FELLOW-CITIZENS:--

      This, I trust, is an auspicious day for the Old Dominion. I hail it as a day long to be remembered, on which, for the first time, a respectable portion of the intelligence, patriotism and philanthropy of Alpine Virginia have assembled in convention gravely and benevolently to deliberate on the ways and means by which this community shall discharge to itself its paramount and all-transcendent duty. For if there be any truth in the oft-repeated maxim that a representative government depends not merely for its prosperity and perpetuity, but for its very existence, on the intelligence and virtue of its citizens, evident it is that the great and superlative duty of the people and of the Government they have placed over them is to provide for, and secure, that intelligence and virtue, by a system of education not only rational and well adapted in itself, but also coextensive with the entire wants of the whole community. Until this be done, our liberties are not secured, and nothing can be effectually done to perpetuate and extend to our heirs and successors that rich inheritance obtained for us at the expense of so much blood and treasure, and transmitted to us by those noble spirits who for this end imperilled all, and staked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

      Two objects will naturally engross the attention of this convention. The first--What sort of an education is adapted to the common wants of the whole community, to the happiness and prosperity of the State? and the second--How is it to be made truly common and accessible to all?

      But as introductory to this discussion, certain great principles ought to be clearly propounded, developed and accredited by those who undertake to effect this great moral revolution in the community. The interest that the State has, purely as a matter of policy, in establishing [247] and sustaining such a system in whole or in part, the duties which devolve upon the Government in reference to the establishment and maintenance of such a system, should be thoroughly laid open to the apprehension and full conviction of all persons of mature age and reason. These points should be elaborated, illustrated and confirmed by facts and documents, plain and undeniable, in all the primary meetings of the people. Lecturers should perigrinate every town, village and hamlet in the State, and awaken the whole community to the consideration of the matter. In arguing the first point--the political interest that the State has in establishing and patronizing universal education--care should be taken to show that educated mind is the true commonwealth of every community. This may be done by showing clearly and conclusively that it is mind and society, and only these two, that find any value in the earth above that which the brutal creation enjoy. Of what use, for example, are hills and mountains stored with minerals and metals of the most valuable character, without educated mind to search them out and to convert them into use? Of what value to the Indian are the forests in which he roams, or the mountains and hills of brass and iron on which he treads, destitute as he is of science and educated art to convert them to his use and comfort? Of what value the richest mines of India or Peru, of Margaretta or Potosi, to him who has not skill to work them, and art to fuse, and compound, and mould, and hammer, and polish their products into the conveniencies and comforts and elegantes of civilized life? Do not the granite hills and marble quarries of Italy and Egypt--the pearls and hidden treasures of the ocean--the diamond, the ruby and the emerald, with all the precious stones of the earth--acquire even their beauty and lustre, their interest and value, from the mind that science illumines and the hand that education guides in laying them under contribution to the wants of man?

      Nay, may it not be shown that the richest valleys and the most luxuriant soils owe their fruitfulness more to the skill and labor of the cultivator, than to their natural and inherent richness?--that the agriculturist, the planter and the manufacturer owe to science and general education the utensils and machinery of their respective callings and pursuits?--that it is educated mind that makes the wilderness and the solitary place glad, and that causes the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose? Of all the sources of national wealth, may it not be affirmed that not only is the mind, the intellect of the community, the richest and the most considerable part, but that it is that which gives value, and riches, and beauty, and convenience, and comfort, and [248] refinement to every thing else? Viewed as a separate and distinct item of the national domain, it deserves more labor, cultivation and improvement than all the other items of public property in the statistics of a nation's wealth. Of what avail to the world the genius of a Newton, a Franklin, a Fulton, without education? To what do we owe the plough, the sickle and the scythe, the cotton-gin, the shuttle and the loom? To what the ships, the steamboats, the railroads, the thousand-and-one inventions that subdue our forests, that beautify our fields and meadows, our orchards and gardens, that erect and adorn our dwellings, that build our towns and cities and replenish and enrich them with the products of every clime--with the fabrics of every hand? To these and a thousand such inquiries there is but one answer; and that answer is, Educated mind. As a single item of a nation's wealth, the political economist, whether he appear in the character of a statesman, a philosopher, a patriot or a philanthropist, is therefore compelled to say that the development and cultivation of the mind, the whole mind, of a community, by a judicious and favorable system of education, is the first and superlative duty of the State. The masses of national wealth that have been accumulated to society by the inventors of the mariner's compass, the steam-engine, the cotton-gin, are worth more than the entire commonwealth of Virginia, real and personal, with all the hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging. And who can tell but that there is at this moment amidst these rough mountains and deep valleys, these gently-sloping hills and wide-extended plains that diversify and beautify Western Virginia, one or more such minds, like marble yet in the quarry or a diamond among the pebbles of Golconda, which, were fair science to smile upon their humble birth, might make them not only gems in a nation's crown of glory, effulgent stars emblazoning her escutcheon, but sources of wealth equalling the resources of many prosperous years, and lessening the toils of many generations?

      But it is not only as a portion of a nation's wealth that the public mind is to be contemplated by even the mere political economist, but as a means of a nation's defence, and of its annoyance also. Nations have been saved, and they have been destroyed, by a portion of their intellect overpowering all the balance. A minority, a very small minority, of a nation's intellect, immorally educated, has often proved the scourge and the ruin of a whole country. A few spirits--a mere trio, like that of Danton, Robespierre and Marat, sustained by a few subalterns moving in humbler circles, but holding places of power, drenched the fields of France in human blood, clothed its millions in [249] the sable garments of mourning, and agonized the hearts of untold multitudes with unutterable pangs of sorrows. What varied mischiefs have a few ambitious marauding Pharaohs, Cæsars, Tamerlanes, Bonapartes, inflicted on mankind! At the shrine of their unhallowed ambition what millions of human beings have been immolated! And what shall we say of the Torquemadas, the Voltaires, the Hastings, the Arnolds, the Burrs, and the lesser monsters that have in various spheres scourged mankind? Men of high intellect, indeed, partially educated, but whose hearts were suffered to grow up the hotbeds of every passion and lust that could degrade and afflict human kind! But, to turn from the darker to the brighter side of the picture, we have some few samples of the power of good intellectual and moral culture combining their happy powers to work out a nation's deliverance. We need not indeed tell of the saviours of other nations, nor of the few small bands that have from time to time risen up to redress a nation's wrongs, to wrest the scorpion-scourge of tyranny from the relentless hand of heartless despotism. We can tell of our own Washington, and the few mighty and noble spirits of that era, his confederates in the council and in the field--who, at the sacrifice of all that men hold dear, dared to redeem a nation from the unjust encroachments and avaricious spoliations of a corrupt Government prompted by a few aspiring and ambitious men. Yet had that Washington and his illustrious compeers been still better educated than was the age in which they lived and from which they took their counsels and their examples, who can tell but that without so much blood and so many years of suffering, by other policies and principles, all that we enjoy might have been secured to themselves and their posterity for many generations! Another Franklin, of another category, might have arisen, who could have stolen from the breast of kings the electric fluid of a monarch's wrath by a conducting-rod that would, without the lurid flash of scathing lightnings and the mighty peals of angry thunders, have sent it secretly and quietly into the bosom of mother earth!

