TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-47. 383 



to minister to our pleasure or convenience. We greatly 

 mistake, if we imagine that our constituents are indiiferent 

 to the privilege of drawing from these waters of knowledge ; 

 that they cannot appreciate their fertilizing influence. If 

 there be one feeling more powerful than another in the 

 hearts of the millions of this land, even through its remotest 

 forests, it is that the intellectual cultivation which circum- 

 stances may have denied them shall be secured to their 

 children. They value, sometimes even beyond their worth, 

 the literary advantages, by aid of which the few commonly 

 distance their competitors in the paths of emolument and 

 honor. Ay, and beyond this, they feel — do we not all feel ? 

 — that we are not in temper, in habits, in feelings, or in in- 

 telligence, what we ought to be, or what we might have 

 been ; that our nature was better than our education. They 

 feel — has not the most careless among us felt it too ? — that 

 there are springs of virtue within us that have seldom been 

 touched ; generous aspirings that have scarcely been called 

 into action ; capabilities of improvement that have hardly 

 been awakened ; capabilities of enjoyment that have been 

 turned to fountains of bitterness. If we might now re- 

 educate ourselves even from the cradle upwards, developing 

 each mental power and moral faculty, checking the rising 

 vice and cultivating the nascent virtue; bending the pliant 

 habit to reason, and mastering the evil passions at its birth 

 — how gladly would we grasp at the ofier ! how dearly value 

 the privilege ! And what selfishness would do for itself, 

 think you not that parental affection desires for its offspring? 

 Yes, vice itself desires it ! Stronger than the thirst after 

 riches ; deeper than the craving for power, springing from 

 the best and most enduring of human instincts, is the par- 

 ent's' longing for the welfare of his child! Criminal he 

 may be ; ignorant he may be ; reckless even of his own 

 character, hopeless of a reputable standing for himself; but 

 his children ! if brutish excesses have not utterly quenchecl 

 the principle of good within him — for them there is still a 

 redeeming virtue in his soul ; a striving after better things ; 

 a hope that they may escape the vices which have degraded 

 him ; that they may emerge from the ignorance in which 

 he is benighted, if not to wealth and hoijor, at least to fair 

 fame and honest reputation — a credit to his blighted name, 

 and a comfort to his declining years. 



Such are the sentiments that spring up to meet us from 

 among the people ; shared by the bad as well as the good ; 

 universal in their prevalence. And it is to such sentiments, 

 the best earnest of progressive improvement in man, that 



