LD 2101 &1 UC-NRLF ^B 115 533 r o o X N CO oo n o t*»ji AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES HAMILTON COLLEGE, JULY 23, 1844. BY HORACE GREELEY. n PUBLISHED BV REQUEST, CLINTON, N. Y. 1844. • • • •••••••• ••• 1 -• •• • • ••• - .' Andrews, Prentiss Sf Studley, Printers. Boston: 11 Devonshire Street, fTf '-O Hamilton College^ Oct. 4, 1844. Horace Greeley, Esq,. Sir : — The Phoenix Society of Hamilton College, through the under- signed, their Committee, tender their unanimous thanks for the able and entertaining Address you delivered before them at their last Anniversary, and request a copy af the same for publication. With sentiments of respect, we have the honor to be, Your obedient servants, Sumner Stow Ely, \ John T. Clark, > Committee, Chauncey L. Hatch, ' JVewj York, Oct. 15, 1844. Gentlemen : — I transmit to the printers, at your request, the manuscript of my Address before your Societies on the eve of your last Commencement. I do this the more readily since I am sure your reiterated invitation to pub- lish is not a matter of course — not a reluctantly proiFered compliment. I stated to you, in reply to a similar invitation, the day after you listened to this Address, that I had no desire to see it printed, and that I had abundant opportunities to obtain of the public a hearing, without tasking'your cour- tesy. I then intimated that, as some of the suggestions of my discourse were, if not novel, at any rate very different from those usually presented on such an occasion, you might very naturally hesitate to endorse them. But I was relieved by your prompt response that such publication would not in any way render you responsible for the sentiments of the Address, while you were desirous of considering more carefully and leisurely before passing judgment upon them. The public, therefore, will rightfully censure me only if it shall discover any thing heretical or offensive in the following pages. I apprehend youVill not find this Address * entertaining,' though you so characterize it in your note. I am quite sure that entertainment was very far from my thoughts in writing it. Indeed, had I not been impelled by far different considerations, I suspect I could not have found leisure, in snatches of half hours from the incessant labors of this most exacting summer, to pre- pare it at all. But I deeply felt that there were truths vital to the useful- ness and well-being of the Educated Class which had not been so often nor f^80307 so emphatically presented as the interests of Mankind require. How far 1 have succeeded in evolving such truths I leave to your judgment and that of the few beside you who will condescend to read these pages. I know well that there is another side to the picture I have presented — that the Scholar has vast fields of usefulness, even under all existing disparagements, and that they are by no means unimproved. But all that need be said on this has been well said from Commencement to Commencement for generations. If I have been able to present any new ideas, or give fuller expression to old ones, be yours the credit and the advantage ; if I have wholly failed, be mine alone the censure. I am yours, most truly, Horace Greeley. Messrs. S. S. Ely, J. T. Clark, C. L. Hatch, Committee. ADDRESS. Gentlemen of the Phcenix and Union Societies : From the fierce turmoils and hot strifes of the passing day, I come at your bidding to spend an hour with you in the interchange of more quiet thought, returning on the morrow to my wonted sphere and calling. I appear be- fore you, not as a scholar among his equals, to descant on themes common and dear alike to all, but as one whose chief teacher has^ been the rugged world, and whose little all of knowledge has been gathered amid its rude jousts and stern encounters. You will not expect me, therefore, if you give me credit for sincerity and purpose in embracing this opportunity, to address you in the language or unfold to you thoughts peculiar to the halls of learning. Were he some specimen of our fading Aboriginal Race whom you had thus summoned before you, you would hardly*anticipate any thing more than an outward deference to the genius of the place — a relinquishment, for the occasion, of the blanket, the tomahawk and the war-paint — not of whatever is intrinsic and essential. He could only hope to justify your daring choice by speaking to you his own words, — by an utterance from the depths of his own being. And thus I, standing be- fore you in some sort a humble representative of that large class sometimes termed the self-educsited, by others (perhaps more properly) the wneducated, shall speak to you from the heart of that class, — truths which may or may not have long since resounded through the halls of our Universities, agitat- ing their venerable dust, but which in either case are certain ere long to make themselves heard and respected. I have not hesitated to choose for my theme on this occa- sion — The Discipline and Duties of the Scholar, vast and lofty though it be, and imperfect as have been my oJ>jyprtunitiiBi^ fdr its thorough appreciation and discussion. Few-aS'ar^. the fragments of hours that I have been able to '3ei2:e for its cbntemplation, I am well aware that on its proper apprehension depends, in great degree, the Progress and the Well-being of the Human Race. You need not fear, my friends ! that the advantages of a thorough Education, or of a thoroughly Educated Class, will be undervalued in our day, and especially by us weary marchers and combatants along the parched highways, beneath the fervid sun of active life, who have been able but to scoop, as it were, here and there a handful! from the grateful, invigorating waters of Know- ledge, as they danced and bubbled across our too eager, head- long course. O, not from our panting ranks will ever arise the cry that solid and symmetric Learning is a boon to be re- jected or lightly prized ! The small coins of knowledge which we awkwardly handle and dispense are constantly reminding us of the priceless ingots of golden treasure which for us lie buried in the far recesses of halls like these, from which a grim Fate has •forever debarred us. Limited as may have been our opportunities, it is not to us a sealed truth that the Present is only to be rightly read and interpreted in the full light reflected from the Past. We are not unaware that this uneasy, jostling throng of to-day is but a reproduction, with slight permutations, of the sweating, striving crowds of a thou- sand yesterdays, to be again and again represented, in the several throngs of countless to-morrows. We are well aware that faithful, graphic History is a diviner as well as a judge — that her magic mirror gives back the faces glowing around us as well as the forms in dust beneath us, and that he who rightly, intelligently, reads of Aristides and Cleon, of Brutus and Catiline, of smooth Augustus and deified Nero, may turn at once from the musty chronicle and see the living charac- ters stalking eagerly around him. Must he not discern the Phocion of our Republic in that noble relic of our heroic elder time, the oft-baffled, defeated, decried, but