from all restraint on their dispositions. Those dispositions, as indulged
in some instances, when the miserable creatures are formally consigned to
be destroyed, cannot be much exceeded by anything we can attribute to
fiends. Some horrid exemplifications were adduced, not as single casual
circumstances, but as usual practices, by a patriotic senator some years
since, in endeavoring to obtain a legislative enactment in mitigation of
the sufferings of the brute tribes. The design vanished to nothing in the
House of Commons, under the effect of argument and ridicule from a person
distinguished for intellectual cultivation; whose resistance was not only
against that specific measure, but avowedly against the principle itself
on which _any_ measure of the same tendency could ever be founded.
[Footnote: Lord Erskine's memorable Bill, triumphantly scouted by the
late Mr. Windham.--Undoubtedly there are considerable difficulties in the
way of legislation on the subject; but an equal share of difficulty
attending some other subjects--an affair of revenue, for instance, or a
measure for the suppression (at that time) of political opinion--would
soon have been overcome.] Nor could any victory have pleased him better,
probably, than one which contributed to prolong the barbarism of the
people, as the best security, he deemed, for their continuing fit to
labor at home and fight abroad. It might have added to this gratification
to hear (as was the fact) his name pronounced with delight by ruffians of
all classes, who regarded him as their patron saint.

If any one should be inclined to interpose here with a remark, that after
_such_ a reference, we have little right to ascribe to those classes, as
if it were peculiarly one of their characteristics, the insensibility to
the sufferings of the brute creation, and to number it formally among the
results of the "lack of knowledge," we can only reply, that however those
of higher order may explode any attempt to make the most efficient
authority of the nation bear repressively upon the evil, and however it
may in other ways be abetted by them, it is, at any rate, in those
inferior classes chiefly that the actual perpetrators of it are found. It
is something to say in favor of cultivation, that it does, generally
speaking, render those who have the benefit of it incapable of practising,
_themselves_, the most palpably flagrant of these cruelties which they may
be virtually countenancing, by some things which they do, and some things
which they omit or refuse to do. Mr. Windham would not himself have
practised a wanton barbarity on a poor horse or ass, though he scouted any
legislative attempt to prevent it among his inferiors.

       *       *       *       *       *

The proper place would perhaps have been nearer the beginning of this
description of the characteristics of our uneducated people, for one so
notorious, and one entering so much into the essence of the evils already
named, as that we mention next; _a rude, contracted, unsteady, and often
perverted sense of right and wrong in general_.

It is curious to look into a large volume of religious casuistry, the work
of some divine of a former age, (for instance Bishop Taylor's _Ductor
Dubitantium,_) with the reflection what a conscience disciplined in the
highest degree might be; and then to observe what this regulator of the
soul actually is where there has been no sound discipline of the reason,
and where there is no deep religious sentiment to rectify the perceptions
in the absence of an accurate intellectual discrimination of things. This
sentiment being wanting, dispositions and conduct cannot be taken account
of according to the distinction between holiness and sin; and in the
absence of a cultivated understanding, they cannot be brought to the test
of the distinguishing law between propriety and turpitude; nor estimated
upon any comprehensive notion of utility. The evidence of all this is
thick and close around us; so that every serious observer has been struck
and almost shocked to observe, in what a very small degree conscience is a
_necessary_ attribute of the human creature; and how nearly a nonentity
the whole system of moral principles may be, as to any recognition of it
by an unadapted spirit. While that system is of a substance veritable and
eternal, and stands forth in its exceeding breadth, marked with the
strongest characters and prominences, it has to these persons hardly the
reality or definiteness of a shadow, except in a few matters, if we may so
express it, of the grossest bulk. There must be glaring evidence of
something bad in what is done, or questioned whether to be done, before
conscience will come to its duty, or give proof of its existence. There
must be a violent alarm of mischief or danger before this drowsy and
ignorant magistrate will interfere. And since occasions thus involving
flagrant evil cannot be of very frequent occurrence in the life of the
generality of the people, it is probable that many of them have
considerably protracted exemptions from any interference of conscience at
all; it is certain that they experience no such pertinacious attendance of
it, as to feel habitually a monitory intimation, that without great
thought and care they will inevitably do something wrong. But what may we
judge and presage of the moral fortunes of a sojourner, of naturally
corrupt propensity, in this bad world, who is not haunted, sometimes to a
degree of alarm, by this monitory sense, through the whole course of his
life? What is likely to become of him, if he shall go hither and thither
on the scene exempt from all sensible obstruction of the many
interdictions, of a nature too refined for any sense but the vital
tenderness of conscience to perceive?

Obstructions of a more gross and tangible nature he is continually
meeting. A large portion of what he is accustomed to see presents itself
to him in the character of boundary and prohibition; on every hand there
is something to warn him what he must not do. There are high walls, and
gates, and fences, and brinks of torrents and precipices; in short, an
order of things on all sides signifying to him, with more or less of
menace,--Thus far and no further. And he is in a general way obsequious to
this arrangement. We do not ordinarily expect to see him carelessly
transgressing the most decided of the artificial boundaries, or daring
across those dreadful ones of nature. But, nearly destitute of the faculty
to perceive, (as in coming in contact with something charged with the
element of lightning,) the awful interceptive lines of that other
arrangement which he is in the midst of as a subject of the laws of God,
we see with what insensibility he can pass through those prohibitory
significations of the Almighty will, which are to devout men as lines
streaming with an infinitely more formidable than material fire. And if we
look on to his future course, proceeding under so fatal a deficiency, the
consequence foreseen is, that those lines of divine interdiction which he
has not conscience to perceive as meant to deter him, he will seem as if
he had acquired, through a perverted will, a recognition of in another
quality--as temptations to attract him.

But to leave these terms of generality and advert to a few particulars of
illustration:--Recollect how commonly persons of the class described are
found utterly violating truth, not in hard emergencies only, but as an
habitual practice, and apparently without the slightest reluctance or
compunction, their moral sense quite at rest under the accumulation of a
thousand deliberate falsehoods. It is seen that by far the greater number
of them think it no harm to take little unjust advantages in their
dealings, by deceptive management; and very many would take the greatest
but for fear of temporal consequences; would do it, that is to say,
without inquietude of conscience, in the proper sense. It is the testimony
of experience from persons who have had the most to transact with them,
that the indispensable rule of proceeding is to assume generally their
want of principle, and leave it to time and prolonged trial to establish,
rather slowly, the individual exceptions. Those unknowing admirers of
human nature, or of English character, who are disposed to exclaim against
this as an illiberal rule, may be recommended to act on what they will
therefore deem a liberal one--at their cost.

That power of established custom, which is so great, as we had occasion to
show, on the moral sense of even better instructed persons, has its
dominion complete over that of the vulgar; insomuch that the most
unequivocal iniquity of a practice long suffered to exist, shall hardly
bring to their mere recollection the common acknowledged rule not to do as
we would wish not done to us. From recent accounts it appears, that the
entire coast of our island is not yet clear of those people called
_wreckers_, who felt not a scruple to appropriate whatever they could
seize of the lading of vessels cast ashore, and even whatever was worth
tearing from the personal possession of the unfortunate beings who might
be escaping but just alive from the most dreadful peril. The cruelty we
have so largely attributed to our English vulgar, never recoils on them in
self-reproach. The habitual indulgence of the irascible, vexatious, and
malicious tempers, to the plague or terror of all within reach, scarcely
ever becomes a subject of judicial estimate, as a character hateful in the
abstract, with them a reflection of that estimate on the man's own self.
He reflects but just enough to say to himself that it is all right and
deserved, and unavoidable, too, for he is unpardonably crossed and
provoked; nor will he be driven from this self-approval, when it may be
evident to every one else that the provocations are comparatively slight,
and are only taken as offences by a disposition habitually seeking
occasions to vent its spite. The inconvenience and vexation incident to
low vice, may make the offenders fret at themselves for having been so
foolish, but it is in general with an extremely trifling degree of the
sense of guilt. Suggestions of reprehension, in even the discreetest
terms, and from persons confessedly the best authorized to make them,
would not seldom be answered by a grinning, defying carelessness, in some
instances by abusive retort; instead of any betrayed signs of an internal
acknowledgment of deserving reproof.

And while thus the censure of a fellow-mortal meets no internal testimony
to own its justice, this insensate self-complacency is undisturbed also on
the side toward heaven. A mere philosopher, that should make little
account of religion, otherwise than as capable of being applied to enforce
and aggravate the sense of obligation with respect to rules of conduct,
and would not, provided it may have this effect, care much about its truth
or falsehood,--might be disposed to assert that the ignorant and debased
part of the population, of this Christian and Protestant country, are but
so much the worse for the riddance of some parts of the superstitions of
former ages. He might allege, with plausibility, that the system which
imposed so many falsehoods, vain observances, and perversions of moral
principles, acknowledging nevertheless _some_ correct rules of morality,
as an external practical concern, had the advantage of enjoining them, as
far as it chose to do so, with the force of superstition, a stronger
authority with a rude conscience than that of plain simple religion. That
system exercised a mighty complexity and accumulation of authority, all
avowedly divine; by which it could artificially augment, or rather
supersede, the mere divine prescription of such rules, making _itself_ the
authority and prescriber; and thus could infix them in the moral sense of
the people with something more, or something else, than the simple divine
sanction. Whereas, now when those superstitions which held the people so
powerfully in awe, are gone, and have taken away with them that spurious
sanction, there remains nothing to exert the same power of moral
enforcement; since the people have not, in their exemption from the
superstitions of their ancestors, come under any solemn and commanding
effect of the true idea of the Divine Majesty. And it is undeniable that
this is the state of conscience among them. The vague, faint notion, as
they conceive it, of a being who is said to be the creator, governor,
lawgiver, and judge, and who dwells perhaps somewhere in the sky, has not,
to many of them, the smallest force of intimidation from evil, at least
when they are in health and daylight. One of the large sting-armed insects
of the air does not alarm them less. A certain transitory fearfulness that
occasionally comes upon them, points more to the Devil, and perhaps (in
times now nearly gone by) to the ghosts of the dead, than to the Almighty.
It may be, indeed, that this feeling is in its ultimate principle, if it
were ever followed up so far, an acknowledgment of justice and power in
God, reaching to wicked men through these mysterious agents; who though
intending no service to him, but actuated by dispositions of their own,
malignant in the greatest of them, and supposed inauspicious in the
others, are yet carrying into effect his hostility. But it is little
beyond such proximate objects of apprehension that many minds extend their
awe of invisible spiritual existence. Even the notion really entertained
by them of the greatness of God, may be entertained in such a manner as to
have but slight power to restrain the inclinations to sin, or to impress
the sense of guilt after it is committed. He is too great, they readily
say, to mind the little matters that such creatures as we may do amiss;
they can do _him_ no harm. The idea, too, of his bounty, is of such
unworthy consistency as to be a protection against all conscious reproach
of ingratitude and neglect of service toward him;--he has made us to need
all this that it is said he does for us; and it costs him nothing, it is
no labor, and he is not the less rich; and besides, we have toil, and
want, and plague enough, notwithstanding anything that he gives.

It is probable this unhappiness of their condition, oftener than any other
cause, brings God into their thoughts, and that as a being against whom
they have a complaint approaching to a quarrel on account of it. And this
strongly assists the reaction against whatever would enforce the sense of
guilt on the conscience. When he has done so little for us, (something
like this is the sentiment,) he cannot think it any such great matter if
we _do_ sometimes come a little short of his commands. There is no doubt
that their recollections of him as a being to murmur against for their
allotment, are more frequent, more dwelt upon, and with more of an excited
feeling, than their recollections of him as a being whom they ought to
have loved and served, but have offended against. The very idea of such
offence, as the chief and essential constituent of wickedness, is so
slightly conceived, (because he is invisible, and has his own felicity,
and is secure against all injury,) that if the thoughts of one of these
persons _should_, by some rare occasion, be forced into the direction of
unwillingly seeing his own faults, it is probable his impiety would appear
the most inconsiderable thing in the account; that he would easily forgive
himself the negation of all acts and feelings of devotion towards the
Supreme Being, and the countless multiplications of insults to him by
profane language.

To conclude this part of the melancholy statement; it may be observed of
the class in question, that they have but very little notion of guilt, or
possible guilt, in anything but external practice. That busy interior
existence, which is the moral person, genuine and complete; the thoughts,
imaginations, volitions; the motives, projects, deliberations, devices,
the indulgence of the ideas of what they cannot or dare not practically
realize,--all this, we have reason to believe, passes nearly exempted from
jurisdiction, even of that feeble and undecisive kind which _may_
occasionally attempt an interference with their actions. They do indeed
take such notice of the quality of these things within, as to be aware
that some of them are not to be disclosed in their communications; which
prudential caution has of course little to do with conscience, when the
things so withheld are internally cherished in perfect disregard of the
Omniscient Observer, and with hardly the faintest monition that the
essence of the guilt is the same, with only a difference in degree, in
intending or deliberately desiring an evil, and in acting it.

It is not natural obtuseness of mental faculty that we are attributing,
all this while, to the uneducated class of our people, in thus exposing
the defectiveness of their discernment between right and wrong. If it
were, there might arise somewhat of the consolation afforded in
contemplating some of the very lowest of the savage tribes of mankind, by
the idea that such outcasts of the rational nature must stand very nearly
exempt from accountableness, through absolute natural want of mind. But in
the barbarians of our country we shall often observe a very competent, and
now and then an abundant, share of native sense. We may see it evinced in
respect to the very questions of morality, in cases where they are quite
compelled, as will occasionally happen, to feel themselves brought within
the cognizance of one or other of its plainest rules. In such cases we
have witnessed a sharpness and activity of intellect claiming almost our
admiration. What contrivance of deception and artful evasion. What
dexterity of quibble, and captious objection, and petty sophistry. What
vigilance to observe how the plea in justification or excuse takes effect,
and, if they perceive it does not succeed, what address in sliding into a
different one. What quickness to avail themselves of any mistake, or
apparent concession, in the examiner or reprover. What copious rhetoric in
exaggeration of the cause which tempted to do wrong, or of the great good
hoped to be effected by the little deviation from the right,--a good
surely enough to excuse so trifling an impropriety. What facility of
placing between themselves and the censure, the recollected example of
some good man who has been "overtaken in a fault."

Here _is_ mind, after all, we have been prompted to exclaim; mind
educating itself to evil, in default of that discipline which should have
educated it to good. How much of the wisdom of evil, (if we may be allowed
the expression,) there is faculty enough in the neglected corrupt popular
mass of this nation to attain, by the exercise into which the individual's
mind is carried by its own impulse, and in which he may everywhere and
every hour find ample co-operation. Each of these self-improvers in
depraved sense has the advantage of finding himself among a great tribe of
similar improvers, forming an immense school, as if for the promotion of
this very purpose; where they all teach by a competition in learning;
where the rude faculty which is not expanded into intelligence is,
however, sharpened into cunning; where the spirit which cannot grow into
an eagle, may take the form and action of a snake. This advantage,--that
there should not be a diminution of the superabundant plenty of associates
always at hand, to assist each man in making the most of his native
intellect for its least worthy use,--has been from age to age secured to
our populace, as if it had been the most valuable birthright of
Englishmen. Whatever else the person born to the inheritance of low life
was destined to find in it, the national state had made as sure to him as
it had before made the same privilege to his ancestors, that the
generality of his equals should be found fit and ready to work with him in
the acquirement of a depraved shrewdness.

But while the bulk of the people have been, in every period, abandoned to
such a process of educating themselves and one another, where has been
that character of parental guardianship, which seems to be ascribed when
poets, orators, and patriots, are inspired with tropes, and talk of
England and her children? This imperial matron of their rhetoric seems to
have little cared how much she might be disgraced in the larger portion of
her progeny, or how little cause they might have to all eternity to
remember her with gratitude. She has had far other concern about them, and
employment for them, than that of their being taught the value of their
spiritual nature, and carefully trained to be enlightened, good, and
happy. Laws against crime, it is true, she has enacted for them in liberal
quantity; appointed her quorums of magistrates; and not been sparing of
punishments. She has also maintained public sabbath observances to remind
them of religion, of which observances she cared not that they little
understood the very terms; except when the reading of a Book of Sports was
appointed an indispensable part at one time long after her adoption of the
Reformation. But she might plainly see what such provisions did _not_
accomplish. It was a glaring fact before her eyes, that the majority of
her children had far more of the mental character of a colony from some
barbarian nation, than of that which an enlightened and Christian state
might have been expected to impart. She had most ample resources indeed
for supplying the remedy; but, provided that the productions of the soil
and the workshop were duly forthcoming, she thought it of no consequence,
it should seem, that the operative hands belonged to degraded minds. And
then, too, as at all times, her lofty ambition destined a good proportion
of them to the consumption of martial service, she perhaps judged that the
less they were trained to think, the more fit they might be to be actuated
mechanically, as an instrument of blind impetuous force. Or perhaps she
thought it would be rather an inconsistency, to be making much of the
inner existence of a thing which was to be, in frequent wholesale lots,
sent off to be cut or dashed to pieces. [Footnote: "Killed off," was the
sentimental phrase emitted in parliament, in easy unconsciousness of
offence, by the accomplished senator named in a former page. He probably
was really unaware that the creatures were made for anything better.] And
besides, a certain measure of instruction to think, especially if
consisting, in a considerable part, of the inculcation of religion, might
have done something to disturb that notion, (so worthy to have been
transferred from the Mohammedan creed,) which she was by no means desirous
to expel from her fleets and armies, that death for "king and country"
clears off all accounts for sin.

Let our attention be directed a little while to the effects of the
privation of knowledge, as they may be seen conspicuous in the several
parts of the economy of life, in the uneducated part of the community.
Observe those people in their daily occupations. None of us need be told
that, of the prodigious diversity of manual employments, some consist of,
or include, operations of such minuteness or complexity, and so much
demanding nicety, arrangement, or combination, as to necessitate the
constant and almost entire attention of the mind; nor that all of them
must require its full attention at times, at particular stages, changes,
and adjustments, of the work. We allow this its full weight, to forbid any
extravagant notion of how much it is possible to think of other things
during the working time. It is however to be recollected, that persons of
a class superior to the numerous one we have in view, take the chief share
of those portions of the arts and manufactures which require the most of
mental effort,--those which demand extreme precision, or inventive
contrivance, or taste, or scientific skill. We may also take into the
account of the allotment of employments to the uncultivated multitude, how
much facility is acquired by habit, how much use there is of instrumental
mechanism, (a grand exempter from the responsibility that would lie on the
mind,) and how merely general and very slight an attention is exacted in
the ordinary course of some of the occupations. These things considered,
we may venture perhaps to assume, on an average of those employments, that
the persons engaged in them might be, as much at least as one third part
of the time, without detriment to the manual performance, giving the
thoughts to other things with attention enough for such interest as would
involve improvement. This is particularly true of the more ordinary parts
of the labors of agriculture, when not under any critical circumstances,
or special pressure owing to the season.

But as the case at present is, what does become, during such portion of
the time, of the ethereal essence which inhabits the corporeal laborer,
this spirit created, it is commonly said and without contradiction, for
thought, knowledge, religion, and immortality? If we be really to believe
this doctrine of its nature and destiny, (for we are not sure that
politicians think so,) can we know without regret, that in very many of
the persons in the situations supposed, it suffers a dull absorption,
subsides into the mere physical nature, is sunk and sleeping in the animal
warmth and functions, and lulled and rocked, as it were, in its lethargy,
by the bodily movements, in the works which it is not necessary for it to
keep habitually awake to direct? And its obligation to keep just enough
awake to see to the right performance of the work, seems to give a
licensed exemption from any other stirring of its faculties. The
employment _is something to be minded_, in a general way, though but now
and then requiring a pointed attention; and therefore this said
intellectual being, if uninformed and unexercised, will feel no call to
mind anything else: as a person retained for some service which demands
but occasionally an active exercise, will justify the indolence which
declines taking in hand any other business in the intervals, under the
pretext that he has his appointment; and so, when not under the immediate
calls of that appointment, he will trifle or go to sleep, even in the full
light of day, with an easy conscience.

But here we are to beware of falling into the inadvertency of appearing to
say, that the laboring classes, in this country and age, have actually
this full exemption, during their employments, from all exercise of
thought beyond that which is immediately requisite for the right
performance of their work. It is true that there is little enough of any
such mental activity directed to the instructive uses we were supposing.
But while such partial occupation of the thoughts (of course it is
admitted, in an irregular and discontinuous, but still a beneficial
manner) with topics and facts of what may be called intellectual and moral
interest as we are assuming to be compatible with divers of the manual
operations, is a thing to which most among the laboring classes are
strangers, many of them are equally strangers to an easy vacancy of mind;
experiencing amidst their employments a severe arrest of those thoughts
which the mere employment itself may leave free. During the little more
than mechanical action of their hands and eyes, the circumstances of their
condition press hard into their minds. The lot of many of those classes is
placed in a melancholy disproportion between what _must_ be given to the
cares and toils for a bare subsistence, and what _can_, at most, be given
to the interests of the nobler part of their nature, either during their
work or in its intervals. It is a sad spectacle to behold so many myriads
of spiritual beings, (proviso, again, that we may call them so without
being suspected to forget that their proper calling is to work with their
hands,) doomed to consume a proportion so little short of the whole of
their vigor and time, in just merely supporting so many bodies in the
struggle to live.

When it is in special relation to the present times that we speak of this
struggle to live, we of course mean by it something more than that
circumstance of the general lot of humanity which is expressed in the
sentence, "In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread," We put the
emphasis on the peculiar aggravation of that circumstance in this part of
the world in this and recent times, by the adventitious effect of some
dreadful disorder of the social economy, in consequence of which the
utmost exertions of the body and mind together but barely suffice in so
many cases, in some hardly do suffice, for the mere protraction of life;
comfortable life being altogether out of the question. The course of the
administration of the civilized states, and the recent dire combustion
into which they have almost unanimously rushed, as in emulation which of
them should with the least reserve, and with the most desperate rapidity,
annihilate the resources that should have been for the subsistence and
competence of their people, have resulted in such destitution and misery
in this country as were never known before, except as immediately
inflicted by the local visitation of some awful calamity. The state of
very many of our people, at this hour, is nearly what might be conceived
as the consequence of a failure of the accustomed produce of the earth.
[Footnote: No exaggeration at the time when it was written. The condition
of the working classes during the subsequent years does not admit of any
comprehensive uniform description. It has suffered successive harassing
fluctuations, and been probably at all times severely distressing in one
part of the country or another.]

There is no wish to deny or underrate the additions made to the evil by
the intervention of causes, whose operation admits of being traced in some
measure distinctly from the effect of this grand one. They may be traced
in an operation which is _distinguishable_; and referable to each
respectively; but it were most absurd to represent them as working out of
connection, or otherwise than subordinately concurring, with that cause
which has invaded with its pernicious effects everything that has an
existence or a name in the social system. And it were simply monstrous to
attribute the main substance of so wide and oppressive an evil to causes
of any debateable quality, while there is glaring in sight a cause of
stupendous magnitude, which _could not possibly do otherwise than_ produce
immense and calamitous effects. It would be as if a man were prying about
for this and the other cause of damage, to account for the aspect of a
region which has recently been devastated by inundations or earthquakes.
It has become much a fashion to explain the distresses of a country on any
principles rather than those that are taught by all history, and
prominently manifest in the nature of things. And airs of superior
intelligence shall be assumed on hearing a plain man fix the main charge
of national exhaustion and distress on the nation's consuming its own
strength in an unquenchable fury to destroy that of others; just as if
such madness had never been known to result in poverty and distress, and
it were perfectly inexplicable how it should. This is partly an
affectation of science, accompanied, it is likely, by somewhat of that
sincere extravagance with which some newly developed principle is apt to
be accounted the comprehension of all wisdom, a nostrum that will explain
everything. But we suspect that in many instances this substitution of
subordinate causes for a great substantial one, proceeds from something
much worse than such affectation or self-duped extravagance. It is from a
resolute determination that ambition shall be the noblest virtue of a
state; that martial glory shall maintain its ground in human idolatry and
that wars and their promoters shall be justified at all hazards.

We were wishing to show how the laboring people's thoughts might be partly
employed, during their daily task, and consistently with industry and good
workmanship. But what a state of things is exhibited where the very name
of industry, the virtue universally honored, the topic of so many human
and divine inculcations, cannot be spoken without offering a bitter
insult; where the heavy toil, denounced on man for his transgression, in
the same sentence as death, is in vain implored as the greatest privilege;
or thought of in despair, as a blessing too great to be attainable; and
when the reply of the artisan to an unwitting admonition, that even amidst
his work he might have some freedom for useful thinking, may be,
"Thinking! I have no work to confine my thinking; I may, for that, employ
it all on other subjects; but those subjects are, whether I please or not,
the plenty and luxury in which many creatures of the same kind as myself
are rioting, and the starvation which I and my family are suffering."

We hope in Providence, more than in any wisdom or disposition shown by
men, that this melancholy state of things will be alleviated, otherwise
than by a reduction of number through the diseases generated by utter
penury. [Footnote: It _has_ been alleviated; but not till after a
considerable duration. In England it has; but look at Ireland?] We trust
the time will come when the Christian monitor shall no longer be silenced
by the apprehension of such a reply to the suggestion he wishes to make to
the humble class, that they should strive against being reduced to mere
machines amidst their manual employments; that it is miserable to have the
whole mental existence shrunk and shrivelled as it were to the breadth of
the material they are working upon; that the noble interior agent, which
lends itself to maintain the external activity, and direct the operations
required of the bodily powers for the body's welfare, has eminently a
right and claim to have employments on its own account, during such parts
of those operations as do not of necessity monopolize its attention. It
may claim, in the superintendence of these, a privilege analogous to that
possessed in the general direction of subordinate agents by a man of
science, who will interfere as often as it is necessary, but will not give
up all other thought and employment to be a constant mere looker-on,
during such parts of the operations as are of so ordinary a nature that he
could not really fix his attention on them.

But how is the mind of the laborer or artisan to be delivered from the
blank and stupified state, during the parts of his employment that do not
necessarily engross his thoughts? How, but by its having within some store
of subjects for thought; something for memory, imagination, reflection; in
a word, by the possession of knowledge? How can it be sensibly alive and
active, when it is placed fully and decidedly out of communication with
all things that are friendly to intellectual life, all things that apply a
beneficial stimulus to the faculties, all things, of this world or
another, that are the most inviting or commanding to thought and emotion?
We can imagine this ill-fated spirit, especially if by nature of the
somewhat finer temperament, thus detached from all vital connection,
secluded from the whole universe, and inclosed as by a prison wall,--we
can imagine it sometimes moved with an indistinct longing for its
appropriate interests; and going round and round by this dark, dead wall,
to seek for any spot where there might be a chance of escape, or any
crevice where a living element for the soul transpires; and then, as
feeling it all in vain, dejectedly resigning itself again to its doom.
Some ignorant minds have instinctive impulses of this kind; though far
more of them are so deeply stupified as to be habitually safe from any
such inquietude. But let them have received, in their youth and
progressively afterwards, a considerable measure of interesting
information, respecting, for instance, the many striking objects on the
globe they inhabit, the memorable events of past ages, the origin and uses
of remarkable works within their view, remaining from ancient times; the
causes of effects and phenomena familiar to their observation as now
unintelligible facts; the prospects of man, from the relation he stands in
to time, and eternity, and God, explained by the great principles and
facts of religion. Let there be fixed in their knowledge so many ideas of
these kinds, as might be imparted by a comparatively humble education,
(one quite compatible with the destination to a life of ordinary
employment,) and even involuntarily the thoughts would often recur to
these subjects, in those moments and hours when the manual occupation can,
and actually will, be prosecuted with but little of exclusive attention.
Slight incidents, casual expressions, would sometimes suggest these
subjects; by association they would suggest one another. The mere reaction
of a somewhat cultivated spirit against invading dulness, might recall
some of the more amusing and elating ones; and they would fall like a
gleam of sunshine on the imagination. An emotion of conscience, a
self-reflection, an occurring question of duty, a monitory sensation of
defective health, would sometimes point to the serious and solemn ones.
The mind might thus go a considerable way, to recreate or profit itself,
and, on coming back again, find all safe in the processes of the field or
the loom. The man would thus come from these processes with more than the
bare earnings to set against the fatigue. There would thus be scattered
some appearances to entertain, and some sources and productions to
refresh, over what were else a dead and barren flat of existence.

There is no romancing in all this; we have known instances of its
verification to a very pleasing and exemplary extent. We have heard
persons of the class in question tell of the exhilarating imaginations, or
solemn reflections, which, through the reminiscences of what they had read
in youth or more advanced years, had visited their minds; and put them, as
it were, in communication for a while with diversified, remote, and
elevated objects, while in their humble employments under the open sky or
the domestic roof. And is not this, (if it be true, after all, that the
intellectual, immortal nature is by emphasis the man,) is not this vastly
better than that this mind should lie nearly as dormant, during the
laborer's hours of business, as his attendant of the canine species shall
be sometimes seen to do in the corner of the field where he is at work?

But perhaps it will be said, that the minds of the uncultivated order are
not generally in this state of utter inanity during their common
employments; but are often awake and busy enough in recollections,
fancies, projects, and the tempers appropriate; and that they abundantly
show this when they stop sometimes in their work to talk, or talk as they
are proceeding in it. So much the stronger, we answer, the argument for
supplying them with useful knowledge; for it were better their mental
being _were_ sunk in lethargy, than busy among the reported, recollected,
or imagined transactions, the wishes, and the schemings, which will be the
most likely to occupy the minds of persons abandoned to ignorance,
vulgarity, and therefore probably to low vice.

We may add to the representation, the manner in which they spend the part
of their time not demanded for the regular, or the occasional, exercise of
their industry. It is not to be denied that many of them have too much
truth in their pleading that, with the exception of Sunday, they have
little remission of their toils till they are so weary that the remainder
of the time is needed for complete repose. This is particularly the case
of the females, especially those who have the chief cares and the actual
work of a family. Nevertheless, it is within our constant observation that
a considerable proportion of the men, a large one of the younger men, in
the less heavily oppressed divisions of our population, do in fact
include, for substance, their manual employments within such limits of
time, as often to leave several hours in the day to be spent nearly as
they please. And in what manner, for the most part, is this precious time
expended by those of no mental cultivation? It is true, again, that in
many departments of labor, a diligent exertion during even this limited
space of the day, occasions such a degree of lassitude and heaviness as to
render it almost inevitable, especially in certain seasons of the year, to
surrender some moments of the spare time, beyond what is necessary for the
humble repast, to a kind of listless subsidence of all the powers of both
body and mind. But after all these allowances fully conceded, a great
number in the class under consideration have in some days several hours,
and in the whole six days of the week, on an average of the year, very
many hours, to be given, as they choose, to useful purposes or to waste;
and again we ask, where the mind itself has been left waste how _is_ that
time mostly expended?