      The powers of a proper system of education have never yet been fully developed on a grand scale. Yet, from the developments already made, we may infer that the time is not far distant when we will look to the schoolmaster and the district school, more than to mighty generals, standing armies and immense navies, with all the munitions of war, for the preservation of a nation's peace, a nation's safety, and a nation's honor. It is no freak of fancy, no hallucination of a romantic imagination, but the oracle of substantial truth, derived from the experience of the past, that all will sooner be gained, by good education, [250] in the adjustment of even national wrongs by mediatorial tribunals, which hitherto have cost millions of gold and torrents of human blood.

      We are beginning to see that as yet we have too much of Roman barbarism, not only in some of our patrician regulations, but in our rudimental ideas of what is just and honorable, and in our views of what is creditable to ourselves as individuals and as nations. Our political halls and chambers of legislation--our honorable rencounters, first in wordy strife, then in polite blackguardism, and finally with powder and lead or Turkish sabre, bowie-knife or stiletto--show that as yet we are but half civilized, and more Pagan than Christian in the inner man. We look in vain to those standing upon the upper rounds of the ladder of human ambition for help to remove it or to change its position and modification. We must begin at the bottom; we must stand upon the soil, and raise up a new species of men, and attach to the high places of the State a ladder of a new and more rational and moral construction.

      Learned men and the higher classes, in their more sober and lucid intervals, begin to see that it would be less expensive to educate an infant than to support an aged criminal in a State prison; nay, that a county pauper costs more than a well-educated child. It is therefore becoming a very grave question whether ignorance and crime do not now cost the State more than would expatriate them and introduce intelligence and virtue in their place. If any one were so well educated in the State finances--in the expenditures for jails, pillories, penitentiaries and poor-houses, with all the expenditures in gaming, gambling, immoral speculations, eating tobacco and drinking rum, in idleness and its brood of gigantic vices--as to be able to tell how many millions per annum ignorance and vice cost the nation, I doubt not for a single moment but that it would be found that we are annually paying, in various ways, direct and indirect, more for the present stock on hand of ignorance and vice than would educate every child born on our territory in a good common school, such as patriarchal monarchs in the North of Europe allow their population out of the public purse.

      Indeed, there are some conscientious men who are seriously asking the question whether a State government has a right, natural, inherent or divine, to punish the crimes which grow from the ignorance which she creates, rather than removes, by laying taxes on myriads without their consent, and withholding from them that education which is essential to their clear discrimination of right and wrong. [251]

      It is no longer debatable whether the great mass of enormities which are daily growing up in this country are not the legitimate offspring of the want of good primary and common school education. From the strictest inquiries and researches which I have been able to make, from our penitentiary reports, and the number of executions for capital offences, it appears that while in our best-educated States the proportion of the whole population that are taught to read varies from more than one hundred to one to twenty-eight to one, the proportion of those in public prisons not educated at all is more than two to one. The difference, then, between the two aggregates in the penitentiaries and out of them, in such States as New York, for example, is as follows:--Out of the penitentiaries, in twenty-nine persons twenty-eight can read for one that cannot; whereas in the penitentiaries, out of twenty-nine persons fifteen cannot read for fourteen that can.

      Dr. Julius, after a laborious examination of the principal prisons in the United States, affirms that "one-third of the convicts are foreigners. In New York they are frequently one-half." Now, these are, for the most part, wholly uneducated persons. A cheering fact occurs in the statistics of the State prisons of New York in demonstration of the influence of education to diminish crime. In the Secretary's report for 1840, it is stated that crimes requiring some education and skill, such as "forgery, perjury, burglary, &c., have been gradually diminishing with the diffusion of education; whereas those the usual concomitants of ignorance and debasement are increasing." "That knowledge," remarks the chaplain of the Connecticut State Prison, "is not very frequently used as an instrument in the commission of crime, appears from the fact that out of sixty-six committed to that prison last year, the crimes of but four were such in commission as required ability to read or write." The Directors of the Ohio Penitentiary state that "it is an erroneous impression that the convicts are intelligent, shrewd men. Nearly the whole number in our prison are below mediocrity in point of information. Of two hundred and seventy-six, nearly all are below mediocrity; one hundred and seventy-five are grossly ignorant, and in point of education scarcely capable of transacting the common business of life." From all the documents that I have had access to, it appears that "the tendency to crime amongst the ignorant is fourteen times greater than it ought to be on the supposition that education has no power to restrain it." Is not this a cheering fact, regarding education as it now is, having generally little or no reference to the heart, but chiefly to the head? If the culture of the heart or moral [252] training were equal to that of the mere intellect, which, on every principle of policy, interest, honor, safety and benevolence, it ought to be, the tendency to crime would be a hundred times greater than it ought to be, on the supposition that education has no power to restrain it. Our theory might carry us much further; but we are content to let it be bounded by what actually has occurred.

