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jel! LETTERS FROM THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH ANtER ICAL °°" 
ren rol AE 4 san ; i a7 at . 
a a J weg No. VI. ye aslisc “to 
oF SAiaish iilg 
aft abr \ General View of Education there. uj 983 fo: sot 
re 5 é » adowld 
>'D wave been putting together a multitude of facts, my dear, P., con- 
cétning the state of education here; and.as I know of nothing mone 
likely to interest you in your “ search after truth” about America, I 
shall ety to give you the result of my labour in a few words ; after 
which, if there should be room enough left, and I should happen to feel 
as I do now, about a dozen or two of your popular writers, who, haye 
been helping the ‘British public to information about America. and 
the affairs of America, while, to judge by what I see, they are. pro- 
foundly—inexcusably ignorant of the most public and_ best-known 
facts relating to that very part of America with which they are 
best acquainted—I shall show them up for it. It is high time, I as- 
sure you. 
~ You ‘will not care much about order, I hope, in the arrangement 
of the results which Iam to furnish you with: for to throw a multitude 
' of *Sittle facts into the shape of a narrative or an essay, or into any 
other regular shape, would require a great many more words than 
will ‘be’ necessary, if you let me have my own way, , Statistical tables 
may answer every purpose, though the reader should, see as little con- 
nexion in them, as the man did between the first and second yolumes 
of the dictionary that were lent him to kill time with on, a, voyage to 
Madras. RSI 
“Thave already told you, or, if not, I intended to tell you, six or, eight 
months ago, that in the six New England or Northern States, and in.the 
three out of the four Middle States, it would be no easy matter to find a 
person, black or white, between the ages of twelve and forty, unable to 
read, write, and cipher. The very Indians of the north are taught so much, 
and have theixestablished schools. I have been a good deal over. the 
country now, and I have never yet seen but three individuals of a proper 
age, and in the full possession of their faculties, who could not read and 
write ; and of those three, two were of the generations that have gone 
by : (the growth of aperiod, when the schools of the country were nota 
fiftieth part so plentiful in proportion to the necessities of the time as 
they are now. At the south, it is not so; has not been—hitherto, I 
should’say—the whites being wealthy enough to educate, their young, 
either at home, with private instructors, or at the northern colleges, 
academies, and boarding schools ; or too poor, and too proud when poor, 
to educate them at all; and the blacks being, of course, either incapa-. 
ble or unworthy of learning their alphabet—in the opinion of those who. 
are not black. So it has been hitherto, I say ; but a better spirit begins, 
to‘appear, as you will see by the facts I have gathered for you. And, by. 
the way, speaking of this matter—the capacity of the blacks here, and, 
the prejudice of the whites, a word or two in your ear for the people of, 
the'Mother-country. Do you know that you are getting very absurd in, 
your'sympathy for the blacks of America ; and very, outrageous in. your, 4 
indignation at the prejudice that you suppose to be felt here by the’ 
whites toward their black brethren? I would read you a lecture on the, 
business) "if! it were worth while ; but, as itis not, I shall give you the, 
Ta ne Ramen ee Sua oO Mg 
ty 
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