If the persons are of a phlegmatic temperament, we shall often see them
just simply annihilating those portions of time. They will for an hour,
or for hours together, if not disturbed by some cause from without, sit
on a bench, or lie down on a bank or hillock, or lean on a wall, or fill
the fire-side chair; yielded up to utter vacancy and torpor, not asleep
perhaps, but more lost to mental existence than if they were; since the
dreams, that would probably visit their slumbers, would be a more lively
train of ideas than any they have awake. Of a piece with this is the
habit, among many of this order of people, of giving formally to sleep as
much as one-third part, sometimes considerably more, of the twenty-four
hours. Certainly there are innumerable cases in which infirmity, care,
fatigue, and the comfortlessness and penury of the humble dwelling,
effectually plead for a large allowance of this balm of oblivion. But
very many surrender themselves to this excess from destitution of
anything to keep their minds awake, especially in the evenings of the
winter. What a contrast is here suggested to the imagination of those who
have read Dr. Henderson's, and other recent descriptions, of the habits
of the people of Iceland!

These, however, are their most harmless modes of wasting the time. For,
while we might think of the many hours merged by them in apathy and
needless sleep, with a wish that those hours could be recovered to the
account of their existence, we might well wish that the hours could be
struck out of it which they may sometimes give, instead, to conversation;
in parties where ignorance, coarse vulgarity, and profaneness, are to
support the dialogue, on topics the most to their taste; always including,
as the most welcome to that taste, the depravities and scandals of the
neighborhood; while all the reproach and ridicule, expended with good-will
on those depravities, have the strange result of making the censors the
less disinclined themselves to practise them, and only a little better
instructed how to do it with impunity. In many instances there is the
additional mischief, that these assemblings for corrupt communication find
their resort at the public-house, where intemperance and ribaldry may
season each other, if the pecuniary means for the former ingredient can be
afforded, even at the cost of distress at home.--But without including
depravity of this degree, the worthlessness of the communications of a
number of grossly ignorant associates is easy to be imagined; besides that
most of us have been made judges of their quality by numberless occasions
of unavoidably hearing samples of them.

In the finer seasons of the year, much of these leisure spaces of time can
be expended out of doors; and we have still only to refer to every one's
own observation of the account to which they are turned, in the lives of
beings whose lot allows but so contracted a portion of time to be, at the
best, applied directly to the highest purposes of life.--Here the hater of
all such schemes of improvement, as would threaten to turn the lower order
into what that hater may probably call Methodists, (a term we venture to
interpret for him as meaning thoughtful beings and Christians,) comes in
with a ready cant of humanity and commiseration. And why, he says, with an
affected indignation of philanthropy, why should not the poor creatures
enjoy a little fresh air and cheerful sunshine, and have a chance of
keeping their health, confined as many of them are, for the greatest part
of the time, in narrow, squalid rooms, unwholesome workshops, and every
sort of disagreeable places and employments? Very true, we answer; and why
should not numbers of them be collected in groups by the road-side, in
readiness to find in whatever passes there occasions for gross jocularity;
practising some impertinence, or uttering some jeering scurrility, at the
expense of persons going by; shouting with laughter at the success of the
annoyance, or to _make_ it successful; and all this blended with language
of profaneness and imprecation, as the very life of the hilarity? Or why
should not the boldest spirits among them form a little conventicle for
cursing, blaspheming, and blackguard obstreperousness in the street, about
the entrance of one of the haunts of intoxication; where they are
perfectly safe from that worse mischief of a gloomy fanaticism, with which
they might have been smitten if seduced to frequent the meeting-house
twenty paces off? Or why should not the children, growing into the stage
called youth, be turned loose through the lanes, roads, and fields, to
form a brawling, impudent rabble, trained by their association to every
low vice, and ambitiously emulating, in voice, visage, and manners, the
ruffians and drabs of maturer growth? Or why should not the young men and
women collect in clusters, or range about or beyond the neighborhood in
bands, for revel, frolic, and all kinds of coarse mirth; to come back late
at night to quarrel with their wretched elders, who perhaps envy them
their capacity for such wild gaieties and strollings, while rating them
for their disorderly habits? We say where can be the harm of all this?
What reasonable and benevolent man would think of making any objection to
it? Reasonable and benevolent,--for these have been among the qualities
boasted for the occasion by the opposers of any materially improved
education of the people; while in such opposition they virtually avowed
their willing tolerance of all that is here described.

We have allowed most fully the plea of how little time, _comparatively_,
could be afforded to the concern of mental improvement by the lower
classes from their indispensable employments; and also that of the
consequent fatigue, causing a temporary incapacity of effort in any other
way. But this latter plea cannot be admitted without great abatement in
the case of our neglected _young_ people of the working classes; for when
we advert to their actual habits, we see that, nevertheless, time,
strength, and wakefulness, and spring and spirit for exertion, _are_ found
for a vast deal of busy diversion, much of it blended with such folly as
tends to vice.

If such is the manner in which the spare time of the week-days goes to
waste and worse, the Sunday is welcomed as giving scope for the same
things on a larger scale. It is very striking to consider, that several
millions, we may safely assert, of our English people, arrived at what
should be years of discretion, are almost completely destitute of any
manner of conscience respecting this seventh part of time; not merely as
to any required consecration of it to religion, but as to its being under
any claim or of any worth at all, otherwise than for amusement. It is
actually regarded by them as a section of time far less under obligation
than any other. They take it as so absolutely at their free disposal, by a
right so exclusively vested in their taste and will, that a demand made
even in behalf of their own most important interests, is contemptuously
repelled as a sanctimonious impertinence. If the idea occurs at all (with
multitudes it never does) of claims which they have heard that God should
make on the hours, it is dismissed with the thought that it really cannot
signify to him how creatures, condemned by his appointment to toil all the
rest of the week, may wish to spend this one day, on which the secular
taskmaster manumits them, and He, the spiritual one, might surely do as
much. An immense number pay no attention whatever to any sort of religious
worship; and many of those that do give an hour or two to such an
observance, do so, some of them as merely a diversification of amusement,
and the others by way of taking a license of exemption from any further
accountableness for the manner in which they may spend the day. It is the
natural consequence of all this, that there is more folly, if not more
crime, committed on this than on all the other six days together.

Thus man, at least _ignorant_ man, is unfit to be trusted with anything
under heaven; since a remarkable appointment for raising the general tenor
of moral existence, has with these persons the effect of sinking it. There
is interposed, at frequent regular intervals throughout the series of
their days, a richer vein, as it were, of time. The improvement of this,
in a manner by no means strained to the austerity of exercise prescribed
in the Puritan rules, might diffuse a worth and a grace over all the time
between, and assist them against the tendency there may be in its
necessary habits and employments, to depress the intelligent nature into
meanness or debasement. The space which they are passing over is marked,
at near intervals, with broad lines of a benignant light, which might
spread an appearance of mild lustre over the whole extent as contemplated
in retrospect; but how many, in looking back when near the end of their
progress, have to perceive its general shade rendered darker by the very
spaces where that light had been shed from heaven.

The Sundays of those who do not improve them to a good purpose, will
infallibly be perverted to a bad one. But it were still a melancholy
account if we could regard them as merely standing for nothing, as a blank
in the life of this class of the people. It is a deeply unhappy spectacle
and reflection, to see a man of perhaps more than seventy, sunk in the
grossness and apathy of an almost total ignorance of all the most
momentous subjects, and then to consider, that, since he came to an age of
some natural capacity for the exercise of his mind, there have been more
than three thousand Sundays. In their long succession they were _his
time_. That is to say, he had the property in them which every man has in
duration; they were present to him, he had them, he spent them. Perhaps
some compassionate friend may have been pleading in his behalf,--Alas!
what opportunity, what time, has the poor mortal ever had? His lot has
been to labor hard through the week throughout almost his whole life. Yes,
we answer, but he has had three thousand Sundays; what would not even the
most moderate improvement of so vast a sum of hours have done for him? But
the ill-fated man, (perhaps rejoins the commiserating pleader,) grew up
from his childhood in utter ignorance of any use he ought to make of time
which his necessary employment would allow him to waste. There, we reply,
you strike the mark. Sundays are of no value, nor Bibles, nor the enlarged
knowledge of the age, nor heaven nor earth, to beings brought up in
estrangement from all right discipline. And therefore we are pleading for
the schemes and institutions which will not _let_ human beings be thus
brought up.

In so pleading, we happily can appeal to one fact in evidence that the
intellectual and religious culture, in the introductory stages of life,
tends to secure that the persons so trained shall be, when they are come
to maturity, marked off from the neglected barbarous mass, by at least an
external respect, but accompanied, we trust, in many of them, by a still
better sentiment, to the means for keeping truth and duty constantly in
their view. Observe the numbers now attending, with a becoming deportment,
public worship and instruction, as compared with what the proportion is
remembered or recorded to have been half a century since, or any time
previous to the great exertions of benevolence to save the children of the
inferior classes from preserving the whole mental likeness of their
forefathers.

It can be testified also, by persons whose observation has been the
longest in the habit of following children and youth from the instruction
of the school institutions into mature life, that, in a gratifying number
of instances, they have been seen permanently retaining too much love of
improvement, and too much of the habit of a useful employment of their
minds, to sink, in their ordinary daily occupations, into that wretched
inanity we were representing; or to consume the free intervals of time in
the listlessness, or worthless gabble, or vain sports, of which their
neighbors furnished plenty of example and temptation.

       *       *       *       *       *

These representations have partly included, what we may yet specify
distinctly as one of the unhappy effects of gross ignorance--_a degraded
state of domestic society_.

Whatever is of nature to render individuals uninteresting or offensive to
one another, has a specially bad effect among them as members of a family;
because there is in that form of community itself a peculiar tendency to
fall below the level of dignified and complacent social life.--A number of
persons cannot be placed in a state of social communication, without
having a certain sense of claiming from one another a conduct meant and
adapted to please. It is expected that a succession of efforts should be
made for this purpose, with a willingness of each individual to forego, in
little things, his own inclination or convenience. This is all very well
when the society is _voluntary_, and the parties can separate when the
cost is felt to be greater than the pleasure. Under this advantage of
being able soon to separate, even a company of strangers casually
assembled will often recognize the claim and conform to the law; with a
certain indistinct sentiment partaking of reciprocal gratitude for the
disposition which is so accommodating. But the members of the domestic
community also have each this same feeling which demands a mutual effort
and self-denial to please, while the condition of their association is
adverse to their _yielding_ what they thus respectively claim. Theirs,
when once it is formed, is not exactly a voluntary companionship, and it
is one of undefinable continuance. The claim therefore seems as if it were
to be of a prolongation interminable, while the grateful feeling for the
concession is the less for the more compulsory bond of the association.
And to be thus required, in a community which must not be dissolved, and
in a series that reaches away beyond calculation, to exercise a
self-restraint on their wills and humors in order to please one another,
goes so hard against the great principle of human feeling--namely, each
one's preference of pleasing himself--that there is an habitual impulse of
reaction against the claim. This shows itself in their deportment, which
has the appearance of a practical expression of so many individuals that
they _will_ maintain each his own freedom. Hence the absence, very
commonly, in domestic society, of the attentiveness, the tone of civility,
the promptitude of compliance, the habit of little accommodations,
voluntary and supernumerary, which are so observable in the intercourse of
friends, acquaintance, and often, as we have said, even of strangers.

And then consider, in so close a kind of community, what near and intimate
witnesses they are of all one another's faults, weaknesses, tempers,
perversities; of whatever is offensive in manner, or unseemly in habit; of
all the irksome, humiliating, or sometimes ludicrous circumstances and
situations. And also, in this close association, the bad moods, the
strifes, and resentments, are pressed into immediate, lasting, corrosive
contact with whatever should be the most vital to social happiness. If
there be, into the account, the wants, anxieties, and vexations of severe
poverty, they will generally aggravate all that is destructive to domestic
complacency and decorum.

Now add gross ignorance to all this, and see what the picture will be. How
many families have been seen where the parents were only the older and
stronger animals than their children, whom they could teach nothing but
the methods and tasks of labor. They naturally could not be the mere
companions, for alternate play and quarrel, of their children, and were
disqualified by mental rudeness to be their respected guardians. There
were about them these young and rising forms, containing the
inextinguishable principle, which was capable of entering on an endless
progression of wisdom, goodness, and happiness! needing numberless
suggestions, explanations, admonitions, brief reasonings, and a training
to attend to the lessons of written instruction. But nothing of all this
from the parent. Their case was as hopeless for receiving these
necessaries of mental life, as the condition, for physical nutriment, of
infants attempting to draw it, (we have heard of so affecting and mournful
a fact,) from the breast of a dead parent. These unhappy heads of families
possessed no resources for engaging youthful attention by mingled
instruction and amusements; no descriptions of the most wonderful objects,
or narratives of the most memorable events, to set, for superior
attraction, against the idle stories of the neighborhood; no assemblage of
admirable examples, from the sacred or other records of human character,
to give a beautiful real form to virtue and religion, and promote an
aversion to base companionship.

Requirement and prohibition must be a part of the domestic economy
habitually in operation of course; and in such families you will have
seen the government exercised, or attempted to be exercised, in the
roughest, barest shape of will and menace, with no aptitude or means of
imparting to injunction and censure, a convincing and persuasive quality.
Not that the seniors should allow their government to be placed on such a
ground that, in everything they enforce or forbid, they may be liable to
have their reasons demanded by the children, as an understood condition
of their compliance. Far from it; they will sometimes have to require a
prescribed conduct for reasons not intelligible, or which it may not be
discreet to explain, to those who are to obey. But their authority
becomes odious, and as a moral force worse than inefficient, when the
natural shrewdness of the children can descry that they really _have_ no
reasons better than an obstinate or capricious will; and infallibly makes
the inference, that there is no obligation to submit, but that necessity
which dependence imposes. But this must often be the unfortunate
condition of such families.

Now imagine a week, month, or year, of the intercourse in such a domestic
society, the course of talk, the mutual manners, and the progress of mind
and character; where there is a sense of drudgery approaching to that of
slavery, in the unremitting necessity of labor; where there is none of the
interest of imparting knowledge or receiving it, or of reciprocating
knowledge that has been imparted and received; where there is not an acre,
if we might express it so, of intellectual space around them, clear of the
thick, universal fog of ignorance; where, especially, the luminaries of
the spiritual heaven, the attributes of the Almighty, the grand phenomenon
of redeeming mediation, the solemn realities of a future state and another
world, are totally obscured in that shade; where the conscience and the
discriminations of duty are dull and indistinct, from the youngest to the
oldest; where there is no genuine respect on the one side, nor affection
unmixed with vulgar petulance and harshness, expressed perhaps in language
of imprecation, on the other; where a mutual coarseness of manners and
words has the effect, without their being aware of it as a cause, of
debasing their worth in one another's esteem, all round; and where,
notwithstanding all, they absolutely must pass a great deal of time
together, to converse, to display their dispositions toward one another,
and exemplify the poverty of the mere primary relations of life, as
divested of the accessories which give them dignity, endearment, and
conduciveness to the highest advantage of existence.

Home has but little to please the young members of such a family, and a
great deal to make them eager to escape out of the house; which is also a
welcome riddance to the elder persons, when it is not in neglect or
refusal to perform allotted tasks. So little is the feeling of a peaceful
cordiality created among them by their seeing one another all within the
habitation, that, not unfrequently, the passer-by may learn the fact of
their collective number being there, from the sound of a low strife of
mingled voices, some of them betraying youth replying in anger or contempt
to maturity or age. It is wretched to see how early this liberty is boldly
taken. As the children perceive nothing in the _minds_ of their parents
that should awe them into deference, the most important difference left
between them is that of physical strength. The children, if of hardy
disposition, to which they are perhaps trained in battles with their
juvenile rivals, soon show a certain degree of daring against their
superior strength. And as the difference lessens, and by the time it has
nearly ceased, what is so natural as that they should assume equality, in
manners and in following their own will? But equality assumed where there
should be subordination, inevitably involves contempt toward the party in
defiance of whom it is asserted.

The relative condition of such parents as they sink in old age, is most
deplorable. And all that has preceded, leads by a natural course to that
consequence which we have sometimes beheld, with feelings emphatically
gloomy,--the almost perfect indifference with which the descendants, and a
few other relations, of a poor old man of this class, could consign him to
the grave. A human being was gone out of the world, a being they had been
with or near all their lives, some of them sustained in their childhood by
his labors, and yet perhaps not one heart, at any moment, felt the
sentiment--I have lost----. They never could regard him with respect, and
their miserable education had not taught them humanity enough to regard
him in his declining days as an object of pity. Some decency of attention
was perhaps shown him, or perhaps hardly that, in his last hours. His
being now a dead, instead of a living man, was a burden taken off; and the
insensibility and levity, somewhat disturbed and repressed at the sight of
his expiring struggle, and of his being lowered into the grave, recovered
by the day after his interment, if not on the very same evening, their
accustomed tone, never more to be interrupted by the effect of any
remembrance of him. Such a closing scene one day to be repeated is
foreshown to us, when we look at an ignorant and thoughtless father
surrounded by his untaught children. In the silence of thought we thus
accost him,--The event which will take you finally from among them,
perhaps after forty or fifty years of intercourse with them, will leave no
more impression on their affections, than the cutting down of a decayed
old tree in the neighborhood of your habitation.

There are instances, of rare occurrence, when such a man becomes, late in
life, far too late for his family to have the benefit of the change, a
subject of the only influence which could awake him to earnest
thoughtfulness and the full sensibility of conscience. When the sun thus
breaks out toward the close of his gloomy day, and when, in the energy of
his new life, he puts forth the best efforts of his untaught spirit for a
little divine knowledge, to be a lamp to him in entering ere long the
shades of death, with what bitter regrets he looks back to the period when
a number of human beings, some perhaps still with him, some now scattered
from him, and here and there pursuing their separate courses in careless
ignorance, were growing up under his roof, within his charge, but in utter
estrangement from all discipline adapted to ensure a happier sequel. His
distressing reflection is often representing to him what they might now
have been if they had grown up under such discipline. And gladly would he
lay down his life to redeem for them but some inferior share of what the
season for imparting to them is gone forever.

Another thing is to be added, to this representation of the evils
attendant on an uncultivated state of the people, namely--that _this
mental rudeness puts them decidedly out of beneficial communication with
the superior and cultivated classes_.

We are assuming (with permission) that a national community should be
constituted for the good of all its parts, not to be obtained by them as
detached, independent portions, but adjusted and compacted into one social
body; an economy in which all the parts shall feel they have the benefit
of an amicable combination; in other words, that they are the better for
one another. But it can be no such constitution when the most palpable
relations between the two main divisions of society consist of such direct
opposites as refinement and barbarism, dignity and gross debasement,
intelligence and ignorance; which are the distinctions asserted by the
higher classes as putting a vast distance between them and the lower. If
so little of the correct understanding, the information, the liberalized
feeling, and the propriety of deportment, which we are to ascribe to the
higher and cultivated portion, goes downward into the lower, it should
seem impossible but there must be more of repulsion than of amicable
disposition and communication between them. We may suspect, perhaps, that
those more privileged classes are not generally desirous that the interval
were much less wide, provided that without cultivation of the lower orders
the nuisance of their annoying and formidable temper could be abated. But
however that may be, it is exceedingly desirable, for the good of both,
that the upper and inferior orders _should_ be on terms of communication
and mutual good-will, and therefore that there should be a diminution of
that rudeness of mind and habits which must contribute to keep them
alienated and hostile.

If it were asked what communication, at all of a nature to be described
by epithets of social and friendly import, we can be supposing by
possibility to subsist between classes so different and distant, we may
exemplify it by such an instance as we have now and then the pleasure of
seeing. Each reader also, of any moderate compass of observation, may
probably recollect an example, in the case of some man in humble station,
but who has had (for his condition) a good education; having been well
instructed in his youth in the elements of useful knowledge; having had
good principles diligently inculcated upon him; having subsequently
instructed himself, to the best of his very confined means and
opportunity, through a habit of reading; and being in his manners
unaffectedly observant of all the decorums of a respectable human being.
It has been seen, that such a man has not found in some of his superiors
in station and attainment any disposition to shun him; and has not felt
in himself or his situation any reason why he should seek to shun them.
He would occasionally fall into conversation with the wealthy and
accomplished proprietor, or the professional man of learning, in the
neighborhood. His intelligent manner of attending to what they said, his
perfect understanding of the language naturally used by cultivated
persons, the considerateness and pertinence of his replies, and the
modest deference, combined with an honest freedom in making his
observations on the matters brought in question, pleased those persons of
superior rank, and induced various friendly and useful attentions, on
their part to him and his family. He and his family thus experienced a
direct benefit of superior sense, civility, and good principle, in a
humble condition; and were put under a new responsibility to preserve a
character for those distinctions.--Now think of the incalculable
advantage to society, if anything approaching to this were the general
state of social relation between the lower and the higher orders.

On the contrary, there is no medium of complacent communication between
the classes of higher condition and endowment, and an ignorant, coarse
populace. Except on occasion of giving orders or magisterial rebukes, the
gentleman will never think of such a thing as converse with the clowns in
his vicinity. They, on their part, are desirous to avoid him; excepting
when any of them may have a purpose to gain, by arresting his attention,
with an ungainly cringe; or when some of those who have no sort of
present dependence on him, are disposed to cross his way with a look and
strut of rudeness, to show how little they care for him. The servility,
and the impudence, almost equally repress in him all friendly disposition
toward a voluntary intercourse with the class. There is thus as complete
a dissociation between the two orders, as mutual dislike, added to every
imaginable dissimilarity, can create. And this broad ungracious
separation intercepts all modifying influence that might otherwise have
passed, from the intelligence and refinement of the one, upon the
barbarism of the other.

But there is in human nature a pertinacious disposition to work
disadvantages, in one way or other, into privileges. The people, in being
thus consigned to a low and alien ground, in relation to the cultivated
part of society, are put in possession, as it were, of a territory of
their own; where they can give their disposition freer play, and act out
their characters in their own manner; exempt equally from the voluntary
and the involuntary influence of the cultivated superiors; that is to say,
neither insensibly modified by the attraction of what is the most laudable
in them as a pattern, nor swayed through policy to a studied accommodation
to their understood opinion and will. This is a great emancipation enjoyed
by the inferiors. And however injurious it may be, it is one of which they
will not fail to take the full license. For in all things and situations,
it is one of the first objects with human beings, to verify experimentally
the presumed extent of their liberty and privilege. In this dissociation,
the people are rid of the many salutary restraints and incitements which
they would have been made to feel, if on terms of friendly recognition
with the respectable part of the community; they have neither honor nor
disgrace, from that quarter, to take into their account; and this
contributes to extinguish all sense and care of respectability of
character,--a care to which there will be no motive in any consideration
of what they may, as among themselves, think of one another; for, with the
low estimate which they mutually and justly entertain, there is a
conventional feeling among them that, for the ease and privilege of them
all, they are systematically to set aside all high notions and nice
responsibilities of character and conduct. There is a sort of recognized
mutual _right_ to be no better than they are. And an individual among them
affecting a high conscientious principle would be apt to incur ridicule,
as a man foolishly divesting himself of a privilege;--unless, indeed, he
let them understand that hypocrisy was his way of maintaining that
privilege, and turning it to account.

The people are thus, by their ignorance, and what inseparably attends it,
far removed and estranged from the more cultivated part of their
fellow-countrymen; and consequently from every beneficial influence under
which a state of friendly contiguity, if we may so express it, would have
placed them. Let us now see what, in this abandonment to themselves, are
their growing dispositions toward the superior orders and the existing
arrangements of the community; dispositions which are promoted by causes
more definite than this estrangement considered merely as the negation of
benevolent intercourse, but to which it mightily contributes.

Times may have been when the great mass, while placed in such decided
separation from the upper orders, combined such a quietude with their
ignorance, that they had little other than submissive feelings toward
these superiors, whose property, almost, for all service and
obsequiousness, they were accustomed to consider themselves; when no
question would occur to them why there should be so vast a difference of
condition between beings of the same race; when no other proof was
required of the right appointment of their lot, however humble it might
be, than their being, and their forefathers having been, actually in it;
and when they did not presume, hardly in thought, to make any inferences
from the fact of the immense disproportion of numbers and consequent
physical strength between them and their superiors. [Footnote: Here,
however, it should be observed that in the former age, when there was far
less of jealous invidious feeling between the upper and lower classes than
has latterly intervened, there was a more amicable manner of
intercommunication. The settled and perfectly recognized state of
subordination precluded on the one side, all apprehension of encroachment,
and on the other the disposition to it.] But the times of this perfect,
unquestioning, unmurmuring succumbency under the actual allotment have
passed away; except in such regions as the Russian empire, where they have
yet long to continue. In other states of Europe, but especially in our
own, the ignorance of the people has nowhere prevented them from acquiring
a sense of their strength and importance; with a certain ill-conceived,
but stimulant notion, of some change which they think ought to take place
in their condition. How, indeed, should it have been possible for them to
remain unaware of this strength and importance, while the whole civilized
world was shaken with a practical and tremendous controversy between the
two grand opposed orders of society, concerning their respective rights;
or that they should not have taken a strong, and from the rudeness of
their mental condition, a fierce interest, in the principle and progress
of the strife? And how should they have failed to know that, during this
controversy, innumerable persons raised from the lower rank by talent and
spirit, had left no place on earth except in courts (and hardly even
there) for the dotage of fancying some innate difference between the
classes distinguished in the artificial order of society?

The effect of all this is gone deep into the minds of great numbers who
are not excited, in consequence, to any worthy exertion for raising
themselves, individually, from their degraded condition, by the earnest
application and improvement of their means and faculties. The feeling of
many of them seems to be, that they must and will sullenly abide by the
ill-starred fate of their order, till some great comprehensive alteration
in their favor shall absolve them from that bond of hostile sentiment, in
which they make common cause against the superior classes; and shall
create a state of things in which it shall be worth while for the
individual to make an effort to raise himself. We can at best, (they seem
to say,) barely maintain, with the utmost difficulty, a miserable life;
and you talk to us of cultivation, of discipline, of moral respectability,
of efforts to come out from our degraded rank! No, we shall even stay
where we are; till it is seen how the question is to be settled between
the people of our sort, and those who will have it that they are of a far
worthier kind. There may then, perhaps, be some chance for such as we; and
if not, the less we are disturbed about improvement, knowledge, and all
those things, the better, while we are bearing the heavy load a few years,
to die like those before us.

We said they are banded in a hostile sentiment. It is true, that among
such a degraded populace there is very little kindness, or care for one
another's interests. They all know too well what they all are not, to feel
mutual esteem or benevolence.

But it is infinitely easier for any set of human beings to maintain a
community of feeling in hostility to something else, than in benevolence
toward another; for here no sacrifice is required of anyone's
self-interest. And it is certain, that the subordinate portions of society
have come to regard the occupants of the tracts of fertility and sunshine,
the possessors of opulence, splendor, and luxury, with a deep, settled,
systematic aversion; with a disposition to contemplate in any other light
than that of a calamity an extensive downfall of the favorites of fortune,
when a brooding imagination figures such a thing as possible; and with but
very slight monitions from conscience of the iniquity of the most
tumultuary accomplishment of such a catastrophe. In a word, so far from
considering their own welfare as identified with the stability of the
existing social order, they consider it as something that would spring
from the ruin of that order. The greater number of them have lost that
veneration by habit, partaking of the nature of a superstition, which had
been protracted downward, though progressively attenuated with the lapse
of time, from the feudal ages into the last century. They have quite lost,
too, in this disastrous age, that sense of competence and possible
well-being, which might have harmonized their feelings with a social
economy that would have allowed them the enjoyment of such a state, even
as the purchase of great industry and care. Whatever the actual economy
may have of wisdom in its institutions, and of splendor, and fulness of
all good things, in some parts of its apportionment, they feel that what
is allotted to most of _them_ in its arrangements is pressing hardship,
unremitting poverty, growing still more hopeless with the progress of
time, and of what they hear trumpeted as national glory, nay, even
"national prosperity and happiness unrivalled." This bitter experience,
which inevitably becomes associated in their thoughts with that frame of
society under which they suffer it, will naturally have a far stronger
effect on their opinion of that system than all that had ever rendered
them acquiescent or reverential toward it. That it brings no relief, or
promise of relief, is a circumstance preponderating in the estimate,
against all that can be said of its ancient establishment, its theoretical
excellences, or the blessings in which it may be pretended to have once
abounded, or still to abound. What were become of the most essential laws
of human feeling, if such experience _could_ leave those who are
undergoing its discipline still faithfully attached to the social order on
the strength of its consecration by time, and of the former settled
opinions in its favor,--however tenacious the impressions so wrought into
habit are admitted to be? And the minds of the people thus thrown loose
from their former ties, are not arrested and recovered by any
substitutional ones formed while those were decaying. They are not
retained in a temper of patient endurance and adherence, by the bond of
principles which a sedulous and deep instruction alone could have enforced
on them. The growth of sound judgment under such instruction, might have
made them capable of understanding how a proportion of the evil may have
been inevitable, from uncontrollable causes; of perceiving that it could
not fail to be aggravated by a disregard of prudence in the proceedings in
early life among their own class, and that so far it were unjust to impute
it to their superiors or to the order of society; of admitting that
national calamities are visitations of divine judgment, of which they were
to reflect whether they had not deserved a heavy share; of feeling it to
be therefore no impertinent or fanatical admonition that should exhort
them to repentance and reformation, as an expedient for the amendment of
even their temporal condition; and of clearly comprehending that, at all
events, rancor, violence, and disorder, cannot be the way to alleviate any
of the evils, but to aggravate them all. But, we repeat it, there are
millions in this land, and if we include the neighboring island
politically united to it, very many millions, who have received no
instruction adequate, in the smallest degree, to counteract the natural
effect of the distresses of their condition; or to create a class of moral
restraints and mitigations in prevention of a total hostility of feeling
against the established order, after the ancient attachments to it have
been worn down by the innovations of opinion, and the pressure of
continued distress.