      From this view of the subject it would seem a fair and logical inference that the rich ought to contribute to the support of common schools in the ratio of their stakes in society; for of what use their superior fortunes, if the sons of their neighbors be thieves and robbers, marauders or murderers? This conclusion is not only fair in logic, but also in fact; for property is uniformly judged most secure and insured for less per cent. in the midst of an orderly and moral society than in one of a different character. But I do not argue this point: I only name a few of the topics from which those will argue in favor of universal education on the part of the State, who contemplate the subject in all its bearings upon the commonwealth, as the prime source of public revenue, as the palladium of national defence, and as a great preservative of the internal peace, safety and prosperity of the whole community.

      The accurate reasoner on this great subject will labor to show, that, viewed in all its bearings upon the social compact, education is not only to be universal, but to be adapted equally to the head and to the heart. For, while cultivated intellect necessarily builds up the agricultural, manufacturing and commercial interests of the community, cultivated hearts as necessarily preserve the peace and constitute the safety and happiness of society. The orator, too, will not fail to reason from one of the popular maxims in every republic--that the chief end of government is not to preserve itself, build up its own fortunes and aggrandize itself, but to develop a nation's resources, direct its energies, provide for its exigencies and protect it from intestine rivalries and animosities as well as from encroachments on the part of foreign powers; in one sentence, to protect the people in the full enjoyment of all their rights, natural or conventional. His great and invincible argument from this fundamental view and concession will always be, "If mind be any part of a nation's wealth or resources, or if education be one of the exigencies of the State, or if ignorance and vice are evils from which the people are to be protected, then does it not follow with the light of demonstration that the intellectual and moral improvement of all the mind belonging to the State is the first concern of every intelligent, just and patriotic Government in the world?" Believe me, fellow-citizens, that Government is wanting in the essential ends of its [253] being, in the vital object of its existence, which makes not the education of every child born upon its territory its primary concern.

      We should not pause until we have concentrated all the light derived from the voluminous fact--that intelligence and freedom are but two names for the same thing. An intelligent community will always be free; an ignorant one, never. As we advance education, as we promote universal intelligence, we promote universal freedom. If free government, if liberty of thought, of speech and of action, are privileges, then it behooves all who think so to combine their efforts to extend the blessings of education to all, and to make provision for such a system of mental and moral culture as will insure all that we include in the idea of a great nation--an intelligent, virtuous and prosperous community.

      But from these general and fundamental views we must turn to the two points standing directly in the line of an incipient effort to awaken and direct the energies of our fellow-citizens in the present crisis. The first of these is, What is the character and what are the outlines of that system of education which is properly popular and common, and which ought to be commensurate with the geographical boundaries of every community?

      In sketching the outlines of such a system, a due regard must be had to what the common wants of humanity are, in respect of physical, intellectual and moral development and improvement. Whatever is not in harmony with the human constitution, the position that man occupies not only in society, but in the universe, his nature, relations, obligations and destiny, is not only in itself inadequate and imperfect, but must be subject to continual mutation. Hitherto a perfect system has not been introduced; and hence the endless variety of theories and experiments on the part of authors and teachers. In devising a suitable system, the questions, What is man? Where is he? and What is he destined for? must be clearly ascertained, and then it will be more competent to man to devise for him a proper system of education. If to the tailor or the cordwainer it be essential that he have the measure of those parts of the human body he would furnish with suitable apparel, as necessary is it to the school-teacher that he should have the dimensions of his pupil as a sentient, intellectual and moral being, before he can furnish him with an education suitable to his nature and in harmony with the conditions of his existence and his ultimate destiny.

      Without presuming now or hereafter to say what would be a perfect and complete system, we may remark that there are seven arts that [254] human nature must acquire in a judicious course of primary and fundamental education. These seven arts are as essential to education, as society always was, and is, and evermore shall be constituted, as food and raiment are to the human body in the Valley of the Mississippi. These seven arts must therefore ever be the basis of a good system of primary and common school education. They are as follows:--1st. The art of thinking; 2d. The art of speaking; 3d. The art of reading; 4th. The art of singing; 5th. The art of writing; 6th. The art of calculating; and, 7th. The art of book-keeping. These are the seven essentials of a primary school system; they are fundamental to the whole system of education--to a series of schools--primary, secondary and ultimate, usually called common schools, academies and colleges. For, be it observed, the common school system is not only to be perfect in itself for those who shall never enter another school, but also perfect so far as it goes with reference to every other species of school in the most civilized and highly-improved community.

      But I will be asked, Is the system of primary and common school education to consist only of these seven arts, or of any number of arts? Is there nothing worthy of the name of science in all this? I answer, These seven arts are, like all other arts, useful or ornamental, founded on science. Hence, in acquiring these arts the following sciences will necessarily have to be taught to greater or less extent:--orthography, orthoepy, grammar, arithmetic, elements of geometry, algebra, music and elocution. I am aware that some persons will be startled at this range of science in common schools, especially those whose views are bounded by spelling, reading, writing and ciphering to the end of the rule-of-three. But to these I will only say, first, that we do not comprehend the entire range of those sciences as forming a part of common school education, but merely hold that certain portions of them are essential; and, in the second place, that whenever the State sets about finding teachers by founding normal schools to manufacture rational and competent instructors, she will find that all this and more can be taught in the time usually spent in the common schools now in operation under the monarchical governments of the Old World and some portions of our own country.

      I have not added the word correctly to each of these seven arts. I have not said, indeed, that the art of thinking correctly is to be taught before the art of speaking correctly, though I am of opinion that their natural order is in the position in which I have placed them. We regard some of these arts as necessarily facilitating improvement in the others, and all of them as existing on such terms of intimacy and [255] friendship as will mutually aid advancement in all. It may also be objected that few adults have learned to think correctly, and that this is rather the work of a college than of a primary and incipient school. To which I answer that the reason that comparatively so few adults ever learn to think correctly, is that they never enjoyed the advantage of a good common school education. It is not often in adult years that men become proficients in those branches of education which have been wholly neglected in youth. Hence we find hundreds of graduates issuing from respectable colleges, who could not spell correctly all the monosyllables in the book of Proverbs were their lives staked upon it. But in teaching youth to think correctly, I mean no more than the communication of the simple art, which consists in the habit of accurate observation, comparison and deduction--an art, indeed, which, to be satisfactorily communicated, demands assiduous attention on the part of a competent instructor from the very commencement of the alphabet to the end of the course of primary instruction.