dauntless, bravely struggling, unconquerable octogenarian of Quincy? Might he not be tempted at last to suspect that the difference between one age and another exists quite as often in its chroni- clers as in its actors, and that the perishing hieroglyphics of Tlascala and Quito would reveal heroism as devoted and admirable as any of that more felicitously recorded by Homer or Polybius, had we but the skill to interpret them as thor- oughly ? In short, it is not alone the Educated who have learned that a knowledge of Man is the central truth, to which the study of Men and their acts must be subsidiary ; and that the mingled web of Divine beneficence and Human infirmity, termed History, is to be rightly scanned only in pro- portion as we apprehend its beginning and its destined conclusion. There is, there must be, a preeminently Educated Class among us — I do not merely admit the notorious fact ; I per- ceive the vital necessity. Whether the distance between that class and the many should or should not be as broad and palpable as at present, is not now the question. My theme implies its existence, and assumes that the greater number are relatively uneducated. However we might desire the universal diffusion and possession of the knowledge now confined to this class, we know it is, and long must be, impossible. Its attainment exacts a devotion of time and of means, to say nothing of tastes and habits, which can only be given by the comparatively few. My theme, then, involves the compound 8 inquiry — what should be the nature of the education of the more cultivated class ? — under what conditions should Learn- ing be acquired ? — what ends should it contemplate ? — what advantages secure to its possessors ? I shall proceed to dis- cuss it. I would insist, then, as the primary requisition in the Discipline of the Scholar, on a Thorough and Harmonious Development of the Physical Man. I place this first, not as more important than Moral and Intellectual culture, but as the proper foundation of all culture unto perfection. You need not cite me to instances of intellectual giants who are physi- cally dwarfs — of puny Genius and hypochondriac Wit — you may as well tell me that the foetid, pestilent purlieus of a great City are favorable to health and longevity, because men have risen there to stature and vigor and died in hale old age. As well tell me that the bivouac and the battle-field are favorable to long life, because men have died peacefully at ninety, after a half century of camps and sieges. These are exceptions, which rather establish the rule than invalidate it. * A sound mind in a sound body' — that is the order of Nature — you may find a sound mind elsewhere, but it will be most un- fitly and inconveniently bestowed. The body can endure a divorce far better than the mind. In fact, we see bodies breathing, moving, acting all around us, which seem to per- form their proper functions tolerably with the aid of very little mind — almost none — but a healthful, clear mind in a dis- eased, decrepit, decaying body is a far more pitiable spectacle. It is a diamond in the clutch of a lunatic — to be gazed at a moment in wonder, then hurled into the depths of the sea. It is a freight of the wealth of the Indies, embarked in a tot- tering wherry, which is certain to sink in the first tempest. When I look around me, and recall the many noble, and brilliant, and greatly useful, who have sunk after a meteor- like career into premature graves, under the assaults of diseases insensibly contracted during their years of study 9 and mental acquisition, — diseases from which any tolerable knowledge, any careful investigation of the laws of Man's physical being must have preserved them — I am impelled to sound the alarm of danger alike to teachers and to students — to plead for the generation now in process of develop- ment and the generation to follow — and to warn the direc- tors of Education of the fearful responsibility which rests upon them — a responsibility which it is but charity to pre- sume very many of them do not even dimly comprehend. For, assuredly, they could not know that the hundreds of young men committed by anxious love to their charge were growing up in almost total ignorance even that they had physical constitutions to nurture and bring to vigorous matu- rity — in utter ignorance, quite commonly, of many of the inflexible laws on which their physical well-being depend — and not adopt some adequate measures to counteract and avert the danger. And yet, how little is systematically done, how little is even consistently, authoritatively said, in our seminaries of Learning, of the necessity and nature of a true Physical Education ? Shall this deficiency continue ? True Education is Development. It does not create the statue froin the marble — it only finds it therein and exposes it to the unimpeded, admiring gaze. But in what do our Educational processes tend to develope the physical man ? From the high, uncomfortable bench on which the child sits for hours at the common school in abhorred constraint and suffer- ing, watching in envy the flitting of every bird by the window, to the highest University, so called, we find scarcely a recog- nition that his mind is encased in a tenement of flesh and blood. He has teachers of Reading and of Grammar — Pro- fessors of Mathematics and of Ethics — of Languages and of Metaphysics — but the teachers of the laws of his oWn struc- ture and relations to Nature — the Professors of Health, of Strength, of Longevity, I think are mainly yet to be appoint- ed. Yet this ought not to be. The position of the young 2 10 student is surrounded with peculiar perils. From the field, the forest, the bustling ways of home and neighborhood, he is transplanted at once to academic shades, whose genius de- mands quiet, meditation, seclusion. No longer is the climbing of rugged hills, or the leveling of stubborn woods, the pre- paration for the evening's study and the night's rest. He is instantly confronted with two formidable dangers — that of falling into habits of physical indolence and excessive study, inducing indigestion and its long train of enfeebling horrors ; or his lithe frame revolts at the galling bondage, and he becomes a hater of books, a neglecter of studies, and gradu- ally addicts himself to habits of turbulence and wild excess. Henceforward his career need not be indicated — its course and its end are inevitable. I must press this point farther, for I feel that a reform with regard to it is most essential to the usefulness and honor of our seminaries. In too many instances has a Collegiate course, in view of all its consequences, proved a positive curse to a large proportion of the Class which sanguinely entered upon it as the unmistakable high road to eminent usefulness, recompense and fame. Alas ! a deadly serpent lurked in those calm, bright bowers which seemed to their first eager glances so alluring. A few days of eager study jaded their spirits and unstrung their nerves ; a languor and lassitude crept over them ; they fell into the company of those who had traveled that road before them, who suggested — " All study is dry work — let us solace ourselves this evening with a bottle and a feast." Thus is laid the foundation of habits which have dragged too many a youth of rare promise down to an untimely and dishonored grave — which have quenched the fond, proud hopes of admiring relatives in a deluge of sin and shame. Now it is the idlest folly to waste words in declaiming against these evils — we must trace them to their source and apply there an adequate preventive. We must begin by 11 teaching our Young Men the nature of their own frames, and the shocking violence they do to that nature by overtaxing its powers, and then drugging it with narcotics and stimulants to reanimate them. We must demonstrate to them the fact that any use of stimulants is a certain and fearful evil — that the effect we term drunkenness is only a benevolent effort of Nature to expel the monster which has been treacherously ad- mitted to her most sacred and vital recesses — and that the evil commences with the first particle of such substances which is thrust upon her, and the penalty is signal and certain although the second glass were never taken. All these truths and the kindred objections to narcotics, may easily enough be scien- tifically demonstrated — the mischief is that they are not. A man properly instructed, and as yet uncorrupted, would no more think of swallowing Alcohol than live coals or arsenic. And yet many have actually acquired the basest of habits — that of partaking of notoriously hurtful substances merely to produce a temporary and pernicious elevation of the spirits — within the precincts of our very Universities ! Shame is it to human ignorance — shame especially to those whose duty it was to dispel that ignorance in the case of these victims, and yet neglected it ! They cannot be excused, but we may drop a tear of pity for the victim of their neglect, so distorted and misdeveloped that he knows how to construe Greek, yet does not know enough to reject and loathe Tobacco ! You have already anticipated my statement that to a true and healthful development of the Man, I deem a constant participation in Manual Labor indispensable. Labor ! blessed boon of God, to alleviate the horrors and purify the tenden- cies of our fallen state ! when shall its benefits and its joys be brought home to each and to all ? We may make it a curse and a burthen by so regarding it, as we may any other bless- ing from Heaven, but the truth is irrepressible that only he who is familiar with Labor and loves it can either improve or enjoy life. The man whose only stimulant to exertion in aity 12 field is the hope of individual gain, can hardly have risen above the condition of a slave. We must learn to be true workers — our frames need it — our unperverted impulses demand it — our very souls, if unstifled, cry out for it. Most earnestly, then, do I record my protest against the all but universal prescription which divorces entirely profound Study from Manual Labor — which, in its attention to the intellec- tual and moral nature of the student, forgets that he has also a physical frame to be developed and invigorated. Of course, you will not understand me as assuming that the usual routine of student life forgets or disregards the necessity of physical exercise — I know better. I will not doubt that wherever thoughtful, conscientious and cultivated men have charge of the education of youth, there are, there must be, abundant inculcations of the necessity of exercise and the value of health ; also of the danger of losing the latter through the neglect of the former. I will not doubt that abundant oppor- tunities and facilities for exercise are everywhere afforded. Yet what is the result? Do the mass of our young men finish their studies with stronger constitutions, sturdier frames, more athletic limbs, than they brought away from their pa- rental firesides ? Not within the sphere of my observation — far otherwise. I have known many dyspepsias, consumptions, debilities, which traced their origin to the seminaries : I do not remember any that were cured there ; I have known the stout lad in the district school who graduated a feeble invalid from the university. My conviction is that the Physical de- partment of Education has decidedly retrograded since the days of Greek freedom and glory. Our prevalent error is not one of method and detail — it is fundamental. We have lost the true basis ordained of God for the harmonious and health- ful development of the whole human being, in separating the education of the Head from the education of the Hands. We have dared to disregard that Divine fiat, first of punishments JWr'tiicrefore first also of mercies — ' In the sweat of thy 13 face shalt thou eat bread ! ' Shunning this appointed path, we have sought out inventions, which we term Exercise, Recreation, Relaxation. Heaven placidly but inexorably disal- lows them. I do not say that for the cramped, soul-dwarfed, undeveloped miner, delving for six days of each week in some stinted Egyptian labyrinth in the bowels of the earth, there may not be appropriate recreation in the free air and sunshine. Malign Circumstance has grudged him a full development — his class are significantly advertised for as ' Hands wanted ' — not men. But to the true and whole man each successive duty is the proper relief from the preceding, and in the regu- lar alternation of labors — now those which tax mainly the Intellect, next those which appeal mainly to the Sinews — is the needed relaxation best attained. Thus only shall Life be rendered consistent and harmonious — thus shall each hour be dignified and rendered heroic. The division of the Race into two unequal, contrasted classes — the few Thinkers, the many Workers — has been and is the source of many and sore evils, including the loss of the fitting and manly inde- pendence of each. It is the source of infinite servility, false- hood and mean compliance. Not till we shall have emanci- pated the Many from the subjection of taking their thoughts at second-hand from the Few, may we hope to accomplish much for the upraising of the long trampled masses. Not till we have emancipated the Few from the equally degrading necessity of subsisting on the fruits of the physical toil of the Many, can we secure to the more cultivated and intellectual their proper and healthful ascendency over the less aflJluent in mental wealth. The plowman recognizes and appreciates Genius, Talent, Learning ; but he finds that these are too often directed to the acquisition of wealth and luxury by means which add little to the aggregate of human comforts, and rather subtract from his own especial share of them. The reprobate dreads the rebuke of the anointed reprover of sin ; but says, ^ He will hardly venture to arraign pointedly the 14 transgressions of one who contributes liberally to the salary which barely supports his expensive family.' Thus the divorce of Learning from Manual Labor — the absolute dependence of the Educated on the Uneducated class for the means of sup- plying its physical wants — becomes the source of endless and fatal compromises of Principle and perversions