Thus uninstructed to apprehend the considerations adapted to impose a
moral restraint, thus unmodified by principles of mitigation, there is a
large proportion of human strength and feeling not in vital combination
with the social system, but aloof from it, looking at it with "gloomy and
malign regard;" in a state progressive towards a fitness to be impelled
against it with a dreadful shock, in the event of any great convulsion,
that should set loose the legion of daring, desperate, and powerful
spirits, to fire and lead the masses to its demolition. There have not
been wanting examples to show with what fearful effect this hostility may
come into action, in the crisis of the fate of a nation's ancient system;
where this alienated portion of its own people, rushing in, have revenged
upon it the neglect of their tuition; that neglect which had abandoned
them to so utter a "lack of knowledge," that they really understood no
better than to expect their own solid advantage in general havoc and
disorder. But how bereft of sense the _State_ too must be, that would thus
_let_ a multitude of its people grow up in a condition of mind to believe,
that the sovereign expedient for their welfare is to be found in
spoliation and destruction! It might easily have comprehended what it was
reasonable to expect from the matured dispositions and strength of such of
its children as it abandoned to be nursed by the wolf.

While this principle of ruin was working on by a steady and natural
process, this supposed infatuated State was, it is extremely possible,
directing its chief care to maintain the splendor of a court, or to extort
the means for prosecuting some object of vain and wicked ambition, some
project of conquest and military glory. And probably nothing could have
appeared to many of its privileged persons more idle and ridiculous, or to
others of them more offensive and ill-intentioned, than a remonstrance
founded on a warning of such a consequence. The despisers would have been
incomparably the greater number; and, "Go (they would have said) with your
mock-tragical fortune-telling, to whoever can believe, too, that one day
or other the quadrupeds of our stalls and meadows may be suddenly
inspirited by some supernatural possession to turn their strength on us in
a mass, or those of our kennels to imitate the dogs of Actæon."




Section IV.



There may be persons ready to make a question here, whether it be so
certain that giving the people of the lower order more knowledge, and
sharpening their faculties, will really tend to the preservation of good
order. Would not such improvement elate them, to a most extravagant
estimate of their own worth and importance; and therefore result in
insufferable arrogance, both in the individuals and the class? Would they
not, on the strength of it, be continually assuming to sit in judgment on
the proceedings and claims of their betters, even in the most lofty
stations; and demanding their own pretended rights, with a troublesome and
turbulent pertinacity? Would they not, since their improvement cannot,
from their condition in life, be large and deep, be in just such a half
taught state, as would make them exactly fit to be wrought upon by all
sorts of crafty schemers, fierce declaimers, empirics, and innovators? Is
it not, in short, too probable that, since an increase of mental power is
available to bad uses as well as good, the results would greatly
preponderate on the side of evil?

It would be curious to observe how objections so plausible, so decisive in
the esteem of those who admire them, would sound if expressed in other
terms. Let them be put in the form of such sentences and propositions as
the following:--Though understanding is to be men's guide to right
conduct, the less of it they possess the more safe are we against their
going wrong. The duty of a human being has many branches; there are
connected with all of them various general and special considerations, to
induce and regulate the performance; it must be well for these to be
defined with all possible clearness; and it is also well for the great
majority of men to be utterly incapable of apprehending them with any such
definiteness. It is desirable that the rule, or set of rules, by which the
demeanor of the lower orders toward those above them is to be directed,
should appear to them _reasonable_ as well as distinctly defined; but let
us take the greatest care that their reason shall be in no state of
fitness to perceive this rectitude of the rules. It would be a noble thing
to have a competent understanding of all that belongs to human interest
and duty; and therefore the next best thing is to be retained very nearly
in ignorance of all. It would be a vast advantage to proceed a hundred
degrees on the scale of knowledge; but the advantage is nowhere in the
progress; each of the degrees is in itself worth nothing; nay, less than
nothing; for unless a man could attain all, he had better stop at two or
one, than advance to four, six, or ten. Truths support one another; by the
conjunction of several each is kept the clearer in the understanding, the
more efficient for its proper use, and the more adequate to resist the
pressure of the surrounding ignorance and delusion; therefore let there be
the greatest caution that we do not give to three truths in a man's
understanding the aid of a fourth, or four the aid of a fifth; let the
garrison be so diminutive that its successful resistance to the siege must
be a miracle.----The reader will be in little danger of excess in shaping
into as many forms of absurdity as he pleases a notion which goes to the
depreciation of the desire and use of truth, of all that has been
venerated as wisdom, of the divine revelation of knowledge, and of our
rational nature itself.

If it _be_ a rational nature that the lower ranks possess as well as the
superior, one should have imagined it must be in the highest degree
important that they, as well as their superiors, should habitually make
their duty and conduct _a matter of thought_, of intelligent
consideration, instead of going through it mechanically, or with little
more than a brute accommodation of what they do to a customary and imposed
manner of doing it; but this thoughtful way of acting will never prevail
among them, while they are unexercised in that thinking which (generally
speaking) men will never acquire but in the exercise of gaining knowledge.
It were, again, better, one would think, that they should be capable of
seeing some reason and use in gradations and unequal distributions in the
community, than be left to regard it as all a matter of capricious or
iniquitous fortune, to their allotment under which there is no reason for
submission but a bare necessity. The improvement of understanding by which
we are wishing to raise them in this humble allotment, without carrying
them from the ground where it is placed, will explain to them the best
compensations of their condition, will show them it is no essential
degradation, and point them to the true respectability which may be
obtained in it. And even if they _should_ be a little too much elated with
the supposed attainments, (while the flattering possession is yet new, and
far from general in their class,) what taste would it be in their
superiors not to deem this itself a far better thing than the contented,
or more probably insolent and malignant, grossness of a stupid
vulgarity?--as some little excess of self-complacency in appearing in a
handsome dress is accounted much less disgusting than a careless
self-exposure in filth and rags.

As to their being rendered liable by more knowledge to be caught by
declaimers, projectors, and agitators, we may confidently ask, whether it
be the natural effect of more knowledge and understanding to be less
suspicious of cajoling professions, less discerning of what is practicable
and impracticable, and more credulous to extravagant doctrines, and wild
theories and schemes. Is it the well-instructed and intelligent poor man
that believes the demagogue who may assert or insinuate that, if things
were ordered right, all men might live in the greatest plenty? Or if we
advert to those of the lower order whom a diminutive freehold or other
qualification may entitle to vote for a member of parliament, is it the
well-instructed and intelligent man among them that is duped by the
candidate's professions of kind solicitude for him and his family,
accompanied with smiling equivocal hints that it may be of more advantage
than he is aware for a man who has sons to provide for, to have a friend
who has access and interest in a certain high quarter? Nor is it among the
best instructed and most thinking part of the subordinate class, that we
shall find persons capable of believing that a community might, if those
who govern it so pleased, be rich and prosperous by other means than a
general industry in ordinary employments.

If, again, it is apprehended that a great increase of intelligence among
the people would destroy their deference and respectful deportment toward
their superiors, the ground of this apprehension should be honestly
assigned. If the claim to this respect be definable, and capable of being
enforced upon good reasons, it is obvious that improved sense in the
people will better appreciate them. Especially, if the claim is to owe any
part of its validity to higher mental qualifications in the claimants, it
will so far be incomparably better understood, and if it _be_ valid, far
more respected than it is now. By having a measure of knowledge, and of
the power and practice of thinking, the people would be enabled to form
some notion of what it must be, and what it is worth, to have a great deal
more of these endowments. They would observe and understand the
indications of this ampler possession in the minds of those above them,
and so would be aware of the great disparity between themselves and those
superiors. And since they would value _themselves_ on their comparatively
small share of these mental advantages, (for this is the very point of the
objection against their attaining them,) they would be compelled to
estimate by the same scale the persons dignified by so far surpassing a
share of this admired wealth. Whereas an ignorant populace can understand
nothing at all about the matter; they have no guess at the great
disparity, nor impression of its importance; so that with them the
cultivated superiors quite lose the weight of this grand difference, and
can obtain none of the respect which they may deserve on account of it.
The objection against enlightening the lower classes appears so remarkably
absurd as viewed in this direction, that it might tempt us to suspect a
motive not avowed. It is just the sort of caveat to be uttered by persons
aware that themselves, or many of their class, might happen to betray to
the sharpened inspection of a more intelligent people, that a higher
ground in the allotments of fortune is no certain pledge for a superior
rank of mind. It _were_ strange, very strange indeed, if persons combining
with superior station a great mental superiority, should be content, while
claiming the deference of the subordinate part of the community around
them, that this high distinction should go for nothing in that claim, and
that the required respect should be paid only in reverence of the number
of their acres, the size of their houses, the elegance of their equipage
and domestic arrangements, and perhaps some official capacity, in which
many a notorious blockhead has strutted and blustered.

We think such considerations as the above, opposed to the objection that
any very material cultivation of the minds of the common people would
destroy their industry in ordinary employments, their contentment with
their station, and their respectful demeanor to their superiors; and would
render them arrogant, disorderly, factious, liable to be caught by wild
notions, misled by declaimers and impostors, and, in short, all the worse
for being able to understand their duty and interest the better, ought to
go far toward convicting that objection of great folly,--not to apply
terms of stronger imputation.

But we need not have dwelt so long on such arguments, since fortunately
there is matter of fact in answer to the objection. To the extent of the
yet very limited experiment, it is proved that giving the people more
knowledge and more sense does not tend to disorder and insubordination;
does not excite them to impatience and extravagant claims; does not spoil
them for the ordinary business of life, the tasks of duty and necessity;
does not make them the dupes of knaves; nor teach them the most profitable
use of their improved faculties is to turn knaves themselves. Employers
can testify, from all sides, that there is a striking general difference
between those bred up in ignorance and rude vulgarity, and those who have
been trained through the well-ordered schools for the humble classes,
especially when the habits at home have been subsidiary; a difference
exceedingly in favor of the latter, who are found not only more apt at
understanding and executing, but more decorous, more respectful, more
attentive to orders, more ready to see and acknowledge the propriety of
good regulations, and more disposed to a practical acquiescence in them;
far less inclined to ebriety and low company; and more to be depended on
in point of honesty. In almost any part of the country, where the
experiment has been zealously prosecuted for a moderate number of years, a
long resident observer can discern a modification in the character of the
neighborhood; a mitigation of the former brutality of manners, a less
frequency of brawls and quarrels, and less tendency to draw together into
rude riotous assemblages. There is especially a marked difference on the
Sabbath, on which great numbers attend public worship, whose forefathers
used on that day to congregate for boisterous sport on the common, or even
within the inclosure vainly consecrated round the church; [Footnote: We
know a church where, within, the remembrance of an immediate ancestor, it
was not unusual, or thought anything amiss, for the foot-ball to be struck
up within the "consecrated ground" at the close of the afternoon service
of the Sunday.] and who would themselves in all probability have followed
the same course, but for the tuition which has led them into a better. In
not a few instances, the children have carried from the schools
inestimable benefits home to their unhappy families; winning even their
depraved, thoughtless parents into consideration and concern about their
most important interests,--a precious repayment of all the long toils and
cares, endured to support them through the period of childhood, and an
example of that rare class of phenomena, in which (as in the instance of
the Grecian Daughter) a superlative beauty arises from an inversion of the
order of nature.

Even the frightful statements of the increase, in recent years, of active
juvenile depravity, especially in the metropolis, include a gratifying
testimony in favor of education--at least did so some years since. The
result of special inquiries, of extensive compass, into the wretched
history of juvenile reprobates, has fortified the promoters of schools
with evidence that it was not from _these_ seminaries that such noxious
creatures were to go out, to exemplify that the improvement of
intelligence may be but the greater aptitude for fraud and mischief. No,
it was found to have been in very different places of resort, that these
wretches had been, almost from their infancy, accomplished for crime; and
that their training had not taken or needed any assistance from an
exercise on literary rudiments, from Bibles, catechisms, or religious and
moral poetry, or from an attendance on public worship. Indeed, as if
Providence had designed that the substantial utility should be accompanied
with a special circumstance to confound the cavillers, the children and
youth of the schools were found to have been more generally preserved from
falling into the class of premature delinquents, than a moral calculator,
keeping in sight the quality of human nature and the immediate pressure of
so much temptation, would have ventured to anticipate, upon the moderate
estimate of the efficacy of instruction.

Experience equally falsifies the notion that knowledge, imparted to the
lower orders, beyond what is necessary to the handling of their tools,
tends to factious turbulence; to an impatience (from the instigation of
certain wild theories,) under law and regular government in society. The
maintainers of which notion should also affirm, that the people of
Scotland have been to this day about the most disaffected, tumultuary,
revolutionary rabble in Europe; and that the Cornish miners, now so
worthily distinguished at once by exercised intellect and religion, are
incessantly on the point of insurrection, against their employers or the
state. And we shall be just as ready to believe them, if they also assert,
that, in those popular irregularities which have too often disturbed, in
particular places, the peace of our country, the clamorous bands or
crowds, collected for purposes of intimidation or demolition, have
consisted chiefly of the better instructed part of the poorer
inhabitants;--yes, or that this class furnished one in twenty or fifty of
the numbers forming such lawless bands; even though many of these more
instructed of the people might be suffering, with their families, the
extremity of want, the craving of hunger, which, no less than
"oppression," may "make a wise man mad." Many of these, in their desolate
abodes, with tears of parents and children mingled together, have been
committing themselves to their Father in heaven, at the time that the
ruder part of the population have been carrying alarm, and sometimes
mischief, through the district, and so confirming the faith, we may
suppose, of sundry magnates of the neighborhood, who had vehemently
asserted, a few years before, the pernicious tendency of educating the
people. [Footnote: What proportion were found to have been educated, in
the very lowest sense of the term, of the burners of ricks and barns in
the south-eastern counties, a few years since? What proportion of the
ferocious, fanatical, and sanguinary rout who, the other day, near the
centre of the metropolitan see of Canterbury, were brought into action by
the madman Thom, _alias_ Sir W. Courtenay; stout, well-fed, proud
Englishmen--Englishmen "the glory of all lands," who were capable of
believing that madman a divine personage, Christ himself, invulnerable,
till the fact happened otherwise, and then were confident he would come to
life again? When will the Government adopt some effectual means to avert
from the nation the infamy of having such a populace in any part of the
country, and especially _such_ a part of it?]

It would be less than what is due to suffering humanity, to leave this
topic without observing, that if a numerous division of the community
should be sinking under severe, protracted, unmitigated distress,
distress on which there appears to them no dawn of hope from ordinary
causes, it is not to be held a disparagement to the value of education,
if some of those who have enjoyed a measure of that advantage, in common
with a greater number who have not, should become feverishly agitated
with imaginations of great sudden changes in the social system; and be
led to entertain suggestions of irregular violent expedients for the
removal of insupportable evils. It must, in all reason, be acknowledged
the last lesson which education could be expected to teach with practical
effect, that one part of the community should be willing to resign
themselves to a premature mortality, that the others may live in
sufficiency and tranquillity. Such heroic devotement might not be
difficult in the sublime elation of Thermopylae; but it is a very
different matter in a melancholy cottage, and in the midst of famishing
children. [Footnote: This was almost the desperate condition of
numberless families in this country at a period of which they, or the
survivors of them, retain in memory an indelible record; and we think it
right to retain _here_ also that record. While thankful for all
subsequent amendment, we say again, Look at Ireland.]

After thus referring to matter of fact, for contradiction of the notion,
that the mental cultivation of the lower classes might render them less
subject to the rules of good order, we have to say, in further reply, that
we are not heard insisting on the advantages of increased knowledge and
mental invigoration among the people, _unconnected with the inculcation of
religion._

Undoubtedly, the zealous friends of popular education account knowledge
valuable absolutely, as being the apprehension of things as they are; a
prevention of delusion; and so far a fitness for right volitions. But
they consider religion, (besides being itself the primary and infinitely
the most important part of knowledge,) as a principle indispensable for
securing the full benefit of all the rest. It is desired, and endeavored,
that the understandings of these opening minds may be taken possession of
by just and solemn ideas of their relation to the Eternal Almighty Being;
that they may be taught to apprehend it as an awful reality, that they
are perpetually under his inspection; and as a certainty, that they must
at length appear before him in judgment, and find, in another life, the
consequences of what they are in spirit and conduct here. It is to be
impressed on them, that his will is the supreme law; that his
declarations are the most momentous truth known on earth; and his favor
and condemnation the greatest good and evil. Under an ascendency of this
divine wisdom it is, that their discipline in any other knowledge is
designed to be conducted; so that nothing in the mode of their
instruction may have a tendency contrary to it, and everything be taught
in a manner recognizing the relation with it, as far as shall consist
with a natural, unforced way of keeping this relation in view. Thus it is
sought to be secured that, as the pupil's mind grows stronger and
multiplies its resources, and he therefore has necessarily more power and
means for what is wrong, there may be luminously presented to him, as if
celestial eyes visibly beamed upon him, the most solemn ideas that can
enforce what is right.

       *       *       *       *       *

Such is the discipline meditated, for preparing the subordinate classes to
pursue their individual welfare, and act their part as members of the
community.--They are to be trained in early life to diligent employment of
their faculties, tending to strengthen them, regulate them, and give their
possessors the power of effectually using them. They are to be exercised
to form clear, correct notions, instead of crude, vague, delusive ones.
The subjects of these ideas will be, a very considerable number of the
most important facts and principles; which are to be presented to their
understandings with a patient repetition of efforts to fix them there as
knowledge that cannot be forgotten. By this measure of actual acquirement,
and by the habit formed in so acquiring, they will be qualified for making
further attainment in future time, if disposed to improve their
opportunities. During this progress, and in connection with many of its
exercises, their duty is to be inculcated on them in the various forms in
which they will have to make a choice between right and wrong, in their
conduct toward society. There will be reiteration of lessons on justice,
prudence, inoffensiveness, love of peace, estrangement from the counsels
and leagues of vain and bad men; hatred of disorder and violence, a sense
of the necessity of authoritative public institutions to prevent these
evils, and respect for them while honestly administered to this end. All
this is to be taught, in many instances directly, in others by reference
for confirmation, from the Holy Scriptures, from which authority will also
be impressed, all the while, the principles of religion. And religion,
while its grand concern is with the state of the soul towards God and
eternal interests, yet takes every principle and rule of morals under its
peremptory sanction; making the primary obligation and responsibility be
towards God, of everything that is a duty with respect to men. So that,
with the subjects of this education, the sense of _propriety_ shall be
_conscience_; the consideration of how they ought to be regulated in their
conduct as a part of the community, shall be the recollection that their
Master in heaven dictates the laws of that conduct, and will judicially
hold them amenable for every part of it.

And is not a discipline thus addressed to the purpose of fixing religious
principles in ascendency, as far as that difficult object is within the
power of discipline, and of infusing a salutary tincture of them into
whatever else is taught, the right way to bring up citizens faithful to
all that deserves fidelity in the social compact?

But perhaps far less of sacred knowledge than all this pleading admits and
assumes to be indispensable to them, will answer the end. For it is but a
slender quantity of it that is, in effect, proposed to be imparted to them
by those who would give them very little other knowledge. They will talk
of giving the people an education specifically religious; a training to
conduct them on through a close avenue, looking straight before them to
descry distant spiritual objects, while shut out from all the scene right
and left, by fences that tell them there is nothing that concerns them
there. There may be rich and beautiful fields of knowledge, but they are
not to be trampled by vulgar feet.

Now, may we presume that by knowledge, or information, is meant a clear
understanding of a subject? If so, it is but little religious information
that _can_ be imparted while that of a more general nature is withheld.
The case is so, partly because, in order to a clear conception of the
principal things in the doctrine of religion, the mind wants facts,
principles, associations of ideas, and modes of applying its thoughts,
which are to be acquired from the consideration of various other subjects;
and partly because, even though it did _not_, and though it _were_
practicable to understand religious truths clearly without the subsidiary
ideas, and the disciplined mental habit acquired in attention to other
subjects, _it is flatly contrary to the radical disposition of human
nature_ that youthful spirits should yield themselves to a bare
exclusively religious discipline. It were supposing a reversal of the
natural taste and tendency, to expect them to apply their attention so
patiently, so willingly, so long, and with such interest, to this one
subject, as to be brought to an intelligent apprehension through the
almost sole exercise of thinking on this. By thinking on this!--which is
the subject on which they are by their very nature the least of all
inclined to think; the subject on which it is the most difficult as well
as the most important point in education to induce them to think; the
subject which, while it is essential to give it the ascendency in the
instruction of both the lower classes and all others, it requires so much
care and address to present in an attractive light; and which it is so
desirable to combine with other subjects naturally more engaging, in order
to bring it oftener by such associations into the thoughts, in that
secondary manner, which causes somewhat less of recoil.

It is curious to see what some persons can believe, or affect to believe,
when reduced to a dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot endure the idea of
any considerable raising of the common people by mental improvement, in
the general sense: that were ruin to social order. But then on the other,
if it must not be plainly denied, that the said common people are of the
very same rational nature as the most elevated divisions of the race; and
that their essential worth must be in this spiritual thinking being, which
worth is lost to them, if that being is sunk and degraded in gross
ignorance, it follows that some kind of cultivation is required. Well
then; we must give them some religious knowledge, unaccompanied by such
other knowledge as would much more attractively invite them to exercise
their minds, and _it will be practicable and easy enough_ to engage their
habitual attention to that very subject, almost exclusively, to which the
natural taste of the species is peculiarly averse.

In exposing the absurdity of any scheme of education for the inferior
classes, which should propose to make them intelligent about religion
while intelligent about nothing else except their ordinary employments, we
do not forget the instances now and then met with of pious poor men who,
while very uncultivated in the general sense, evince a remarkable
clearness of conception on religious topics, and in the application of
these topics to their duties as men and citizens. But "remarkable" we
involuntarily call these phenomena, whenever adverting to them. We
naturally use some expression importing a degree of wonder at such a fact.
We think it a striking illustration of the power of _religion itself_, and
not of the power of religious instruction. The extreme force with which
the vital spirit has seized and actuated his faculties, has in a measure
remedied the incapacity he had otherwise been under of forming clear ideas
of the subject. Even, however, while acknowledging and admiring this
effect of a special influence from heaven, we still find ourselves
involuntarily surmising, in such an instance, that the man must also have
been superior in natural capacity to the generality of ignorant persons;
so much out of the common course of things we account it for a man who
knows so few things to know this one thing so well. We account it so from
the settled conviction received through experience, that it is very
unlikely a man ignorant of almost all other things _should_ well
understand _one_ subject, of a nature quite foreign to that of his
ordinary occupations.

It is superfluous to observe, that such instances of a very considerable
comprehension of religious truth, obtained in spite of what naturally
makes so much against its being attainable, cannot affect the calculation
when we are devising schemes which can only work according to natural laws
and with ordinary powers. They who devise and apply them will rejoice at
these evidences that there is an Agent who can open men's minds to the
light of religion independently and in the absence of other intellectual
advantages. But the question being how to bring the people, by the
ordinary means of education, to a competent knowledge of religious truth,
we have to consider what way of attempting to impart that knowledge may be
the best fitted, at once to obviate the natural indisposition to the
subject, and to provide that when it does obtain a place in their
understanding, it shall not be a meagre, diminutive, insulated occupant
there, but in its proper dimensions and relations. And if, in attentively
studying this, there be any who come to ascertain, that the right
expedient is a bare inculcation of religious instruction, disconnected, on
system, from the illustrative aid of other knowledge, divested of the
modification and attraction of associated ideas derived from subjects less
uncongenial with the natural feelings,--they really may take the
satisfaction of having ascertained one thing more, namely, that human
nature has become at last so mightily changed, that it may be left to work
itself right very soon, as to the affair of religion, with little further
trouble of theirs.

       *       *       *       *       *

The special view in which we were pleading, on behalf of popular
education, that religious instruction would form a material part of it,
was, that this essential ingredient would be a security against its being
injurious to the good order and subordination in society. It is the more
necessary to be particular on this, as some of those who have professed
to lay much stress on the _religious_ instruction of the people have
seemed to have little further notion of the necessity or use of religion
to the lower classes, than as merely a preserver of good order. In this
character it has been insisted on by persons who avowed their aversion to
every idea of an education in a more enlarged sense. We have heard it so
insisted on, no such long while past, by members of the most learned
institutions, at the same moment that they expressed more than a doubt of
the prudence of enabling the common people to read, literally to _read_,
the Bible. But assuredly the good order of a populace left in the stupid
general ignorance to which some of these good friends of theirs would
have doomed them, cannot be preserved by any such feeble infusion of
religious knowledge as these same good friends would instil into their
mental grossness. As long as they are in this condition, there must be
some far stronger power acting on them to preserve that good order. And
if there actually _has_ been such a power, hitherto competent to preserve
it, with only such an impotent scantling of religious knowledge in the
majority of the mass, and competent still to preserve it, a great deal of
hypocritical canting might have been spared, on the part of those whose
chief or only argument for teaching the people religion is the
maintenance of that good order.

But all this while we are forgetting to inquire how much is to be
understood as included in that good order, that deference and
subordination, which the possession of more mind and knowledge by the
people might disturb or destroy. May not the notion of it, as entertained
by some persons, be rather an image of the polity of an age long past, or
of that which remains unaltered as if it were a part of eternal nature in
the dominions of the East, than a model for the conformation of society
here in the present times? Is it required, that there should be a
sentiment of obsequiousness in the people, affecting them in a manner like
the instinct by which a lower order of animals is in awe of a higher, by
which the common tribe of beasts would cower at the sight of lions? Or, is
the deference expected to be paid, not on any understanding of reciprocal
advantage, but absolutely and unconditionally, as to a claim founded in
abstract or divine right? Is it to be held a criminal presumption in the
people, to think of examining their relations to the community any further
than the obligation of being industrious in the employments to which it
assigns them, and dutiful to its higher orders? Are they to entertain no
question respecting the right adjustment of their condition in the
arrangements of the great social body? Are they forbidden ever to admit a
single doubt of its being quite a matter of course, that everything which
could be done for the interests of their class, consistently with the
welfare of the whole, _is_ done; or, therefore, to pretend to any such
right as that of examining, representing, complaining, remonstrating, or
an ultimate recourse, perhaps, in a severe necessity, to stronger
expedients?

A subordination founded in such principles, and required to such a degree,
it is true enough that the communication of knowledge is not the way to
perpetuate. For the first use which men will infallibly make of an
enlargement of their faculties and ideas, will be, to take a larger view
of their interests; and they may happen, as soon as they do so, to think
they discover that it was quite time; and the longer they do so, to retain
still less and less of implicit faith that those interests will be done
justice to, without their own vigilance and intervention. An educated
people must be very slow indeed in the application of what they learn, if
they do not soon grow out of all belief in the _necessary_ wisdom and
rectitude of any order of human creatures whatever. They will see how
unreasonable it were to expect, that any sort of men will fail in fidelity
to the great natural principle, of making their own advantage the first
object; and therefore they will not be apt to listen, with the gravity
which in other times and regions may have been shown in listening, to
injunctions of gratitude for the willingness evinced by the higher orders
to take on them the trouble of watching and guarding the people's welfare,
by keeping them in due submission.

But neither will it necessarily be in the spirit of hostility, in the
worst sense of the word, that a more instructed people will thus show a
diminished credulity of reverence toward the predominant ranks in the
social economy; and will keep in habitual exercise upon them a somewhat
suspicious observation, and a judicial estimate; with an honest freedom in
sometimes avowing disapprobation, and strongly asserting any right which
is believed to be endangered or withheld. This will only be expressing
that, since all classes naturally consult by preference their own
interests, it is plainly unfit, that one portion of the community should
be trusted with an unlimited discretion in ordering what affects the
welfare of the others; and that, in all prudence, the people must refuse
an entire affiance, and unconditional, unexamining acquiescence; "except
the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh," would come to harmonize, and
then administer, interests which are so placed unappeasably at strife;--at
strife; for, what is so often asserted of those interests being in reality
the same, is true only on that comprehensive theory which neither party is
prompt to understand, or willing to make sacrifices of a more immediate
self-interest to realize; and it is evidently impossible for either, even
if believing it true, to concede to the other the exclusive adjustment of
the practical mode of identification.

But only let the utmost that is possible be done, to train the people,
from their early years, to a sound use of their reason, under a discipline
for imparting a valuable portion of knowledge, and assiduously inculcating
the principles of social duty and of religion; and then something may be
said, to good purpose, to their understanding and conscience, while they
are maintaining the competition of claims with their superiors. They will
then be capable of seeing put in a fair balance, many things which
headlong ignorance would have taken all one way. They will be able to
appreciate many explanations, alleged causes of delay, statements of
difficulty between opposing reasons, which would be thrown away on an
ignorant populace. And it would be an inducement to their making a real
exertion of the understanding, that they thus found themselves so formally
put upon their responsibility for its exercise; that they were summoned to
a rational discussion, instead of being addressed in the style of Pharaoh
to the Israelites. The strife of interests would thus come to be carried
on with less fierceness and malice, in the spirit and manner, on the part
of the people. And the ground itself of the contention, the substance of
the matters in contest, would be gradually diminished, by the concessions
of the higher classes to the claims of the lower; for there is no
affecting to dissemble, that a great mental and moral improvement of the
people would necessitate, though there were not a single movement of rude
force in the case, important concessions to them, on the part of the
superior orders. A people advanced to such a state, would make its moral
power felt in a thousand ways, and every moment. This general augmentation
of sense and right principle would send forth, against all arrangements
and inveterate or more modern usages, of the nature of invidious
exclusion, arbitrary repression, and the debasement of great public
interests into a detestable private traffic, an energy, which could no
more be resisted than the power of the sun, when he advances in the spring
to annihilate the relics and vestiges of the winter. This plastic
influence would modify the institutions of the national community, to a
state better adapted to secure all the popular rights; and to convey the
genuine, collective opinion, to bear directly on the counsel and
transaction of national concerns. That opinion would be so unequivocally
manifested, as to leave no pretence for a doubtful interpretation of its
signs; and with such authority as to preclude any question whether to set
it at defiance.

