or the division of my goods for the maintenance of a larger population, I shall be ready at all times, to deliver them up into its hands. I promise you, you shall not see me shrink from my duty. Should the State not require this sacrifice at my hands, and should I leave my possessions to my children, then I have educated them so that they shall use these possessions as I have used them, and shall teach their successors to act as I have done, even to the end of time." f Unfortunately, however, our rich men value more the culture of the other things than of Humanity, and the consequence is, that the zealous, the generous, and the intelligent, are doubly and triply taxed for the indifferent, the niggardly, and the ignorant. We appeal to common experience, to every man who has ever carried a subscription book or a begging box, whether the most partial tax inflicted by the state, is levied with half the injustice of the so-called Voluntary, but for the most part, most involuntary tax. The poor pay for the rich, and some of the rich pay tenfold their due, while others on whom the duty or the charity was equally binding, escape. As Voluntary funds are levied on the most unjust and inexpedient principle, so, in like manner, are they expended. Much is mere matter of accident; the fountains of benevolence frequently water places already saturated, and often scarcely touch the desert and sandy places. Many duties will be hereafter delegated to government which at present would be dangerous, or at all events, inexpedient, to entrust to hereditary incapacity. The administrators of public affairs should be men who represent no mere sectional or class interests, but who are responsible Trustees for the benefit of the whole nation. In nothing does the cause of progress sustain so much damage, as in the opposition which National Education, and other useful functions of the state, receive at the hands of those who are called 'Voluntaries.' The inertia of Conservatism, -the stolid resistance of those who do not believe in the elevation of the people,—who would by force or fraud, and by all or any means in their power, whether fair or foul, keep the workers in that condition of life into which it had pleased God to call them,'-might be easily overcome. Their ideas belong to the past, and inherit the characteristic weakness of a worn-out period. "They wax old as doth a garment,' and fit not the New Ages. They appeal to nothing lofty, noble, aspiring in the race, and their only anchor is usage and conventionalism. But the 'Voluntary '—who claims to be one in the army of progress -he bases his opposition on the ground of Freedom, and with that word on his lips so exciting to the human heart, resists what he calls 'Government-shackles.' We deem his earnestness to be sadly misdirected. In national education the dread of government interference is the more unreasonable from the fact that it has been tried, not only under a Despotism but a Republic, and with complete success. Within the brief space of half a century, it was the chief agency in converting the semi-barbarous nation of Prussia, into the most intelligent and moral of all the populations of Europe, and at the same time has been surely undermining the foundations of all despotism both political and priestly. In those portions of the United States where national education prevails most, it is * Characteristics of the Present Age. Lecture 15. most valued. There too exists the greatest amount of true Voluntary effort for the promotion of human culture, there religion most florishes,-there crime is least, there is best nursed the sentiments which will extirpate the gangrene of slavery prevailing in those states where education is not encouraged, and there, if any where, must we look for the hope of America. The American and the Prussian citizens regard it as no invasion of their liberty when called upon to pay a school-rate. Too often the cry for 'liberty,' set up against social objects, like other strange deeds done in her name, proceeds from motives the most ignoble. Henry Taylor, speaking of the superior sentiment of independence in the Austrian or Prussian Tradesman over the smirking complaisance of a London Shopkeeper,-says of the latter, "He shouts for liberty at the hustings; but tho the voice is Jacob's voice, the hands are the hands of Esau. What he values in what he calls 'liberty,' is chiefly protection from a tax; money is still the tyrant of his mind, and the very colors of his political liberty are often nothing else than the badge of his inward servitude." If anybody could show that by leveling Snowdon, or bridging the straits of Dover, ten per cent, could be realized, the Scrip would go well enough: not so with National Education, tho the men who know the intimate connection between crime and ignorance, can see that a very moderate amount spent in Education, would be an investment infinitely more remunerative to the nation. Our government spends three millions in the punishment of crime, but what the country spends locally for this purpose, must be enormous. Add to this expenditure the property lost or destroyed by crime,-to this add a good portion of the six millions