1.ECTURE IV

M

POLITICAL EDUCATION.

BY HON. J. W. PATTERSON, LL. D., CONCORD, N. H.

ARTIN LUTHER, in an address to

magistrates, puts this pregnant inter

rogatory: "Beloved rulers, if we find it necessary to expend such large sums as we do yearly upon artillery, roads, bridges, dikes, and a thousand other things of the sort, in order that a city may be assured of continued order, peace, and tranquillity, ought we not to expend on the poor, suffering youth therein, at least enough to provide them with a schoolmaster?" The great monk of Erfurt-who, as a ragged, barefooted boy, sang songs through the streets of Eisenach to secure an education - in this single sentence enunciated by implication the fundamental truth upon which rests the pri mal right and duty of the state.

The leaven thus cast into the thought of the fifteenth century so pervaded the public mind, that in a little time all Europe felt its fermentation. In Holland especially it dominated all classes, and the right and duty of the govern

ment to educate its children became the popular sentiment. We recognize its controlling power over the emigrants who colonized and founded. New Netherlands, the present Empire State of our Republic. In the articles proposed for the settlement and trade of that province, it was provided that "Each householder and inhabitant shall bear such tax and public charge as shall hereafter be considered proper, for the maintenance of schoolmasters." Here, at that early period, we have a clear recognition of the right of a civil organization to tax its people for the maintenance of popular education in the interest of the general safety and well-being, a principle which some of the oracles of modern statecraft have denied. Colonial history seems to leave no doubt that the Dutch settlers of New Netherlands, who also laid the foundations of New Amsterdam, the modern city of New York, believed in free public schools supported by taxation. Under the English there was a reaction.

England early established schools and universities for the education of the higher classes,. "from which has come the perpetual flow of cultured minds that have given skill to English industry, scope to English commerce, learning to English statesmanship, and eminence to her lit erature and science"; but the great forces of the Reformation, which were the potent factors in

the evolution of a free church and a free state from the unbroken centuries of spiritual and civil oppression, were less pervasive and advanced in Great Britain than on the Continent, and hence she has only been driven to popular education in our day as a necessity of self-preservation.

en

Herein we find an explanation, I apprehend, of the fact that in Virginia, Maryland, and some other of the colonies settled by emigrants immediately from England, no system of 'education, embracing the children of all classes and forced by the civil power, was established as an essential part of their political institutions. The importance of knowledge and letters to the young was admitted; but the work was committed mainly to the family and private schools, rather than to comprehensive schemes, established and maintained by colonial authority.

"That which makes a good constitution," says William Penn, "must keep it; viz., men of wisdom and virtue, qualities that, because they descend not with worldly inheritance, must be carefully propagated by virtuous education of youth: for which spare no cost, for by such parsimony all that is saved is lost"; and yet, with his English prejudices, I suspect he regarded this as a personal parental duty, rather than an obligation of the state.

1 With the settlers of New England it was other

wise. The sojourn of the Pilgrims in Holland had doubtless imparted to them new ideas in respect to their obligations to the young. But independent of this, their beliefs and experiences rendered them a peculiar people. Recognizing the infinite worth and personal responsibility of the soul to God, the equality of all before the moral law was fundamental in their religious faith. From this, the natural equality of all before human law would follow as a logical necessity; and hence the duty of the state to prepare each citizen to read and understand both the revealed and the statute law. Religious hierarchies and orders of the state, preordained to rule and oppress, found no place in their theories of church or civil government; and therefore the preparation of each citizen to make and administer law, to comprehend and regard all social and public interests, became a political duty. Provision for the education of all the population was a natural and necessary outgrowth of the beliefs and character of the first settlers in New England. With us, the common and the high school and the college were made the chief corner-stones of civil and religious institutions by the fathers. We may not say that they builded better than they knew, but the wisdom and the worth of their work have commended it to the most advanced and comprehensive statesmanship of succeeding generations; and the system has diffused itself

through the expanding circle of the States, except where excluded by the antagonist system of slavery, at last dead by the grace of God.

While the religious experiences of our fathers led them to ponder upon questions of church polity, while their civil disturbances and hardships led them to study profoundly theories of government and the history of politics, their isolated condition and exhausting labors left them but limited opportunities or disposition to acquire scholastic knowledge; so that the average learning of the colonists, at the opening of the Revolution, was less than at the period of settlement. At the close of the Revolution, the intellectual and moral condition of society was even more deplorable than at its opening; for a generation of young men had been reared whose education had been acquired for the most part in the camp, and at a remove from the influences of home. They were strong, resolute men, but rough and dissolute.

To this, among other causes, undoubtedly, were due the infelicities, instability, and perils of our political history subsequent to the Revolution. Fortunately, however, for posterity, both our State and national governments, at that period, fell into the hands of a body of men among the most extraordinary that Providence has ever brought to the conduct of public affairs.

They clearly saw the dangers impending over