106 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



facilities and advantages are enjoyed by every individual as freely 

 as the sunshine and the rain. While I am writing, a highly- 

 respectable clergyman, not wanting in a benevolent regard for his 

 fellow-men, has said to me that &quot; the most limited education is 

 all that is wanted for these persons, as more would make them 

 discontented with their condition ; and if they can read their 

 Bibles and prayer-books, it is quite sufficient ; &quot; and this same re 

 mark I have heard several times from others. I cannot say that 

 I have not heard the education of the lower classes spoken of, by 

 persons apparently respectable, in very harsh terms, and in terms 

 with which I should be unwilling to stain my pages. I will only 

 add that I deem such views entirely erroneous and unfounded. If, 

 indeed, there are good reasons for the laborers being discontented 

 with their condition, let the evils of it be remedied. But if it 

 be a discontent arising from circumstances of hardship if so they 

 must be deemed which no human power can remedy, education, 

 besides furnishing in itself resources to mitigate these evils, will 

 serve to give them more just views of human life, and to recon 

 cile them to a condition which the divine Providence has made 

 inevitable. If education has a tendency to make persons discon 

 tented with their condition, is it not equally objectionable in 

 respect to other classes in the community who find others above 

 them ? and in truth, as far as my own observation goes, the rich 

 and the elevated are quite as subject to discontent as the poor 

 and restricted, from whom the luring baits of ambition and 

 avarice are absolutely withheld. 



That condition of society is of all others most favorable to 

 improvement, and to the development of the best elements 

 of human nature, where every means of improvement is fur 

 nished without restraint, and where rnen become the creators of 

 their own fortune. The favorite maxim of the great French 

 emperor was, &quot; Let the career be open to talents.&quot; In New 

 England, this great principle every where prevails ; and here, 

 where the advantages of education are freely offered to all, and 

 the highest conditions of influence and honor are equally acces 

 sible to all, it may be safely asserted that no evils have grown 

 out of it, and that its moral and social influences have been the 

 best which the most philanthropic could have desired. In New 

 England, where, even among the most humble classes of society, 

 the literary attainments are often respectable, there will be found 