of Intellectual power. It avails nothing to point me to the failure, if it shall be so termed, of past attempts to reunite Study with Physical exer- tion — the affluent mind with the ready and skilful hand. These failures only prove the inadequacy of the effort, not that the object is unworthy, nor even unattainable. They have been impelled too often by low ideas of their own scope and purpose — by a consideration of the necessity to the stu- dent not so much of Labor as of Bread. Commenced in this spirit, the number of workers will inevitably dwindle till only those labor who must subsist on the fruits of that labor ; soon the class distinction of Gentlemen and Peasants reappear; invidious comparisons, sneers and sarcasms beget hatreds and collisions ; and one class or the other — probably both — make their exit ; the institution explodes ; and the superficial multitude unhesitatingly pronounce the idea of uniting Labor with Study proved impracticable and absurd ! The fatal error here was obviously that of putting the new wine into old bottles. The impulse to the enterprise was not a conviction of the necessity, healthfulness and dignity of La- bor — not even the idea of Duty as commanding a participa- tion in the toil needful to the sustenance and comfort of Man — but at bottom the pauper's necessity, the slave's dread of the lash. This may facilitate and ensure the production of corn — never of true men. Not until Labor shall be joyfully and proudly accepted as a genial and beneficent destiny — as the needful exercise and complement of our else undeveloped or perverted faculties — may we rationally hope for any per- manently satisfactory result. 15 And here you will permit me to hazard a criticism on so much of our educational processes — no great portion of any college course, I will hope — as are undertaken for the sake, it is said, of ' disciplining the mind.' I ask a student- friend why he, who is aspiring to the Christian Ministry, should devote so much time to a science so little pertinent to his future calling as Mathematics, and he answers that the study of Mathematics is an admirable discipline for the mind ! Need I say to you that I neither appreciate the force of the reason nor discern the benefits of the discipline ? I do not say that this or any other science may not be eminently calcu- lated to subserve the purpose contemplated — I simply demur to the necessity or fitness of pursuing mental discipline apart from healthful mental activity in the sphere of practical life. Does the youth contemplate the pursuit of Astronomy, Engi- neering, or any sphere of usefulness requiring the aid of the exact sciences — then let him devote his student years in part to Mathematics, and master them thoroughly. But if he contemplate pursuing either of the three leading professions, Theology, Law or Physic — I distrust the wisdom of such a devotion of his time. This life is too short to justify the acquisition of abstruse sciences on such grounds. The mind is best disciplined when it finds its pleasures in its duties — when all its laborious acquisitions are turned to direct and palpable account — when its every impulse is toward utility and beneficence. We give tl^e child playthings because we know not or have not what we should give him — did we know all things, command all things, we should improve his every desire to subserve directly some useful end. His toys would be tools, or at least demonstrations of some truth adapt- ed to his opening mind. He should be wiser for every walk — more skillful for each hour's diversion. In our ignorance or fond thoughtlessness, we waste half the golden opportuni- ties of the most impressible period of life, and misimprove a portion of the remainder. It were well to remember that a 16 benign Creator has enfolded the mental casket we contem- plate, and that it needs not to be pressed and fashioned, but simply developed. The disciphne it requires, if unstifled, unperverted, is induction into whatever is peculiar to that sphere of laudable endeavor to which it is specially devoted. And here let me state fairly the objection of the Utilitarian school to the acquisition of the Dead Languages, which I find often commented on and controverted without being at all apprehended. We do not, we never did, deny the utility of these Languages to many — it would ill become us to do so — ill become any rational beings. We admit — nay, insist, that there are large classes to which a thorough knowledge of one or more of the Languages in which the noblest, most inspiring ideas of Antiquity lie inurned, is indispensable. The Christian theologian needs a mastery of Greek and Hebrew; the Physician, the Botanist, the thorough Lawyer, of Latin. But, beyond and above these, the world needs and is deeply indebted to the illustrious body of Scholars, Learned Men, who as Professors, (O most desecrated term !) Historians, Philosophers, Poets, Critics, are constantly irradiating and instructing the Present by the light of the Past. Noblest, least obtrusive of our teachers, — we could not dispense with these — we are in no danger of honoring them too highly. But it is not given to every man — it is permitted to few — to be of these, and it is preposterous to subject the multitude of com- paratively educated persons to their ordeal in the idle hope of producing any such result. You cannot make Scholars of these — you have enough to do to render them passable attor- neys and doctors, in the common way. And if they are to be such and nothing more, you must allow me to believe that their College years might be better devoted than to the acquisition of Greek and Latin — oftener practically forgotten in two years than really learned in three. The simple and notorious fact that they usually are so forgotten — that they are to most educated men (so called) in the busy walks of 17 life but a foggy reminiscence of dull days wasted and dry tasks slighted, is their sufficient condemnation, The truth is that the fatal evil of pecuniary dependence is not always unfelt even by those who hold the responsible position of directors of the highest education of our youth. A President or Professor who should frankly tell the parents of a proffered student that their son might make an excellent blacksmith or carpenter, but would neither be eminent nor happy at the bar nor in the pulpit, would probably incur resentment and a withdrawal of patronage — and yet how often ought such truth to be frankly, kindly told ! It would frequently save much waste of energies and means, much weariness and heart-ache. The true, though rugged man who has nobly gathered a competence by following the plow, would feel offended if assured that his son was so fit for no other vocation as that of a farmer — though that were a gen- uine tribute of respect to the dignity of the vocation, and the honest worth of the youth. We are here confronted by the low idea which everywhere prevails of the true rank of useful manual toil — by none so cherished, as by those who themselves toil, except by the empty demagogue who windily babbles in bar-rooms of the rights and dignity of Labor, hoping to