That such effects _would_ be inseparable from a great general advancement
of the people in knowledge and corrected character, must be freely
acknowledged to its disapproves. And is it _because_ these would be the
consequences, that they disapprove it? Then let them say, what it is that
_they_ would expect from an opposite system. _What_ is it, that they could
seriously promise themselves, from the conservative virtue of all the
ignorance, that can henceforward be retained among the people of this part
of the world? It is true, the remaining ignorance is so great that they
cannot well overrate its _general_ amount; but how can they fail to
perceive the importance of those _particulars_ in which its dominion has
been broken up? There is indeed a hemisphere of "gross darkness over the
people;" it may be possible to withhold from it long the illumination of
the sun; but in the mean time it has been rent by portentous lights and
flashes, which have excited a thought and agitation not to be stilled by
the continuance of the gloom. There have come in on the popular mind some
ideas, which the wisest of those who dread or hate their effect there,
look around in vain for the means of expelling. And these glimpses of
partial intelligence, these lights of dubious and possibly destructive
direction amidst the night, will continue to prompt and lead that mind,
with a hazard which can sease only with the opening upon it of the true
daylight of knowledge. That knowledge should have been antecedent to the
falling of these inflammatory ideal among the people; and if they have
come before the proper time, that is to say, before the people were
prepared to judge rationally of their rights, and to apprehend clearly the
duties inseparable from them as a condition of their enjoyment, the
calamitous consequences to the higher classes, as seen in the recent
history of Europe, may be regarded as a righteous judgment of heaven upon
them, for having suffered it to be _possible_ for these new ideas of
liberty and rights to come to the people in a state so unprepared. What
were all their commanding authorities of government, their splendid
ecclesiastical establishments, their great personal wealth and
influence,--all their lofty powers and distinctions which even their
basest sycophants, sacerdotal or poetical, told them, as one topic of
adulation, that they were not entrusted with for their own sole
gratification,--what were all these for, if the great body of the
communities over which they presided were to be retained in a state in
which they could not be touched by a few bold speculations in favor of
popular rights, without exploding as with infernal fire? How appropriate a
retribution of Sovereign Justice, that those who were wickedly the cause
should be the victims of the effect.

Where such a consequence has not followed, but where, nevertheless, these
notions of popular rights have come into the minds of the people very much
in precedence and disproportion to the general cultivation of their
intelligence and moral sense, it is most important that all diligence
should be given to bring up these neglected improvements to stand in rank
with those too forward speculations.

Whether this shall be done or not, these notions and feelings are not
things come into life without an instinct of what they have to do. The
disapproves of schemes for throwing the greatest practicable measure of
sound corrective knowledge into the minds of the multitude, may take
instruction or may decline it from seeing that, both in this country and
other states of Europe, there has gone forth among the mass of the people
a spirit of revolt from the obligation, which would retain their reverence
to institutions on the strength simply of their being established or being
ancient; a spirit that reacts, with deep and settled antipathy, against
some of the arrangements and claims of the order into which the national
community has been disposed by institutions and the course of events; a
spirit which regards some of the appointments and requirements of that
order, as little better than adaptations of the system to the will and
gratification of the more fortunate divisions of the species. And it has
shown itself in a very different character from that of a mere pining
despondency, or the impotent resentment excited sometimes in timidity
itself by severe grievance, but quelled by alarm at its own rashness. The
element and the temperament of its nature, and the force of its action,
have been displayed in the tremendous concussions attending its conflict
with the power arrayed in behalf of the old order of things to crush it.
And _is_ this spirit crushed? Is it subdued? Is it in the least degree
reduced?--reduced, we mean, in its internal power, as a combination of the
most absolute opinion with the impulse of some of the strongest passions.

Is it, we repeat, repressed? There may have been persons who could not,
"good easy men," conceive a possibility of its surviving the fiery storm
of the whole resources of the world converted into the materials of war,
to be poured on it, and followed by the mightiest leagues and the most
systematic legislation, all aimed at its destruction; surviving to come
forth with unabated vigor at the opportune junctures in the future
progress of events; like some great serpent, coming out again to glare on
the sight, with his appalling glance and length of volume, after a volley
of missiles had sent him to his retreat. The old approved expedients
against unreasonable discontents, and refractory tempers, and local
movements of hostility excited by some worthless competitor for power, had
been combined and applied on the grand scale; and henceforward all was to
be still. It was not given to these spell-bound understandings to
apprehend that the spirit to be repressed might be of a nature impassive
to these expedients, possibly to be confirmed by their application.
Repressed! What is it that is manifesting itself in the most remarkable
events in the old, and what has been called the new world, at the present
time? And what are the measures of several of the great state authorities
of Europe, whether adopted in deliberate policy, or in a fitful mood
between rashness and dismay; what are, especially, the meetings,
conferences, and military preparations, of the mightiest despots of the
globe, assembled at this very hour against a small and unoffending nation,
[Footnote: The meeting of imperial and royal personages at Troppau and
Laybach, for the detestable purpose of crushing the newly acquired liberty
of the kingdom of Naples.--January, 1821.]--what are these but a
confession or proclamation, that the spirit which the most enormous
exertions had been made to overwhelm, has preserved its life and energy;
like those warring immortal powers whom Milton describes as having
mountains thrown on them in vain? The progress of time renders it but more
evident, that the principle in action is something far different from a
superficial transient irritation; that it has gone the whole depth of the
mind; has possessed itself of the very judgment and conscience of an
innumerable legion, augmented by a continual and endless accession. No
doubt is permitted to remain of the direction which has been taken by the
current of the popular feeling,--to be recovered to its ancient obsequious
course when some great river which has farced a new channel shall resume
that which it has abandoned. For when once the great mass, of the lower
and immensely larger division of the community, shall have become filled
with an absolute, and almost unanimous conviction, that they, the grand
physical agency of that community; that they, the operators, the
producers, the preparers, of almost all it most essentially wants; that
they, the part, therefore, of the social assemblage so obviously the most
essential to its existence, and on which all the rest must depend; that
they have their condition in the great social arrangement so disposed as
not to acknowledge this their importance, as not to secure an adequate
reward of these their services;--we say, when this shall have become the
pervading intense conviction of the millions of Europe, we put it as a
question to any rational thinker, whether and how this state of feeling
can be reversed or neutralized, if the economy which has provoked it shall
yield to no modification. But it _is_ no question, he will confess. Then
will he pretend not to foresee any material change in an order of things
obnoxious to so vast a combination of wills and agents? This may indeed be
seriously avowed by some, who are so walled up in old prejudice and
presumption that they really have no look out; who, because a thing has
been long established, mistake its artificial substruction of crumbling
materials for the natural rock; and it will be pretended by others, who
think the bravado of asserting the impossibility of the overthrow may be a
good policy for deterring the attempt. There has not been one of the great
alterations effected by the popular spirit within the last half-century,
that was not preceded by professions of contemptuous incredulity, on the
part of the applauders of things as they were, toward those who calculated
on the effects of that spirit. There were occasionally betrayed, under
these shows of confidence and contempt, some signs of horror at the
undeniable excitement and progress of popular feeling; but the scorn of
all serious and monitory predictions of its ultimate result was at all
events to be kept up,--in whatever proportions a time-serving interest and
an honest fatuity might share in dictating this elated and contemptuous
style. Should the latter of these ingredients at present predominate in
the temper which throws off the fume of this high style, it will not leave
much faculty in the defiers of all revolution, for explaining what it is
they have to trust to as security against such consequences as we should
anticipate from the progress of disapprobation and aversion in the people;
unless indeed the security mainly relied on is just that plain, simple
expedient--force, for all nations on earth--downright force. It is plainly
this that is meant, when persons disinclined to speak out give us a
circumlocution of delicate phrases, "the conservative energies of the
public institutions," "the majesty of the law," perhaps, and others of
similar cast;--which fine phrases suggest to one's imagination the
ornamented fashion of the handle and sheath of the scimitar, which is not
the less keen, nor the less ready to be drawn, for all this finery that
hides and garnishes so menacing a symbol of power.

The economy of states _shall_ not be modified in favor of the great body
of those who constitute them.--And are, then, the higher and privileged
portions of the national communities to have, henceforward, just this one
grand object of their existence, this chief employment for their
knowledge, means, and power, namely, to keep down the lower orders of
their fellow-citizens by stress of coercion? Are they resolved and
prepared for a rancorous, interminable hostility in prosecution of such a
benign purpose; with a continual exhaustion upon it of the resources which
might be applied to diminish that wretchedness of the people, which is the
grand inflamer of those principles that have caused an earthquake under
the foundations of the old social systems? But, "interminable" is no
proper epithet to be applied to such a course. This policy of a bare
uncompromising rigor, exerted to keep the people just where they are, in
preference to adjustments formed on a calculation of a material change,
and adapted to prepare them for it--how long could it be successful--not
to ask what would be the value or the glory of that success? With the
light of recent history to aid the prognostication, by what superstitious
mode of estimating the self-preserving, and self-avenging competence of
any artificial form of social order, can we believe in its power to throw
back the general opinions, determinations, and efforts, of the mass of
mankind in endless recoil on themselves? That must be a very firm
structure, must be of gigantic mass or most excellent basis and
conformation, against which the ocean shall unremittingly wear and foam in
vain. And it does not appear what there can be of such impregnable
consistence in any particular construction of the social economy which is,
by the supposition, resolved to be maintained in sovereign immutability,
in permanent frustration of the persevering, ever-growing aim and impulse
of the great majority, pressing on to achieve important innovations in
their favor; innovations in those systems of institution and usage, under
which they will never cease to think they have had far less happiness, or
means of happiness, than they ought to have had. We cannot see how this
impulse can be so repelled or diverted that it shall not prevail at
length, to the effect of either bearing down, or wearing away, a portion
of the order of things which the ascendant classes in every part of Europe
would have fondly wished to maintain in perpetuity, without one particle
of surrender.

But though they cannot preserve its entireness, the manner in which it
shall yield to modification is in a great measure at their command. And
here is the important point on which all these observations are meant to
bear. If a movement has really begun in the general popular mind of the
nations, and if the principle of it is growing and insuppressible, so that
it must in one manner or another ultimately prevail, what will the state
be of any national community where it shall be an unenlightened,
half-barbarous people that so prevails?--a people no better informed,
perhaps, than to believe that all the hardship and distress endured by
themselves and their forefathers were wrongs, which they suffered from the
higher orders; than to ascribe to bad government, and the rapacity and
selfishness of the rich, the very evils caused by inclement seasons; and
than to assume it as beyond question, that the whole accumulation of their
resentments, brought out into action at last, is only justice demanding
and inflicting a retribution.

In such an event, what would not the superior orders be glad to give and
forego, in compromise with principles, tempers, and demands, which they
will know they should never have had to encounter, to the end of time, if,
instead of spending their vast advantages on merely their own state and
indulgence, they had applied them in a mode of operation and influence
tending to improve, in every way, the situation and character of the
people? It is true, that such a wild triumph of overpowering violence
would necessarily be short. A blind, turbulent monster of popular power
never can for a long time maintain the domination of a political
community. It would rage and riot itself out of breath and strength,
succumb under some strong coercion of its own creating, and lie subject
and stupified, till its spirit should be recovered and incensed for new
commotion. But this impossibility of a very prolonged reign of confusion,
would be little consolation for the classes against whose privileged
condition the first tremendous eruption should have driven. It would not
much cheer a man who should see his abode carried away, and his fields and
plantations devastated, to tell him that the agent of this ruin was only a
transient mountain torrent. A short prevalence of the overturning force
would have sufficed for the subversion of the proudest, longest
established state of privilege; and most improbable would it be, that
those who lost it in the tumult, would find the new authority, of whatever
shape or name it were, that would arise as that tumult subsided, either
able or disposed to restore it. They might perhaps, (on a favorable
supposition,) survive in personal safety, but in humiliated fortunes, to
ruminate on their manner of occupying their former elevated situation, and
of employing its ample means of power, a due share of which, exerted for
the improvement of the general condition, both intellectual and civil,
with an accompanying liberal yet gradual concession of privileges to the
people, would have prevented the catastrophe.

Let us urge, then, that a zealous endeavor to render it absolutely
impossible that, in any change whatever, the destinies of a nation should
fall under the power of an ignorant infuriated multitude, may take place
of the presumption that there _is_ no great change to be ever effected by
the progressive and conscious importance of the people; a presumption than
which nothing can appear more like infatuation, when we look at the recent
scenes and present temperament of the moral world. Lay hold on the myriads
of juvenile spirits, before they have time to grow up through ignorance
into a reckless hostility to social order; train them to sense and good
morals: inculcate the principles of religion, simply and solemnly _as_
religion, as a thing directly of divine dictation, and not as if its
authority were chiefly in virtue of human institutions; let the higher
orders generally make it evident to the multitude that they are desirous
to raise them in value, and promote their happiness; and then _whatever_
the demands of the people as a body, thus improving in understanding and
the sense of justice, shall come to be, and _whatever_ modification their
preponderance may ultimately enforce on the great social arrangements, it
will be infallibly certain that there never _can_ be a love of disorder,
an insolent anarchy, a prevailing spirit of revenge and devastation. Such
a conduct of the ascendant ranks would, in this nation at least, secure
that, as long as the world lasts, there never would be any formidable
commotion, or violent sudden changes. All those modifications of the
national economy to which an improving people would aspire and would
deserve to obtain, would be gradually accomplished, in a manner by which
no party would be wronged, and all would be the happier.

[Footnote: The considerations in the latter part of this section (so
plainly on the surface of the subject that they would occur to any
thoughtful and observant man) have been verified in part by the course of
events in our country, since the time they were written. At that, time the
superior, and till then irresistibly and invariably predominant, portion
of the community, felt themselves in perfect security against any
comprehensive and radical change within the ensuing twelve or fourteen
years. There might indeed be one or two subordinate matters in the
established national system in which they might deem it not unlikely that
the advocates and laborers for innovation would be successful; but such an
amount of innovation did not come within the view of even a feverish
dream. Any man who should have predicted, especially, the recent greatest
achievement against the inveterate system, [Footnote: The Reform Bill.]
would have been laughed at as an incorrigible visionary; so proudly
confident were they that the structure would be kept compact and
impregnable in all its essential parts, by the cement of ancient
institution, national veneration, opulence, and the inherence of actual
power, possessed from generation to generation.

In the next place, they were obstinately resolute against all material
concessions. When at intervals the complaints, claims, and remonstrances
of the people sought to be heard, they treated them as unreasonable,
absurd, factious; and asserted that none of the good sense and right
feeling of the nation went that way. They declared that the existing order
of things was on the whole so superlatively excellent that, if there were,
perhaps, any trifling defects, it were far better to let them alone than
to presume to touch with an innovating hand the integrity of so noble a
system, the admiration and envy of all the world. As it was, it had
"worked well" for our happiness and glory; and who could say, if a
tampering of alteration were once suffered to begin, where it might end?
Order the people to be quiet; let their factious demands and seditious
movements be promptly and firmly repressed by authority; and they would
sink into insignificance and silence. To think of such a thing as
condescending to conciliate by moderate concessions would be weakness, and
might eventually bring a hazard which otherwise could have no existence.

And now for the consequence: the popular spirit, thus set at naught in
present account and in calculation for the future, was discouraged from
active outward manifestation, by the invetorate, perfectly organized, and,
for the present, resistless domination. But under the pressure of
wide-spread and unabating grievance, which quickened and envenomed every
sentiment previously entertained regarding the rights and wrongs of the
people, it was gradually acquiring, throughout the country, a more
determinate sense of being absolved from all submissive respect toward the
ascendant party, a more entire conviction of its right to vindicate its
claims in any manner that should become practicable, and a hostility, but
the more deep and intense for its being kept under by despondency of
present success, against those who were rejecting and contemptuously
defying those claims. It wanted, then, only some occurrence that should
present a possibility and a hope of success to burst out in sudden ardor.
It was thus in collective power and readiness for action, when several
events of prodigious excitement came close together; and then, like a
stream in one of the Swiss valleys, dammed up by a mound of earth or ice
fallen across, to a lake deepening without noise, till its vast weight
breaks away the obstruction with a tremendous tumult, the popular will
bore down the aristocratic embankment, consolidated through so many years
or ages. The overpowered party found the consequence of their obstinate
and _entire_ resistance; and had to reflect with unmixed mortification how
much less than they had lost, and without mitigating by the loss the
hostile feeling of those who had taken it from them, would have been
received with gratitude if yielded in the way of gradual voluntary
concession. Happily the change was not left to be accomplished by physical
force, as all such changes must be in purely despotic states; but the
people fully believe that they chiefly owe the forced surrender to the
alarm which their demonstrations excited lest they should bring the
question ere long to that arbitrament.

But in the last place, there is a deplorable circumstance, attending this
sudden rising of the popular spirit into power, and which throws a strong
light on the criminal infatuation of a State that suffers the commonalty
of its citizens to remain grossly uncultivated and uncivilized--perhaps
even fancies it sees in that ignorance a main security for its own
stability. The fact is, that the people have acquired their power and
privileges, before they are (speaking as to many of them) qualified for a
wise and useful exercise of them. A large proportion of those who are now
brought into what may be called political existence have grown up so
destitute of all means and habits for a right use of their minds, that
their notions, wishes, expectations, and determinations, respecting public
interests, will exemplify anything rather than a competent judgment. And
the proportion so raised is but perhaps a minor part of the multitude in
which the popular spirit is embodied and vehemently excited. Great numbers
on a lower level, and having no formal political capacity to act in, are
nevertheless pervaded by a spirit which will bring the rude impulse of
mass and combination into the movement of the popular will.

If alarmed at such a view, will not they who have so long held the
sovereign control over the national economy feel the bitterest regret
that it had not been given them to obviate the possible dangers of such a
crisis and such a change, or rather to prevent such a crisis and a change
so abrupt, by exertions in every way, and on the widest scale, to rescue
the people from their ignorance and barbarism, instead of trusting to it
for an uncontested undisturbed continuance of their own domination? But
they scorned the idea, if it ever occurred, that the many-headed,
many-handed "monster," (so named in the dialect of some of them,) after
lying prone, and inert, and submissive, from time immemorial, should at
last become instinct with spirit, and rise up roaring in defiance of
their power.

It is now for them to consider whether, by maintaining a temper and
attitude of sullen, vindictive, pugnacious alienation from the people,
they shall wilfully aggravate whatever injurious consequences may be
threatened by so sudden a revolution; or endeavor to intercept them by
giving their best assistance to every plan and expedient for rescuing the
lower orders from the curse and calamity of ignorance and debasement.
Other remedial measures, besides that of education, are imperiously
demanded by the miserable and formidable condition of the populace, but no
other, nor all others together, can avail without it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Since the date of the above note, the spirit and policy of the ascendant
class have been just that which a philanthropist would have deprecated,
and a cynic predicted.

Their moral chagrin at the acquisition by the people of a new political
rank, an event by which they, (the ascendant class,) had for a while
appeared amazed and stunned, has soon recovered to a prodigious activity
of device and exertion to nullify that rightful acquisition. For this
purpose have been brought into play, on the widest scale, that of the
whole kingdom, all the means and resources of wealth, station, and power;
with the utmost recklessness of equity, honor, and even humanity; deluding
the ignorant, corrupting the venal, and intimidating and punishing the
conscientious: insomuch that the nominally conceded right or privilege is
practically reduced to an inconsiderable proportion of its pre-estimated
worth; while aristocratic tyranny has rendered it to many of the most
deserving to possess it no better than an inflicted grievance. One
important measure for the improvement of the condition of the lower orders
has been effected, because the anti-popular party saw it advantageous also
to their own interests. But for the general course of their policy, we
have witnessed a systematic determination to frustrate measures framed in
recognition of the rights and wants of the people. As to their education,
it continues abandoned to the efforts and totally inadequate means of
private individuals and societies; except a comparative trifle from the
State, not so much for the whole nation for the whole year as the cost of
some useless, gaudy, barbaric pageant of one day.--It is evident the
predominant portion of the higher classes trouble themselves very little
about the mental condition of the populace. It is even understood that a
chief obstacle in the way of any comprehensive legislation on the subject
is found or apprehended in the repugnance of those classes to any liberal
scheme: any scheme that, aiming simply at the general good, should boldly
set aside invidious restrictions and a jealous, parsimonious limitation; a
scheme that should not work in subjection to the mean self-interest of
this party or that, but for the one grand purpose of raising millions from
degradation into rational existence.]




Section V.



The most serious form of the evil caused by a want of mental improvement,
is that which is exposed to us in its consequences with respect to the
most important concern of all, Religion. This has been briefly adverted to
in a former part of these descriptive observations. But the subject seems
to merit a more amplified illustration, and may be of sufficient interest
to excuse some appearance of repetition. The special view in which we wish
to place it, is that of _the inaptitude of uncultivated minds for
receiving religious instruction._--But first, a slight estimate may be
attempted of the actual state of religious notions among our uneducated
population.

_Some_ notion of such a concern, something different in their
consciousness from the absolute negation of the idea, something that
faintly responds to the terms which would be used by a person conversing
with them, in the way of questioning them on the subject, may be presumed
to exist in the minds of all who are advanced a considerable way into
youth, or come to mature age, in a country where all are familiar with
several of the principal terms of theology, and have the monitory
spectacle of edifices for religious use, on spots appointed also for the
interment of the dead. If this sort of measured caution in the assumption
seem bordering on the ridiculous, we would recommend those who would smile
at it to make some little experiments. Let them insinuate themselves into
the company of some of the innumerable rustics who have grown up destitute
of everything worth calling education; or of the equally ill-fated beings
in the alleys, precincts, and lower employments of towns. With due
management to avoid the abruptness and judicial formality, which, would
preclude a communicative disposition, they might take occasion to
introduce remarks tending, without the express form of questions in the
first instance, to draw out the thoughts of some of these persons
respecting God, Jesus Christ, the human soul, the invisible world. And the
answers would often put them to a stand to conceive, under what suspension
of the laws of rational existence the utterers could have been passing so
many years in the world. These answers might dispel, as by a sudden shock,
the easy and contented assurance, if so unknowing a notion had been
entertained, that almost all the people _must_, in one way or another,
have become decently apprized of a few first principles of religion; that
this _could_ not have failed to be the case in what was expressly
constituted a great Christian community, with an obligation upon it, that
none of its members should be left destitute of the most essential
requisite to their well-being. This agreeable assurance would vanish, like
a dream interrupted, at the spectacle thus presented, of persons only not
quite as devoid of those first principles, after living eighteen, thirty,
forty, or twice forty years, under the superintendence of that community,
as if they had been the aboriginal rovers of the American forests, or
natives of unvisited coral-built spots in the ocean. If these examiners
were to prosecute the investigation widely, and with an effect on their
sentiments correspondent to the enlarging disclosure of facts, they could
find themselves fallen into a very altered estimate of this our Christian
tract of the earth. A fancied sunshine, spread over it before, would have
faded away. From appearing to them, according to an accustomed notion,
peculiarly auspicious, as if almost by some virtue of its climate, to the
growth of religious intelligence in the minds of the people, it might come
to be regarded as favorable to the development of _all things rather than
that_. Plants and trees, the diversity of animal forms and powers, the
human frame, the features enlarging or enlarged to manhood in the younger
persons looked at by the supposed examiner while answering his questions,
with their passions also, and prevailing dispositions,--see how all things
can unfold themselves in our territory, and grow and enlarge to their
completeness,--except the ideas of the human soul relating to the
Almighty, and to the grand purpose of its own existence!

The supposed answers would in many instances betray, that any thought of
God at all was of very rare occurrence, the idea having never become
strongly associated with anything beheld in the whole creation. We should
think it probable, as we have said before, that with many, while in
health, weeks or months often pass away without this idea being once so
presented as to fix the mind in attention to it for one moment of time. If
they could be set to any such task as that of retracing, at the end of the
days or the weeks, the course of their thoughts, to recollect what
particulars in the series had struck the most forcibly and stayed the
longest, it may be suspected that _this_ idea, thus impressively
apprehended, would be as rare a recollection as that of having seen a
splendid meteor. Yet during that space of time, their thoughts, such as
they were, shall have run through thousands of changes; and even the name
of God may have been pronounced by them a multitude of times, in
jocularity or imprecation. Thus there is a broad easy way to atheism
through thoughtless ignorance, as well as a narrow and difficult one
through subtle speculation.

But that idea of God which has, by some means, found its way into their
understandings, to abide there so nearly in silence and oblivion,--what is
it, when some direct call does really evoke it? It is generally a gross
approximation of the conception of the Infinite Being to the likeness of
man. If what they have heard of his being a Spirit, has indeed some little
effect in prevention of the total debasement of the idea, it prevents it
rather by confusion than by magnificence. It may somewhat restrain and
baffle the tendency of the imagination to a direct degrading definition;
but it does so by a dissolution of the idea as into an attenuated cloud.
And ever and anon, this cloudy diffusion is again drawing in, and shaping
itself toward an image, vast perhaps, and spectral, portentous across the
firmament, but in some near analogy to the human mode of personality.

The divine attribute which is apprehended by them with most of an
impression of reality, is a certain vastness of power. But, through the
grossness of their intellectual atmosphere, this appears to them in the
character of something prodigiously huge, rather than sublimely
glorious.--As considered in his quality of moral judicial Governor, God is
regarded by some of them as more disposed, than there is any reasonable
cause, to be displeased with what is done in this world. But the far
greater number have no prevailing sentiment that he takes any very
vigilant account or concern. [Footnote: Some have no very distinct
impression the one way or the other. Not very long since, a friend of the
writer, in one of the midland counties, fell into talk, on a Sunday, with
a man who had been in some very plain violation of the consecrated
character of the day. He seriously animadverted on this, adding, Don't you
think God will be displeased at and punish such conduct? or words to that
effect. The man, after a moment's consideration, answered, with unaffected
cool simplicity, exactly thus: "That's according as how a takes it."

Numerous anecdotes of the same cast have been more recently heard; and
among them that of a conversation with a thoughtless man, of worthless
character, not in the lowest condition in society, and then consciously
near death. The religious visitor represented to him the serious and
alarming situation of a man on the point of going from a sinful life into
the presence of God as a Judge. The man, with a sort of general
acknowledgment that it was so, yet hoped that God would not be severe with
him. But the visitor anxiously pressed upon him the consideration that God
is a just Being, and judges by a holy law: to which at last the answer
was, with little emotion, "Then God and I must fight it out as well as we
can." The phrase, in his use of it, did not mean anything of the nature of
a hostile contest, but simply the _settling of an affair_, which he
thought might be done without any great danger or trouble.] And even those
who entertain the more ungracious apprehension, have it not in sufficient
force to make them, once in whole months, deliberately think it worth
while to care what he may disapprove.]

The notions that should answer to the doctrine of a Providence, are a
confusion of some crude idea of a divine superintendence, with stronger
fancies and impressions of luck and chance; a confusion of them not
unaptly exemplified in a grave and well-meaning sentiment heard from a man
in a temporal condition to be envied by many of his neighbors, "Providence
must take its chance." And these are still further, and most uncouthly,
confounded by the admixture of the ancient heathen notion of fate, reduced
from its philosophy to its dregs. In many instances, however, this last
obtains such a predominance, as to lessen the confusion, and withal to
preclude, in a great measure, the sense of accountableness. In neither of
these rude states of the understanding, (that which confounds Providence
and chance, and that which sinks in dull acquiescence to something
obscurely imagined like fate,) is there any serious admission, at least
during the enjoyment of health, of the duty or advantage of prayer.

The supposed examiner may endeavor to possess himself of the notions
concerning the Redeemer of the world. They would be found, in numerous
instances, amounting literally to no more than, that Jesus Christ was a
worthy kind of person, (the word has actually been "gentleman," in more
than one instance that we have heard from unquestionable testimony,) who
once, somewhere, (these national Christians had never in their lives,
thought of inquiring when or where,) did a great deal of good, and was
very ill used by bad people. The people now, they think, bad as they may
be, would not do so in the like case. Some of these persons may
occasionally have been at church; and are just aware that his name often
recurs in its services; they never considered why; but they have a vague
impression of its repetition having some kind of virtue, perhaps rather in
the nature of a spell.--The names of the four evangelists are by some held
literally and technically available for such a use.

A few steps withdrawn from this thickest of the mental fog, there are many
who are not entirely uninformed of something having been usually affirmed,
by religious formularies and teachers, of Jesus Christ's being more than a
man, and of his having done some thing of great importance toward
preventing our being punished for our sins. This combination of a majestic
superiority to the human nature, with a subsistence yet confessedly human,
just passes their minds like a shape formed of a shadow, as one of the
unaccountable things that may be as it is said, for what they know, but
which they need not trouble themselves to think about. As to the great
things said to be done by him, to save men from being punished, they see
indeed no necessity for such an expedient, but if it is so, very right,
and so much the better; for between that circumstance in our favor, and
God's being too good, after all that is said of his holiness and wrath, to
be severe on such poor creatures, we must have a good chance of coming off
safely at last. But multitudes of the miserably poor, however wicked, have
a settled assurance of this coming off well at last, independently of
anything effected for men by the Mediator: they shall be exempted, they
believe, from any future suffering in consideration of their having
suffered so much here. There is nothing, in the scanty creed of great
numbers, more firmly held than this.

It is true, they believe that the most atrociously wicked must go to a
state of punishment after death. They consider murderers, especially, as
under this doom. But the offences so adjudged, according to any settled
estimate they have of the demerit of bad actions, are comprised in a very
short catalogue. At least it is short if we could take it exclusively of
the additions made to it by the resentments of individuals. For each one
is apt to make his own particular addition to it, of some offence which he
would never have accounted so heinous, but that it has happened to be
committed against _him_. We can recollect the exultation of sincere faith,
seen mingling with the anger, of an offended man, while _predicting_, as
well as imprecating, this retribution of some injury he had suffered; a
real injury, indeed, yet of a kind which he would have held in small
account had he only seen it done to another person.--As to the nature of
that future punishment, the ideas of these neglected minds go scarcely at
all beyond the images of corporal anguish, conveyed by the well-known
metaphors. They have no impressive idea of the pain of remorse, and
scarcely the faintest conception of an infelicity inflicted by the
conscious loss of the Divine favor.

It is most striking to observe how almost wholly negative are their
conceptions of that future happiness which must be _something_--but
what?--as the necessary alternative of the evil they so easily assure
themselves of escaping. The abstracted, contemplative, and elevated ideas
of the celestial happiness are far above their apprehension; and indeed,
though they were not, would be little attractive. And the more ordinary
modes of representing it in religious discourse, (if they should ever have
heard enough of such discourse to be acquainted with them,) are too
uncongenial with their notions of pleasure to have a welcome, or abiding
place, in their imagination or affections. Thus the soul, as to this great
subject, is vacant and cold. And here the reflection again returns, what
an inexpressible poverty of the mind there is, when the people have no
longer a mythology, and yet have not obtained in its place any knowledge
of the true religion. The martial vagrants of Scandinavia glowed with the
vivid anticipations of Valhalla; the savages of the western continent had
their animating visions of the "land of souls;" the modern Christian
barbarians of England, who also expect to live after death, do not know
what they mean by the! phrase of "going to heaven."