      In addition, however, to these seven all-important arts, and so much of the sciences as are necessary to their acquisition, there are other branches of scientific knowledge essential to a rational and useful common school course of instruction, viz. the geography of our planet, a knowledge of material and animated nature, natural history, together with the elements of society, our own social compact, constitution and laws, a sketch of ancient and modern history, especially the history of our own country; and, above all, the admirable science of self-knowledge, an intimate acquaintance with our sentient, intellectual and moral nature, which is to be a portion of every day's instruction, from the abecedarian class to the last lesson in the elementary departments. All this knowledge may be found in a very few elementary books which are now constantly issuing from the press, with the accompanying instructions and explanations of a properly-qualified instructor. "THE HOUSE I LIVE IN," by Dr. Alcott, contains a fund of knowledge on the anatomy of the human system, adapted to an infant-school. This, with "The Laws of Physical Health," forms a school-book of incalculable importance to youth; for those things ought to be first and most thoroughly learned that are most essential to the preservation of health and the formation of proper habits. Mr. Taylor, of New York in his admirable work on the District School, in sketching the glaring defects of the common school and common education, very appositely complains:--

      "This useful and intensely interesting subject is almost entirely neglected in our common schools.Not one pupil in a thousand ever [256] learns a single lesson in either the mineral, vegetable or animal kingdoms. The young farmer learns nothing of the varieties of soil, its nature and composition and its peculiar preparation for different grains; he obtains no knowledge of the nature and growth of vegetables; or the properties and influence of the 'life-giving air.' The most important information for his business the school does not give him.

      "The little knowledge that he acquires of his business he is obliged to get by ignorant experience and blind observation. The mechanic does not study the nature, pliability and uses of the minerals and metals, nor does he learn the beauty, strength and durability of the various timbers. The laborer in his experiments has no science to assist him: he is preparing nature to administer to his necessities, without knowing her rules of action. He knows nothing--for his school has given him no opportunity to know--of his own physical nature, or of the properties of the natural world around him.

      "He cannot, therefore, conform his life and conduct to the relations which exist between matter and his physical nature. He has no means of foreseeing the infringement of the organic laws. In his school he has never learned the most common and simple truths in physiology or anatomy. The structure and uses, the layers, the mucous coat, &c. of the skin, the common school student learns nothing of.

      "He is not told that the skin is the seat of perspiration, the regulator of animal heat, and the seat of absorption.. He does not see the sympathy between the skin and the other organs of life, nor the causes of suppressed perspiration, (an action which brings on the most of our disorders,) nor the connection between the skin and the nervous system. Being ignorant of this vital organ, he abuses and neglects it. He gives no attention to suitable clothing, to ventilation, nor to washing and bathing; for he has no information on these subjects.

      "He has learned nothing of the structure and action of the muscles, nor of the degree and kind of exercise which they require to give them strength, elasticity and health. He has no acquaintance whatever with anatomy, and knows not that the bones are composed of animal and earthy matter, and that they are essential to motion and to the security of the vital organs: he does not study the growth and decay of the bones, nor perceive the advantages of their vitality and insensibility, and their adaptation to contained parts.

      "Of the nature and use of respiration, the structure of the lungs, the necessity of pure air, and the healthy condition of the digestive organs, the common school pupils never hear or read a word. They grow up and live entirely ignorant of the nervous system, knowing nothing of its functions and education--nothing of these great inlets of knowledge and instruments of pleasure and pain.

      "They are not taught even the causes of good or bad health, nor the physical consequences of immoral conduct. Not one truth of this science, which shows that man is 'fearfully and wonderfully made,' is taught in our district schools. This need not be so; for there are no truths more simple or pleasing than some of the most important facts [257] of physiology. There should be a text-book on this subject for our common schools.

      "Although there are 'sermons in stones,' they are not 'delivered' to the common school student. Neither his teacher nor his books speak even of the first principles of geology or mineralogy. The earth, our common mother--the womb and the grave of every living object--the great companion and benefactor of the farmer, has, in the country, scarcely a teacher to make known her nature, her elements and her energies. That which the agriculturist has to labor with, and from which he obtains his 'blessings and his bread,' forms no part of the farmer's education.

      "Does not the neglect of even one department of natural history show a great deficiency in our common school education? But the vegetable kingdom is as little attended to. Plants, flowers and trees find no teacher in district schools. The places they enliven with their freshness, sweeten with their fragrance and cool with their shade, never speak of their bounty or their beauty, their wisdom or their Author. Many of those who spend their lives in nursing flowers and cultivating plants know nothing of their structure or their organs, nor even their artificial or natural classification. What additional interest would the farmer feel, amidst the freedom and the freshness of his labor, if he could be enlightened with even a faint ray from the science of botany! But it would be a lonely and wandering ray that would enter the room of the district school."

      The Bible as a school-book and moral instructor is made a part of every day's education in every good school both in the Old World and in the New. A few years have accomplished a truly marvellous revolution in public opinion on this subject. Ever since the French Revolution--that era of terror, that age of atheism and infidelity, that triumph of lawless despotism and licentious majorities--enlightened minds have looked to the Bible with more intense interest and assurance than before, as the palladium of all human rights--as the only strong and safe guarantee of our social immunities and privileges, whether political, moral or religious.

      The true philosopher, the patriot, the statesman and the philanthropist, equally with the Christian, say that intellectual without moral culture is a curse to each and every community. To educate the head, and neglect the heart, is only giving teeth to the lion, claws to the tiger, and talons to the eagle to seize and devour their prey. The ablest politicians and the most profound philosophers of France, England and America now affirm that education in universities, in high schools and common schools, without the Bible and moral training, is a national calamity rather than a public benefaction. Hence, in Prussia, and in most of the German States, in France, England and America, there is but one voice to be heard on this [258] subject. All concur, sectarianism with all her brood and all her rival fears to the contrary notwithstanding, all unite, in recommending the Bible as a universal school-book, from the first lesson in the reading-class to the last recitation in the college course.

