606' Political Education. [JUNE, 



clitary chamber differ from that of Bacon, who in his Advancement of 

 Learning has the following passage. " For that other conceit, that 

 education should undermine the reverence of laws and government, it is 

 assuredly a mere calumny without shadow of truth. For to say that a 

 blind custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught 

 and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by a 

 guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy 

 that learning dolh make the minds of men gentle, maniable, and pliant 

 to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, refractory, and 

 mutinous. And the evidence of history does clear this assertion, con- 

 sidering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times, have been 

 most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes." 



Assuredly, if the cause is investigated of lawless and insubordinate 

 habits amongst those orders of society, which, in the contemptuous cant 

 of aristocracy, are called the lower if those bursts of popular fury, which 

 are occasionally fatal to order, property, and life of incendiarism in 

 England and whiteboyism in Ireland of the murder of policemen and 

 tithe-proctors in Kilkenny, and the Wetherell riots and conflagrations in 

 Bristol, it will be found, that the root of the disease is ignorance, and the 

 remedy for it education. " They be the clouds of error," says the great 

 apostle of intellect we have just quoted, " which descend in the storms 

 of passions and perturbations." Contrast the situations of an unenlight- 

 ened populace and an educated people. Does physical hardship fall on 

 the former, they have no rational resource ; passion has full sway over 

 their actions ; in many cases they mistake the quarter from which their 

 distress arises ; in most cases they mistake the quarter from which relief 

 must proceed ; they are consequently hurried into intemperate courses, 

 which aggravate their sufferings, disgust their friends, and give triumph 

 and advantage to their enemies. Now let knowledge be disseminated, 

 and mark the change. The man becomes superior to the animal ; the 

 mob is exalted into a people ; they ponder their circumstances, discover 

 the cause of their adversities, and comport themselves under them like 

 reasonable men ; the visitations of divine wisdom they never confound 

 with the inflictions of human crime or folly: afflicted by heaven they sub- 

 mit with resignation ; afflicted by man they resist without intemperance ; 

 they are calm, united, and resolved ; they place their affiance in the prin- 

 ciples of liberty; they wield no weapons but their constitutional rights 

 and franchises ; they reform without neeedless innovation ; they revolu- 

 tionize if reform is impossible without blood. Such are the fruits of 

 popular instruction; it enables a nation to endure calamity with fortitude, 

 and resist oppression with power. 



Were we to consider the effects of political ignorance in detail, we 

 should find that nearly all of the great distempers of society are dedu- 

 cible from this single source. How large a proportion, for example, of 

 the poverty and distress abounding in all countries may be traced to 

 ignorance of that great science, which discovers the fountains and 

 teaches the most beneficial distribution of the wealth of nations. Whence 

 is it, that, while nature 



" Pours her bounties forth 

 With such a lull and un withdrawing hand ;" 



that while the whole animal, vegetable, and mineral creation are at man's 

 disposal, designed for his use, subjected to his dominion, and more than 

 equal to all his wants, as well artificial as real, whence is it, we ask, that, 