Most of this class of persons think very little in any way whatever of the
invisible spiritual economy. And some of them would be pleased with a
still more complete exemption from such thought. For there are among them
those who are liable to be occasionally affected with certain ghostly
recognitions of something out of the common world. But it is remarkable
how little these may contribute to enforce the salutary impressions of
religion. For instance, a man subject to the terror of apparitions shall
not therefore be in the smallest degree the less profane, except just at
the time that this terror is upon him. A number of persons, not one of
whom durst walk, alone, at midnight, round a lonely church, encompassed
with graves, to which has perhaps lately been added that of a notoriously
wicked man, will nevertheless, on a fine Sunday morning, form a row of
rude idlers, standing in the road to this very church, to vent their jokes
on the persons going thither to attend the offices of religion, and on the
performers of those offices.

Such, as regarding religion, is the state out of which it is desired to
redeem a multitude of the people of this land. Or rather, we should say,
it is sought to save a multitude from being consigned to it. For consider,
in the next place, (what we wished especially to point at, in this most
important article in the enumeration of the evils of ignorance,) consider
what a fatal inaptitude for receiving the truths of religion is created by
the neglect of training minds to the exercise of their faculties, and the
possession of the elements of knowledge.

How inevitably it must be so, from the nature of the case!--There is a
sublime economy of invisible realities. There is the Supreme Existence, an
infinite and eternal Spirit. There are spiritual existences, that have
kindled into brightness and power, from nothing, at his creating will,
There is an universal government, omnipotent, all-wise, and righteous, of
that Supreme Being over the creation. There is the immense tribe of human
spirits, in a most peculiar and alarming predicament, held under eternal
obligation of conformity to a law proceeding from the holiness of that
Being, but perverted to a state of disconformity to it, and opposition to
him. Next, there is a signal anomaly of moral government, the constitution
of a new state of relation between the Supreme Governor and this alienated
race, through a Mediator, who makes an atonement for human iniquity, and
stands representative before Almighty Justice, for those who in grateful
accordance to the mysterious appointment consign themselves to this
charge. There are the several doctrines declaratory of this new
constitution through all its parts. There is the view of religion in its
operative character, or the doctrine of the application of its truths and
precepts by a divine agency to transform the mind and rectify the life.
And this solemn array of all the sublimest reality, and most important
intelligence, is extending infinitely away beyond the sensible horizon of
our present state to an invisible world, to which the spirits of men
proceed at death for judgment and retribution, and with the prospect of
living forever.

Look at this scene of faith, so distinct, and stretching to such
remoteness, from the field of ordinary things; of a subsistence which it
is for intellect alone to apprehend; presenting objects with which
intellect alone can hold converse. Look at this scene; and then consider,
what manner of beings you are calling upon to enter into it by
contemplation. Beings who have never learned to think at all. Beings who
have hardly ever once, in their whole lives, made a real effort to direct
and concentrate the action of their faculties on anything abstracted from
the objects palpable to the senses; whose entire attention has been
engrossed, from their infancy, with the common business, the low
amusements and gratifications, the idle talk, the local occurrences, which
formed the whole compass of the occupation, and practically acknowledged
interests, of their progenitors. Beings who have never been made in the
least familiar with even the matters of fact, those especially of the
scripture history, by which religious truths have been expressed and
illustrated in the substantial form of events, and personal characters.
Beings who, in natural consequence of this unexercised and unfurnished
condition of their understandings, will combine the utmost aversion to any
effort of purely intellectual labor, with the especial dislike which it is
in the human disposition to feel toward this class of subjects. What kind
of ideas should you imagine to be raised in their minds, by all the words
you might employ, to place within their intellectual vision some portion
of this spiritual order of things,--even should you be able, which you
often would not, to engage any effort of attention to the subject?--And
yet we have heard this disqualification for receiving religious knowledge,
in consequence of the want of early mental culture, made very light of by
men whose pretensions to judgment had no less a foundation than an
academical course and a consecrated profession. They would maintain, with
every appearance of thinking so, that a very little, that the barest
trifle, of regulated exercise of the mind in youth, would be enough for
the common people as a preparation for gaining as much knowledge of
religion as they could ever want; that any such thing as a practice of
reading, (a practice of hazardous tendency.) would be needless for the
purpose, since they might gain a competence of that knowledge by
attendance on the public ministration in the church. And there must have
been a very recent acquiescence in a new fashion of opinion, if numbers of
the same class of men would not, in honestly avowing their thoughts, say
something not far different at this hour.

But the pretended facility of gaining a competence of religious knowledge
by such persons on such terms, can only mean, that the smallest
conceivable portion of it may suffice. For we may appeal to those pious
and benevolent persons who have made the most numerous trials, for
testimony to the inaptitude of uneducated people to receive that kind of
instruction. You have visited, perhaps, some numerous family, or Sunday
assemblage of several related families; to which you had access without
awkward intrusion, in consequence of the acquaintance arising from near
neighborhood, or of little services you had rendered, or of the
circumstance of any of their younger children coming to your charity
schools. It was to you soon made sensible what a sterile, blighted spot
of rational nature you were in, by indications unequivocal to your
perception, though, it may be, not easily reducible to exact description.
And those indications were perhaps almost equally apparent in the young
persons, in those advanced to the middle of life, and in those who were
evidently destined not long to remain in it, the patriarch, perhaps, and
the eldest matron, of the kindred company. You attempted by degrees, with
all managements of art, as if you had been seeking to gain a favor for
yourselves, to train into the talk some topic bearing toward religion;
and which could be followed up into a more explicit reference to that
great subject, without the abruptness which causes instant silence and
recoil. We will suppose that the gloom of such a moral scene was not
augmented to you, by the mortification of observing impatience of this
suspension of their usual and favorite tenor of discourse, betrayed in
marks of suppressed irritation, or rather by the withdrawing of one, and
another, from the company. But it was quite enough to render the moments
and feelings some of the most disconsolate you had ever experienced, to
have thus immediately before you a number of rational beings as in a dark
prison-house, and to feel the impotence of your friendly efforts to bring
them out. Their darkness of ignorance infused into your spirit the
darkness of melancholy, when you perceived that the fittest words you
could think of, in every change and combination in which you could
dispose them, failed to impart to their understanding, in the meaning you
wanted to convey, the most elementary and essential ideas of the most
momentous subject.

You thought again, perhaps, and again, Surely _this_ mode of expression,
or _this_, as it is in words not out of common usage, will define the
thing to their apprehension. But you were forced to perceive that the
common phraseology of the language, those words which make the substance
of ordinary discourse on ordinary subjects, had not, for the
understandings of these persons, a general applicableness. It seemed as if
the mere elemental vehicle, (if we may so name it,) available
indifferently for conveying all sorts of sense, except science, had become
in its meaning special and exclusive for their own sort of topics. Their
narrow associations had rendered it incapable of conveying sense to them
on matters foreign to their habits. When used on a subject to which they
were quite unaccustomed, it became like a stream which, though one and the
same current, flows clear on the one side, and muddy (as we sometimes see
for a space) on the other; and to them it was clear only at their own
edge. And if thus even the plain popular language turned dark on their
understandings when employed in explanation of religion, it is easy to
imagine what had been the success of a more peculiarly theological
phraseology, though it were limited to such terms as are of frequent use
in the Bible.

You continued, however, the effort for a while. As desirous to show you
due civility, some of the persons, perhaps the oldest, would give assent
to what you said, with some sign of acknowledgment of the importance of
the concern. The assent would perhaps be expressed in a form meant and
believed to be equivalent to what you had said. And when it gave an
intelligible idea, it might probably betray the grossest possible
misconception of the first principles of Christianity. It might be a crude
formation from the very same substance of which some of the worst errors
of popery are constituted; and might strongly suggest to you, in a glance
of thought, how easily popery might have become the religion of ignorance;
how naturally ignorance and corrupt feeling mixing with a slight vague
notion of Christianity, would turn it into just such a thing as popery.
You tried, perhaps, with repeated modifications of your expression, and
attempts at illustration, to loosen the false notion, and to place the
true one contrasted with it in such a near obviousness to the
apprehension, that at least the difference should be seen, and (perhaps
you hoped) a little movement excited to think on the subject, and make a
serious question of it. But all in vain. The hoary subject of your too
late instruction, (a spectacle reminding you painfully of the words which
denominate the sign of old age "crown of glory,") either would still take
it that it came all to the same thing, or, if compelled to perceive that
you really were trying to make him _unthink_ his poor old notions, and
learn something new and contrary, would probably retreat, in a little
while, into a half sullen, half despondent silence, after observing, that
he was too old, "the worse was the luck," to be able to learn about such
things, which he never had, like you, the "scholarship" and the time for.

In several of the party you perceived the signs of almost a total blank.
They seemed but to be waiting for any trifling incident to take their
attention, and keep their minds alive. Some one with a little more of
listening curiosity, but without caring about the subject, might have to
observe, that it seemed to him the same kind of thing that the methodist
parson, (the term most likely to be used if any very serious and earnest
Christian instructor had appeared in the neighborhood,) was lately saying
in such a one's funeral-sermon. It is too possible that one or two of the
visages of the company, of the younger people especially, might wear,
during a good part of the time, somewhat of a derisive smile, meaning,
"What odd kind of stuff all this is;" as if they could not help thinking
it ludicrously strange that any one should be talking of God, of the
Saviour of mankind, the facts of the Bible, the welfare of the soul, the
shortness and value of life, and a future account, when he might be
talking of the neighboring fair, past or expected, or the local quarrels,
or the last laughable incident or adventure of the hamlet. It is
particularly observable, that grossly ignorant persons are very apt to
take a ludicrous impression from high and solemn subjects; at least when
introduced in any other time or way than in the ceremonial of public
religious service; when brought forward as a personal concern, demanding
consideration everywhere, and which may be urged by individual on
individual. You have commonly enough seen this provoke the grin of
stupidity and folly. And if you asked yourselves, (for it were in vain to
ask _them_,) why it produced this so perverse effect, you had only to
consider that, to minds abandoned through ignorance to be totally
engrossed by the immediate objects of sense, the grave assumption, and
emphatic enforcement, of the transcendent importance of a wholly unseen
and spiritual economy, has much the appearance and effect of a great lie
attempted to be passed on them. You might indeed recollect also, that the
most which some of them are likely to have learnt about religion, is the
circumstance, that the persons professing to make it an earnest concern
are actually regarded as fit objects of derision by multitudes, not of the
vulgar order only, but including many of the wealthy, the genteel, the
magisterial, and the dignified in point of rank.

Individuals of the most ignorant class may stroll into a place of worship,
bearing their character so conspicuously in their appearance and manner as
to draw the particular notice of the preacher, while addressing the
congregation. It may be, that having taken their stare round the place,
they go out, just, it may happen, when he is in the midst of a marked,
prominent, and even picturesque illustration, perhaps from some of the
striking facts or characters of the Scripture history, which had not made
the slightest ingress on their thoughts or imagination. Or they are
pleased to stay through the service; during which his eye is frequently
led to where several of them may be seated together. Without an appearance
of addressing them personally, he shall be excited to direct a special
effort toward what he surmises to be the state of their minds. He may in
this effort acquire an additional force, emphasis, and pointedness of
delivery; but especially his utmost mental force shall be brought into
action to strike upon their faculties with vivid, rousing ideas, plainly
and briefly expressed. And he fancies, perhaps, that he has at least
arrested their attention; that what is going from his mind is in some
manner or other taking a place in theirs; when some inexpressibly trivial
occurring circumstance shows him, that the hold he has on them is not of
the strength of a spider's web. Those thoughts, those intellects, those
souls, are instantly and wholly gone--from a representation of one of the
awful visitations of divine judgment in the ancient world--a description
of sublime angelic agency, as in some recorded fact in the Bible--an
illustration of the discourse, miracles, or expiatory sorrows of the
Redeemer of the world--a strong appeal to conscience on past sin--a
statement, perhaps in the form of example, of an important duty in given
circumstances--a cogent enforcement of some specific point as of most
essential moment in respect to eternal safety;--from the attempted grasp,
or supposed seizure, of any such subject, these rational spirits started
away, with infinite facility, to the movements occasioned by the falling
of a hat from a peg.

By the time that any semblance of attention returns, the preacher's
address may have taken the form of pointed interrogation, with very
defined supposed facts, or even real ones, to give the question and its
principle as it were a tangible substance. Well; just at the moment when
his questions converge to a point, which was to have been a dart of
conviction striking the understanding, and compelling the common sense
and conscience of the auditors to answer for themselves,--at that moment,
he perceives two or three of the persons he had particularly in view
begin an active whispering, prolonged with the accompaniment of the
appropriate vulgar smiles. They may possibly relapse at length, through
sheer dulness, into tolerable decorum; and the instructor, not quite
losing sight of them, tries yet again, to impel some serious ideas
through the obtuseness of their mental being. But he can clearly
perceive, after the animal spirits have thus been a little quieted by the
necessity of sitting still awhile, the signs of a stupid vacancy, which
is hardly sensible that anything is actually saying, and probably makes,
in the case of some of the individuals, what is mentally but a slight
transition to yawning and sleep.

Utter ignorance is a most effectual fortification to a bad state of the
mind. Prejudice may perhaps, be removed; unbelief may be reasoned with;
even demoniacs have been compelled to bear witness to the truth; but the
stupidity of confirmed ignorance not only defeats the ultimate efficacy of
the means for making men wiser and better, but stands in preliminary
defiance to the very act of their application. It reminds us of an
account, in one of the relations of the French Egyptian campaigns, of the
attempt to reduce a garrison posted in a bulky fort of mud. Had the
defences been of timber, the besiegers might have set fire to and burned
them; had they been of stone, they might have shaken and ultimately
breached them by the battery of their cannon; or they might have
undermined and blown them up. But the huge mound of mud had nothing
susceptible of fire or any other force; the missiles from the artillery
were discharged but to be buried in the dull mass; and all the means of
demolition were baffled.

The most melancholy of the exemplifications of the effect of ignorance, as
constituting an incapacity for receiving religious instruction, have been
presented to those who have visited persons thus devoid of knowledge in
sickness and the approach to death. Supposing them to manifest alarm and
solicitude, it is deplorable to see how powerless their understandings
are, for any distinct conception of what, or why, it is that they fear, or
regret, or desire. The objects of their apprehension come round them as
vague forms of darkness, instead of distinctly exhibited dangers and foes,
which they might steadily contemplate, and think how to escape or
encounter. And how little does the benevolent instructor find it possible
for him to do, when he applies his mind to the painful task of reducing
this gloomy confused vision to the plain defined truth of their unhappy
situation, set in order before their eyes.

He deems it necessary to speak of the most elementary principles--the
perfect holiness and justice of God--the corresponding holiness and the
all-comprehending extent of his law, appointed to his creatures--the
absolute duty of conformity to it in every act, word, and thought--the
necessary condemnation consequent on failure--the dreadful evil,
therefore, of sin, both in its principle and consequences. God--perfect
holiness--justice--law--universal conformity--sin--condemnation! Alas!
the hapless auditor has no such sense of the force of terms, and no such
analogical ideas, as to furnish the medium for conveying these
representations to his understanding. He never had, at any time; and now
there may be in his mind all the additional confusion, and incapacity of
fixed attention, arising from pain, debility, and sleeplessness. All this
therefore passes before him with a tenebrious glimmer; like lightning
faintly penetrating to a man behind a thick black curtain.

The instructor attempts a personal application, endeavoring to give the
disturbed conscience a rational direction, and a distinct cognizance. But
he finds, as he might expect to find, that a conscience without knowledge
has never taken but a very small portion of the man's habits of life under
its jurisdiction; and that it is a most hopeless thing to attempt to send
it back reinforced, to reclaim and conquer, through all the past, the
whole extent of its rightful but never assumed dominion. So feeble and
confined in the function of judgment through which it must see and act, it
is especially incapable of admitting the monitor's estimate of the measure
of guilt involved in omission, and in an irreligious state of the mind, as
an exceedingly grave addition to the account of criminal action. The man
is totally and honestly unable to conceive of the substantial guilt of
anything of which he can ask, what injury it has done to anybody. This
single point--whether positive harm has been done to any one--comprehends
the whole essence and sum of the conscious accountableness of very
ignorant people. Material wrong, _very_ material wrong, to their fellow
mortals, they have a conscience that they should not do; a conscience,
however, which they would deem it hard to be obliged to maintain entire
even to this confined extent; and which therefore admits some compromise
and gives some license, with respect especially to any kind of wrong which
has the extenuation, as they deem it, of being commonly practised in their
class; and against which there is a sort of understanding that each one
must take the best care he can of himself. At this confine, so undecidedly
marked, of practical, tangible wrong, these very ignorant persons lose the
sense of obligation, and feel absolved from any further jurisdiction. So
coarse and narrow a conscience as to what they _do_, is not likely to be
refined and extended into a cognizance of what they _are_. As for a duty
absolute in the nature of things, or as owing to themselves, in respect to
their own nature, or as imposed by the Almighty--_that their minds should
be in a certain prescribed state_--there does really require a perfectly
new manner of the action of intellect to enable them to apprehend its
existence. And this habitual insensibility to any jurisdiction over their
internal state, now meets, in its consequences, the supposed instructor.
In consideration of the vast importance of this part of a rational
creature's accountableness, and partly, too, from a desire to avoid the
invidiousness of appearing as a judicial censor of the sick man's
practical conduct, he insists in an especial manner on this subject of the
state within, endeavoring to expose that dark world by the light of
religion to the sick man's conscience. But to give in an hour the
_understanding_ which it requires the discipline of many years to render
competent! How vain the attempt! The man's sense of guilt fixes almost
exclusively on something that has been improper in his practical courses.
He professes to acknowledge the evil of this; and perhaps with a certain
stress of expression; intended, by an apparent respondence to the serious
emphasis which the monitor is laying on another part of the
accountableness and guilt, to take him off from thus endeavoring, as it
appears to the ignorant sufferer, to make him more of a sinner than there
is any reason, so little can he conceive that it should much signify what
his thoughts, tempers, affections, motives, and so forth, may have been.
By continuing to press the subject, the instructor may find himself in
danger of being regarded as having taken upon him the unkind office of
inquisitor and accuser in his own name, and of his own will and authority.

When inculcating the necessity of repentance, he will perceive the
indistinctness of apprehension of the difference between the horror of
sin merely from dread of impending consequences, and an antipathy to its
essential nature. And even if this distinction, which admits of easy
forms of exemplification, should thus be rendered in a degree
intelligible, the man cannot make the application. The instructor
observes, as one of the most striking results of a want of disciplined
mental exercise, an utter inability for self-inspection. There is before
his eyes, looking at him, but a stranger to himself, a man on whose mind
no other mind, except One, can shed a light of self-manifestation, to
save him from the most fatal mistakes.

If the monitor would turn, (rather from an impulse to relieve the gloom of
the scene, than from anything he sees of a hopeful approach toward a right
apprehension of the austerer truths of religion,) if he would turn his
efforts, to the effect of directing on this dark spirit the benign rays of
the Christian redemption, what is he to do for terms,--yes, for very
terms? Mediator, sacrifice, atonement, satisfaction, faith; even the
expression, believing in Christ; merit of the death of Christ, acquittal,
acceptance, justification;--he knows, or soon will find, that he is
talking the language of an occult science. And he is forced down to such
expedients of grovelling paraphrase, and humiliating analogy, that he
becomes conscious that his method of endeavoring to make a divine subject
comprehensible, is to divest it of its dignity, and reduce it, in order
that it may not confound, to the rank of things which have not majesty
enough to impress with awe. And after this has been done, to the utmost of
his ability, and to the unavoidable weariness of his suffering auditor, he
is distressed to think of the proportion between the insignificance of any
ideas which this man's mind now possesses of the economy of redemption,
and the magnitude of the interest in which he stands dependent on it. A
symptom or assurance which should impart to the sick man a confidence of
his recovery, would appear to him a far greater good than all he can
comprehend as offered to him from the Physician of the soul. Some crude
sentiment, as that he "hopes Jesus Christ will stand his friend;" that it
was very good of the Saviour to think of us; that he wishes he knew what
to do to get his help; that Jesus Christ has done him good in other
things, and he hopes he will now again at the last; [Footnote: Such an
expression as this would hardly have occurred but from recollection of
fact, in the instance of an aged farmer, (the owner of the farm,) in his
last illness. In the way of reassuring his somewhat doubtful hope that
Christ would not fail him when now had recourse to, at his extreme need,
he said, (to the writer,) "Jesus Christ has sent me a deal of good
crops."]--such expressions will afford little to alleviate the gloomy
feelings, with which the serious visitor descends from the chamber in
which, perhaps, he may hear, a few days after, that the man he conversed
with lies a dead body.

But such benevolent visitors have to tell of still more melancholy
exemplifications of the effects of ignorance in the close of life. They
have seen the neglect of early cultivation, and the subsequent
estrangement from all knowledge and thinking, except about business and
folly, result in such a stupefaction of mind, that irreligious and immoral
persons, expecting no more than a few days of life, and not in a state of
physical lethargy, were absolutely incapable of being alarmed at the near
approach of death. They might not deny, nor in the infidel sense
disbelieve, what was said to them of the awfulness of that event and its
consequences; but they had actually never thought enough of death to have
any solemn associations with the idea. And their faculties were become so
rigidly shrunk up, that they could not now admit them; no, not while the
portentous spectre was unveiling his visage to them, in near and still
nearer approach; not when the element of another world was beginning to
penetrate through the rents of their mortal tabernacle. It appeared that
literally their thoughts _could not_ go out from what they had been
through life immersed in, to contemplate, with any realizing feeling, a
grand change of being, expected so soon to come on them. They could not go
to the fearful brink to look off. It was a stupor of the soul not to be
awaked but by the actual plunge into the realities of eternity. In such a
case the instinctive repugnance to death might be visible and
acknowledged. But the feeling was, If it must be so, there is no help for
it; and as to what may come after, we must take our chance. In this temper
and manner, we recollect a sick man, of this untaught class, answering the
inquiry how he felt himself, "Getting worse; I suppose I shall make a die
of it." And some pious neighbors, earnestly exhorting him to solemn
concern and preparation, could not make him understand, we repeat with
emphasis, _understand_ why there was occasion for any extraordinary
disturbance of mind. Yet this man was not inferior to those around him in
sense for the common business of life.

After a tedious length of suffering, and when death is plainly
inevitable, it is not very uncommon for persons under this infatuation to
express a wish for its arrival, simply as a deliverance from what they
are enduring, without disturbing themselves with a thought of what may
follow. "I know it will please God soon to release me," was the
expression to his religious medical attendant, of such an ignorant and
insensible mortal, within an hour of his death, which was evidently and
directly brought on by his vices. And he uttered it without a word, or
the smallest indicated emotion, of penitence or solicitude; though he had
passed his life in a neighborhood abounding with the public means of
religious instruction and warning.

When earnest, persisting, and seriously menacing admonitions, of pious
visitors or friends, almost literally compel such unhappy persons to some
precise recognition of the subject, their answers will often be faithfully
representative, and a consistent completion, of their course through
mental darkness, from childhood to the mortal hour. We recollect the
instance of a wicked old man, who, within that very hour, replied to the
urgent admonitions by which a religious neighbor felt it a painful duty to
make a last effort to alarm him, "What! do you believe that God can think
of damning me because I may have been as bad as other folk? I am sure he
will do no such thing: he is far too good for that."

We cannot close this detailed illustration of so gloomy a subject, without
again adverting to a phenomenon as admirable as, unhappily, it is rare;
and for which the observers who cannot endure mystery in religion, or
religion itself, may go, if they choose, round the whole circle of their
philosophy, and begin again, to find any adequate cause, other than the
most immediate agency of the Almighty Spirit. Here and there an instance
occurs, to the delight of the Christian philanthropist, of a person
brought up in utter ignorance and barbarian rudeness, and so continuing
till late in life; and then at last, after such a length of time and habit
has completed its petrifying effect, suddenly seized upon by a mysterious
power, and taken, with an alarming and irresistible force, out of the dark
hold in which the spirit has lain imprisoned and torpid, into the sphere
of thought and feeling.

Occasion is taken this once more of adverting to such facts, not so much
for the purpose of magnifying the nature, as of simply exhibiting the
effect, of an influence that can breathe with such power on the obtuse
intellectual faculties; which it appears, in the most signal of these
instances, almost to create anew. It is exceedingly striking to observe
how the contracted, rigid soul seems to soften, and grow warm, and expand,
and quiver with life. With the new energy infused, it painfully struggles
to work itself into freedom, from the wretched contortion in which it has
so long been fixed as by the impressed spell of some infernal magic. It is
seen filled with a distressed and indignant emotion at its own ignorance;
actuated with a restless earnestness to be informed; acquiring an unwonted
pliancy of its faculties to thought; attaining a perception, combined of
intelligence and moral sensibility, to which numerous things are becoming
discernible and affecting, that were as non-existent before. It is not in
the very extreme strength of their import that we employ such terms of
description; the malice of irreligion may easily parody them into poetical
excess; but we have known instances in which the change, the intellectual
change, has been so conspicuous, within a brief space of time, that even
an infidel observer must have forfeited all claim to be esteemed a man of
sense, if he would not acknowledge,--This that you call divine grace,
whatever it may really be, is the strangest awakener of faculties after
all. And to a devout man, it is a spectacle of most enchanting beauty,
thus to see the immortal plant, which has been under a malignant blast
while sixty or seventy years have passed over it, coming out at length in
the bloom of life.

We cannot hesitate to draw the inference, that if religion is so
auspicious to the intellectual faculties, the cultivation and exercise of
those faculties must be of great advantage to religion.

These observations on ignorance, considered as an incapacitation for
receiving religious instruction, are pointed chiefly at that portion of
the people, unhappily the largest, who are little disposed to attend to
that kind of instruction. But we should notice its prejudicial effect on
those of them to whom religion has become a matter of serious and
inquisitive concern. The preceding assertions of the efficacy of a strong
religious interest to excite and enlarge the intellectual faculty will not
be contradicted by observing, nevertheless, that in a dark and crude state
of that facility those well-disposed persons, especially if of a warm
temperament withal, are unfortunately liable to receive delusive
impressions and absurd notions, blended with religious doctrine and
sentiment. It would be no less than plain miracle or inspiration, a more
entire and specific superseding of ordinary laws than that which we have
just been denominating "an immediate agency of the Almighty Spirit," if a
mind left uncultivated all up through the earlier age, and perhaps far on
in life, should not come to its new employment on a most important subject
with a sadly defective capacity for judgment and discrimination. The
situation reminds us of an old story of a tribe of Indians denominated
"moon-eyed," who, not being able to look at things by the light of the
sun, were reduced to look at them under the glimmering of the moon, by
which light it is an inevitable circumstance of human vision to receive
the images of things in perverted and deceptive forms.

Even in such an extremely rare instance as that above described, an
example of the superlative degree of the animating and invigorating
influence of religion on the uncultivated faculties, there would be
visible some of the unfortunate consequences of the inveterate rudeness; a
tendency, perhaps, to magnify some one thing beyond its proportionate
importance to adopt hasty conclusions; to entertain some questionable or
erroneous principle because it appears to solve a difficulty, or perhaps
falls in with an old prepossession; to make too much account of variable
and transitory feelings; or to carry zeal beyond the limits of discretion.
In examples of a lower order of the correction or reversal of the effects
of ignorance by the influence of religion, the remains will be still more
palpable. So that, while it is an unquestionable and gratifying fact, that
among the uneducated subjects of genuine religion many are remarkably
improved in the power and exercise of their reason; and while we may
assume that _some_ share of this improvement reaches to all who are really
under this most beneficent influence in the creation, [Footnote: _Really_
under this influence, we repeat, pointedly; for we justly put all others
out of the account. It is nothing (as against this asserted influence on
the intelligent faculty) that great numbers who may contribute to swell a
public bustle about religion; who may run together at the call of whim,
imposture, or insanity, assuming that name; who may acquire, instead of
any other folly, a turn for talking, disputing, or ranting, about that
subject: it is nothing, in short, that _any_ who are not in real,
conscientious seriousness the disciples of religion, can be shown to be no
better for it, in point of improved understanding.] it still is to be
acknowledged of too many, who are in a measure, we may candidly believe,
under the genuine efficacy of religion, that they have attained, through
its influence, but so inferior a proportion of the improvement of
intellect, that they can be well pleased with the great deal of absurdity
of religious notions and language. But while we confess and regret that it
is so, we should not overlook the causes and excuses that may be found for
it, in unfortunate super-addition to their lack of education; partly in
the natural turn of the mind, partly in extraneous circumstances. Many
whose attention is in honest earnestness drawn to religion, are endowed by
nature with so scanty an allotment of the thinking power, strictly so
denominated, that it would have required high cultivation to raise them to
the level of moderate understanding. There are some who appear to have
constitutionally an invincible tendency to an uncouth, fantastic mode of
forming their notions. It is in the nature of others, that whatever
cultivation they might have received, it would still have been by their
passions, rather than, in any due proportion, by their reason, that an
important concern would have taken and retained hold of them. It may have
happened to not a few, that circumstances unfavorable to the understanding
were connected with the causes or occasions of their first effectual
religious impressions. Some quaint cast in the exposition of the Christian
faith, not essentially vitiating, but very much distorting and cramping
it, or some peculiarity or narrow-mindedness of the teachers, may have
conveyed their effect, to enter, as it were, at the door at the same
moment that it was opened by the force of a solemn conviction, and to be
retained and cherished ever after on the strength of this association.
This may have tended to give an obliquity to the disciple's understanding,
or to arrest and dwarf its growth; to fix it in prejudices instead of
training it to judgments; or to dispense with its exercise by merging it
in a kind of quietism; so that the proper tendency of religion to excite
intellectual activity was partly overruled and frustrated. It is most
unfortunate that thus there may be, from things casually or
constitutionally associated with a man's piety, an influence operating to
disable his understanding; as if there had been mixed with the incense of
a devout service in the temple, a soporific ingredient which had the
effect of closing the worshipper's eyes in slumber.

