CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCIENTIFIC MEN. 43 



nation, for they are all enemies to the liberties of the people, 

 and friends to despotism, but from their imbecility all their 

 plans of destroying the happiness and freedom of their 

 nation fail, and have as yet strengthened the constitution 

 which they were laboring to destroy. The reform in the 

 common schools is the only mode of equalizing knowledge. 

 Not one in a thousand in any country can have a college 

 education, and when once the schools are modelled upon the 

 forms of utility the colleges must follow, or none will attend 

 them. That knowledge can be obtained in a twentieth part 

 of the time that is wasted by the ancient, monkish system, 



there can be no doubt. Mr. has a school in my 



house at Paris, for the last two years, and boys from eight 

 to ten years old become good mineralogists and chemists, 

 almost equal to the analysis of rocks, and speak and gram 

 matically understand three to four modern languages, 

 Mathematics in all its branches, are good arithmeticians, 

 and in short before the arrival of that critical time, the age 

 of puberty, they will possess more useful knowledge than 

 they could have had by the old system at the age of thirty 

 or forty 



TO ME. WILLIAM MACLURE. 



NEW HAVEN, March 23, 1825. 



MR. OWEN, I hear of frequently through the 



papers, but have not seen him yet. I observe he has given 

 a lecture or lectures to Congress, but with what success I 

 know not. In this country, and especially in that part of 

 it where he has fixed his destination, there will be at least 

 a perfect freedom from any opposition, no corporations, 

 no prescriptions, no inveterate habits, and no legal im 

 pediments to oppose his success. You have heard of the 

 noble treatment which Congress has given to General 

 Lafayette, and of the perfect quiet and good feeling with 

 which a new President was elected by the House of Repre 

 sentatives. The friends of legitimacy must now despair of 



