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manners, or the arts, and the literature, and fashions of society ; and where 
chaff was to be blown away from the wheat, both care and time became 
necessary to avoid injury. But, as was most natural, we began with the 
science of government, improving it by means of written constitutions, 
as well as a more equal representative system, and placing legislation 
more immediately under the control of the people, and making it more 
practical and wide in its objects. The endeavor has been made in these 
ways, and with some success, to work out that difficult problem of pre- 
serving in order and prosperity, popular privileges, which in many other 
places would tend to anarchy ; such as the free suffrage of the many, 
their eligibility to office, their equal rights to hold property and pursue 
all kinds of business, and their participation in all the benefits of legisla- 
tion, as well as in the administration itself of the laws, that are made. 
Indeed, on no topic, has more science and talent been employed than on 
the political machinery of our General and State Governments, and in 
the making and execution of the laws under them ; and in none have 
these qualities been exercised with greater vigilance and devotion, to se- 
cure as well as advance the interests of the whole. So the tendency in 
our systems of education since the revolution, has been more and more 
towards instruction in the sciences, and their application to the arts, ex- 
pecting thus to forward, with greater efficiency, the practical business of 
life, and benefit numbers rather than a few. Academies, institutes, and 
colleges, have done much more of late, that is new, for philosophical in- 
struments and chemical lectures, and expeiiments and collections in 
mineralogy and natural history, than for belles lettres ; and it is vain to 
attempt to shut our eyes on the impulses, which the public mind has ac- 
quired to mould education more, for the practical benefits of the many. 
Indeed, to promote such benefits in this, and other ways, have been some 
of the greatest efforts and rewards of American genius, even from an 
early day. Thus Franklin, though distinguished for drawing lightning 
from, the clouds , no less than helping to pluck the sceptre from tyrants — 
Eripuit coelo fulmen , sceptrumque tyrannis — became much more widely 
known, if not enriched, by applying his sublime discovery to protect the 
dwellings of the many from electric fire, and using philosophy for the 
immediate benefit of millions through his humble improvements in 
stoves. The genius of few has been more successful in turning science 
to practical purposes, and especially economy in the use of heat, than 
that of another American in Count Rumford. And though it was most 
fully developed in Europe, so as to gain there both wealth and rank, yet 