Now suppose all these worthy persons, with so many things of a special
kind against them, to be also under the one great calamity of a neglected
education, and is it any wonder that they can admit religious truths in
shapes very strange and faintly enlightened; that they have an uncertain
and capricious test of what is genuine, and not much vigilance to
challenge plausible semblances; that they should be caught by some
fanciful exhibition of a truth which would be of too intellectual a
substance as presented in its pure simplicity; and should be ready to
receive with approbation not a little of what is a heavy disgrace to the
name of religious doctrine and ministration? Where is the wonder that
crudeness, incoherence, and inconsistency of notions, should not
disappoint and offend minds that have not, ten times since they came into
the world, been compelled to form two ideas with precision, and then
compare them discriminately or combine them strictly, on any subject
beyond the narrow scope of their ordinary pursuits? Where is the wonder,
if many such persons take noise and fustian for a glowing zeal and a lofty
elevation; if they mistake a wheedling cant for affectionate solicitude;
if they defer to pompous egotism and dogmatical assertion, when it is so
convenient a foundation for all their other faith to believe their teacher
is an oracle? No marvel if they are delighted with whimsical conceits as
strokes of discovery and surprise, and yet at the same time are pleased
with common-place, and endless repetition, as an exemption from mental
effort; and if they are gratified by vulgarity of diction and
illustration, as bringing religion to the level where they are at home?
Nay, if an artful pretender, or half-lunatic visionary, or some poor set
of dupes of their own inflated self-importance, should give out that they
are come into the world for the manifestation, at last, of true
Christianity, which the divine revelation has failed, till their advent,
to explain to any of the numberless devout and sagacious examiners of
it,--what is there in the minds of the most ignorant class of persons
desirous to secure the benefits of religion, that can be securely relied
on to certify them, that they shall not forego the greatest blessing ever
offered to them by setting at naught these pretensions?

It is grievous to think there should be an active extensive currency of a
language conveying crudities, extravagances, arrogant dictates of
ignorance, pompous nothings, vulgarities, catches of idle fantasy, and
impertinences of the speaker's vanity, as religious instruction to
assemblages of ignorant people. But then for the means of depreciating
that currency, so as to drive it at last out of circulation? The thing to
be wished is, that it were possible to put some strong coercion on the
_minds_ (we deprecate all other restraint) of the teachers; a compulsion
to feel the necessity of information, sound sense, disciplined thinking,
the correct use of words, and an honest, careful purpose to make the
people wiser. There are signs of amendment, certainly; but while the
passion of human beings for notoriety lasts, (which will be yet some
time,) there will not fail to be men, in any number required, ready to
exhibit in religion, in any manner in which the people are willing to be
pleased with them. Let us, then, try the inverted order, and endeavor to
secure that those who assemble to be taught, shall already have learnt so
much, _by other means_, that no professed teacher shall feel at liberty to
treat them as an unknowing herd. But by what other means, except the
discipline of the best education possible to be given to them, and the
subsequent voluntary self-improvement to which it may be hoped that such
an education would often lead?

We cannot dismiss this topic, of the unhappy effect of extreme ignorance
on persons religiously disposed, in rendering them both liable and
inclined to receive their ideas of the highest subject in a disorderly,
perverted, and debased form, mixed largely with other men's folly and
their own, without noticing with pleasure an additional testimony to the
connection between genuine religion and intelligence. It arises from the
fact, apparent to any discriminating observer, that as a _general_ rule
the most truly pious of the illiterate disciples of religion, those who
have the most of its devotional feeling and its humility, do certainly
manifest more of the operation of judgment in their religion than is
evinced by those of less solemn and devout sentiment. The former will
unquestionably be found, when on the same level as to the measure of
natural faculty and the want of previous cultivation, to show more
discernment, to be less captivated by noise and extravagance, and more
intent on obtaining a clear comprehension of that faith, which they feel
it is but a reasonable obligation that they should endeavor to understand,
if they are to repose on it their most important hopes.




Section VI.



Thus it has been attempted, we fear with too much prolixity and
repetition, to describe the evils attendant on a neglected state of the
minds of the people. The representation does not comprehend all those even
of magnitude and prominence; but it displays that portion of them which is
the most serious and calamitous, as being the effect which the people's
ignorance has on their moral and religious interests. And we think no one
who has attentively surveyed the state and character of the lower orders
of the community, in this country, will impute exaggeration to the
picture. It is rather to be feared that the reality is of still darker
shade; and that a more strikingly gloomy exhibition might be formed, by
such a process as the following:--That a certain number of the most
observant of the philanthropic persons, who have had most intercourse with
the classes in question, for the purposes of instruction, charitable aid,
or perhaps of furnishing employment, should relate the most characteristic
circumstances and anecdotes within their own experience, illustrative of
this mental and moral condition; and that these should be arranged,
without any comment, under the respective heads of the preceding sketch,
or of a more comprehensive enumeration. Each of them might repeat, in so
many words, the most notable things he has heard uttered as disclosing the
notions entertained of the Deity, or any part of religion; or those which
have been formed of the ground and extent of duty and accountableness; or
the imaginations respecting the termination of life, and a future
retribution. They might relate the judgments they have heard pronounced on
characters and particular modes of conduct; on important events in the
world; on anything, in short, which may afford a test of the quality and
compass of uncultivated thought. Let the recital include both the
expressions of individual conception, and those of the most current maxims
and common-places; and let them be the sayings of persons in health, and
of those languishing and dying. Then let there be produced a numerous
assortment of characteristic samples of practical conduct; conduct not
simply proceeding, in a general way, from wrong disposition, but bearing
the special marks of the cast and direction which that disposition takes
through extreme ignorance: samples of action that is wrong because the
actor cannot think right, or does not think at all. The assemblage of
things thus recounted, when the actual circumstances were also added of
the wretchedness corresponding and inseparable, would constitute such an
exhibition of fact, as any description of those evils in general terms
would incur the charge of rhetorical excesses in attempting to rival. We
can well imagine that some of these persons, of large experience, may have
accompanied us through the foregoing series of illustrations, with a
feeling that they could have displayed the subject with a far more
striking prominence.

And now again the mortifying reflection comes on us, that all this is the
description of too probably the major part of the people of our own
nation. Of this nation, the theme of so many lofty strains of panegyric;
of this nation, stretching forth its powers in ambitious enterprise, with
infinite pride and cost, to all parts of the globe;--just as if a family
were seen eagerly intent on making some new appropriation, or going out to
maintain some competition or feud with its neighbors, or mixing perhaps in
the strife of athletic games, or drunken frays, at the very time that
several of its members are lying dead in the house. So that the fame of
the nation resounded, and its power made itself felt, in every clime, it
was not worth a consideration that a vast proportion of its people were
systematically consigned, through ignorance and the irreligion and
depravity inseparable from it, to a wretchedness on which that fame was
the bitterest satire. It is matter for never-ending amazement, that during
one generation after another, the presiding wisdom in this chief of
Christian and Protestant States, should have thrown out the living
strength of that state into almost every mode of agency under heaven,
rather than that of promoting the state itself to the condition of a happy
community of cultivated beings. What stupendous infatuation, what
disastrous ascendency of the Power of Darkness, that this energy should
have been sent forth to pervade all parts of the world in quest of
objects, to inspirit and accomplish innumerable projects, political and
military, and to lavish itself, even to exhaustion and fainting at its
vital source, on every alien interest; while here at home, so large a part
of the social body was in a moral and intellectual sense dying and
putrefying over the land. And it was thus perishing for want of the
vivifying principle of knowledge, which one-fifth part of this mighty
amount of exertion would have been sufficient to diffuse into every corner
and cottage in the island. Within its circuit, a countless multitude were
seen passing away their mortal existence little better, in any view, than
mere sentient shapes of matter, and by their depravity immeasurably worse;
and yet this hideous fact had not the weight of the very dust of the
balance, in the deliberation whether a grand exertion of the national
vigor and resource could have any object so worthy, (with God for the
Judge,) as some scheme of foreign aggrandizement, some interference in
remote quarrels, an avengement by anticipation of wrongs pretended to be
foreseen, or the obstinate prosecution of some fatal career, begun in the
very levity of pride, by a decision in which some perverse individual or
party in ascendency had the influence to obtain a corrupt, deluded, or
forced concurrence.

The national _honor_, perhaps, would be alleged, in a certain matter of
punctilio, for the necessity of undertakings of incalculable consumption,
by men who could see no national _disgrace_ in the circumstance that
several millions of the persons composing the nation could not read the
ten commandments. Or the national _safety_ has been pleaded to a similar
purpose, with a rant or a gravity of patriotic phrases, upon the
appearance of some slight threatening symptoms; and the wise men so
pleading, would have scouted as the very madness of fanaticism any
dissuasion that should have advised,--"Do you, instead, apply your best
efforts, and the nation's means, to raise the barbarous population from
their ignorance and debasement, and you really may venture some little
trust in Divine Providence for the nation's safety meanwhile."

If a contemplative and religious man, looking back through little more
than a century, were enabled to take, with an adequate comprehension of
intellect, the sum and value of so much of the astonishing course of the
national exertions of this country as the Supreme Judge has put to the
criminal account of pride and ambition; and if he could then place in
contrast to the transactions on which that mighty amount has been
expended, a sober estimate of what so much exerted vigor _might_ have
accomplished for the intellectual and moral exaltation of the people, it
could not be without an emotion of horror that he would say, Who is to be
accountable, who _has been_ accountable, for this difference? He would no
longer wonder at any plagues and judgments which may have been inflicted
on such a state. And he would solemnly adjure all those, especially, who
profess in a peculiar manner to feel the power of the Christian Religion,
to beware how they implicate themselves, by avowed or even implied
approbation, in what must be a matter of fearful account before the
highest tribunal. If some such persons, of great merit and influence,
honored performers of valuable public services in certain departments,
have habitually given, in a public capacity, this approbation, he would
urge it on their consciences, in the evening of life, to consider whether,
in the prospect of that tribunal, they have not one duty yet to
perform,--to throw off from their minds the servility to party
associations, to estimate as Christians, about to retire from the scene,
the actual effects on this nation of a policy which might have been nearly
the same if Christianity had been extinct; and then to record a solemn,
recanting, final protest against a system to which they have concurred in
the profane policy of degrading that religion itself into a party.

Any reference made to such a prospect implies, that there is attributed to
those who can feel its seriousness a state of mind perfectly unknown to
the generality of what are called public men. For it is notorious that, to
the mere working politician, there is nothing on earth that sounds so idly
or so ludicrously as a reference to a judgment elsewhere and hereafter, to
which the policy and transactions of statesmen are to be carried. If the
Divine jurisdiction would yield to contract its comprehension, and retire
from all the ground over which a practical infidelity heedlessly
disregards or deliberately rejects it, how large a province it would leave
free! If it be assumed that the province of national affairs _is_ so left
free, on the pretence that they _cannot_ be transacted in faithful
conformity to the Christian standard, that plea is reserved to be tried in
the great account, when the responsibility for them shall be charged. For
assuredly there will be persons found, to be summoned forth as accountable
for that conduct of states which we are contemplating. Such a moral agency
could not throw off its responsibility into the air, to be dissipated and
lost, like the black smoke of forges or volcanoes. This one grand thing
(the improvement of the people) left undone, while a thousand arduous
things have been done or strenuously endeavored, cannot be less than an
awful charge _somewhere_. And where?--but on all who have voluntarily
concurred and co-operated in systems and schemes, which could deliberately
put _such_ a thing last? Last! nay, not even that; for they have, till
recently, as we have seen, thrown it almost wholly out of consideration. A
long succession of men invested with ample power are gone to this audit.
How many of those who come after them will choose to proceed on the same
principles, and meet the same award?

We were supposing a thoughtful man to draw out to his view a parallel and
contrast, exhibiting, on the one side, the series of objects on which,
during several ages, an enormous exertion of the national energy has been
directed; and on the other, those improvements of the people which might
have been effected by so much of that exertion as he deems to have been
worse than wasted. In this process, he might often be inclined to single
out particular parts in the actual series, to be put in special contrast
over against the possibilities on the opposite line. For example; there
may occur to his view some inconsiderable island, the haunt of fatal
diseases, and rendered productive by means involving the most flagrant
iniquity; an iniquity which it avenges by opening a premature grave for
many of his countrymen, and by being a moral corrupter of the rest. Such
an infested spot, nevertheless, may have been one of the most material
objects of a widely destructive war, which has in effect sunk incalculable
treasure in the sea, and in the sands, ditches, and fields of
plague-infested shores; with a dreadful sacrifice of blood, life, and all
the best moral feelings and habits. Its possession, perhaps, was the chief
prize and triumph of all the grand exertion, the equivalent for all the
cost, misery, and crime.

Or there may occur to him the name of some fortress, in a less remote
region, where the Christian nations seem to have vied with one another
which of them should deposit the greatest number of victims, securely kept
in the charge of death, to rise and testify for them, at the last day, how
much they have been governed by the peaceful spirit of their professed
religion. He reads that his countrymen, conjoined with others, have
battled round this fortress, wasting the vicinity, but richly manuring the
soil with blood. They have co-operated in hurling upon the abodes of
thousands of inhabitants within its walls, a thunder and lightning
incomparably more destructive than those of nature; and have put fire and
earthquake under the fortifications; shouting, "to make the welkin ring,"
at sight of the consequent ruin and chasm, which have opened an entrance
for hostile rage, or compelled an immediate submission, if, indeed, it
would then be accepted to disappoint that rage of its horrible
consummation. They have taken the place,--and they have surrendered it.
The next year perhaps they have taken it again; to be again at last given
up, on compulsion or in compromise, to the very same party to which it had
belonged previously to all this destructive commotion. The operations in
this local and very narrow portion of the grand affray of monarchies, he
may calculate to have cost his country as much as the amount earned by the
toils of half the life of all the inhabitants of one of its populous
towns; setting aside from his view the more portentous part of the
account,--the carnage, the crimes, and the devastation perpetrated on the
foreign tract, the place of abode of people who had little interest in the
contest, and no power to prevent it. And why was all this? He may not be
able to divest himself of the principles that should rule the judgment of
a moralist and a Christian, in order to think like a statesman; and
therefore may find no better reason than that, when despots would quarrel,
Britain must fancy itself called upon to take the occasion to prove itself
a great power, by bearing a high hand amidst their rivalries; or must
seize the opportunity of revenging some trivial offence of one of them;
though this should be at the expense of having the scene at home chequered
between children learning little more than how to curse, and old persons
dying without knowing how to put words together to pray.

The question may have been, in one part of the world or another, which of
two wicked individuals of the same family, competitors for sovereign
authority, should be actually invested with it, they being equal in the
qualifications and dispositions to make the worst use of it. And the
decision of such a question was worthy that England should expend what
remained of her depressed strength from previous exertions of it in some
equally meritorious cause.

Or the supposed reviewer of our national history may find, somewhere in
his retrospect, that a certain brook or swamp in a wilderness, or a stripe
of waste, or the settlement of boundaries in respect to some insignificant
traffic, was difficult of adjustment between jealous, irritated, and
mutually incursive neighbors; and therefore, national honor and interest
equally required that war should be lighted up by land and sea, through
several quarters of the globe. Or a dissension may have arisen upon the
matter of some petty tax on an article of commerce: an absolute will had
been rashly signified on the claim; pride had committed itself, and was
peremptory for persisting; and the resolution was to be prosecuted through
a wide tempest of destruction, protracted perhaps many years; and only
ending in the forced abandonment by the leading power concerned, of
infinitely more than war had been made in the determination not to forego;
and after an absolutely fathomless amount of every kind of cost, financial
and moral, in this progress to final frustration.--But there would be no
end of recounting facts of this order.

Now the comparative estimator has to set against the extended rank of such
enormities the forms of imagined good, which might, during the ages of
this retrospect, have been realized by an incomparably less exhausting
series of exertion, an exertion, indeed, continually renovating its own
resources. Imagined good, we said;--alas! the evil stands in long and
awful display on the ground of history; the hypothetical good presents
itself as a dream; with this circumstance only of difference from a dream,
that there is resting on the conscience of beings somewhere still
existing, a fearful accountableness for its not having been a reality.

For such an _island_, as we have supposed our comparer to read of, he can
look, in imagination, on a space of proportional extent in any part of his
native country, taking a district as a detached section of a general
national picture. And he can figure to himself the result, resplendent
upon this tract, of so much energy, there beneficently expended, as that
island had cost: an energy, we mean _equivalent in measure_, while put
forth in the infinitely different _mode_ of an exertion, by all
appropriate means, to improve the reason, manners, morals, and with them
the physical condition of the people. What a prevalence of intelligence,
what a delightful civility of deportment, what repression of the more
gross and obtrusive forms of vice, what domestic decorum, attentive
education of the children, appropriateness of manner, and readiness of
apprehension in attendance on public offices of religion, sense and good
order in assemblages for the assertion and exercise of civil and political
rights! All this he can imagine as the possible result.

We were supposing his attention fixed a while on the recorded operations
against some strongly fortified place, in a region marked through every
part with the traces and memorials of the often-renewed conflicts of the
Christian states. And we suppose him to make a collective estimate of all
kinds of human ability exerted around and against that particular devoted
place; an estimate which divides this off as a portion of the whole
immense quantity of exertion, expended by his country in all that region
in the campaigns of a war, or of a century's wars. He may then again
endeavor, by a rule of equivalence, to conceive the same amount of
exertion in quite another way; to imagine human forces equal in
_quantity_ to all that putting forth of strength, physical, mental, and
financial, for annoyance and destruction, expended instead, in the
operation of effecting the utmost improvement which they _could_ effect,
in the mental cultivation and the morals of the inhabitants of one large
town in his own country.

In figuring to himself the channels and instrumentality, through which
this great stream of energy might have passed into this operation, on a
detached spot of his country, he will soon have many specific means
presented to his view: schools of the most perfect appointment, in every
section and corner of the town; a system of friendly but cogent dealing
with all the people of inferior condition, relatively to the necessity of
their practical accordance to the plans of education;[Footnote: It is here
confidently presumed, that any man who looks, in a right state of his
senses, at the manner in which the children are still brought up, in many
parts of the land, will hear with contempt any hypocritical protest
against so much interference with the discretion, the liberty of
parents;--the discretion, the liberty, forsooth, of bringing up their
children a nuisance on the face of the earth.] an exceedingly copious
supply, for individual possession, of the best books of elementary
knowledge; accompanied, as we need not say, by the sacred volume; a number
of assortments of useful and pleasing books for circulation, established
under strict order, and with appointments of honorary and other rewards to
those who gave evidence of having made the best use of them; a number of
places of resort where various branches of the most generally useful and
attainable knowledge and arts should be explained and applied, by every
expedient of familiar, practical, and entertaining illustration, admitting
a degree of co-operation by those who attended to see and hear; and an
abundance of commodious places for religious instruction on the Sabbath,
where there should be wise and zealous men to impart it. Our speculator
has a right to suppose a high degree of these qualifications in his public
teachers of religion, when he is to imagine a parallel in this department
to the skill and ardor displayed in the supposed military operations. He
may add as subsidiary to such an apparatus, everything of magistracy and
municipal regulation; a police, vigilant and peremptory against every
cognizable neglect and transgression of good order; a resolute breaking up
of all haunts and rendezvous of intemperance, dishonesty and other vice;
and the best devised and administered institutions for correcting and
reclaiming those whom education had failed to preserve from such
depravity; and besides all this, there would be a great variety of
undefinable and optional activity of benevolent and intelligent men of
local influence.

Under so auspicious a combination of discipline, he will not indeed fancy,
in his transient vision, that he beholds Athens revived, with its bright
intelligence all converted to minister to morality, religion, and
happiness; but he will, in sober consistency, we think, with what is known
of the relation of cause and effect, imagine a place far surpassing any
actual town or city on earth. And let it be distinctly kept in view, that
to reduce the ideal exhibition to reality, he is not dreaming of means and
resources out of all human reach, of preternatural powers, discovered
gold-mines, grand feats of genius. He is just supposing to have been
expended, on the population of the town, a measure of exertion and means
equal, (as far as agencies in so different a form and direction can be
brought to any rule of comparative estimate) to what has been expended by
his country in investing, battering, undermining, burning, taking, and
perhaps retaking, one particular foreign town, in one or several
campaigns.

If he should perchance be sarcastically questioned, how he can allow
himself in so strange a conceit as that of supposing such a quantity of
forces concentrated to act in one exclusive spot, while the rest of the
country remained under the old course of things; or in such an absurdity
as that of fancying that _any_ quantity of those forces could effectually
raise one local section of the people eminently aloft, while continuing
surrounded and unavoidably in constant intercourse with the general mass,
remaining still sunk in degradation--he has to reply, that he is fancying
no such thing. For while he is thus converting, in imagination, the
military exertions against one foreign town, into intellectual and moral
operations on one town at home, why may he not, in similar imagination,
make a whole country correspond to a whole country? He may conceive the
incalculable amount of exertion made by his country, in martial operations
over all that wide foreign territory of which he has selected a particular
spot, to have been, on the contrary, expended in the supposed beneficent
process on the great scale of this whole nation. Then would the
hypothetical improvement in the one particular town, so far from being a
strange insulated phenomenon, absurd to be conceived as existing in
exception and total contrast to the general state of the people, be but a
specimen of that state.

He may proceed along the series of such confronted spectacles as far as
bitter mortification will let him. But he will soon be sick of this
process of comparison. And how sick will he thenceforward be, to perpetual
loathing, of the vain raptures with which an immortal and anti-Christian
patriotism can review a long history of what it will call national glory,
acquired by national energy ambitiously consuming itself in a continual
succession and unlimited extent of extraneous operations, of that kind
which has been the grand curse of the human race ever since the time of
Cain; while the one thing needful of national welfare, the very _summum
bonum_ of a state, has been regarded with contemptuous indifference.

These observations are not made on an assumption, that England could in
all cases have kept clear of implication in foreign interests, and remote
and sanguinary contests. But they are made on the assumption of what is
admitted and deplored by every thoughtful religious man, whose
understanding and moral sense are not wretchedly prostrated in homage to a
prevailing system, and chained down by a superstition that dares not
question the wisdom and probity of high national authorities and counsels.
What is so admitted and deplored by the true and Christian patriots is,
that this nation has gone to an awfully criminal extent beyond the line of
necessity; that it has been extremely prompt to find or make occasions for
appearing again, and still again, in array for the old work of waste and
death; and that the advantage possessed by the preponderating classes in
this protestant country, for being instructed (if they had cared for such
instruction) to look at these transactions in the light of religion, has
reflected a peculiar aggravation on the guilt of a policy persevered in
from age to age, in disregard of the laws of Christianity, and the warning
of accountableness to the Sovereign Judge.

These observations assume, also, that there _cannot_ be such a thing as a
nation so doomed to a necessity and duty of expending its vigor and means
in foreign enterprise, as to be habitually absolved from the duty of
raising its people from brutish ignorance. _This_ concern is a duty at all
events and to an entire certainty; is a duty imperative and absolute; and
any pretended necessity for such a direction of the national exertion as
would be, through a long succession of time, incompatible with a paramount
attention to this, would be a virtual denial of the superintendence of
Providence. It would be the same thing as to assert of an individual, that
his duties of other kinds are so many and great, as to render it
impossible for him to give a competent attention to his highest interests,
and that therefore he stands exempted from the obligations of religion.

Such as we have described has been, for ages, the degraded state of the
multitude. And such has been the indifference to it, manifested by the
superior, the refined, the ascendant portion of the community; who,
generally speaking, could see these sharers with them of the dishonored
human nature, in endless numbers around them, in the city and the field,
without its ever flashing on conscience that on them was lying a solemn
responsibility, destined to press one day with all its weight, for that
ill arrangement of the social order which abandoned these beings to an
exclusion from the sphere of rational existence. It never occurred to many
of them as a question of the smallest moment, in what manner the mind
might be living in all these bodies, if only it were there in competence
to make them efficient as machines and implements. Contented to be gazed
at, to be envied, or to be regarded as too high even for envy, and to have
the rough business of the world performed by these inhalers of the vital
air, they perhaps thought, if they reflected at all on the subject, that
the best and most privileged state of such creatures was to be in the
least possible degree morally accountable: and that therefore it would be
but doing them an injury to enlarge their knowledge. And might not the
thought be suggested at some moment, (see how many things may be envied in
their turns!) how happy _they_ should be, if, with the vast superiority of
their advantages, they could still be just as little accountable? But if
even in this way, of envy, they received an unwelcome admonition of their
own high responsibility, not even then was it suggested to them, that they
should ever be arraigned on a charge to which they would vainly wish to be
permitted to plead, "Were we our brothers' keepers?" And if an office
designated in those terms had been named to them, as a part of their duty,
by some unearthly voice of imperious accent, their thoughts might have
traversed hither and thither, in various conjectures and protracted
perplexity, before the objects of that office had been presented
explicitly to their apprehension as no other than the reason, principles,
consciences, and the whole moral condition of the vulgar mass. They would
understand that its condition was, _in some way or other_, a concern lying
at their door, but probably not in this.--We speak generally, and not
universally.

       *       *       *       *       *

But we would believe there are signs of a revolution beginning; a more
important one, by its higher principle and its expansive impulse toward a
wide and remote beneficence, than the ordinary events of that name. What
have commonly been the matter and circumstance of revolutions? The last
deciding blow in a deadly competition of equally selfish parties; actions
and reactions of ambition and revenge; the fiat of a conqueror; a burst of
blind fury, suddenly sweeping away an old order of things, but
overwhelming to all attempts to substitute a better institution; plots,
massacres, battles, dethronements, restorations: all actuated by a
fermentation of the ordinary or the basest elements of humanity. How
little of the sublime of moral agency has there been, with one or two
partial exceptions, in these mighty commotions; how little wisdom or
virtue, or reference to the Supreme Patron of national interests; how
little nobleness or even distinctness of purpose, or consolidated
advantage of success! But here is, as we trust, the approach of a
revolution with different phenomena. It displays the nature of its
principle and its ambition in a conviction, far more serious and extensive
than heretofore, of the necessity of education to the mass of the
population, with earnest discussions of its scope and methods by both
speculative and practical men; in schemes, more speedily animated into
operation than good designs were wont to be, for spreading useful
knowledge over tracts of the dead waste where there was none; in exciting
tens of thousands of young persons to a benevolent and patient activity in
the instruction of the children of the poor; in an extended and extending
system of means and exertions for the universal diffusion of the sacred
scriptures; in multiplying endeavors, in all regular and all uncanonical
ways, to render it next to impossible for the people to avoid hearing some
sounds at least of the voice of religion; in the formation of useful local
institutions too various to come under one denomination; in enterprises to
attempt an opening of the vast prison-houses of human spirits in dark
distant regions; in bringing to the test of principles many notions and
practices which have stood on the authority of prejudice, custom, and
prescription: and all this taking advantage of the new and powerful spirit
which has come on the world to drive its affairs into commotion and
acceleration; as bold adventurers have sometimes availed themselves of a
formidable torrent to be conveyed whither the stream in its ordinary state
would never have carried them; or as we have heard of heroic assailants
seizing the moment of a tempest to break through the enemy's lines.--Such
are some of the insignia by which it stands distinguished out and far off
from the rank of ordinary revolutions.

We are not unaware that, with certain speculators on this same subject of
meliorating the state and character of the people, some of the things here
specified will be of small account, either as signs of a great change, or
as means of promoting it. The widely spreading activity of a humble class
of laborers, who seek no fame for their toils and sacrifices, is but a
creeping process, almost invisible in the survey. The multiplied,
voluntary, and extraordinary efforts to diffuse some religious knowledge
and sentiment among the vulgar, appear to them, if not even of doubtful
tendency, at least of such impotence for corrective operation, that any
confidence founded on them is simple fanaticism; that the calculation is,
to use a commercial term, mere moonshine. We remember when a publication
of great note and influence flung contempt on the sanguine expectations
entertained from the rapid circulation of Bibles among the inferior
population. At the hopeful mention of expedients of the religious kind
especially, the class of speculators in question might perhaps be reminded
of Glendower's grave and believing talk of calling up spirits to perform
his will; or (should they ever have happened to read the Bible) of the
people who seized, in honest credulous delight, the mockery of a proposal
of pulling a city, to the last stone, into the river with ropes, as a
prime stroke of generalship.

When we see such expedients rated so low in the process for raising the
populace from their degradation, we ask what means these speculators
themselves would reckon on for the purpose. And it would appear that their
scheme would calculate mainly on some supposed dispositions of a political
and economical nature. Let the people be put in possession of all their
rights as citizens, and thus advanced in the scale of society. Let all
invidious distinctions which are artificial, arbitrary, and not
inevitable, be abolished; together with all laws and regulations
injuriously affecting their temporal well-being. Give them thus a sense of
being _something_ in the great social order, a direct palpable interest in
the honor and prosperity of the community. There will then be a dignified
sense of independence; the generous, liberalizing, ennobling sentiments of
freedom; the self-respect and conscious responsibility of men in the full
exercise of their rights; the manly disdain of what is base; the innate
perception of what is worthy and honorable, developing itself
spontaneously on the removal of the ungenial circumstances in the
constitution of society, which have been as a long winter on the
intellectual and moral nature of its inferior portions. All this will
conduce to the practicability and efficacy of education. It will be an
education _to fit them for an education_ to be introduced with the
progress of that fitness; intellectual culture finding a felicitous
adaptation of the soil. We may then adopt with some confidence a public
system, or stimulate and assist all independent local exertions for the
instruction of the people in the rudiments of literature and general
knowledge; and religion too, if you will.

But, to say nothing of the vain fancies of the virtues ready to disclose
themselves in a corrupt mass, under the auspices of improved political
institutions, it is unfortunate for any such speculation that what it
insists on as the primary condition cannot as yet, but very imperfectly,
be had. The higher and commanding portion of the community have, very
naturally, the utmost aversion to concede to the people what are claimed
as theoretically their rights. They have, indeed, latterly been
constrained to make considerable concessions in name and semblance. But
their great and various power will be strenuously exerted, for probably a
long while yet, to render the acquisitions made by the people as nearly as
possible profitless in their hands. And unhappily these predominant
classes have to allege the mental and moral rudeness of the lower, in
vindication of this determined policy of repression and frustration; thus
turning the consequences of their own criminal neglect into a defence of
their injustice. They will say, If the subordinate millions had grown up
into a rational existence; if they had been rendered capable of thinking,
judging, distinguishing, if they were in possession of a moderate share of
useful information, and withal a strong sense of duty; then might this and
the other privilege, or call it right, in the social constitution be
yielded to them. But as long as they continue in their present mental
grossness they are unfit for the possession, because unqualified for the
exercise, of any such privileges as would take them from under our
authoritative control.

