1832.] Political Education. 607 



amidst such a profusion of physical resources, there exists, whereever 

 we turn our eyes, so large an amount of physical suffering ? It is because 

 human ignorance frustrates the intention of divine bounty ; sometimes 

 locking up altogether the springs of wealth ; sometimes diverting the 

 stream from public into private channels, and to make one Dives reducing 

 thousands to the estate of Lazarus. It is because commerce is shackled 

 with restrictions and regulations; industry hampered with taxes and 

 monopolies ; popular enterprise checked by legislative incapacity : it is 

 because there are aristocratic institutions, (the produce of times when 

 mental darkness covered the face of Europe), occasioning a deplorable 

 waste, and the most iniquitous division of the public stock, and aris- 

 tocratic establishments profitable to none but military coxcombs and idle 

 churchmen : it is because there are boyish jealousies and barbarous 

 antipathies, where unity of feeling ought to flow from unity of interest : 

 the man of acres scowls at the man of money ; the manufacturer and the 

 husbandman alternately defame and worry each other ; and the larger 

 compartments of society exhibit the same frenzy ; empires, like classes, 

 wasting each other with wars, or consuming each other's strength less 

 ferociously, but not less effectually, by statutes ; the new world excluding 

 the produce of the old, and the kingdoms of the old the produce of each 

 other, regardless that there is a commonwealth of nations as well as of 

 individuals that all the families of the earth are of one fraternity their 

 interests bound up indissolubly together mutually dependent on each 

 other for the only prosperity that is durable, and the only glory that is 

 genuine. In fine, the science of political economy is a sealed volume : 

 its golden principles are indeed the study of a few philosophic closets ; 

 but they have not yet been melted down into the mass of general intelli- 

 gence, to the quantity of which the wisdom of those who hold the reigns 

 of government will ever be proportioned. The ignorance of the many 

 who obey, may justly be regarded as the cause of the ignorance of the 

 few who rule. Senators ought to be statesmen, there is no doubt ; but it 

 is idle to expect it until nations become enlightened. Knowledge must 

 ascend from the people. The mists that are gathered round the summits 

 of society will be the last to disperse. 



It is not, unquestionably, to be denied, that mischievous measures 

 originate not seldom with ill-intentioned rather than weak men, and are 

 the suggestions more of base self-interest, than of deficient intellect or 

 foresight. Consider, however, to what it is that such measures are 

 indebted for success ; is it not to the non-resistance of the multitude, who 

 either want the proper degree of information to enable them to discern 

 their hurtful tendency, or are too little acquainted with their strength, to 

 deter their rulers from adopting them ? We do not mean to do corruption 

 any disparagement; we know how much the guilt of crowns and coronets 

 has added to the sad sum of human evils ; but we know also that 

 villany, in a hundred instances, would be impotent, if it had not ignorance 

 at its back, the dupe of its cunning, arid the accomplice of its crimes. 



The enemies of popular education, albeit they style themselves the 

 conservative party, are the most dangerous agitators of society. They tell 

 us they shudder at the consequences of instructing the 'people only 

 partially and superficially; and they jump forthwith to the conclusion 

 that it is the safer way not to instruct them all. It never occurs to them 

 that if a little knowledge be dangerous, less knowledge must be still more 

 so ; and that the danger must go on increasing ever as knowledge dimi- 



