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 themreasonableas 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 itbea 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 conducta 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 theyshouldbe 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 itbevalid, 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 valuethemselveson 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. Itwerestrange, 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 fromtheseseminaries 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,aliasSir 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 especiallysucha 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 retainherealso 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 ofproprietyshall beconscience; 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 thatcanbe 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 didnot, and though itwerepracticable 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 naturethat 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, andit will be practicable and easy enoughto 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 ofreligion 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 thingsshouldwell understandonesubject, 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 thereligiousinstruction 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 toread, 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 actuallyhasbeen 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,isdone; 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 thenecessarywisdom 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 effectswouldbe inseparable from a great general advancement of the people in knowledge and corrected character, must be freely acknowledged to its disapproves. And is itbecausethese would be the consequences, that they disapprove it? Then let them say, what it is thattheywould expect from an opposite system.Whatis 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 itsgeneralamount; but how can they fail to perceive the importance of thoseparticularsin 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 bepossiblefor 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. Andisthis 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 itisno 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 statesshallnot 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 thereisno 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 solemnlyasreligion, 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 thenwhateverthe demands of the people as a body, thus improving in understanding and the sense of justice, shall come to be, andwhatevermodification their preponderance may ultimately enforce on the great social arrangements, it will be infallibly certain that there nevercanbe 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 andentireresistance; 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.]