      I had the pleasure to see even the Catholic Bishop of Cincinnati, with all the clergy of all denominations--Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist--then present at a meeting of the College of Teachers in that city, voting in favor of my amendment of a resolution to give the Bible to every school in the country, without one sectarian or denominational note or comment; and that, too, within one year after a debate on Romanism, growing out of that cardinal tenet of Protestantism, viz. the, Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, as the rule of Christian faith and manners. It is now a settled point, proclaimed from the thrones of the Old World, and from the heads of all departments in the New, that education without the Bible, and without moral training, is not to be tolerated by any civilized community.

      It is also becoming more and more evident that, notwithstanding all our sectarian differences, we yet have something called a common Christianity;--that there are certain great fundamental matters--indeed, every thing elementary in what is properly called piety and morality--in which all good men of all denominations are agreed; and that these great common principles and views form a common ground on which all Christian people can unite, harmonize and co-operate in one great system of moral and Christian education.

      If names truly great were needed to illustrate and confirm these views, we could give them in superabundance. I will at present select but one, from one of the highest places in the Old World, and from a nation that has a more ample experience of the neglect of Bible-instruction than any other in the civilized world--Italy, the land of saints and pilgrims, only excepted. From the minister of public instruction--from the great philosopher and statesman, Monsieur Victor Cousin--whose titles are, Peer of France, Councillor of State, Professor of Philosophy, Member of the Institute and of the Royal Council of Instruction--we quote a few words out of very many which he has fitly spoken on religious and moral culture:--

      "We have abundant proof that the well-being of an individual, like that of a people, is nowise secured by extraordinary intellectual powers or very refined civilization. The true happiness of an individual, as of a people, is founded on strict morality, self-government, humility and moderation; on the willing performance of all duties to God, his superiors and his neighbors.

      "A religious and moral education is consequently the first want of a [259] people. Without this, every other education is not only without real utility, but in some respects dangerous. If, on the contrary, religious education has taken firm root, intellectual education will have complete success, and ought on no account to be withheld from the people, since God has endowed them with all the faculties for acquiring it, and since the cultivation of all the powers of man secures to him the means of reaching perfection, and, through that, supreme happiness. . . .

      "We must lay the foundations of moral life in the souls of our young masters, and therefore we must place religious instruction that is, to speak distinctly, Christian instruction--in the first rank in the education of our normal schools. We must teach our children that religion which civilized our fathers--that religion whose liberal spirit prepared, and can alone sustain, all the great institutions of modern times. . . .

      "The less we desire our schools to be ecclesiastical, the more ought they to be Christian. It necessarily follows, that there must be a course of special religious instruction in our normal schools. Religion is, in my eyes, the best--perhaps the only--basis of popular education. I know something of Europe; and never have I seen good schools where the spirit of Christian charity was wanting. Primary instruction flourishes in three countries--Holland, Scotland and Germany; in all it is profoundly religious. . . .

      "No more than grapes can be gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles, can any thing good be hoped from school-masters who are regardless of religion and of morality. For this reason religious instruction is placed at the head of all other parts of education: its object is to implant in the normal schools such a moral and religious spirit as ought to pervade the popular schools. . . .

      "I must confess, that in religious instruction I do not confine myself to any particular method; I try by meditation to bring the thing clearly before my own mind, and then to expound it intelligibly, in fitting language, with gravity and calmness, with unction and earnestness, because I am convinced that a clear exposition obliges the pupil, to meditate, and excites interest and animation. Christianity ought to be the basis of the instruction of the people; we must not flinch from the open profession of this maxim; it is no less politic than it is honest. . . .

      "I am not ignorant, sir, that this advice will grate on the ears of many persons, and that I shall be thought extremely dévot at Paris. Yet it is not from Rome, but from Berlin, I address you. The man who holds this language to you is a philosopher, formerly disliked and even persecuted by the priesthood; but this philosopher has a mind too little affected by the recollection of his own insults, and is too well acquainted with human nature and with history, not to regard religion as an indestructible power; genuine Christianity as a means of civilization for the people, and a necessary support for those on whom society imposes irksome and humble duties without the slightest prospect of fortune, without the least gratification of self-love." [260]

      The second item of our address demands at least an equal share of your attention. The question, the great question, before this Convention, and in the wishes of very many in Eastern and Western Virginia, is yet to be discussed. Having sketched a rude outline of the essential elements of a proper system of primary and common school education, the next and all-absorbing question is, How shall such a system be established and made commensurate with the wants of the whole community? We are not, indeed, left wholly to imagine how such a system might be introduced and consummated, nor to argue from a priori and abstract reasonings its practicability. Other states and nations have gone before us, and not only taught us the golden theory that the great end of all human government is to teach men to govern themselves, and that therefore it is the duty of the Government to provide a system of national education, and to place it under a very strict and rigid supervision,--we say, they have not only expounded to us the sage theory, but have actually exemplified it by a variety of successful experiments.

      Saxony, the cradle of liberty, because the cradle of Protestantism, first conceived the theory, but Prussia first developed and put it in full operation. It was under that rather paternal than monarchical Government that the world first saw the entire youth of a whole nation at school--three millions of children well educated during eight years--the whole expense being paid by about five millions of adults. Prussia will soon exhibit to the world a grand but rare spectacle--a whole nation of fifteen millions strong, every individual comparatively well educated. For half a century she has been trying many experiments, maturing and perfecting a grand scheme of popular education. Advancing from one improvement to another, in a long series of experiments, she has now arrived at such an enviable eminence as to attract the attention and command the veneration of the civilized world.

      She, however, had her feeble infancy and childhood in these benevolent and patriotic efforts before she reached her manhood prime. We also must have ours. When, however, we begin profiting at her expense and by her experience, and by that of other nations, especially by the enterprise of our sister States, we may expect to advance more rapidly than any of them.

      It must be frankly admitted that we have some difficulties peculiarly our own--difficulties unknown to those States and nations that have led the way in public instruction. We have a large territory, much of it mountainous, a sparse population, farms large, roads bad, streams unbridged, no districts, without any metes or boundaries or divisions [261] other than those irregular, disproportionate and misshapen things called counties, of all sizes and figures, varying from twenty freeholds to territories equal in size to ancient Greece and sundry other renowned kingdoms of former times.

