An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance

Chapter 5

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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 superst.i.tion, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.sociated 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 circ.u.mstance 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 subst.i.tutional 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 mult.i.tude 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 ma.s.s, or those of our kennels to imitate the dogs of Actaeon."

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 cla.s.s? Would they not, on the strength of it, be continually a.s.suming 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 rect.i.tude of the rules. It would be a n.o.ble 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 cla.s.s,) 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 a.s.sert 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 ent.i.tle 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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.signed. 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 surpa.s.sing 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s, 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 bl.u.s.tered.

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 cla.s.ses, 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 a.s.semblages. 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 cla.s.s 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 compa.s.s, 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 apt.i.tude 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 a.s.sistance 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 circ.u.mstance to confound the cavillers, the children and youth of the schools were found to have been more generally preserved from falling into the cla.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ate, 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 a.s.sert, 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.serted, 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 repet.i.tion 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 inst.i.tutions 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 G.o.d and eternal interests, yet takes every principle and rule of morals under its peremptory sanction; making the primary obligation and responsibility be towards G.o.d, 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 a.s.sumes to be indispensable to them, will answer the end. For it is but a slender quant.i.ty 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 princ.i.p.al things in the doctrine of religion, the mind wants facts, principles, a.s.sociations 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociations 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 cla.s.ses, 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.trative aid of other knowledge, divested of the modification and attraction of a.s.sociated 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 cla.s.ses, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.suredly 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 ma.s.s, 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 a.s.signs 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 cla.s.s, 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 rect.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.serting any right which is believed to be endangered or withheld. This will only be expressing that, since all cla.s.ses 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 G.o.ds, 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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.siduously 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 compet.i.tion 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 cla.s.ses 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 debas.e.m.e.nt 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 inst.i.tutions 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 cla.s.ses, 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 mult.i.tude, 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 ma.s.s of the people a spirit of revolt from the obligation, which would retain their reverence to inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions 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 pa.s.sions.

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 compet.i.tor 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 impa.s.sive 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, a.s.sembled 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 ma.s.s, 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 a.s.semblage 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 a.s.serting 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 circ.u.mlocution of delicate phrases, "the conservative energies of the public inst.i.tutions," "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 const.i.tute 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 superst.i.tious 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 ma.s.s of mankind in endless recoil on themselves? That must be a very firm structure, must be of gigantic ma.s.s 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 inst.i.tution 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sume it as beyond question, that the whole acc.u.mulation 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, succ.u.mb 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 cla.s.ses 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 mult.i.tude, 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 inst.i.tutions; let the higher orders generally make it evident to the mult.i.tude 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 inst.i.tution, 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 a.s.serted 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 n.o.ble a system, the adm

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