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either tbe Primaries, or the University, I would rather abandon 

 the last, because it is safer to have a whole people respectably 

 enlightened, than a few in a high state of science, and the 

 many in ignorance. The advantages of popular education are 

 above all estimate. The objects should be to give every citi- 

 zen the information he needs for the transaction of his own 

 business, enabling him to calculate for himself and express and 

 preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing ; to 

 improve by reading, his morals and his faculties ; to under- 

 stand his duties to his neighbor and country, and to discharge 

 with competence the functions confided to him by either ; to 

 know his rights and exercise with order and justice those he 

 retains ; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he 

 delegates, and to notice their conduct with diligence, candor 

 and judgment, and, in general, to observe with intelligence and 

 faithfulness all his social relations. All the States but our own 

 are sensible that knowledge is power. We are sinking into the 

 barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect, like them, to 

 oppose by ignorance the overwhelming mass of light and science 

 by which we shall be surrounded. Surely Governor Clinton's 

 display of the gigantic efforts of New York in education, will 

 stimulate the pride as well as the patriotism of our Legislature 

 to look to the reputation and safety of their own State, to res- 

 cue it from the degradation of becoming the Barbary of the 

 Union and of falling into the ranks of our own negroes. To 

 that condition it is fast sinking." How different would have 

 been the history of Virginia had she heeded the wise counsel 

 of this, her most eminent and far-seeing statesman? To the 

 lasting harm of that State a different sentiment prevailed, so 

 that as late as I860, a leading Virginia paper said, " We have 

 got to hating everything with the prefix free^ from free negroes 

 down and up through the whole catalogue, free farms, free 

 labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children and 

 FREE SCHOOLS — all belonging to the same brood of damnable 

 sins. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern 

 system of free schools. The New England system of free 

 schools has been the prolific source of the infidelities and trea- 

 sons that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, 

 and her land into the common nestling place of howling Bed- 