      Other nations and States have various subdivisions of territory favorable to a district or common school system. Prussia has her Gemeinden, her Kreis, her Regierungen and her Provinz; France has her Communes, Cantons, Arrondissements and Departements; England has her parishes, Townships, Counties; but Virginia knows nothing less than a county.

      In order to any system of common schools worthy of public patronage, a survey and distribution of counties into some sort of districts, either according to territory or population, or a mixture of both, would be an indispensable preliminary. We take the world in some respects as we find it; but, really, I have long thought that a new survey of all the Southern and some of, the Middle States, after the manner of Ohio, Michigan and certain other new States, would be the shorter and cheaper way of placing school and other public matters on a rational, convenient and economical basis. We would save more in one single census than would pay the whole expense, and would thus lay a permanent foundation for various important improvements.

      But another difficulty in Virginia, it is alleged, is found in the fact that the aristocracy are more disposed to patronize colleges and one great Eastern university, than to extend education throughout the length and breadth of the land. Perhaps, indeed, there may be some foundation for this imputation of this exclusiveness of feeling. Well, as two wrongs cannot make one right, we must be cautious that we do not set up a rival monopoly of common schools against colleges. In the sacred and benevolent cause of education we are not allowed to have any castes or parties; we are neither aristocrats nor democrats; we do not plead for the rich or for the poor, but for the people, the whole people, and nothing but the people. Such is my theory. I am for rendering to all their dues. I would not rob the poor for the rich, nor would I filch from the rich to benefit the poor. We must have common schools, normal schools and colleges. The whole wants of society must be met.

      All persons have not exactly the same physical or the same intellectual appetites and tastes. Nature suits them all. So must we have common schools suited to the common wants of all; but should there be Come who have larger appetites and peculiar varieties of tastes, [262] we must have high schools and colleges for them, as well as common schools for the others.

      But, my fellow-citizens, it is a great mistake to imagine that we want colleges for the rich and common schools for the poor. Political demagogues may say so, and perhaps they may have no more sense than to think so. But we neither think nor say so. We want colleges for those who by nature's moulding and formation have more appetite taste and capacity than the common standard; and we want common schools for all. We must satisfy the common wants of all, and the peculiar wants of the few. But this commonalty and this minority are not the rich nor the poor. The rich are not the monopolists of genius, talent or capacity; nor are the poor necessarily the monopolists of sterile minds and humble capacity. Let us not, then, act as though God had given all mind, genius and wealth to one class and withheld them from the other. We plead for an ample supply for all.

      There are many of us in the West who will be satisfied with nothing short of a wise and just provision for all. We will not allow that it is either just or Honorable that Eastern Virginia should have all the university and college powers, and that Western Virginia should have only common schools. Shall we of the West be satisfied that the Legislature of Virginia shall bestow four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on one Eastern university and put us off with an annual pittance for common schools? Let it only do half as much for two or three Western colleges as it has done for an Eastern one, and then we of the West will begin to think that we are not regarded as step-children. Let it give us our full share of the literary fund, and, with some hope of success, we shall endeavor to provide for our own wants, and repay our Eastern brethren not with empty thanks only, but with a class of citizens more worthy of their brotherhood and esteem.

      We ask for colleges, not because the rich want them--not because a few only have taste, inclination or means of possessing themselves of their advantages--but because all the community need them as much as they need common schools; for without them no country has ever had, and no country can ever have, qualified teachers. We can have no good common schools without good teachers; for it is now a canonical maxim in France and Prussia, almost as evident and current as the golden rule, that, "as is the master, so is the school." An ill-educated and immoral teacher is a pest rather than a blessing to any community. I wonder not, then, that Prussia and other States which have paid much attention to common schools have found it indispensable to establish normal schools or colleges for the education of school-teachers. [263] The system requires it. If the whole State were divided into school-districts, and had school-houses erected and public libraries in them all, without a proper supply of accomplished teachers it were comparatively labor and expense in vain. We must have colleges or normal schools to supply teachers; and, therefore, in pleading the cause of universal education, we must not oppose colleges and universities--the only means now extant of supplying ourselves with teachers.

      New York now wants one thousand teachers every year. Ten thousand is her present supply. Of these, some thousand annually leave the business by death, emigration and change of profession. She requires ten colleges to supply her institutions. How shall we supply ours?

      We must have a supply of teachers in view, whatever plan we may adopt. The more respectable the qualifications we require in our teachers, and the greater the remuneration we give them, the greater the benefit to the whole community. Colleges and common schools are reciprocally advantageous to each other. True, we want hundreds of common schools for every college. There ought to be, however, no rivalry, no exclusiveness, no monopoly in the views, feelings or actions of our fellow-citizens on this subject. Universities and colleges are to common schools what oceans and seas are to lakes, rivers, pools and springs of water. If there were no oceans and seas, we should have no lesser collections of water. The sun and the winds carry from our oceans a constant supply to all the lakes, rivers and fountains of the country.

      We blame not the aristocracy of the East nor the memory of Thomas Jefferson for erecting and liberally endowing one great Eastern university, nor for founding other colleges in that quarter: we only blame them for not granting similar favors to the West, and good common schools to the whole country.

      We have a fund, indeed, annually accumulating, which, under a proper and wise administration, together with some other aids in the way of legislation, and perhaps some additional taxation, might be made available to the introduction of at least an incipient system of common schools. But there is a singular apathy--to use no harsher name--on this whole subject. I know not why it is, that the convention which revised and amended the Constitution of Virginia refused to admit into it a single provision expressive of the necessity of any legislative action on the subject of education. I had, indeed, the honor of offering the only resolution on that subject, which appears on the Journal of that distinguished body. In anticipation of the [264] demands of this community, and believing it would be an additional impulse to future legislation on the subject, if not a formal demand for it, I anxiously desired to have it recognised as a national object in the supreme law of the land. I therefore offered the following resolution, as reported on said Journal, page 181:--

      "Whereas republican institutions and the blessings of free government originated in, and must always depend upon, the intelligence, virtue and patriotism of the community; and whereas neither intelligence nor virtue can be maintained or promoted in any community without education, it shall always be the duty of the Legislature of this Commonwealth to patronize and encourage such a system of education, or such common schools and seminaries of learning, as will, in their wisdom, be deemed to be most conducive to secure to the youth of this Commonwealth such an education as may most promote the public good."