compass thereby the means of avoiding Labor. The farmer will not feel gratified, though he should, if assured that he can give his son no fitter, no better caUing than his own ; the hope of the family must be trained to the chicanery of Law or the futility of Medicine in order that he may duly honor his kindred, though he may be reluctant to enter, or at best have manifested no genius or taste for the calling thus thrust upon him. This is in the true spirit of the illiterate farmer who insisted on having a sermon in Greek, on the ground that he paid the clergyman for the best, and would have it. Thus our higher Education becomes a bed of Procrustes — excellent for the few whom Nature has just adapted to it — but a very different affair for all be- 3 18 side. We shall learn yet to study the unfolding genius of the youth — to be guided by this rather than attempt to overrule it — and to leave to the directors of Education a larger dis- cretion in the premises than they have usually hitherto enjoyed. In the lamentable divorce of Learning from Labor — of the highest Intellectual culture from the greatest Industrial capa- city and efficiency — do I detect the origin of that deplorable discord which prevails between the teachings of our Schoolmen and the edicts of Legislators, between the lessons of our Liter- ature and the spirit of Communities and States, with regard to Political Economy. Vainly do our Colleges, the wide world over, indoctrinate nearly all the leading minds of the age with the distinctive principles of Adam Smith and his followers — their labor may be lighter than that of Sysiphus, but their fortune is inevitably like his. On a few minds, remarkable rather for speculative than for practical ability, they make a durable impression ; but with the majority their plausible inculcations are overborne by the observation and experience of a few succeeding years. Those originally most captivated by the theory of 'Laissez /aire,' soon dis- cover, on passing out into the actual world, that all Life is, all Legislation must be, in contradiction to its spirit. A man who should be left to grow up on this fundamental principle of the Free Trade philosophy, would, if by some miraculous chance he survived to maturity at all, be a most unmitigated savage, and a bad specimen even of that forlorn condition. A great Nation which should really and fully adopt the cor- responding theory of National Economy, and, by dispensing with all Industrial and Commercial Legislation of its own, leave its Labor and Trade wholly at the mercy of Foreign regulation, would soon have little left wherewith to tempt the cupidity of Foreign policy. There never yet was, there never can be, a Government of a civilized, accessible, enlightened, wealthy Nation which acted consistently and thoroughly on the principle of Free Trade for a single generation — no, not 19 for ten years. Superficial men may dilate on the unsafeness of following Theory, the discrepancies between Theory and Practice, and the like fig-leaves of seeming Wisdom where- with Folly is wont to enrobe herself — but there is in truth no such discrepancy. A sound theory is always a safe one — it may fearlessly be reduced to practice and followed to the end. When a Statesman rises in your halls of Legislation and tells you that a certain theory is indeed sound and worthy of gen- eral acceptance, but it must be postponed in this particular instance, because of the depression of Trade, the distresses of the Laboring Classes, or on any such ground, be sure that either he or his theory is hollow and untrustworthy. More probably both of them are so. For, were the theory sound, the earliest moment would be the best moment to reduce it to practice, and whatever the embarrassments existing, they but furnish additional arguments for its instant adoption. Their existence argues a wrong somewhere, and demands that every known wrong be instantly redressed. To say that a theory is sound, and yet act in contradiction thereto, is to dethrone eternal Right and exalt a fleeting, unstable, unrighteous Expe- diency in its stead. Whatever is true in Theory is desirable in practice, and desirable to-day. But the elemental Free Trade assumption is not true. ' The best government is ' not ' that which governs least,' or no government at all were clearly better still. ^ Trade will ' not ^ regulate itself so as to secure even *the greatest good of the greatest number,' though I insist that it is not the good of the greatest number but of the whole number which com- munities and governments are bound unceasingly to seek and to secure. It is not true that the largest possible average or general reward of Industry is that which it would secure in the total absence of Governmental regulation. The grain- grower of the valley of the Wabash or Illinois, for example, could never receive the fullest reward of his toil, the largest return for his bounteous harvests, while the producer of his 20 cloths, his wares, his glass, his cutlery, &c. remained on the other side of the Atlantic, The fact that they do remain there compels a large export thither of his bulky Agricultural staples, at an enormous cost for transportation, and inevita- bly involves a corresponding and permanent depression of the prices of those staples. If England may obtain Wheat from the Black Sea and the Baltic at an average cost of one dollar a bushel, (as she can, very nearly,) then his must be largely sold in England at that price, though the cost of transporting it thither amounts to three-fourths of that sum. The residue, small as it is, must be the standard price of his wheat at the point of production. But change your policy so as to bring the producers of most of the fabrics which minister to his convenience and comfort from Sheffield and Birmingham to the banks of his own gentle rivers, or of their more impetu- ous tributaries, or divert a portion of the grain-growers already there into the various pursuits of Manufacture, and now you have ensured a higher price for Grain and a larger reward to the industry of its producer. He will not merely receive more money for his yearly product than he could have done for a long, indefinite period if Manufactures had been left to grow up around him, by the slow, capricious efforts of unaided individual enterprise, exposed to the relentless hos- tility of their alarmed and skillful, wealthy and powerful For- eign rivals, but he will receive a far greater aggregate of the various articles he desires in exchange for his own surplus productions. The reason why this is inevitable is that the number of actual producers, the amount of aggregate product, is immensely greater than formerly. Of a thousand workers there were originally three hundred in Illinois producing Grain, two hundred in Europe fabricating various products to be exchanged for the Grain, and the remaining five hundred employed as wagoners, boatmen, sailors, forwarders, mer- chants, etc., in interchanging the Provisions and the Manu- factures between their respective producers, and living (as 21 they must) out of the aggregate product. Now, with the workshops attracted to