POSITION OF PROFESSIONAL MEN. 135 



tlon with Yale College was established in 1810, and the 

 theological department as late as 1822. The former has 

 six and the latter four professors. I do not know whether 

 the expense of the purely professional education is greater 

 than that of students in arts. A step has recently been 

 taken towards a provision of special education for the 

 agricultural and higher industrial classes, by the estab- 

 lishment of chairs of chemistry in its application to the 

 arts, and of chemistry in its relations to agriculture and 

 physiology. These departments have been placed respec- 

 tively under the charge of Benjamin Silliman, jun., 

 whose father has so long enjoyed a European reputation, 

 and, by his writings, made his college known where 

 otherwise it would never have been heard of; and of 

 my friend, and former pupil, Professor Norton, who is 

 already favourably known in this country, as well as in 

 his own. 



A circumstance which early strikes the European tra- 

 veller in the United States, is the comparatively small 

 consideration in which professional men are held, and 

 the small salaries they in general receive. The former 

 may be supposed to arise from the more universal dif- 

 fusion of a certain amount of instruction than is the case 

 in most European countries — and this is no doubt in part 

 the cause. But it is partly due also to the theoretical and 

 practical political equality of all citizens, which appears 

 to induce, among the masses of ordinarily educated men, 

 an impression that higher intellectual gifts or attainments 

 are, generally speaking, no sufficient reasons for social 

 distinctions or higher consideration. Every man you 

 meet thinks himself capable of giving an opinion upon 

 questions of the most difficult kind ; and, for the most 

 part, the masses seem, by their choice at public elections, 

 to prefer to be guided by the less rather than by the more 

 educated of their fellow-citizens. 



In the country districts, five to eight hundred dollars 