Since they can and will, for the present, maintain this controlling power,
to the extent of nearly invalidating any political advancement attained,
or likely to be soon attained, by the lower grades, a speculation that
should place on that advancement, as a pre-requisite, our hope of a great
change in the mental condition of the people, would be, to adopt a humble
figure, setting us to climb to an upper platform without a ladder, or
rather telling us not to climb at all. And while this supposed
pre-requisite will be refused, on the allegation that the uncultivated
condition of the people renders them unfit for a liberal political
arrangement, the parties so refusing will be little desirous to have the
obstacle removed; foreseeing, as the inevitable consequence of a highly
improved cultivation, a more resolute demand of the advantages withheld, a
constantly augmenting force of popular opinion, and therefore a diminution
of their own predominant power. They will deem it much more commodious for
themselves, that the people should not be so enlightened and raised as to
come into any such competition. And since they, with these dispositions,
have the preponderance in what we denominate the State, we fear we are not
to look with much hope to the State for a liberal and effective system of
national education.

       *       *       *       *       *

What then is to be done?--We earnestly wish it might please the Sovereign
Ruler to do one more new thing in the earth, compelling the dominant
powers in the nations to an order of institutions and administrations that
_would_ apply the energy of the state to so noble a purpose. Nor can we
imagine any test of their merits so fair as the question whether, and in
what degree, they do this; nor any test by which they may more naturally
decline to have those merits tried. But since, to the shame of our nature,
there is no use to which we are so prone to turn our condemnation of evil
in one form, as that of purchasing a license for it in another, the
persons who are justly arraigning the powers at the head of nations should
be warned that they do not take from the guilty omissions of states a
sanction for individuals to do nothing. Let them not suffer an imposition
on their minds in the notion entertained of a state, as a thing to be no
otherwise accounted of than in a collective capacity, acting by a
government; as if the collective power and agency of a nation became, in
being exerted through that political organ, an affair altogether foreign
to the will, the action, the duty, the responsibility, of the persons of
whom the nation is composed. Let them not put out of sight that whatever
is the duty of the national body in that collective capacity, acting
through its government, is such only because it is the duty of the
individuals composing that body, as far as it is in the power of each; and
that it would be their duty individually not the less, though the
government, as the depositary of the national power, neglect it. But more
than this; to speak generally, and with certain degrees of possible
exception, we may affirm that a government _cannot_ be lastingly
neglectful of a great duty but because the individuals constituting the
community are so. An assertion, that a government has been utterly and
criminally neglectful of the moral condition of the inferior population,
age after age, and through every change of its administrators; but that,
nevertheless, the generality of the individuals of intelligence, wealth,
and influence, have all the while been of a quite opposite spirit,
zealously intent on remedying the flagrant evil, would be instantly
rejected as a contradiction. Such an enlightened and philanthropic spirit
prevailing widely among the individuals of the nation would carry its
impulse into the government in one manner or another. It would either
constrain the administrators of the state to act in conformity, or
ultimately displace them in favor of better men. Even if, short of such a
_general_ activity of the respectable and locally influential members of
society, a large proportion of them had vigorously prosecuted such a
purpose, it would have compelled the administrators of the state to
consider, even for their own sake, whether they should be content to see
so important a process going on independently of them, and in contrast
with their own disgraceful neglect.

But at the worst, and on the supposition that they were obstinately
inaccessible to all moral and philanthropic considerations, still a grand
improvement would have been accomplished, if many thousands of the
responsible members of the community had attempted it with zealous and
persevering exertion. The neglect, therefore, of the improvement of the
people, so glaring in the review of our conduct as a nation, has been, to
a very great extent, the insensibility of individuals to obligations lying
on them as such, independently of the institutions and administration of
the state.

And are individuals _now_ absolved from all such responsibility; and the
more so, that the conviction of the importance of the object is come upon
them with such a new and cogent force? When they say, reproachfully, that
the nation, as a body politic, concentrating its powers in its government,
disowns or neglects a most important duty, is it to be understood that
this accusatory testimony is _their_ share, or something equivalent in
substitution for their share, of that very duty? Does a collective duty of
such very solid substance, vanish into nothing under any attempted process
of resolving it into fractions and portions for individuals? And do they
themselves, as some of the individuals to whom this duty might thus be
distributively assigned,--do they themselves, in spite of self-love,
self-estimation, and all the sentiments which they will at other times
indulge in homage of their own importance,--do they, when this assignment
is attempted to be made to them, instantly and willingly surrender to a
feeling of crumbling down from this proud individuality into an
undistinguishable existence in the mass; and, profaning the language of
religion, say to the State, "In thee we live, move, and have a being?" Or,
will they, (in assimilation to eastern pagans, who hold that a divinity so
pervades them as to be their wills and do their actions, leaving the mere
human vehicle without power, duty, or accountableness,) will they account
themselves but as passive matter, moved or fixed, and in all things
necessitated, by a sovereign mythological something denominated the state?

No, not in all things. It is not so that they feel with respect to those
other interests and projects, which they are really in earnest to promote,
though those concerns may lie in no greater proportion than the one in
question does within the scope of their individual ability. The incubus
has then vanished; and they find themselves in possession of a free
agency, and a degree of power, which they will not patiently hear
estimated in any such contemptuous terms. What is there then that should
reduce them, as individual agents, to such utter and willing
insignificance in the affair of which we are speaking? Besides, they may
form themselves, in indefinite number, into combination. And is there no
power in any collective form in which they can be associated, save just
that one in which the aggregation is constituted under the political shape
and authority denominated a state? Or is it at last that some alarm of
superstitious loyalty comes over them; that they grow uneasy in conscience
at the high-toned censure they have been stimulated and betrayed to
pronounce on the state; that they relapse into the obsequiousness of
hesitating, whether they should presume to do good of a kind which the
"Power ordained of God" has not seen fit to do; that they must wait for
the sanction of its great example; that till the "shout of kings is among
them" it were better not to march against the vandalism and the paganism
which are, the while, quite at their ease, destroying the people?

But if such had always been the way in which private individuals, single
or associated, had accounted of themselves and their possible exertions,
in regard to great general improvements, but very few would ever have been
accomplished. For the case has commonly been, that the schemes of such
improvements have originated with persons not invested with political
power; have been urged on by the accession and co-operation of such
individuals; and at length slowly and reluctantly acceded to by the
holders of dominion over the community, always, through some malignant
fatality, the last to admit what had long appeared to the majority of
thinking men no less than demonstrative evidence of the propriety and
advantage of the reformation.

In all probability, the improvement of mankind is destined, under
Providence, to advance nearly in proportion as good men feel the
responsibility for it resting on themselves as individuals, and are
actuated by a bold sentiment of independence, (humble at the same time, in
reference to the necessity of Divine intervention,) in the prosecution of
it. Each person who is standing still to look, with grief or indignation,
at the evils which are overrunning the world, would do well to recollect
what he may have read of some gallant partisan, who, perceiving where a
prompt movement, with the comparatively slender force at his own command,
would make an impression infallibly tending to the success of the warfare,
could not endure to lose the time till some great sultan should find it
convenient to come in slow march, and the pomp of state, to take on him
the direction of the campaign.

In laying this emphasis of incitement and hope on the exertions of good
men as individuals, we cannot be understood to mean that the government of
states, if ever they did come to be intent on rendering the condition of
society better and happier, could not contribute beyond all calculation to
the force and efficacy of _every_ project and measure for that grand
purpose. How far from it! it is melancholy to consider what they might do
and do not. But it is because their history, thus far, affords such feeble
prognostics of their becoming, till some better age, actuated by such a
spirit,--it is because the Divine Governor has hitherto put upon them so
little of the honor of being the instruments of his beneficence,--that the
anticipations of good, and the exhortations to attempt it, are so
peculiarly directed to its promoters in an individual capacity.

Happily, the accusatory part of such exhortations is becoming, we trust we
may say fast becoming, less extensively applicable; and we return with
pleasure to the animating idea of that revolution of which we were noting
the introductory signs. It is a revolution in the manner of estimating the
souls of the people, and consequently in the judgment of what should be
done for both their present and future welfare. Through many ages, that
immense multitude had been but obscurely presented to view in any such
character as that of rational, improvable creatures. They were recognized
no otherwise than as one large mass of rude moral substance, but faintly
distinguishable into individuals; existing, and to be left to exist, in
their own manner; and that manner hardly worth concern or inquiry. Little
consideration could there be of how much spiritual immortal essence must
be going to waste, absorbed in the very earth, all over the wide field
where the inferior portion of humanity was seen only through the gross
medium of an economical estimate, by the more favored part of the race.
But now it is as if a mist were rising and dispersing from that field, and
leaving the multitude of possessors of uncultivated and degraded mind
exhibited in a light in which they were never seen before, except by the
faithful promoters of Christianity, and a few philanthropists of a less
special order.

It is true, this manifestation forms so tragic a vision, that if we had
only to behold it _as a spectacle_, we might well desire that the misty
obscurity should descend on it again, to shroud it from sight; while we
should be left to indulge and elate our imaginations by dwelling on the
pomps and splendors of the terrestrial scene,--the mighty empires, the
heroes, the victories, the triumphs; the refinements and enjoyments of the
most highly cultivated of the race; the brilliant performances of genius,
and the astonishing reach of science. So the tempter would have beguiled
our Lord into a complacent contemplation of the kingdoms and glories of
the world. But he was come to look on a different aspect of it! Nor could
he be withdrawn from the gloomy view of its degradation and misery. And a
good reason why. For the sole object for which he had appeared in the only
world where temptation could even in form approach him was to begin in
operation, and finish in virtue, a design for changing that state of
degradation and misery. In the prosecution of such a design, and in the
spirit of that divine benevolence in which it sprung, he could endure to
fix on the melancholy and odious character of the scene, the contemplation
which was vainly attempted to be diverted to any other of its aspects.
What, indeed, could sublunary pomps and glories be to him in any case; but
emphatically what, when his object was to redeem the people from darkness
and destruction?

Those who, actuated by a spirit in some humble resemblance to his, have
entered deeply into the state of the people, such as it is found in our
own nation, have often been appalled at the spectacle disclosed to them.
They have been astonished to think, what _can_ have been the direction,
while successive ages have passed away, of so many thousands of acute and
vigilant mental eyes, that so dreadful a sight should scarcely have been
descried. They have been aware that in describing it as they actually saw
it, they would be regarded by some as gloomy fanatics, tinctured with
insanity by the influence of some austere creed; and that others, of
kinder nature, but whose sensibility has more of self-indulging refinement
than tendency to active benevolence, would almost wish that so revolting
an exhibition had never been made, though the fact be actually so. There
may have been moments when they themselves have experienced a temporary
recoil of their benevolent zeal, under the impression at once of the
immensity of the evil, so defying the feebleness of their remedial means
and efforts, and of its noisome quality. At times, the rudeness of the
subjects, and perhaps the ungracious reception and thankless requital of
their disinterested labors, aggravating the general feeling of the
miserableness (so to express it) of seeing so much misery, have lent
seduction to the temptations to ease and self-indulgence. Why should they,
just _they_ of all men, condemn themselves to dwell so much in the most
dreary climate of the moral world, when they could perhaps have taken
their almost constant abode in a little elysium of elegant knowledge,
taste, and refined society? Then was the time to revert to the example of
Him "who, though he was rich, for our sakes became poor."

Or, again, they may have been betrayed to indulge too long in the bitter
mood of thinking, how entirely the higher and more amply furnished powers
leave such generous designs to proceed as they can, in the mere strength
of private individual exertion. And they may have yielded to depressive
feelings after the fervor of indignant ones; for such indignation, unless
qualified by the purest principle--unless it be the "anger that sins
not"--is very apt, when it cools, to settle into misanthropic despondency.
It is as if (they have said) armies and giants would stand aloof to amuse
themselves, while we are to be committed and abandoned in the ceaseless,
unavailable toil of a conflict, which these armies and giants have no
business even to exist as such but for the very purpose of waging. We are,
if we will,--and if we will we may let it alone--to try to effect in
diminutive pieces, and detached local efforts, a little share of that, to
the accomplishment of which the greatest human force on earth might be
applied on system, and to the widest compass. So they have said, perhaps,
and been tempted to leave their object to its destiny.

But really it is now too late for this resentful and desponding
abandonment. They cannot now retire in the tragic dignity of despair. It
must be some more forlorn predicament that would allow them any grace of
rhetoric in saying, as in parody of Cato, "Witness heaven and earth, that
we have done our duty, but the stars and fate are against us; and here it
becomes us to terminate a strife, which would degenerate into the
ridiculous, if prosecuted against impossibilities." On the contrary, the
zeal which could begin so onerous a work, and prosecute it thus far, could
not now remit without convicting its past ardor of cowardice lurking under
its temporary semblance of bravery. Is it for the projectors of a noble
edifice of public utility, to abandon the undertaking when it has risen
from its foundation to be seen above the ground; or is just come to be
level with the surface of the waters, in defiance of which it has been
commenced, and the violence of which it was designed to control, or the
unfordable depths and streams of which it was to bear people over? Let the
promoters of education and Christian knowledge among the inferior classes,
reflect what has already been accomplished; though regarding it as quite
the incipient stage. It is most truly as yet "the day of small things;"
and shall they despise it, from an idea of what it might have been if the
great powers had been directed to its advancement? They have found that in
the good cause thus unaided they have not wholly labored in vain; that it
_can_ be brought in contact with a considerable portion of what would
otherwise be so much human existence abandoned; and that already, as from
the garments of the Divine Healer of diseases, a sanative virtue goes out
of it. Let them recount the individuals they have seen, and not despond as
to many more, rescued from what had all the signs of a destination to the
lowest debasement, and utter ruin; some of whom are returning animated
thanks, and will do so in the hour of death, for what these, their best
human friends, have been the means of imparting to them. Let them
recollect of how many families they have seen the domestic condition
pleasingly, and in some instances eminently and delightfully amended. And
let them reflect how they have trampled down prejudices, nearly silenced a
heathenish clamor, and provoked the imitative and rival efforts of many
who would, but for them, have been willing enough for all such schemes to
lie in abeyance to the end of time. Let them think of all this, and
faithfully persist in the trial what it may please God that they shall
accomplish, whether the possessors of national power will acknowledge his
demand for such an application of it or not; whether, when the infinite
importance of the concern is represented to them, they will hear, or
whether they will forbear.

But let them not doubt that the time will come, when the rulers and the
ascendant classes in states will comprehend it to be their best policy to
promote all possible improvement of the people. It will be given to them
to understand, that the highest glory of those at the head of great
communities, must consist in the eminence attained by those communities
generally, in whatever it is that constitutes the worth, the honor, the
happiness, of individuals; a glory with which would be combined the
advantage that the office of presiding over such a nation could be
administered in a liberal spirit. They will one day have learned to esteem
it a far nobler form of power to lead and direct an immense society of
intelligent minds, than to delude, coerce, and drive a vast semi-barbarous
herd. Providence surely will one day, in the progress of society, confer
on it such wise and virtuous rulers as can feel, that it is better for
them to have a people who can understand and rationally approve, when
deserving of approbation, their system and measures, than one bent in
stupid submission, even if ignorance could henceforward suffice (which it
cannot) to retain the people in that posture; better, therefore, by a
still stronger reason, than to have a people fermenting in ignorant
disaffection, constantly believing the governors to be in the wrong, and
without the sense to comprehend any arguments in justification, excepting
such as might be addressed in the shape of bribes to corruption. And a
time will come when it will not be left to the philanthropic or censorial
speculatists alone, to make the comparative estimate between what has been
effected by the enormously expensive apparatus of coercive and penal
administration--the prisons, prosecutions, transportations, and a large
military police, (things quite necessary in our past and present national
condition,)--and what _might_ have been effected by one half of that
expenditure devoted to popular reformation, to be accomplished by means of
schools, and every practicable variety of methods for placing men's
judgment and conscience as the "lion in the way," when they are inclined
and tempted to go wrong.--All this will come to pass at length. And if the
promoters of the best designs see cause to fear that the time is remote,
this should but enforce upon them the more strongly the admonition that no
time is _theirs_, but the present.

It was not possible to pursue the long course of these observations so
nearly to the conclusion, without being reminded still again of what we
have adverted to before, that there will be persons ready to impute
sanguine extravagance to our expectations of the result of such an order
of means and exertions, for the improvement of the education and mental
condition of the people, as we see already beginning to work. When the
means are of so little splendid a quality, it will be said, by what
inflation of fancy is their power admeasured to such effects?

And what _is_ it, then, and how much, that is expected as the result, by
the zealous advocates of schools, and the whole order of expedients, for
the instruction of that part of the rising generation till lately so
neglected? Are they heard maintaining that the communication of knowledge,
or true notions of things, to youthful minds, will _infallibly_ ensure
their virtue and happiness? They are not quite so new to the world, to
experimental labor in the business of tuition, or to self-observation.
Their vigilance would hardly overlook such a circumstance as the very
different degree of assurance with which the effects may be predicted, of
ignorance on the one hand, and of knowledge on the other. There is very
nearly an absolute certainty of success in the method for making clowns,
sots, vagabonds, and ruffians. You may safely leave it to themselves to
carry on the process for becoming complete. Let human creatures grow up
without discipline, destitute therefore of salutary information, sound
judgment, or any conscience but what will shape itself to whatever they
like, serving in the manner of some vile friar pander in the old
plays,--and no one takes any credit for foresight in saying they will be a
noxious burden on the earth; except indeed in those tracts of it where
they seem to have their appropriate place and business, in being matched
against the wolves and bears of the wilderness. When they infest what
should be a civilized and Christianized part of the world, the
philanthropist is sometimes put in doubt whether to repress, or indulge,
the sentiment which tempts him to complacency in the operation of an
epidemic which is thinning their numbers.

The consequences of ignorance are certain, unless almost a miracle
interpose; but unhappily those of knowledge are of diffident and
restricted calculation; unless we could make a trifle of the testimony of
all ages, and suppress the evidence of present experience, that men may
see and approve the better, and yet follow the worse. It is the hapless
predicament of our nature, that the noblest of its powers, the
understanding, has but most imperfectly and precariously that commanding
hold on the others, which is essential to the good order of the soul. Our
constitution is like a machine in which there is a constant liability of
the secondary wheels to be thrown out of the catch and grapple of the
master one. And worse than so, these powers which ought to be subordinate
and obedient to the understanding, are not left to stand still when
detached from its control. They have a strong activity of their own, from
the impulse of other principles: indeed, it is this impulse that _causes_
the detachment. It is frightful to look at the evidence from facts, that
these active powers _may_ grow strong in the perversity which will set the
judgment at defiance, during the very time that it is successfully
training to a competence for dictating to them what is right. The
assertions of those who are determined to find the chief or only cause of
the wrong direction of the passions and will in misapprehension of the
understanding, are a gross assumption, in a question of fact, against an
infinite crowd of facts pressing round with their evidence. This evidence
is offered by men without number distinctly and deliberately acknowledging
their conviction of the evil quality and fatal consequences, of courses
which they are soon afterwards seen pursuing, and without the smallest
pretence of a change of opinion; by the same men in more advanced stages
still owning the same conviction, and sometimes in strong terms of
self-reproach, in the checks and pauses of their career; and by men in the
near prospect of death and judgment expressing, in bitter regret, the
acknowledgment that they had persisted in acting wrong when they knew
better. And this assumption, made against such evidence, is to be
maintained for no better reason, that appears, than a wilful determination
that human nature cannot, must not, shall not, be so absurd and depraved
as to be capable of such madness: as if human nature were taking the
smallest trouble to put on any disguise before them, to beguile them into
a good opinion; as if it could be cajoled by their flattery to assume even
a semblance of deserving it; as if it had the complaisance to check one
bad propensity, to save them from standing contradicted and exposed to
ridicule for speaking of it with indulgence or respect; as if it stayed or
cared to thank them for their pains in attempting to make out a plausible
extenuation. It has, and keeps, and shows its character, in perfect
indifference to the puzzled efforts of its apologists to reduce its moral
turpitude to just so much error of the understanding. But, as for
understanding--it should be time to look to their own, when they find
themselves asserting, in other words, that there is actually as much
virtue in the world as there is knowledge of its principles and laws. We
should rather have surmised that, deplorably deficient as that knowledge
is, the reduction of a fifth or tenth part of it to practice would make a
glorious change in England and Europe.

The persons, therefore, whose zeal is combined with knowledge in the
prosecution of plans for the extension of education, proceed on a
calculation of an effect more limited, in apparent proportion to the
means, and with less certainty of even that more limited measure in any
single instance, than they would have been justified in anticipating in
many other departments of operation. They would, for example, predict more
positively the results of an undertaking to cultivate any tract of waste
land, to reclaim a bog, or to render mechanical forces available in an
untried mode of application; or, in many cases, the decided success of the
healing art as applied to a diseased body. They must needs be moderate in
their confidence of calculation for good, on a moral nature whose
corruption would yield an enemy of mankind a gratifying probability in
calculating for evil. In comparing these opposite calculations, they would
be glad if they might make an exchange of the respective probabilities.
That is to say, let a man, if such there be, who could be pleased with the
depravity and misery of the race, a sagacious judge too, of their moral
constitution, and a veteran observer of their conduct,--let him survey
with the look of an evil spirit a hundred children in one of the
benevolent schools, and indulge himself in prognosticating, on the
strength of what he knows of human nature, the proportion, in numbers and
degree, in which these children will, in subsequent life, exemplify the
_failure_ of what is done for their wisdom and welfare;--let him make his
calculation, and, we say, there may be times when the friends of these
institutions would be glad to transfer the quantity of probability from
his side to theirs; would feel they should be happy if the proportion in
which they fear he may be right in calculating on evil from the nature of
the beings under discipline, were, instead, the proportion in which it is
rational to reckon on good from the efficacy of that discipline. "Evil, be
thou my good," might be their involuntary apostrophe, in the sense of
wishing to possess the stronger power, transmuted to the better quality.

But we shall know where to stop in the course of observations of this
darkening color: and shall take off the point of the derider's taunt, just
forthcoming, that we are here unsaying, in effect, all that we have been
so laboriously urging about the vast benefit of knowledge to the people.
It was proper to show, that the prosecutors of these designs are not
suffering themselves to be duped out of a perception of what there is, in
the nature of the youthful subjects, to counteract the intention of the
discipline, and with too certain a power to limit its efficacy to a very
partial measure of the effect desired. These projectors might fairly be
required to prove they are not unknowing enthusiasts; but then, in keeping
clear of the vain extravagances of expectation, they are not to surrender
their confidence that something great and important can be done; it should
be possible for a man to be sober, short of being dead. They are not to
gravitate into a state of feeling as if they thought the understanding and
the moral powers are but casually associated in the mind; as if an
important communication to the one, might, so to speak, never be heard of
by the others; as if these subordinates had just one sole principle of
action--that of disobeying their chief, so that it could be of no use to
appeal to the master of the house respecting the conduct of his inmates;
as if, therefore, _all_ presumption of a relation between means and ends,
as a ground of confidence in the efficacy of popular instruction, must be
illusory. It might not indeed be amiss for them to be _told_ that the case
is so, by those who would desire, from whatever motive, to repress their
efforts and defeat their designs. For so downright a blow at the vital
principle of their favorite object would but serve to provoke them to
ascertain more definitely what there really is for them to found their
schemes and hopes upon, and therefore to verify to themselves the reasons
they have for persisting, in assurance that the labor will be far from
wholly lost. And for this assurance it is, at the very lowest,
self-evident, that there is at any rate such an efficacy in cultivation,
as to give a certainty that a well-cultivated people _cannot_ remain on
the same degraded moral level as a neglected ignorant one--or anywhere
near it. None of those even that value such designs the least, ever
pretend to foresee, in the event of their being carried into effect, an
undiminished prevalence of rudeness and brutality of manners, of delight
in spectacles and amusements of cruelty, of noisy revelry, of sottish
intemperance, or of disregard of character. It is not pretended to be
foreseen, that the poorer classes will then continue to display so much of
that almost desperate improvidence respecting their temporal means and
prospects, which has aggravated the calamities of the present times. It is
not predicted that a universal school-discipline will bring up several
millions to the neglect, and many of them in an impudent contempt, of
attendance on the ministrations of religion. The result will at all
hazards, by every one's acknowledgment, be _the contrary of this_.

But more specifically:--The promoters of the plans of popular education
see a most important advantage gained in the very outset, in the obvious
fact, that in their schools a very large portion of time is employed well,
that otherwise would infallibly be employed ill. Let any one introduce
himself into one of these places of concourse, where there has been time
to mature the arrangements. He should not enter as an important personage,
in patronizing and judicial state, as if to demand the respectful looks of
the whole tribe from their attention to their printed rudiments and their
slates; but glide in as a quiet observer, just to survey at his leisure
the character and operations of the scene. Undoubtedly he may descry here
and there the signs of inattention, weariness or vacancy, not to say of
perverseness. Even these individuals, however, are out of the way of
practical harm; and at the same time he will see a multitude of youthful
spirits acknowledging the duty of directing their best attention to
something altogether foreign to their wild amusements; of making a rather
protracted effort in one mode or another of the strange business of
_thinking_. He will perceive in many the unequivocal indications of a
serious and earnest effort made to acquire, with the aid visible signs and
implements, a command of what is invisible and immaterial. They are thus
rising from the mere animal state to tread in the precincts of an
intellectual economy; the economy of thought and truth, in which they are
to live forever; and never, in all futurity, will they have to regret, for
itself, [Footnote: _For itself_--a phrase of qualification inserted to
meed the captious remark, that there have been instances of bad men, under
the reproach of conscience of the dread of consequences, expressing a
regret that they had ever been well instructed, since this was an
aggravation of their guilt, and perhaps had subserved their evil
propensities with the more effectual means and ability.] _this_ period and
part of their employments. He will be delighted to think how many
regulated actions of the mind, how many just ideas distinctly admitted,
that were unknown or unimpressed at the beginning of the day's exercise,
(and among these ideas, some to remind them of God and their highest
interest,) there will have been by the time the busy and well-ordered
company breaks up in the evening, and leaves silence within these walls.
He will not indeed grow romantic in hope; he knows the nature of which
these beings partake; knows therefore that the desired results of this
process will but partially follow; but still rejoices to think those
partial results which will most certainly follow, will be worth
incomparably more than all they will have cost to the learners, or the
teachers, or the patrons.

Now let him, when he has contemplated this scene, consider how the
greatest part of this numerous company would have been employed during the
same hours, whether of the Sabbath or other days, but for such a provision
of means for their instruction. And, for the contrast, he has only to
leave the school, and walk a mile round the neighborhood, in which it will
be very wonderful, (we may say this of most parts of England,) if he shall
not, in a populous district, especially near a great town, and on a fine
day, meet with a great number of wretched, disgusting imps, straggling or
in knots, in the activity of mischief and nuisance, or at least the full
cry of vile and profane language; with here and there, as a lord among
them, an elder larger one growing fast into an insolent adult blackguard.
He may make the comparison, quite sure that such as they are, and so
employed, would many now under the salutary discipline of yonder school
have been, but for its institution. But the two classes so beheld in
contrast, might they not seem to belong to two different nations? Do they
not seem growing into two extremely different orders of character? Do they
not even seem preparing for different worlds in the final distribution?

The friends of these designs for a general and highly improved education,
may proceed further in this course of verifying to themselves the grounds
of their assurance of happy consequences. A number of ideas, the most
important that were ever formed in human thought, or imparted to men from
the Supreme Mind, will be so communicated and impressed in these
institutions, that it is absolutely certain they will be fixed irrevocably
in the minds of the pupils. And in the case of many, if not the majority
of these destined adventurers into the temptations of life, these
important ideas, thus inserted deep in their souls, will distinctly
present themselves to judgment and conscience an incalculable number of
times. What a number, if the sum of all these reminiscences, in all the
minds now assembled in a numerous school, could be conjectured! But if one
in a hundred of these recollections, if one in a thousand, shall be
efficacious, who can compute the amount of the good resulting from the
instruction which shall have so enforced and fixed these ideas that they
shall inevitably be thus recollected? And is it altogether out of reason
to hope that the desired efficacy will, far oftener than once in a
thousand times, attend the luminous rising again of a solemn idea to the
view of the mind! Is still less than _this_ to be predicted for our
unhappy nature, while, however fallen, it is not abandoned by the care of
its Creator!

The institutions themselves will gradually improve, in both the method and
the compass of their discipline. They will acquire a more vigorous
mechanism, and a more decidedly intellectual character. In this latter
respect, it is but comparatively of late years that schools for the
inferior classes have ventured anything beyond the humblest pretensions.
Mental cultivation--enlarged knowledge--elements of science--habit of
thinking--exercise of judgment--free and enlightened opinion--higher
grade in society--were terms which they were to be reverently cautious of
taking in vain. There would have been an offensive sound in such phrases,
as seeming to betray somewhat of the impertinence of a _disposition_, (for
the idea of the _practicability_ of any such invasion would have been
scorned,) to encroach on a ground exclusively appropriate to the superior
orders. Schools for the poor were to be as little as possible scholastic.
They were to be kept down to the lowest level of the workshop, excepting
perhaps in one particular--that of working hard: for the scholars were to
throw time away rather than be occupied with anything beyond the merest
rudiments. The advocates and the petitioners for aid of such schools, were
to avow and plead how little it was that they pretended or presumed to
teach. The argument in their behalf was either to begin or end with
saying, that they taught _only_ reading and writing; or if it could not be
denied that there was to be some meddling with arithmetic and grammar,--we
may safely appeal to some of the veterans of these pleaders, whether they
did not, thirty or forty years since, bring out this addition with the
management and hesitation of a confession and apology. It is a prominent
characteristic of that happy revolution we have spoken of as in
commencement, that this aristocratic notion of education is breaking up.
The theory of the subject is loosening into enlargement, and will cease by
degrees to impose a niggardly restriction on the extent of the
cultivation, proper to be attempted in schools for the inferiors of the
community.

