AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 39 



A chief defect in the American system of education is the pur- 

 poseless character of its discipline. A purposeless man can have 

 no power but such as accident may confer upon some inanimate 

 agent, and an objectless training in the formation of the active 

 agents of society is as inefficient as the want of purpose in men. 

 It is no uncommon thing to see young men run in a few years the 

 gauntlet of every vocation, cheering on others in the same course 

 by an accidental success, or obstructing the natural courses of 

 business by inevitable failure, forgetting, and teaching others to 

 forget that the first element of success is proper discipline and 

 qualification. Vacillating purposes like these naturally lead us 

 to identify that which we call respectability and dignity with 

 those employments in which listless inactivity or the adventitious 

 acquisition of wealth are probable results. There can be nothing 

 further removed from the truth. The dignity of laljor is in its 

 results, and not in the form of employment. The peerless states- 

 man of England, who, after prolonged study of diplomatic papers, 

 throw^s himself upon the hearth-rug to find thirty minutes' sleep 

 before a sea-cole fire, exhibits as li:tle dignity in the fl)rm of his 

 employment as the swarthy smith who fashions at the forge the 

 anchor at which commerce rides in safety; and yet the unattrac- 

 tive toil of the statesman may have given liberty to a continent 

 or free bread to suffering people, silencing the cry of hunger, and 

 stifling the rising appetite for crime. The true dignity of labor 

 is in its results, and not in the conventional forms in which it is 

 employed. 



The science of statistics is of so recent growth with us, that it 

 is difficult to establish, from the data it furnishes, the exact rela- 

 tion which our national pursuits have borne to eacli other in past 

 time as to numbers employed, or to their bearing upon the accu- 

 mulations of national wealth; but we may approximate a tole- 

 rably correct conclusion by referring to the same interests in more 

 matured states. In Holland, in 1841, the product of agricultural 

 history was $181,000,000; that of manufacturing industry, $144,- 

 000,000; and the estimated product of commerce, $65,000,000: 

 thus, of 1390,000.000, commercial industry gave but little more 

 than a sixth part, while manufactui-es and mechanics afforded 37 