paid for pauperism,-add a still greater proportion of the £75,000,000 wasted in intoxicating liquors and tobacco,-add the value of much of the property destroyed thrö ignorance and carelessness,—and it may be said without a shade of exaggeration, that every pound which could be spent in Education for years to come, would reproduce itself seventy fold. "No less than £18,502,147 were spent last year on the navy, army, and ordnance alone; an enormous sum (amount unknown) goes every year in the police force and other modes of protecting life and property, including the stupid system by which we punish criminals without preventing crime. £529,804 goes for the pensions of a few great people; and £155,000 for the education of the poor, or the 370th part of the revenue (amounting to about one shilling yer annum for each child who ought to be at school!)— about half what we pay in the tax on men servants, and little more than we give every year for liberty to engrave dolphins and griffins on our spoons and seals!" h Hundreds of children exist in every village, endowed as it is preached (but not believed, else it could not so remain) with Divine powers and immortal destinies, whose only school is the street, their only lessons those of mischief, sensualism, and crime. In ten to fifteen years they will have grown to be men and women, and will teach their children what they now learn. It will cost society Notes from Books. h Symons' Tactics for the Times. p. 201. tenfold more to keep them in order, than to render them its models and defenders. Even the pains bestowed in training an accomplished setter, if expended on one of these neglected children, would produce far more valuable results. But why take so low a standard? Why speak as if the highest result of education was to economize the expense of thief-takers? Why not strive to raise MAN to a position never yet attained, to give him a training which shall render him the judge and arbiter of his own welfare. Why not see what is in man? and what ideal-possibilities the race can realize? This is the work of the Fellenbergs and Pestalozzis. It is the highest, the most pressing interest that mankind has, or can have, to bring out every man of this description,—to facilitate their action as much as possible, and to inaugurate a civilization as far surpassing ours, as this of Europe surpasses that of the savage. Will voluntaryism do this?- -a system which depends for its whole machinery upon the demands of the market,—that market now determined by the ignorance and poverty of those who most need raising, and are least able to be raised, or upon the chance offerings of a benevolence which gives grudgingly because it is taxed unfairly! Absurd! Indeed, the whole power of the state, backed by the independent effort of all the wise and good men in it, would scarcely accomplish the work which now waits to be done, and yet men can be found to stand foward and impede this godlike work of Common Education, under the ridiculous plea of Freedom, just as if we could 'Of inward slaves, make outward free.' With the progress of popular culture, and its necessary consequence the increase of popular power, men of intellect, energy, and moral worth will be placed in the seats of honor and trust, that society may reap the results of their wisdom, and be raised by the spectacle of their merit. Government, we repeat, can neither far excel, nor be far behind, the society it represents. It is unjust, nay, it misleads, to charge upon governments, the weakness, the follies, the vices, which have had their foundation in the whole society, and which would as certainly exist if the functions of government were carried on by 'voluntary' association. Expensive wars have been plunged into with the sympathy, nay, at the command of the nation, but when this has proved a losing game, the public have turned round and charged all the consequences of their own will upon their governors! What can be more unjust? True, extravagance and corruption are found in the management of public business, yet thousands of the very men who exclaim against it, are ready to sell their vote to the highest bidder, or have some brother or cousin to whom a place in the excise would be exceedingly useful, and which they would spare no pains to obtain. The cause of social progress has as yet little to hope from the extension of the suffrage, precisely because those to whom the suffrage is due, do not understand and value the benefits of social organization. Look at those popularly elected bodies, Town Councils and Boards-ofGuardians. Large powers are vested in them for the benefit of the people,1 and they remain unexercised. So it must be, till those who elect them have a better As for example, the power to establish Museums, Galleries of Art, Public Libraries. Guardians possess the power to take land and employ the poor. conception of the public requirements, and a deeper feeling as to the duties of the citizen. The foolish public regard it as an astonishing piece of condescension, if a Prince or a Prime Minister attend a meeting for improving the condition of outcast humanity, as if they were doing some work not in their vocation. If