248 IMPORTANCE OF UNIVERSAL EDUCATION 



tinue to be, less than our calculated average of 1^ per cent 

 on the whole income of the State ; it will in. other districts 

 equal, or exceed, an income-tax of 5 per cent on all 

 classes of the resident population. 



It is really very creditable to the people of this State, 

 that they are willing to pay so high a tax for the com 

 mon-school education of all. 



In free countries, where the power is already, as in 

 North America, altogether in the hands of the masses, 

 or where, as in our own, the power of the masses is a 

 growing and increasing power, it is a duty the State owes 

 to itself, and its liberties one which the government of 

 the day owes the people to place instruction so generally 

 within the easy reach of the masses, that they may be 

 trained up to the reasonable exercise and guardianship 

 of the public rights of freemen, rather than be left to 

 become the blinded instruments of selfish demagogues or 

 designing priests, and probably the crushers of constitu 

 tional liberty, both political and religious. 



But there are, besides this general good, a thousand 

 circumstances in everyday life which prove the money- 

 value of instruction in the masses, even to the holders of 

 property and the givers of employment. One of the 

 boasts of Scotland in reference to its agriculture has 

 been, that, though far later in beginning to improve, and 

 enjoying far fewer advantages of climate than England, 

 the native intelligence and superior education of its 

 Lowland peasantry has enabled it to overtake, and to 

 equal, if not to surpass the most successful farming of the 

 southern kingdom. But already, in some counties, com 

 plaints begin to be made, that the defective education 

 of the farm-servants forms a serious hindrance to the 

 introduction of those better methods, and still more 

 improved means of culture, which the peculiar pressure 

 of the times demands. And who can doubt that the 

 ignorance of the agricultural labourers, in the southern 