the westward of the Alleghenies, there are but one hundred required to effect those exchanges, releasing four hundred from various non-productive functions, and reinforcing by so many the body of actual producers of wealth. The consequence, most manifestly, is an increased production and accumulation of wealth, to be evinced not in store-houses filled to bursting with unneeded food and cloth- ing, but in the improvement of wild or waste lands, the erec- tion of buildings, and the multiplication of books, schools, implements, and every thing which conduces to human com- fort and well-being. There is no mystery, no magic, no juggle in the increase of National Wealth by an enlightened and judicious Protection of Home Industry — an increase of the wealth not of one nation merely, but of the People of all Nations. It operates by giving Idleness employment, and rendering Labor more effective. There is nothing narrow, partial, envious, exclusive, in the policy of Protection, rightly understood and rightly pursued. That we should systemati- cally produce for ourselves and not purchase from other coun- tries whatever articles may with substantially as little labor be produced here as elsewhere, is the dictate not only of a wise Patriotism but of a generous Philanthropy. It is the perma- nent, universal interest of the Toihng Millions of all climes that the exchanges of their productions be rendered as direct, simple, unexpensive, as possible ; but a bloated and superflu- ous Commerce, regarding simply its own profits and not the general good, may, in the absence of Protective Legislation, defeat this consummation, or at least postpone it for years. We may clearly be able — we are able — with our Home Market secured to us by such legislation, after vanquishing the difficulties presented by utter inexperience, to fabricate our own Hardware and Glass, our Pins and Penknives, much cheaper than we could purchase them from England — no matter though they were made somewhat lower there — and 22 yet we should not be able in fifty years to naturalize and esta- blish, under the batteries of destructive Foreign rivalry, so as to be beyond the reach of its capricious competition, the various arts and processes required for their production. A hundred farmers of Illinois, combining or resolving singly to purchase only Home Manufactures, might not raise the market price of their Agricultural staples one per cent, though the agreement of the Community, expressed through a Protective Tariff, to consume only or mainly Domestic fabrics, securing the Home Production of those fabrics and the consequent Home Consumption of the Agricultural staples, would inevita- bly raise the price of the latter by fifty to a hundred per cent. To repeat, then, the parrot phrase that ' Trade will regulate itself,' meaning that individual avarice and anarchical compe- tition will work out the most beneficent general results, is a futility unworthy of this enhghtened age. As well leave a necessary canal to dig itself, or be scraped out from time to time by the voluntary efforts of those who chance to live on its borders. The seeming personal interest of many of them will often be directly adverse to its construction at all, im- pelling them to impede rather than advance it. General good is only to be attained through general effort — system- atic, harmonious and far-sighted. Left to the mercy of indi- vidual selfishness and caprice, it will rarely be compassed at all. But I do not merely challenge the Economical soundness of the Free Trade system — my objection is deeper, broader, and more vital. I object that it fails to recognize and respect the more important use and purpose of Industrial effort. I object that it regards Labor only as a necessary means of supplying Man's sensual wants, and not at all as Divinely appointed for the discipline and development of our Race. It regards the Corn and the Cloth as the only results of Indus- try ; and takes no account of that nobler product, the Man. It everywhere assumes as unquestionable that if our Peo- ple, or those of any section, as a mass, a community, can 23 realize a greater aggregate of wealth by devoting their ener- gies wholly to some single function or department of Industry — the growing of Cotton, for example — then it would be clearly their interest and duty to do nothing but grow Cotton, and with this purchase everything else they need or desire, made ready for use abroad. But this I most strenuously deny. We might so have more goods for a season, but less good — more sensual gratification, but less Intellectual expan- sion and force. A new art, a new caUing, introduced among a people, is a new seminary for that people. It awakens inquiry, elicits ideas, suggests improvements even in old pro- cesses and inveterate habits. It has a decided value, though not precisely calculable in dollars and cents. The boorish- ness of manners, the* vacuity or stupor of mind, of a youth trained in the dull routine of a single pursuit and ignorant of the processes of all others, contrasts strikingly with the rapid- ity of thought, freedom of manner, and fertility of resource, of his fellow who has been reared in observing contact with the multiform processes of a hundred surrounding avocations. It is thus that the City lad usually appears to advantage beside the rustic who has grown up in some secluded valley, even when the latter is the more favored by nature and more informed by the study of the schools. The vast domain of Industry is and must be the University of the great majority — it is of the highest public importance that none shall be restricted therein to a single acquirement, but that the educa- tion it affords shall be diversified and thorough. But it is not merely true that the ultimate uses and full beneficence of the Divine appointment of Labor as the proper condition and essential element of human development and well-being can only be realized where that Labor is diversified and elevated, not monotonous and degraded — it is also true that, though the majority might possibly find a pecuniary and sensible advantage in a National Industry restricted to one or two pursuits, there would be numerous classes condemned to 24 helplessness and dependence thereby. Let a whole commu- nity be purely Agriculturists, purely Iron-workers, or entirely devoted to any branch of Industry, and there must be a large proportion of its members who from inadequacy of strength or of skill, from considerations of age or of sex, will be un- suited for efficiency in that especial field of effort — conse- quently, for the most part idle or but partially employed and meagrely rewarded. There will be seasons when, owing to unfavorable markets, the whole Industry of such a community will be suspended or unrecompensed, as well as classes which habitually earn little or nothing. Under such circumstances, the laborer becomes the thrall of the capitalist, just as the Egyptians did of Pharaoh during the seven years of famine ; while those whose capacities are not suited to the demands of the branches of industry there mainly pursued, are habitually, inevitably dependent