INFLUENCE OF THE COMMON SCHOOL. 251 



developed the popular powers of the times into a capacity for 

 the largest civil duty. In many a Massachusetts town the prob- 

 lem of free government was worked out long before it became a 

 national question. The equality of all boys in the school-house, 

 the equality of all men in the town-meeting — this original 

 colonial condition involved the necessity for larger and higher 

 declarations. And so in one town they struck for suffrage in 

 the beginning ; in another they resolved that " all men are cre- 

 ated equal," and enjoy the right " to life, liberty and the pursuit 

 of happiness," and recorded the resolve on their " town-l:)ook," 

 more than three years before the declaration of our national 

 independence. I am sure it was the school-house which did all 

 this ; which raised the popular mind up to a general standard, 

 of which the great men of our past history are but individual 

 expressions; which developed a people, of whom "Washington, 

 as a warrior, and Jefferson, as a civilian, were the leaders ; and 

 which verified in its noblest sense that saying of Lord Bacon, 

 that, " in the management of practical affairs the wisdom of the 

 wisest man is less reliable than the deliberate and concurring 

 judgment of common minds." 



It was in accordance with the example set by the fathers that 

 Massachusetts, while yet in her infancy as a State, placed upon 

 her statute book " an act to provide for the instruction of youth, 

 and for the promotion of good education." In that act the 

 popular estimate of the value of education is embodied. With 

 felicity of speech unusual — with a regard for religion and human 

 elevation worthy of all praise — with an intellectual fervor which 

 illumines tlie statutes, and which stands out in delightful con- 

 trast with the usual chilling expression of the law — her legisla- 

 ture enacted in 1789 : — 



" Tluit it shall be and it is hereby made the duty of the 

 president, professors and tutors of the University at Cambridge, 

 preceptors and teachers of academies, and all other instructors 

 of youth, to take diligent care and to exert their best endeavors 

 to impress on the minds of children and youth committed to 

 their care and instruction the principles of piety, justice, and 

 a sacred regard to truth, love of their country, humanity, and 

 universal benevolence, sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity, 

 moderation and temperance, and those virtues which are the 

 ornament of human society and the basis upon which the 



