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LESSON VIII.

IMPORTANCE OF THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE.

HORACE MANN.

1. THE history of the world shows an ever present desire in mankind to acquire power and privilege, and to retain them, when acquired. Knowledge is power; and the race has suffered as much from the usurpers of knowledge, as from Alexanders or Napoleons, If learning could be monopolized by a few individuals amongst us, another priesthood, Egyptian or Druidical, would speedily arise, bowing the souls of men beneath the burden of their terrible superstitions; or, if learning were more widely spread, but still confined to a privileged or der, the multitude, unable to comprehend the source of the advantages it conferred, and stimulated by envy and fear, would speedily extinguish whatever there might be of light—just as the owl, and the bat, and the mole, if they were promoted to the government of the solar system, would extinguish the sun, because its beams arrested their hunt for insects and vermin.

2. The whole people must be instructed in the knowledge of their duties, they must be elevated to a contemplation and comprehension of those great truths on which alone a government like ours can be successfully conducted; and any hope of arresting degeneracy, or suppressing the insurgent passions of the multitude by the influence of here and there an individual, though he were wise as Solon or Solomon, would prove as fallacious as an attempt to stop the influx of malaria, by sprinkling a little chloride of lime along the creeks and shallows of the shore, if the whole ocean, in all its depths, were corrupted.

3. Bear with me, fellow-citizens, while I say, I rejoice that this emergency has burst upon us. I rejoice that power has passed irrevocably into the hands of the people, although I knc w

it has brought imminent peril upon all public and private interests, and placed what is common and what is sacred alike in jeopardy. Century after century mankind had groaned beneath unutterable oppressions. To pamper a few with luxuries, races had been subjected to bondage. To satiate the ambition of a tyrant, nations had been dashed against each other in battle, and millions crushed by the shock. The upward tending, light seeking capacities of the soul had been turned downward into darkness and debasement.

4. All the realms of futurity, which the far-seeing eye of the mind could penetrate, had been peopled with the specters of superstition. The spirits of the infernal world had been subsidized, to bind all religious freedom, whether of thought or of speech, in the bondage of fear. Heaven had been sold, for money, like an earthly domicile, by those who, least of all, had any title to its mansions. In this exigency, it was the expedient of Providence, to transfer dominion from the few to the many-from those who had abused it, to those who had suffered. The wealthy, the high-born, the privileged, had had it in their power to bless the people; but they had cursed them. Now, they and all their fortunes are in the hands of the people. The poverty which they have entailed is to command their opulence. The ignorance they have suffered to abound, is to adjudicate upon their rights. The appetites they have neglected, or which they have stimulated for their own indulgence, are to invade the sanctuary of their homes.

5. In fine, that interest and concern for the welfare of inferiors, which should have sprung from motives of philanthropy, must now be extorted from motives of self-preservation. As famine teaches mankind to be industrious and provident, so do these great developments teach the more favored classes of society that they never can be safe while they neglect the welfare of any portion of their social inferiors. In a broad survey of the grand economy of Providence, the lesson of frugality and

thrift, which is taught by the dearth of a single year, is no plainer than this grander lesson of universal bevevolence, which the lapse of centuries has been evolving, and is now inculcating upon the world.

6. Yes, fellow-citizens, it is the sublimest truth which the history of the race has yet brought to light, that God has so woven the fortunes of all men into one inseparable bond of unity and fellowship, that it can be well with no class, or oligarchy, or denomination of men, who in their own self-seeking, forget the welfare of their fellow beings. Nature has so bound us together by the ties of brotherhood, by the endear ments of sympathy and benevolence, that the doing of good to others opens deep and perennial well-springs of joy in the human soul; but if we will select the coarse gratifications of selfishness, if we will forget our own kindred blood in whatsoever veins it may flow, then the eternal laws denounce, and will ex ecute upon us tribulation and anguish, and a fearful looking for of an earthly, as well as of a heavenly judgment.

7. In the first place, there is the property of the affluent, which lies outspread, diffused, scattered over land and seaopen alike to the stealthiness of the thief, the violence of the robber, and the torch of the incendiary. If any think they hold their estates by a surer tenure-by charters, franchises, or other muniments of property; let them know that all these, while the ballot-box which controls legislation, and the jurybox and the witnesses' stand, which control the tribunals of justice, are open; all these are but as iron mail to protect them against lightning. Where is their security againt breaches of trust, and fraudulent bankruptcies-against stop-laws and suspension-acts, or the bolder measures of legislative repu diation ?

8. If their ultimate hope is in the protection of the laws, what shall save them, when fraud and perjury turn every legal rem edy into a new instrument of aggression? And behind all

these, there is an omnipotent corps de reserve of physical force, which mocks at the slowness of legislation and judiciary—whose decrees are irreversible deeds-whose terrific decisions flash forth in fire, or burst out in demolition. But houses, lands, granaries, flocks, factories, warehouses, ships, banks, are only exterior possessions-the outworks of individual ownership. When these are carried, tke assault will be made upon personal security, character, and life; and, lastly, upon all the endearments and sanctities that cluster around the domestic altar-and when these are lost, humanity has nothing more to lose.

9. Look at England: and is she not, at the present moment, teaching a lesson too instructive to be lost upon us? There, a landed aristocracy, by extortious rents and class-legislation, have turned every twelfth subject into a pauper. They have improved soils; but they have forgotten the cultivator himself—as though the clod of the valley were worth more than the soul of the tiller. The terms offered by manufacturing capitalists, with a few most worthy exceptions, have been, absolute starvation, or work with the lowest life-sustaining pittance. Manufacturers have been most anxious about tariff-laws, which merely regulate the balance of trade; but heedless of those moral laws, which determine the balance of all power in the last resort. They have been alive to all improvements in machinery, but dead to the character of the operatives who were to work it.

10. Surely there is no such danger of spontaneous combustion in a heap of oiled cotton or wool, as there is in a mass of human ignorance and prejudice; nor can the former be so easily set on fire by a torch, as the latter by a demagogue. For years past the upper house of parliament have perseveringly and successfully resisted all measures for national education, which they could not pervert from the bestowment of equal benefits upon all, to the support of their own monopolies.

And, as a legitimate consequence of all these systematic, wholesale infractions of the great law which teaches us to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us, there are now, to-day, three millions of Chartists thundering at the palace gates, and the motto upon their banner is, "Bread or Blood."

LESSON IX.

WOMAN.

R. H. TOWNSEND.

1. SYLPH of the blue, and beaming eye!
The Muses' fondest wreaths are thine
The youthful heart beats warm and high,

And joys to own thy power
divine!
Thou shinest o'er the flowery path

Of youth; and all is pleasure there! Thou soothest man, whene'er he hath -a brow of care.

An

eye of gloom

2. To youth, thou art the early morn,
With "light, and melody, and song,"
To gild his path, each scene adorn,
And swiftly speed his time along.
man, thou art the gift of Heaven,
A boon from regions bright above;
His lot, how dark, had ne'er been given
To him the light of woman's love!

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3. When o'er his dark'ning brow, the storm
Is gath'ring in its power and might,
The radiant beam of woman's form

Shines through the cloud, and all is light!
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