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II.
ON THE EDUCATION OF THE LABOURING
CLASS.[1]
It is sometimes fancied that here in New England the
education of the mass of men and women, who do all the
work of the world, is so near perfection that little need be
done but keep what we have got to attain the highest
destination of any people. But as things are sometimes
seen more clearly by their reflection in an artificial mirror,
than when looked at in the natural way, let us illustrate our
own condition by contrasting it with another widely
different. Let us suppose we were to go to some region
in the heart of the African continent, and should find a
highly cultivated nation, with towns and cities, and
factories and commerce, equipped with the thousand arts
which diffuse comfort all over society, but should find the
whole class of lawyers were ignorant men. That they
could scarcely read and write, and never read anything
beyond the newspapers, books of legal forms, and similar
matters of the most trifling magnitude. That they could
repeat the laws inherited from their ancestors, or enacted
from time to time by their contemporaries, but never
dreamed of inquiring whether these laws were right or
wrong, still less of examining the principle on which they
rested, or ought to rest, and then of attempting to improve
them. That they generally aimed to get on with the
smallest outlay of education, the least possible expenditure
of thought wherewith they could keep their sorry station
- ↑ From Lectures before the American Institute for Instruction, August, 1841.