      Judge, fellow-citizens, of my disappointment and mortification to see a resolution, every way honorable (as I supposed) to the Old Dominion, and replete with blessings to the State, nailed to the table by a mere parliamentary manœuvre--by those, too, who had not courage to vote against it or formally to oppose it. In this way, however, it was virtually negatived; and so it came to pass that Virginia, once distinguished for her profound and eminent statesmen and eloquent orators, has sent her Magna Charta to the world without the recognition of education at all--without one word upon the subject, as though it were no concern of the State.

      In providing against the difficulties in the way of a great and successful effort on the part of this convention and its friends, it is essential to our success that we have all the difficulties in our eye. This apathy on the part of legislators is supported by a more fatal apathy on the part of a multitude of the people. Since the days of common schools till now--since the project of getting them up was first named--this apathy on the part of the great mass of the uneducated (not wholly confined to them either) has generally, even after a system was provided by law, necessitated compulsory measures to require some parents even to send their children to school.

      In examining the old statutes on the subject of public education in the European families, we find in some of the German States statutes enforcing what in our vernacular is called "school obligation,"--i. e. the obligation of sending children to school. In the Hanoverian dominions, provisions were made on this subject so long ago as 1681; in Saxe-Gotha, as far back as 1642; in Prussia, in 1169; in New England, [265] early in the last century; and by acts of the Scotch Parliament, they are found as far back as the middle of the fifteenth century--at least fifty years before the Protestant Reformation. These facts are very pertinently arrayed by Mrs. Austin, of New York, in her translation of Monsieur Cousin's Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia, in proof that the legal obligation to educate children is no modern invention, and not peculiar to what some call the military and despotic Government of Prussia.

      But it is obvious to all that we want common schools for the common wants, and the question is, How shall we get them? We do not want poor schools for poor scholars, or gratuitous instruction for paupers; we want schools for all at the expense of all. Theory might have taught what experience has everywhere proved--that few of the worthy poor, who most deserve education, will accept it under such humiliating conditions as it must be tendered on any plan hitherto attempted of having two classes of pupils in he same school--one class educated at the public expense, and another at their own. Some, indeed, who are sufficiently able to educate their own children, will, from innate meanness, accept of the poor-fund; but the really indigent and honorable poor will, in very many cases, do without education altogether rather than acknowledge their abject poverty, or afterwards be under what they consider the opprobrium of having been charity-scholars.

      To avoid all this is one of the objects of common schools; and that common schools can be introduced in Western Virginia without any or at least with very little additional expense to the richer classes, or to the whole community, I am confident can be made apparent to all. But, in order to this, we must go to work not only energetically, but systematically. We must not wait till all the East and the West agree on one system. This would be equivalent to postponing indefinitely the matter altogether.

      Our brethren of the East have difficulties--great difficulties--that lie not in our way. They have two sort; of population, of great political disparity. We are not so unfortunate. Common schools and aristocracy are not homogeneous. A patrician will not have a plebeian system of education. It would humiliate his son to learn out of the same grammar, under the same teacher and in the same school-room with the son of a plebeian! We of the West are generally too poor--that is, too democratical--for such notions. Poverty and humility have some little homogeneity between them, though we find them occasionally divorced. Were we richer, we might perhaps be a little more aristocratical than we are; for, after all, there is no [266] political aristocracy but that which, first, middle or last, stands upon gold. This is the real sovereign of America; and the nobility are those who have most of it. Hence the easy transition from democracy to aristocracy. I have known a lottery-ticket, luckily bought, or a good trip to New Orleans or to Cuba, convert a flaming democrat into a spruce, well-starched, decent little aristocrat of full five feet stature. It is, however, problematical whether aristocracy ever did thrive in a region so high and rough as ours. It is rather indigenous to extended plains, great cities and level countries; and, being an exotic on our calcareous hills, grows slowly, and is, upon the whole, of a sickly appearance. We, therefore, in the great aggregate of our population, would be glad to send our children to the same good common school, and would have no patrician scrupulosity of conscience in permitting them to read the same primer or Greek Testament with those of mere plebeian honors, whose good fortune it might be, perchance, to be placed under the same teacher.

      Again, our plebeian farms are smaller, and therefore our sons and daughters would not have to walk from the centre of a thousand-acre parallelogram to see the domicile of a near neighbor, or to explore a school-house situate in the middle of three or four such plantations, with not more than a dozen elect pupils assembled in the sunniest days of the year. The propinquity of less patrician inheritances is our happier lot; and, therefore, not merely equality of fortune but propinquity of residence are signs in our zodiac favorable to a cordial cooperation in the introduction of a common school system. A simultaneous, well-concerted, vigorous and persevering effort on our part is all that is necessary to the success of this great enterprise.

      Still the question recurs, How is the system to be introduced? Without further delay, I shall then frankly suggest, with great deference to the opinions of others, my views of the ways and means by which common schools may be established in Western Virginia.

      1st. Public lecturers could be obtained, who would, at several points in each county, lecture at full length upon the whole subject of common schools and primary instruction, pointing out clearly the intellectual and moral wants of the community, the nature and objects of a system of common education, developing its numerous advantages to society, political, moral and economical, and urging its claims upon all humane and benevolent persons. This, together with the labors of the periodical press, would enlighten the people on their great interests in such a system.

      2d. In the second place, petitions can be got up, and addresses to the [267] legislature, praying for a fair distribution of the annual avails of the Literary Fund to all Western Virginia, or to such ranges of counties and districts in it as may agree in one system of operations, after having done proportionally as much for the colleges of Western Virginia as for those of the East.

      3d. Power also may be obtained from the Assembly for every county in a given district, or even for a single county by itself, by and with the consent of a majority of the voters in such county, or district of counties to levy an ad valorem property-tax, to be added to the annual dividend of the Literary Fund from the State, for the purpose of creating a common school fund for the aforesaid district; to which also voluntary subscriptions from the more wealthy and benevolent may be added.

