124 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



environment. The Swiss people practically rule Germany 

 and France still. If you look at the history of the ancient 

 days, you will find that when Babylon was taken the men 

 of the rude country were the conquerors. 



The high peaks make thoughts that are heavenly and 

 meditation that is sublime. A man raised amidst a variety 

 of scenery may enjoy a thousand things that other men 

 cannot. I find that men are often made by the scenery 

 amidst which they are reared. If you want your boy to feel 

 ennobled, take him to the mountains and the hills, and then 

 look down to some depth more terrible than those into 

 which you intend him to descend. 



Men were made intellectually in our district school sys- 

 tems. It is an important advance to have grammar schools, 

 and high schools, and academies, and colleges, and uni- 

 versities ; I think it is. But there are a great many dis- 

 advantages. The old-fashioned, liberty-teaching common 

 school was the salvation of the State, and through the 

 State the salvation of the whole country. The common 

 school system began in Massachusetts, and it has been 

 preserved through the country towns. It is the only place 

 where you find children actually on an even democratic 

 equality. There the rich and the poor meet together. 

 The boys and the girls play together, and they learn the 

 great American principle, that every man has the right to 

 be the equal of every other man, if he can. When the 

 common school system goes out of the towns of Massa- 

 chusetts, I shall wait for the change in the whole govern- 

 ment into some tyrannical form. In the common schools 

 they learn liberty and equality ; and a great deal more than 

 even the children learn in the city schools, in some very 

 necessary directions. You cannot judge a man's education 

 by wdiat he has read. Some men never went to school 

 more than two years, and they know more in a minute than 

 you and I with our college education will know in a week, 



I have not time to do more than hint upon this. The 

 common school is at the base of all political liberty. Pre- 

 sei-ve 3^our common schools. You cannot preserve them 

 anywhere except in the country district. Out in the sub- 

 urbs of Westfield you will find some common schools still. 