As these institutions go on, augmenting in number and improving in
organization, their pupils will bring their quality and efficacy to the
proof, as they grow to maturity, and go forth to act their part in
society. And there can be no doubt, that while too many of them may be
mournful exemplifications of the power with which the evil genius of the
corrupt nature, combined with the infection of a bad world, resists the
better influences of instruction, and may, after the advantage of such an
introductory stage, be carried down towards the old debasement, a very
considerable proportion will take and permanently maintain a far higher
ground. They will have become imbued with an element, which must put them
in strong repulsion to that coarse vulgar that will be sure to continue in
existence, in this country, long enough to be a trial of the moral taste
of this better cultivated race. It will be seen that they cannot associate
with it by choice, and in the spirit of companionship. And while they are
thus withheld on their part, from approximating, it may be hoped that in
certain better disposed parts of that vulgar, there may be a conversion of
the repelling principle into an impulse to approach and join them on their
own ground. There will be numbers among it who cannot be so entirely
insensate or perverse, as to look with carelessness at the advantages
obtained through the sole medium of personal improvement, by those who had
otherwise been exactly on the same level of low resources and estimation
as themselves. The effect of this view on pride, in some, and on better
propensities, it may be hoped, in others, will be to excite them to make
their way upward to a community which, they will clearly see, could commit
no greater folly than to come downward to them. And we will presume a
friendly disposition in most of those who shall have been raised to this
higher standing, to meet such aspirers and help them to ascend.

And while they will thus draw upward the less immovable and hopeless part
of the mass below them, they will themselves, on the other hand, be
placed, by the respectability of their understanding and manners, within
the influence of the higher cultivation of the classes above them; a great
advantage, as we have taken a former occasion to notice:--a great
advantage, that is to say, if the cultivation among those classes _be_
generally of such a quality and measure, that the people could not be
brought a few degrees nearer to them without becoming, through the effect
of their example, more in love with sense, knowledge, and propriety of
conduct. For it were somewhat too much of simplicity, perhaps, to take it
for quite a thing of course that the people would always perceive such
intellectual accomplishments as would keep them modest or humble in their
estimate of their own, and such liberal spirit and manners as would at
once command their respect and conduce to their refinement, when they made
any approach to a communication with the classes superior in possessions
and station. If this _might_ have been assumed as a thing of course, and
if therefore it might have been confidently reckoned on, that the more
improving of the people would receive from the ranks above them a salutary
influence, similar to that which we have been supposing they will
themselves exert on a part of the vulgar mass below them, there had been a
happy omen for the community; and if it may not be so assumed, are we to
have the disgraceful deficiencies of the upper classes pleaded as an
argument against raising the lower from their degradation? Must the
multitude flounder along the mud at the bottom of the upward slope,
because their betters will not be at the cost of making for themselves a
higher terraced road across it than that they are now walking on?

       *       *       *       *       *

But it would be an admirable turn to make the lower orders act
beneficially on the higher. And it is an important advantage likely to
accrue from the better education of the common people, that their rising
attainments would compel not a few of their superiors to look to the state
of their own mental pretensions, on perceiving that _this_, at last, was
becoming a ground on which, in no small part, their precedence was to be
measured. Surely it would be a most excellent thing, that they should find
themselves thus incommodiously pressed upon by the only circumstance,
perhaps, that could make them sensible there are more kinds of poverty
than that single one to which alone they had hitherto attached ideas of
disgrace; and should be forced to preserve that ascendency for which
wealth and station would formerly suffice, at the cost, now, of a good
deal more reading, thinking, and general self-discipline. And would it be
a worthy sacrifice, that to spare some substantial agriculturalists, idle
gentlemen, and sporting or promenading ecclesiastics, such an afflictive
necessity, the actual tillers of the ground, and the workers in
manufacture and mechanics, should continue to be kept in stupid ignorance?

It is very possible this may excite a smile, as the threatening of a
necessity or a danger to these privileged persons, which it is thought
they may be comfortably assured is very remote. This danger (namely, that
a good many of them, or rather of those who are coming in the course of
nature to succeed them in the same rank, will find that its relative
consequence cannot be sustained but at a very considerably higher pitch of
mental qualification) is threatened upon no stronger presages than the
following:--Allow us first to take it for granted, that it is not a very
protracted length of time that is to pass away before the case comes to
be, that a large proportion of the children of the lower classes are
trained, through a course of assiduous instruction and exercise in the
most valuable knowledge, during a series of years, in schools which
everything possible is done to render efficient. Then, if we include in
one computation all the time they will have spent in real mental effort
and acquirement there, and all those pieces and intervals of time which we
may reasonably hope that many of them will improve to the same purpose in
the subsequent years, a very great number of them will have employed, by
the time they reach middle age, many thousands of hours more than people
in their condition have heretofore done, in a way the most directly
tending to place them greatly further on in whatever of importance for
repute and authority intelligence is to bear in society. And how must we
be estimating the natural capacities of these inferior classes, or the
perceptions of the higher, not to foresee as a consequence, that these
latter will find their relative situation greatly altered, with respect to
the measure of knowledge and mental power requisite as one most essential
constituent of their superiority, in order to command the unfeigned
deference of their inferiors?

Our strenuous promoters of the schemes for cultivating the minds of all
the people, are not afraid of professing to foresee, that when schools, of
that completely disciplinarian organization which they are, we hope,
gradually to attain, shall have become general, and shall be vigorously
seconded by all those auxiliary expedients for popular instruction which
are also in progress, a very pleasing modification will become apparent in
the character, the moral color, if we might so express it, of the people's
ordinary employment. The young persons so instructed, being appointed, for
the most part, to the same occupations to which they would have been
destined had they grown up in utter ignorance and vulgarity, are expected
to give evidence that the meanness, the debasement almost, which had
characterized many of those occupations in the view of the more refined
classes, was in truth the debasement of the men more than of the callings;
which will come to be in more honorable estimation as associated with the
sense, decorum, and self-respect of the performers, than they were while
blended and polluted with all the low habits, manners, and language, of
ignorance and vulgar grossness. And besides, there is the consideration of
the different degrees of merit in the performance itself; and who will be
the persons most likely to excel, in the many branches of workmanship and
business which admit of being better done in proportion to the degree of
intelligence directed upon them? And again, who will be most in
requisition for those offices of management and superintendence, where
something must be confided to judgment and discretion, and where the value
is felt, (often vexatiously felt from the want,) of some capacity of
combination and foresight?

Such as these are among the subordinate benefits reasonably, we might say
infallibly, calculated upon. Our philanthropists are confident in
foreseeing also, that very many of these better educated young persons
will be valuable co-operators with all who may be more formally employed
in instruction, against that ignorance from which themselves have been so
happily saved; will exert an influence, by their example and the steady
avowal of their principles, against vice and folly in their vicinity; and
will be useful advisers of their neighbors in their perplexities, and
sometimes moderators in their discords. It is predicted, with a confidence
so much resting on general grounds of probability, as hardly to need the
instances already afforded in various parts of the country to confirm it,
that here and there one of the well-instructed humbler class will become a
competent and useful public teacher of the most important truth. It is, in
short, anticipated with delightful assurance, that great numbers of those
who shall go forth from under the friendly guardianship which will take
the charge of their youthful minds, will be examples through life and at
its conclusion, of the power and felicity of religion.

Here we can suppose it not improbable that some one may, in pointed terms,
put the question,--Do you then, at last, mean to affirm that you can, by
the proposed course, by any course, of discipline, absolutely secure that
effectual operation and ascendency of religion in the mind, which shall
place it in the right condition toward God, and in a state of fitness for
passing, without fear or danger, into the scenes of its future endless
existence?

We think the cautious limitation of language, hitherto observed in setting
forth our expectations, might preclude such a question. But let it be
asked, since there can be no difficulty to reply. We do _not_ affirm that
any form of discipline, the wisest and best in the power of the wisest and
best men to apply, is competent of itself thus to subject the mind
decidedly and permanently to the power of religion. On the contrary, we
believe that grand effect can be accomplished only by a special influence
of the Divine Being, operating by the means applied in a well-judged
system of instruction, or, if he pleases, independently of them. But next,
it is perfectly certain, notwithstanding, that the application of these
human means will, in a multitude of instances, be efficacious to that most
happy end.

This certainty arises from a few very plain general considerations. The
first is, that the whole system of means appointed by the Almighty to be
employed as a human process for presenting religion solemnly in view
before men's minds, and enforcing it on them, is an appointment _expressly
intended_ for working that great effect which secures their final
felicity; though to what extent in point of number is altogether unknown
to the subordinate agents. They are perfectly certain, in employing the
appointed expedients in prosecution of the work, that they must be
proceeding on the strength of a positive relation subsisting between those
means and the results to be realized, in what instances, in what measure,
at what time, it shall please the sovereign Power. The appointment cannot
be one of mere exercise for the faculties and submissive obedience of
those who are summoned to be active in its execution.

Accordingly, there are in the divine revelation very many explicit and
animating assurances, that their exertions shall certainly be in a measure
effectual to the proposed end. And if these assurances are made in favor
of the exertions for inculcating religion generally, that is, on men of
all conditions and ages, they may be assumed as giving special
encouragement to those for impressing it on young minds, before they can
be preoccupied and hardened by the depravities of the world. There is
plainly the more hope for the efficacy of those exertions the less there
is to frustrate them. But besides, the authority itself, which has assured
a measure of success to religious instruction as administered generally,
has marked with peculiar strength the promise of its success as applied to
the young; thus affording rays of hope which have in ten thousand
instances animated the diligence of pious parents, and the other
benevolent instructors of children.

There is also palpable matter of fact to the point, that an education
which combines the discipline of the conscience and the intellectual
faculty will be rendered, in many instances, efficacious to the formation
of a religious character. This obvious fact is, that a much greater
proportion of the persons so educated do actually become the subjects of
religion, than of a similar number of those brought up in ignorance and
profligacy. Take collectively any number of families in which such an
education prevails, and the same number in which it does not, and follow
the young persons respectively into subsequent life. But any one who hears
the suggestion, feels there is no need to wait the lapse of time and
follow their actual course. As instructed by what he has already seen in
society, he can go forward with them prophetically, with perfect certainty
that many more of the one tribe than that of the other, will become
persons not only of moral respectability but decided piety. Any one that
should assert respecting them that the probabilities are equal and
indifferent, would be considered as sporting a wilful absurdity, or
betraying that he is one of those who did not come into the world for
anything they can learn in it. And the experience which thus authorizes a
perfect confidence of prediction, is evidence that, though discipline must
wholly disclaim an absolute power to effect the great object in question,
there is, nevertheless, such a constitution of things that it most
certainly will, as an instrumental cause, in many instances effect it.

The state of the matter, then, is very simple. The Supreme Cause of men's
being "made wise to salvation," in appointing a system of means, to be put
by human activity in operation toward this effect, has also appointed that
in this operation they shall infallibly be attended with a measure of
success in accomplishing that highest good,--a measure which was not to be
accomplished otherwise than by such means. So much he has signified to men
as an absolute certainty: but then, he has connected this certainty in an
arbitrary, and as to our knowledge, indefinite manner with the system. It
is a certainty connected with the system _as taken generally and
comprehensively_; and which it is not given to us to affix to the
particular instances in which the success will take place. It is a Divine
Volition suspended over the whole scene of cultivation; like a cloud from
which we cannot tell where precisely the shower to fertilize it will fall,
certain, however, that there are spots whose verdure and flowers will tell
after awhile. The agents under the Sovereign Dispenser are to proceed on
this positive assurance that the success _shall be somewhere_, though they
cannot know that it will be in this one instance, or in the other: "In the
morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand; for thou
knowest not whether shall prosper, this, or that." If they rate the value
of their agency so high, as to hold it derogatory to their dignity that
any part of their labors should be performed under the condition of
possibly being unsuccessful, they may be assured that such is not exactly
the estimate of Him to whom they look for the acceptance of their
services, and for the reward.

But it may be added, that the great majority of those who are intent on
the schemes for enlightening and reforming mankind, are entertaining a
confident hope of the approach of a period, when the success will be far
greater in proportion to the measure of exertion in every department of
the system of instrumentality for that grand object. We cherish this
confidence, not on the strength of any pretension to be able to resolve
prophetic emblems and numbers, into precise dates and events of the
present and approaching times. It rests on a more general mode of
apprehending a relation between the extraordinary indications of the
period we live in, and the substantial purport of the divine predictions.
There unquestionably gleams forth, through the plainer lines, and through
the mystical imagery of prophecy, the vision of a better age, in which the
application of the truths of religion to men's minds will be irresistible.
And what should more naturally be interpreted as one of the dawning signs
of its approach, than a new spirit come into action with insuppressible
impulse, at once to dispel the fog from their intellects and bring the
heavenly light to shine close upon them; accompanied by a prodigious
convulsion in the old system of the world, which hardly recognized in the
inferior millions the very existence of souls to need or be worth such an
illumination? It is true that an eruptive activity of evil, beyond what
was witnessed by our forefathers, has attended and followed that
convulsion; as mephitic exhalations are emitted through the rents of an
earthquake. Viewed in itself, this outbreak of the bad principles and
passions might seem to portend anything rather than a grand improvement in
the state of a nation or of mankind. It appears like an actual
augmentation of the evil previously existing. But it should rather be
regarded as the setting loose of the noxious elements accumulated and
rankling under the old system; a phenomenon inevitably attendant on its
breaking up, by a catastrophe absolutely necessary to open and clear the
field for operations on the great scale against those evils themselves,
and to give scope and means for the advancement toward a better condition
of humanity.

The laborers in the institutions for instructing the young descendants of
an ill-fated generation, may often regret to perceive how little the
process is as yet informed with the energy which is ultimately to pervade
the world. But let them regard as one great undivided economy and train of
operation, these initiatory efforts and all that is to follow, till that
time "when all shall know the Lord;" and take by anticipation, as in
fraternity with the happier future laborers, their just share of that
ultimate triumph. Those active spirits, in the happier periods, will look
back with this sentiment of kindred and complacency to those who sustained
the earlier toils of the good cause, and did not suffer their zeal to
languish under the comparative smallness of their success.

       *       *       *       *       *

We shall conclude with a few sentences in the way of reply to another
question, which we can surmise there may be persons ready to ask, after
this long iteration of the assertion of the necessity of knowledge to the
common people. The question would be to this effect: What do you, all this
while, mean to assign as the _measure_ of knowledge proper for the people
to be put in possession of?--for you do not specify the kinds, or limit
the extent: you talk in vague general terms of mental improvement; you
leave the whole matter indefinite; and for all that appears, the people
are never to know when they know enough.

It is answered, that we _do_ leave the extent undefined, and should
request to be informed where, and why, the line of circumscription and
exclusion should be drawn.

Is it, we could really wish to know, a point at all yet decided, wherein
consist the value and importance of the human nature? Any liberal scheme
for its universal cultivation is met by such a jealous parsimony toward
the common people, such a ready imputation of wild theory, such protesting
declamations against the mischief of practically applying abstract
principles, such an undisguised or betrayed precedence given to mere
interests of state, and those perhaps very sordid ones, before all others,
and such whimsical prescriptions for making a salutary compound of a
little knowledge and much ignorance,--that it might seem to be doubtful,
after all, whether the human nature, in the mass of mankind at least, be
of any such consistence, or for any such purpose, as is affirmed in our
common-places on the subject. It is uniformly assumed in the language of
divines, and of the philosophers in most repute, that the worth, the
dignity, the importance of man, are in his rational, immortal nature; and
that therefore the best condition of _that_ is his true felicity and
glory, and the object chiefly to be aimed at in all that is done by him,
and for him, on earth. But whether this should be regarded as anything
more than the elated faith of ascetics, a fine dogma of academics, or a
theme for show in the pomp of moral rhetoric? For we often see, and it is
very striking to see, how principles which are suffered to pass for
infallible truth while content to stay within the province of speculation,
and to be pronounced as mere doctrine, may be disowned and repelled when
they come demanding to have their appropriate place and influence in the
practical sphere. Even many pretended advocates of Christianity, who in
naming certain principles would seem to make them of the very essence of
the moral part of that religion, and, in discoursing merely as
_religionists_, will insist on their vital importance, will yet shuffle
and equivocate about these principles, and in effect set them aside, when
they are attempted to be applied to some of their most legitimate uses.
If, for example, these religionists are among the servile adherents of
corrupted institutions and iniquity invested with power, they will easily
find accommodating interpretations, or pleas of exemption from the direct
authority, of some of the most sacred maxims of their professed religion.
Serve the true God when we happen to be in the right place; but at all
events we must attend our master to pay homage in the temple of Eimmon,
or, should he please to require it, that of Moloch,--with this signal
difference from the ancient instance of peccant servility, that whereas in
that case pardon for it was implored, in the present case a merit is made
of the sycophancy and the idolatry. Unless the principles of Christianity
will acknowledge the supremacy of _something else_ than Christianity, in
the mode of their application to estimate the importance of the popular
mind, they may take their repose in bodies of divinity, sermons,
catechisms, systems of ethics, or wherever they can find a place.

But _is_ it really admitted, as a great principle for practical
application, that the mind, the intelligent, imperishable existence, is
the supremely valuable thing in man? It is then admitted, inevitably, that
the discipline, the correction, the improvement, the maturation of this
spiritual being to the highest attainable degree, is the great object to
be desired by men, for themselves and one another. That is to say, that
knowledge, cultivation, salutary exercise, wisdom, all that can conduce to
the perfection of the mind, form the state in which it is due to man's
nature that he should be endeavored to be placed. But then, this is due to
his nature by an absolutely _general_ law. He cannot be so circumstanced
in the order of society that this shall _not_ be due to it. No situation
in which the arrangements of the world, or say of Providence, may place
him, can constitute him a specific kind of creature, to which is no longer
fit and necessary that which is necessary to the well-being of man
considered generally, as a spiritual, immortal nature. The essential law
of this nature cannot be abrogated by men's being placed in humble and
narrow circumstances, in which a very large portion of their time and
exertions are required for mere subsistence. This accident of a confined
situation is no more a reason why their minds should not require the best
attainable cultivation, than would be the circumstance that the body in
which a man's mind is lodged happens to be of smaller dimensions than
those of other men.

That under the disadvantages of this humble situation they _cannot_
acquire all the mental improvement, desirable for the perfection of their
intelligent nature, that the situation renders it impracticable, is quite
another matter. So far as this inhibition is real and absolute, that is,
so far as it must remain after the best exertion of human wisdom and means
in their favor, it must be submitted to as one of the infelicities of
their allotment by Providence. What we are insisting on is, that since by
the law of their nature there is to them the same general necessity as to
any other human beings, of that which is essential to the well-being of
the mind, they should be advanced in this improvement _as far as they
can_; that is, as far as a wise and benevolent disposition of the
community can make it practicable for them to be advanced.

It is an odious hypocrisy to talk of the narrow limits to this advancement
as an ordination of Providence, when a well-ordered constitution and
management of the community might enlarge those limits. At least it is so
in the _justifiers_ of that social system: those who deplore and condemn
it _may_ properly speak of the appointment of Providence, but in another
sense; as they would speak of the dispensations of Providence in
consolation to a man iniquitously imprisoned or impoverished.

Let the people then be advanced in the improvement of their rational
nature as far as they can. A greater degree of this progress will be more
for their welfare than a less. This might be shown in forms of
illustration easily conceived, and as easily vindicated from the
imputation of extravagance, by instances which every observer may have met
with in real life. A poor man, cultivated in a small degree, has acquired
a few just ideas of an important subject, which lies out of the scope of
his daily employments for subsistence. Be that subject what it may, if
those ideas are of any use to him, by what principle would one idea more,
or two, or twenty, be of _no_ use to him? Of no use!--when all the
thinking world knows, that every additional clear idea of a subject is
valuable by a ratio of progress greater than that of the mere numerical
increase, and that by a large addition of ideas a man triples the value of
those with which he began. He has read a small meagre tract on the
subject, or perhaps only an article in a magazine, or an essay in the
literary column of a provincial newspaper. Where would be the harm, on
supposition he can fairly afford the time, in consequence of husbanding it
for this very purpose, of his reading a well-written concise book, which
would give him a clear, comprehensive view of the subject?

But perhaps another branch of the tree of knowledge bends its fruit
temptingly to his hand. And if he should indulge, and gain a tolerably
clear notion of one more interesting subject, (still punctually regardful
of the duties of his ordinary vocation,) where, we say again, is the harm?
Converse with him; observe his conduct; compare him with the wretched
clown in a neighboring dwelling; and say that he is the worse for having
thus much of the provision for a mental subsistence. But if thus much has
contributed greatly to his advantage, why should he be interdicted still
further attainments? Are you alarmed for him, if he will needs go the
length of acquiring some knowledge of geography, the solar system, and the
history of his own country and of the ancient world? [Footnote: These
denominations of knowledge, so strange as they will to some person?
appear, in such a connection, we have ventured to write from, observing
that they stand in the schemes of elementary instruction in the Missionary
schools for the children of the natives of Bengal. But of course we are to
acknowledge, that the vigorous, high-toned spirits of those Asiatic
idolaters are adapted to receive a much superior style of cultivation to
any of which the feeble progeny of England can be supposed to be capable.]
Let him proceed; supply him gratuitously with some of the best books on
these subjects; and if you shall converse with him again, after another
year or two of his progress, and compare him once more with the ignorant,
stunted, cankered beings in his vicinity, you will see whether there be
anything essentially at variance between his narrow circumstances in life
and his mental enlargement.

You are willing, perhaps, that he _should_ know a few facts of ancient
times, and can, though with hesitation, trust him with some such slight
stories as Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rome. But if he should then
by some means find his way into such a work as that of Rollin, (of moral
and instructive tendency, however defective otherwise,) or betray that he
covets an acquaintance with those of Gillies, or even Thirlwall,--it is
all over with him for being a useful member of society in his humble
situation. You would consent (may we suppose?) to his reading a slender
abridgment of voyages and travels; but what _is_ to become of him if
nothing less will content him than the whole-length story of Captain Cook?
He will direct, it is to be hoped, some of his best attention to the
supreme subject of religion. And you would quite approve of his perusing
some useful tracts, some manuals of piety, some commentary on a catechism,
some volume of serious, plain discourses; but he is absolutely undone if
his ambition should rise at length to Barrow, or Howe, or Jeremy Taylor.
[Footnote: It should be unnecessary to observe, that the object in citing
_any_ names in this paragraph was, to give a somewhat definite cast to the
description of the supposed progress of the plebeian self-instructor. The
principal of them are mentioned simply as being of such note in their
departments, that he would be likely to hear of them among the first of
the authors to be sought, if he were aspiring to something beyond his
previously humble and abridged reading. The reader may substitute for
these names any others, of the superior order, that he may think more
proper to stand in their place. It would therefore be animadversion or
ridicule misspent, to make the charge of extravagance on this imagined
course of a plain man's reading, with a specific reference to the authors
here named, as if it had been meant that precisely these, by a peculiar
selection, were to be the authors he may be supposed to peruse, and in
perusing, to waste his time and destroy his sense of duty.] He is by all
means, you say, to be kept out of all such pernicious company, in which it
is impossible he can learn any lesson but one,--an aversion to good
morals, just laws, virtuous kings, a polished and benevolent gentry, and
learned and pious teachers. Well; _let_ him be kept as far as possible
from the mischief of all such books and knowledge; let him hardly know
that there _was_ an ancient world, or that there _are_ on the globe such
regions and wonders as travellers have described; or that a reason and
eloquence above the pitch of some plain homily ever illustrated and
enforced religion. _Let_ him keep clear of all such evil communications;
and then, (since we were expressly making it a condition, that he can
fairly spare the time for such reading from his common employment,) and
then,--he will have just so much the more time for needless sleep, for
discussing the trifles and characters of the neighborhood, or, (supposing
him still of a religious habit,) for tiring his friends and family with
the well-meant but very unattractive iteration of a few serious phrases
and remarks, of which they will have long since learnt to anticipate the
last word from hearing the first. Advantages like these he certainly may
enjoy in consequence of his preclusion from the higher and wider field of
ideas. But however valuable these may be in themselves, they will not
ensure his being better qualified for the common business and proprieties
of his station, than another man in the same sphere of life whose mind has
acquired that larger reach which we are describing. It is no more than
what we have repeatedly seen exemplified, when we represent this
transgressor into the prohibited field as probably acquitting himself with
exemplary regularity and industry in his allotted labors, and even in this
very capacity preferred by the men of business to the illiterate tools in
his neighborhood; nay, most likely preferred, in the more technical sense
of the word, to the honorable, but often sufficiently vexatious office of
directing and superintending the operations of those tools.

And where, now, is the evil he is incurring or causing, during this
progress of violating, step after step, the circumscription by which the
aristocratic compasses were again and again, with small reluctant
extensions to successive greater distances, defining the scope of the
knowledge proper for a man of his condition? It is a bad thing, is it,
that he has a multiplicity of ideas to relieve the tedium incident to the
sameness of his course of life; that, with many things which had else been
but mere insignificant facts, or plain dry notions and principles, he has
a variety of interesting associations; like woodbines and roses wreathing
round the otherwise bare, ungraceful forms of erect stones or withered
trees; that the world is an interpreted and intelligible volume before his
eyes; that he has a power of applying himself to _think_ of what it
becomes at any time necessary for him to understand? Is it a judgment upon
him for his temerity, in "seeking and intermeddling with wisdom" with
which he had no business, that he has so much to impart to his children as
they are growing up, and that if some of them are already come to
maturity, they know not where to find a man to respect more than their
father? Or if he takes a part in the converse and devotional exercises of
religious society, is no one there the better for the clearness and the
plenitude of his thoughts and the propriety of his expression?--But there
would be no end of the preposterous suppositions fairly attachable to the
notion, that the mental improvement of the common people has some proper
limit of arbitrary prescription, on the ground simply of their _being_ the
common people, and quite distinct from the restriction which their
circumstances may invincibly impose on their ability.

Taken in this latter view, we acknowledge that their condition would be a
subject for most melancholy contemplation,--if we did not hope for better
times. The benevolent reflector, when sometimes led to survey in thought
the endless myriads of beings with minds within the circuit of a country
like this, will have a momentary vision of them as they would be if all
improved to the highest mental condition to which it is _naturally
possible_ for them to be exalted a magnificent spectacle; but it instantly
fades and vanishes. And the sense is so powerfully upon him of the
unchangeable economy of the world, which, even if the fairest visions of
the millennium itself were realized, would still render such a thing
_actually_ impossible, that he hardly regrets the bright scene was but a
beautiful _mirage_, and melts away. His imagination then descends to view
this immense tribe of rational beings in another, and comparatively
moderate state of the cultivation of their faculties, a state not
one-third part so lofty as that in which he had beheld all the individuals
improved to the utmost of their natural capacity; and he thinks, that the
condition of man's abode on earth _might_ admit of their being raised to
_this_ elevation. But he soon sees that, till a mighty change shall come
on the management of the affairs of nations, this too is impossible; and
with regret he sees even this inferior ideal spectacle pass away, to rest
on an age in distant prospect. At last he takes his imaginary stand on
what he feels to be a very low level of the supposed improvement of the
general popular mind; and he says, Thus much, at the least, should be a
possibility allowed by the circumstances of the people under _any_
tolerable disposition of national interests;--and then he turns to look
down on an actual condition in which care, and toil, and distress, render
it impossible for a great proportion of the people to reach, or even
approach, this his last and lowest conception of what the state of their
minds ought to be.

In spite of all the optimists, it _is_ a grievous reflection, after the
race has had on earth so many thousands of years for attaining its most
advantageous condition there, that all the experience, the philosophy, the
science, the art, the power acquired by mind over matter,--that all the
contributions of all departed and all present spirits and bodies, yes, and
all religion too, should have come but to this;--to this, that in what is
self-adulated as the most favored and improved nation of all terrestrial
space and time, a vast proportion of the people are found in a condition
which confines them, with all the rigor of necessity, to a mere childhood
of intelligent existence, without its innocence.

But at the very same time, and while the compassion rises, at such a view,
there comes in on the other hand the reflection, that even in the actual
state of things, there are a considerable number of the people who _might_
acquire a valuable share of improvement which they do not. Great numbers
of them, grown up, waste by choice, and multitudes of children waste
through utter neglect, a large quantity of precious time which their
narrow circumstances still leave free from the iron dominion of necessity.
And they will waste it, it is certain that they will, till education shall
have become general, and much more vigorous in discipline. If through a
miracle there were to come down on this country, with a sudden, delightful
affluence of temporal melioration, resembling the vernal transformation
from the dreariness of winter, a universal prosperity, so that all should
be placed in comparative ease and plenty, it would require another miracle
to prevent this benignity of heaven from turning to a dreadful mischief.
What would the great tribe of the uneducated people do with the half of
their time, which we will suppose that such a state would give to their
voluntary disposal? Every one can answer infallibly, that the far greater
number of them would consume it in idleness, vanity or every sort of
intemperance. Educate them, then, bring them under a grand process of
intellectual and moral reformation;--or, in all circumstances and events,
calamitous or prosperous, they are still a race made in vain!

In taking leave of the subject, we wish to express, in strong terms, the
applause and felicitations due to those excellent individuals, found here
and there, who In very humble circumstances, and perhaps with very little
advantage of education in their youth, have been excited to a strenuous,
continued exertion for the improvement of their minds; and thus have made
(the unfavorable situation considered,) admirable attainments, which are
verifying to them that "knowledge is power," over rich resources for their
own enjoyment, and are in many instances passing with inestimable worth
into the instruction of their families, and a variety of usefulness within
their sphere. They have nobly struggled with their threatened destiny, and
have overcome it. When they think, with regret, how confined, after all,
is their portion of knowledge, as compared with the possessions of those
who have had from their infancy all facilities and the amplest time for
its acquirement, let them be consoled by reflecting, that the value of
mental progress is not to be measured solely by the quantity of knowledge
possessed, but partly, and indeed still more, in the corrective,
invigorating effect produced on the mental powers by the resolute
exertions made in attaining it. And therefore, since, under their great
disadvantages, it has required a much greater degree of this resolute
exertion in them to force their way victoriously out of ignorance, than it
has required in those who have had everything in their favor to make a
long, free career over the field of knowledge, they may be assured they
possess one greater benefit in _proportion_ to the measure of their
acquirements. This persistence of a determined will to do what has been so
difficult to be done, has infused a peculiar energy into the exercise of
their powers; a valuable compensation, in part, for their more limited
share of the advantage that one part of knowledge becomes more valuable in
itself by the accession of many others. Let them persevere in this worthy
self-discipline, appropriate to the introductory period of an endless
mental life. Let them go on to complete the proof how much a mind incited
to a high purpose may triumph over a depression of its external
condition;--but solemnly taking care, that all their improvements may tend
to such a result, that at length the rigor of their lot and the
confinement of mortality itself bursting at once from around them, may
give them to those intellectual revelations, that everlasting sunlight of
the soul, in which the truly wise will expand all their faculties in a
happier economy.



The End.












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