      4th. The counties can and should be surveyed into school districts five or six miles square, or of such other dimensions as will be most equitable and convenient for all the population. In the centre of each of these districts one good school-house should be erected, and one good teacher engaged at the public expense. These districts ought to be arranged with regard to the sparseness or density of the population, including not less than fifty nor more than one hundred families in one district. In this district school all the pupils should be placed on an equal footing, so far as equal rights are involved. There should be neither rich nor poor scholar known in the district school. They should be all district pupils, in a district school and under a district teacher. This should be the sum of all the distinctions, titles and honors in their charter.

      5th. School committees and a treasurer, men of probity and responsibility, should be elected or otherwise appointed in each district, who should obtain competent instructors and strictly and faithfully supervise the schools.

      Here are five practicable means, which, whenever any county or number of counties in Virginia pleases, can be adopted and made very efficient, to establish and sustain common schools in a county or in a large district.

      I am a practical man, and advocate practical schemes. When we cannot accomplish all we want at once, we must do what we can. We must begin and persevere, and we shall not fail to consummate our wishes. That this will cost us little or nothing more than the present invidious, selfish and impotent system, can be easily demonstrated. For example, suppose that there are only fifty families in one school district, the least we have contemplated, none of them probably more [268] than from one and a half to two and a half miles from a centre schoolhouse. Suppose that these fifty freeholds should have a school-tax levied upon them, averaging five or six dollars each: can not any one see that this sum, with the addition of only fifty dollars from the Literary Fund, would constitute an annuity equal to the necessary expenditures of that district for a good common school? Here would be an annuity of from three hundred to three hundred and fifty dollars per annum, a sum adequate to secure a respectable teacher in most districts in Western Virginia. And although this be a less average sum than any head of a family, with a freehold of fifty acres, should ordinarily pay for the education of his own children, under such a system as we have projected it would be amply sufficient to educate all the children, rich and poor, within said district, for as many years as may be necessary to the attainment of a good common school education.

      Fellow-citizens, I have doubtless exhausted your patience,--unless you have an unusual share of that article; still I feel as though I had hardly touched the subject, and regretting, as I do, the adverse circumstances which have forbidden me the pleasure of participating in your counsels, I could not do less than give a general sketch of my views on the whole premises which I supposed were directly to come before you.

      The subject of common schools and common education has long been regarded by me as one of paramount importance to the patriot, the philanthropist and the Christian. When we consider that at least nineteen-twentieths of the whole population obtain from common schools all the scholastic education they ever obtain, and that most of our public functionaries--our legislators, judges, magistrates and leading men--there receive the first elements of thought, their rudimental views and conceptions of men and things, of how much importance it is to the world that we have not only a sufficient number of them, but that we have them under the best possible intellectual and moral discipline.

      What a melancholy thought that, in the great, ancient, venerable and opulent Commonwealth of Virginia, there is one county possessing more than twenty-one hundred adults that cannot read!¹ What a waste--what a dreary waste--of uncultivated intellect! What a loss to the present and to future times! What a loss of intellectual and moral pleasure to those unfortunate, untaught and uneducated men and [269] women! What sort of mothers and fathers for another generation? How much superior to the four hundred thousand uneducated negroes east of the Blue Ridge? Tell it, not at Mecca, publish it not among the wild men of the forest, that in the civilized and Christianized State of Virginia there are in a single county twenty-one hundred persons of mature age and reason who can neither read nor write! Yet they must vote, and their illiterate vote would, in our government, outweigh the vote of two thousand and ninety-nine Solomons, could they be found. Is this rational? Is this right? Is this an oracle of wisdom or of folly? If we must have universal suffrage, let us have universal education. I would limit the one by the other. Till I shall have another sort of head, and until we have another sort of world than this, I cannot consent to think that it is good, or reasonable, or fair, or honorable that the vote of a Franklin, a Jefferson, a Madison, or a Washington, should be neutralized by that of one who never knew the letters that compose his own name, or read one verse of the Bible in any language spoken by the many-tongued tribes of men! The right of suffrage in the hands of such voters, uneducated in morals and literature, is like a razor in an infant's hand, or a flambeau in the hands of a drunkard in a magazine of gunpowder. I care not for measuring or counting votes by cash, whether in the form of land, or gold, or bank-notes, or sheep, or cattle, or asses. The poor man's vote may be as good as that of Monsieur Girard or that of Baron Rothschild; but that ignorance should neutralize intelligence, or that two thousand uneducated persons should decide the election of a State or the fate of a nation, is, to my mind, no less preposterous than the custom of naturalizing certain foreigners who swear to support a Constitution not one word of which they have ever heard or ever read.

      On whose heads, may I ask, rest the shame and the guilt of those untaught thousands of adults in Western Virginia, who cannot read the Saviour's name, nor one line of the gospel of eternal life! Some must be to blame. "Their parents," you say. But perhaps they were left orphans, or their parents had not such a legacy to transmit to them: for I contend that a moral and virtuous parent will always in our country either teach his children, or have them taught, to read, provided always he can read himself. The State, then, is to blame; that is, the community is to blame. But that community consists of individuals; and hence the blame is to be distributed amongst them. Well, then, fellow-citizens, let us endeavor to clear ourselves of this manifold evil. Let us all discharge our relative duties to the State, and we shall soon have an intelligent, virtuous and happy community. [270]

      The scheme I propose is practicable, and you can make it popular. In other countries, the few that opposed have often been among the first to partake of its blessings and to sound the praises of the system. Let us enter upon the labor, persuaded that it is a good and necessary one; let us commence, in the assurance that it is perfectly practicable; let us put forth our energies in the confidence of ultimate success; let us take "a long pull, a strong pull and a pull all together," and we shall gain for ourselves, our country and posterity, richer blessings, political and religious, than ever followed the blood-earned victories of the Alexanders, the Cæsars or the Napoleons of the earth. Their reward was the wild huzzas of maddened multitudes--ours will be the approval of conscience, the smiles of Heaven, and the thanks of a grateful, virtuous and happy posterity.

[PLA 247-271]