fires of persecution all unscathed, and that its soul-entrancing truths sustained confessors and martyrs who suffered to the death to transmit to us, their descendants, the inestimable treasure? Can we be free, we would again ask, if we suffer ourselves to be deprived of the Scriptures and are those friends of liberty and free institutions who would proscribe their circulation among the people?

THE PRINCIPLES AND PERILS OF OUR COMMON

EDUCATION.

Education is the cheap defence of nations."-EDMUND BURKE.

THE wisest must govern. This truth has been the basis of all the governments in the world, from the Patriarchs to the Presidents. It is a text upon which a whole circle of sermons has been preached. It has supplied the arguments of the absurd monarchist, Filmer; the aristocratical aspirations of Thomas Carlyle; of the ravings and reveries of all the red republicans in the world. In the rude times, when men were gathered into tribes, the old men, as wisest, ruled the band; not very stringently, but with all the authority of the tribe. This primitive mode of governing has descended down, among savages, to the Wittenagemote ("witty men's meet," "wise men's meeting") of the Saxons, and to our Indian contemporaries.

Monarchs, whether autocratic or constitutional, usurping or hereditary, have asserted the same principle. Great rulers, such as Julius Cæsar, Oliver Cromwell, and Napoleon Bonaparte, who grasped supreme power because they knew they could use it; and petty tyrants, who abused it because the people were supine and ignorant, have asserted the same claim-the right of the wisest to govern.

The feudal governments of Europe are set on a like foundation. The wealthy and (so-called) noble. aristocracy-whose power, and whose intention to keep it, are alike and almost equally represented by Alexander the Autocrat, and Victoria the constitutional Queenmake appeal to this principle in their very name. An "Aristocracy" is, literally, a Best Government-a Government by the Wisest.

Not that these rulers have always deliberately claimed that they, individually, were wisest among men; but they have done it for themselves as officers, in their formal documents. They say, "In our wisdom;" and, "Of our free grace and mere motion," and such things. These forms at least defer to the common consent of mankind that the wisest ought to govern, by taking the name of wisdom; just as vice acknowledges the supremacy of virtue, by pretending to be virtue. Republics-Greek, Italian, Swiss, German, French, American—have alike proclaimed the same universal maxim, with so loud a voice that we need not stop to repeat their words.

"The

The only difference amongst all these different rulers has been in their answers to the question, Who are the wisest? The king, the emperor, the holy czar-say the monarchists. The king and his nobles-say the feudalists. The nobles, said the oligarchic Venetians. The people said, and still say-The people. So say we. But precisely at this point is a common and enormous omission. people ought to govern," is the loud cry of all our politicians. But there can be no reason why they ought to govern, unless that they are wisest because they are wise enough to govern. It is with the nation as it is with the individual. When a man is old enough, knows enough, to take care of himself, then he may take care of himself. Until that time, he is under more or less restraint. And a nation not wise enough to govern itself, will as surely work out its own destruction, as an inexperienced boy in the sole charge of a great estate would unwisely waste and lose it.

Our politicians happen in fact to be right. But that is only because our people have been wise enough to govern. The presumption has always been, that each voter has been intelligent enough and upright enough to be intrusted with the power. The exceptions have been so few as to serve only to prove the rule. But of late years, the exceptions have increased so rapidly, especially by immigration of ignorant and immoral foreigners, that this presumption of intelligence can hardly any longer be said to exist. The politicians continue to cry, Let the people govern!" But the trouble is not now

lest the people shall govern. That they will always do. They will never, in this country, suffer the sceptre to pass out of their hands. But the trouble now is, to keep them wise enough to govern well. They are not in the case of the boy who is not old enough to manage his estate; but they are in the case of the man who is in danger of ruining his estate by falling into evil' courses.

The American Republican theory is not merely that the people should govern; it is, first, that the people are the wisest; and second, and only by virtue of this wisdom, comes the other truth which we hear so often, The people must govern.

For abundant proof of our position, let us look to the practice and precepts of those founders of the Union and fathers of American liberty-the first settlers of the thirteen colonies. In the early times of the various colonial commonwealths, only members of churches were admitted, in some of them, to the exercise of the electoral franchise, for the declared reason that the body of the people ought to consist of honest and good men. Decent and reputable conduct as members of society was also a recognized requisite of those admitted to vote. The written constitutions, and the whole spirit of the frame of government of all the early colonies, is conclusively in point. The strong, clear-minded men who established them, saw plainly the absolute necessity of admitting none to the freeman's privilege of governing the State, except such as were duly qualified in intellect and morals for that high responsibility. They set their standard of qualification higher than would now be endured. They required, until public sentiment compelled a change, both the ownership of property, that the voter might the more sensibly feel the effects of his own governing, and church-membership, that he might be approved a man of pure heart and life, and as one not about to endanger their peculiar semi-theocratic institutions. That their application of the principle was extreme and mistaken, may be allowed; but the demonstration is not less conclusive, but rather more so, of the strength and clearness of their conviction that only safe men-well-qualified men— should conduct the affairs of the State.

Since this is our theory, and has been our practice, as it ought to be, is in some measure, and as we hope it will be again, evidently it is the very profoundest and most absolute necessity of the State, if it desires to be a righteous, prosperous, and happy State, to foresee its future, and to secure to itself the means of a prosperous and progressive life, by raising up well-trained citizens for the next generation. The nation, during one generation, must prepare the next; just as a provident man of business during one season is making arrangements for his investments and enterprises during the next; or as a farmer, while cultivating one crop, makes that crop help prepare for the next, and thus preserves and improves the value and productive power of his land.

The children of the present age are the nation of the future, and properly educating them for wise and right action as men, is not only the very greatest responsibility of our adult generation, but it is also a necessity as plain and indispensable as that a man should preserve his life now, in order to be alive next year. The training of the children is the whole basis of our republic; the one thing needful, without which all our other pains and trouble for perpetuating our Union must come to naught; the primary source and condition of all that is desirable in our peculiar national life, if any such we have.

The American common-school education is the essential condition of all that is valuable in our American citizenship and polity. It is consistent with them; a part of the same machine-as one particular wheel is of its own engine, and of no other. It differs from other common-school educations, precisely as our people differ from other people, and our institutions from other institutions. American school education, as fostered and enforced by our government, is intended to train citizens fit to uphold our State; men wise enough to govern. They must be intelligent; possessed of minds free, active, stored with the fundamentals of knowledge, and with as much as possible of the superstructure. Yet they must be so trained, morally and religiously, as to keep their intellects and their passions subject