on others for the means of subsistence. A new branch of Industry naturalized in any country is a vir- tual Declaration of Independence for a portion of its before subject people. There can be no emancipation of the Labor- ing Mass from a virtual bondage without a liberal and thor- ough diversification of Industrial pursuits ; and though this is profitable in every way, it is too vastly important to be deferred to any mere pecuniary consideration. If it were true that it must cost us more, according to the narrowest dol- lar-and-cent reckoning, to manufacture for ourselves than to buy of others the products of manufacture, the interests of Labor and of Man would still imperatively require us to secure the supplying of our own wants, so far as Nature interposed no obstacle, by the skill and effort of our own People. Not individual Man only, but the Nation as an aggregate, demands that symmetrical and thorough Development which is to be attained only through a many-sided Industry. You will bear with one more illustration of the blindness which has befallen Learning through its divorce from Labor. I allude now to the discussions which have arisen in our day 25 respecting the organic Reform of Society. We of the Move- ment are not surprised to hear from the lips of Ignorance and a purbhnd Selfishness the cavils which befit and bespeak their sources. We are not surprised nor vexed to hear from such that Industrial Association is but another device to get the goods of the thrifty and prudent within the grasp of the knavish and prodigal — that no house was ever large enough for two families — that no man will work unless impelled to it by appetite or avarice — or any of the sage and well-con- sidered objections which we are required to meet as profound novelties, or novel profundities, day after day. From the class wherein such objections properly originate, we receive and answer them with indomitable patience. Neither ^re we surprised that a well-meaning man, with a brain by nature and habit nicely adjusted to the reception and retention of one idea at a time, is afraid that if he accepts the thought of a Social condition based on brotherhood and love, he must eject his Religion, or his Family ties, or some other cherished possession, to make room for it. We see that the man wants expansion — he must have more room before he can render more hospitality — and we are but moved to more energetic and untiring effort in the great work of whose necessity he is so striking an evidence. But when the objections of the ostler and the nurse confront us from the rostrum and the pulpit — when they overwhelm us in the magisterial dictum of the Professor — when the annihilation that we cannot realize in the Judge's argument overtakes us in the Judge's frown — what shall we think or say ? The narrowness and obliquity of the depressed and benighted was saddening; but when that which should be light but deepens darkness; whither shall we turn for a ray ? Whither but to the great central truth of which we are the imperfect advocates ? We of the Movement maintain a position which need not be deemed ambiguous and ought not to be regarded with distrust or aversion by any generous, lofty mind — by any hopeful, loving heart. We maintain that Industry, now too often 4 26 degraded and repugnant, may be everywhere elevated and rendered attractive, so that not the result only but the process shall be a source of daily joy. We contend that the anarchy between Labor and Capital which now glaringly prevails all around us may be replaced by a better system, wherein a just and settled proportion of product shall be accorded to each, and the present alienating, disorganizing, depraving, universal struggle to secure more wages for less work or more work for less wages, shall be banished forever, taking unfaith- fulness on the one side and extortion on the other along with it. We maintain that, in this bounteous creation of our God, a man standing idle for want of employment, or even of suitable employment, when there is scarcely a square mile of the earth's surface which would not reward ten times the labor ever yet bestowed on it, is a grievous wrong and a bitter reproach to our whole Social Economy, wherein the cunning and the strong secure a certain portion of comfort and luxury to themselves by means which leave the simple and the feeble to famish. We contend that the Rights of Property in the earth, so wisely and necessarily guaranteed to the fortunate possessors, were granted not that the many might be excluded from the common source of sustenance, but that they might be enabled more securely, peacefully, advantageously to de- rive their subsistence therefrom, and that the Right to Labor, and to receive the rewards of Labor, pertains to every indi- vidual where the right to the Soil, originally free and common to all, has been granted away to a part. We maintain that, as no man, clearly, would have a moral right to acquire the ownership of all the earth and, forbidding any to cultivate or dwell on it, starve the Race to death, so no one can have the moral right to do this in part, by monopolizing the land and keeping it unproductive for the gratification of his pomp and avarice, while hundreds around him are suffering for the want of it. In fine, we hold that all individual rights are held sub- ordinate to the demands of Universal Beneficence, and though Human Law may not prescribe the limits of such rights and 27 provide against any overstepping them, yet the Divine Law condemns every act which finds its end in self-gratification by means which trench on the well-being of others. We main- tain that the isolated family is not the most perfect form of the household — that immense economies, both in production and consumption, are attainable by Combined Effort, directed by combined experience and wisdom — that a true and full Education, such as is not possible under the isolated system, will be all but inevitable in the Combined Order, with its schools beneath the common roof for every department of Knowledge and Art, presided over by instructors chosen from the whole body because of their observed and tested capacity to teach, and not of their indisposition to work — but, above all, its extensive, infinitely diversified, carefully perfected pro- cesses of Industry in action all around the young learner. We maintain that only in such a relation, based on a pro- found sentiment of Human Brotherhood, can be wrought out the emancipation of the Laboring Class from practical servi- tude and the haunting dread of destitution, — from Ignorance, Degradation and the apathy of departed Hope. We main- tain that for Woman, from infancy a toy or a slave, so often condemned to mercenary Xnd loathed marriages, or a useless and joyless loneliness, by an education and by Social usages which deny her the means of essential independence, there is no hope but in a truer Social condition, and enlarged oppor- tunities for Knowledge, liberal Culture and Industrial useful- ness which the Phalanx alone can afford to all. We maintain that only in a Society which puts an end to the interminable vagrancy of