government fulfil not our wants, the fault is not in it, but in us. On this point, Victor Cousin has made the following just remarks : "Humanity for a long time reposes tranquilly under the form of Liberty, which suffices it. This form can be established and supported only in so far as it suits humanity. There never was such a thing as entire and absolute Oppression, even in the periods which to us appear at the present day the most opprest; for, after all, a state of society endures only by the consent of those to whom it applies. Men desire no more liberty at the time than what they can conceive; and it is upon ignorance, far more than upon servility, that all despotisms are founded. Thus, not to speak of the East, where the man-child had scarce the sentiment of its own being, that is to say, of liberty,—in Greece, in that youth of the world where humanity began to move and to know itself, rising liberty was but very feeble; and the democracies of Greece sought not to extend it. But, as it is of all important things to tend onward to perfection, so every partial form has but its limited time, and then gives place to a more general form, which, externally destroying the former, develops the motive-spirit in them; for evil alone perishes, the good remains and advances on its way. The middle ages, in which slavery gradually succumbs to the Gospel-the middle ages possessed far more liberty than the ancient world. Yet now they appear to us an epoch of oppression, because the human mind is no longer satisfied with the liberties it then enjoyed; and to seek to enclose it within the limits of those inadequate liberties, were, manifestly, real oppression. But the proof that the human race did not feel itself opprest in the middle ages, is, that it endured them. It was only some two or three centuries back that the middle ages began to be oppressive to humanity: it was, accordingly, some two or three centuries back that they began to be attacked. The forms of society, when they suit it, are immovable; the rash man who ventures to touch them, is dashed in pieces against them; but when a form of society has served its time; when people conceive of, and desire, more rights than they possess; when that which was a prop becomes an obstacle,—in a word, when the spirit of liberty, and the love of the people, which is its close attendant, have together withdrawn themselves from the form, once the most puissant and the most adored, the first man that lays hands on this idol, deserted by the Deity that had animated it, overthrows it with ease, and reduces it to dust." In ages when a few thousand 'dum-drudges' are ready for no other reason but pay, to slaughter other thousands of 'dum-drudges' because two knaves fall out, very great progress of the species' is not to be expected. The Gazette signalizes General A, or Captain B, but the thousands of poor wretches who sacrifice their lives get what they deserve-oblivion. History hitherto records but the slaughter of mis-called heroes, the diplomacy and trickery of statesmen, and the intrigues of courtiers and kings. Of man's well-being and well-doing, of arts and civilization, of all that marks the development of humanity, it says little. But as each individual unit of the mass called society, attains a clearer notion of his rights and duties, and a consequent greater power of self-assertion, so does society become diviner, and government a more perfect exponent of its wishes. Some who have many reasons for thankfulness, are in love with our 'glorious constitution,' the product of the wisdom and ignorance of a thousand years. Other wise men wish to save society from certain doctrines, just as if the knowlege, justice, and love of liberty in a nation depended for existence on a form of government, or as if men could not to-morrow re-organize a govern ment destroyed to-day. Why, the very scum and vagabondage of the earth engaged in the scramble for gold at California, did the other day so feel the benefits of law and order, that it instituted a government; nor is there a band of robbers without its captain and code of honor. He who would elevate government, let him elevate the people. Let schools, books, newspapers, and every agency for good, continue their work on the masses of our country. Let virtue, intelligence, and a sense of the nobleness, not of title or of wealth, but of human worth, embrace the toiling millions, and ere long we shall conquer for ourselves that divine heritage of Justice and Love, which human nature in its best moments knows to be its birthright. Then shall the exultant shout whose mere echo but a few months since roused the enthusiasm of a great nation, and struck the knell of despotism, announce a great fact; then shall the State become the embodiment of Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. To those who fear its advent we say, in the words of Whittier, Oh! backward-looking son of time!— The new is old, the old is new, The cycle of a change sublime As idly in that old day Thou mournest, did thy sires repine, Yet not the less for them or thou The eternal step of progress beats Take heart-the Master builds again-- God works in all things; all obey |