its creed, nor set science a, going freely, lest it run over some impotent theological dogma—or else of it little coterie, or else corporation of men selected because radical or because conservative; men chosen not on account of any special fitness for superintending tho superior education of tho people, but because they wore one-sided, and leaned this way in Massachusetts and that in Virginia. Able men seek such places because they get a competent pay, competent honours, competent social rank. Senators and ambassadors are not ashamed to be presidents of a college, and submit to the control of a coterie, or a sect, and produce their results. If such men can be had for private establishments, to educate a few to work in such trammels and such company, certainly it is not difficult to get them for the public and for the education of all. As the State has the most children to educate, tho most money to pay with, it is clear, not only that they need the best ability for this work, but that they can have it soon as they make the teacher's calling gainful and respectable. In England and Rome, the most important spiritual function of the State is the production of the gentleman and the priest; in democratic America it is the production of the man. Some nations have taken pains with the military training of all the people, for the sake of the State, and mode every man a soldier. No nation has hitherto taken equivalent pains with the general education of all, for the sake of the State and the sake of the citizens;—"the heathens of China" have done more than any Christian people, for the education of all. This was not needed in a theocracy, nor an aristocracy; it is essential to a democracy. This is needed politically; for where all men are voters, the ignorant man, who cannot read the ballot which he casts—the thief, the pirate, and the murderer—may at any time turn the scale of an election, and do us a damage which it will take centuries to repair. Ignorant men are the tools of the demagogue; how often he uses them, and for what purposes, we need not go back many years to learn. Let the people be ignorant and suffrage universal, a very few men will control the State, and laugh at the folly of the applauding multitude whose bread they waste, and on whose necks they ride to insolence and miserable fame.