Labor anxiously seeking employment, and often seeking long and hungrily in vain — which banishes Commerce and Wages, with their incessant temptations to selfishness, avarice and dishonesty, — which secures Development and Opportunity to all, with Plenty and Comfort to every one who will use the means he possesses of acquiring them — wherein Love to God and Man will constitute the moral atmosphere, and Progress in all good the universal aspiration, — can the 28 benign purposes of Heaven be fulfilled and the Destiny of Man on earth accomplished. If there be any who object that the Social Movement of our time is defective in method or in purpose, we simply invite them to embrace and pursue it by that better method, with that better purpose, which their criticism implies. If there be any who object that only publicans and sinners are en- gaged in it, we ask them to dignify it with their weight of character and hallow it with their sanctity. If they deem its advocates heretical in faith or deficient in piety, how much larger and more inviting is the field wherever they are called to exemplify the influences of a true faith and of a saintly life ! Assuredly, there is no necessary heresy or impiety in effort to supplant Divergence by Convergence of Interests — to replace envious Competition by generous Cooperation — to banish Strife and Want, and establish instead Concord and Plenty ; and if any has been engrafted thereon by injudicious or incon- siderate partisans, it will be easy tp demonstrate the fact by an effort based on better principles, and made in a more catholic spirit. We may be sure that every sincere, unselfish effort to do good is based on a Religion which cannot be false, and a Faith which takes hold on Heaven. Now it weighs httle with us that those who never thought seriously, candidly, of this subject for two hours, perceive obstacles in our path which to them seem insurmountable — for we have traversed the quagmires in which they now flounder and know that they are not impassable. It is no tidings to us that time, and effort, and sacrifice, will be requi- site to secure what we contemplate, and that the grave will probably close over the present generation before half that we foresee and struggle for can be attained. Neither can failure in practical trials discourage us, for we anticipate successive and often mortifying failures. The inadequacy of means, the absence of that every-day wisdom learned only in the school of experience, the imperfection of men, all unite to assure us on this point. But we are sustained by an undoubting faith 29 that whatever of possible good has been revealed to the un- derstandings of men may be rendered practical by devoted and patient exertion. Through sacrifices, discouragements, reverses, and failures, the great work steadily advances step by step to its ultimate triumph. A hundred failures will not suffice to arrest it ; a thousand lives are already pledged to its steadfast prosecution ; and many thousands will be ready ere these are wholly spent. This wounded, bleeding body of Humanity shall yet be raised up and healed — the benefi- cence of God has decreed it ; the silent transformations of the ages have prepared the way for it. For a time may the Priest and the Levite distrustfully pass by on the other side ; but they shall yet recognize in this the work which they were appointed to aid and to compass, and shall exultingly share in the glory and the joy of its consummation ! I have thus far invited your attention to some of the de- fects, as they strike me, of our educational methods and aims, as exemplified in the practical errors and deficiencies in which they result. I need not, surely, now reverse the picture and exhibit at length the amendments I would with diffidence suggest. That Education should be based on Labor and directed thoroughly, discriminately, to practical ends — this is the immovable and universal foundation. If a youth is destined to be a Professor, a Physician, a Lawyer, a Poet, a Clergyman, let his higher education at every step contemplate that fact ; but let all his education, from infancy to maturity, regard the development and perfection of the Man. And as one battle contributes more than ten reviews or sham engagements to form the soldier, so one acquirement which commends itself to the student's regard by a direct and palpa- ble utility shall prove of more worth to him than a dozen which he is constrained to labor at as part of a prescribed routine, and (as he is told) to " discipline his mind." It is in life only that we learn how to live. The great ends of all study, of all acquirement, are ability and disposition to dis- charge more effectually our duties as men and as citizens. m The benefits of a true education commence with the indi- vidual, but pass directly and inevitably to the community. He who is not a better brother, neighbor, friend, and citizen, because of his superior knowledge, may very well doubt whether his knowledge is really superior to the ignorance of the unlettered many around him. He whose education has not taught him to shun Vice and loathe Hypocrisy, — has not taught him to prize lightly the pleasures of Sense, the pos- session of boundless Wealth, and the pomp of Public Station, has been taught to little purpose, and should be sent back to his hornbook. Far be it from me to decry Ambition. There is a generous and lofty aspiration for the blessing of the present, and the admiring regard of future generations, which has doubtless been the main-spring of many a self-denying act of devotion to human welfare — of many an illustrious and eminently useful career. Let this be held in due honor, that those who do not find in the consecration of their every faculty, every hour, to the good of their Race the proper and ample reward of such consecration, may unite in the good work, though from a motive less exalted. I can comprehend an ardent desire for Public Station and even for Riches, springing from a consciousness of capacity to wield the power thence accru- ing to the signal benefit of mankind. It is this which excuses the thirst for oflice we often detect in men who by nature are clearly above receiving either consideration or renown from any post whatever. Yet I trust this will not much longer continue — that the increase and diffusion of Knowledge, ensuring a more just and general discrimination of the real from the factitious, will gradually work a separation of real Power, as well as of popular homage, from Station undignified by the Virtue and Ability which should be essential to its attainment. Our Country has enjoyed — shall I say, has enjoyed ? — a remarkable example of the impotency of mere station, however lofty, to confer respect or substantial power — may we not hope that the salutary lesson will be widely and lastingly heeded ? 31 Yet I confess that I find or fancy a perverted and groveling Ambition alarmingly prevalent among our Educated Young Men, and that the hope of awaking in some minds a nobler and loftier impulse has been instrumental in bringing me be- fore you. It seems to me that, while our higher Culture is far more vague and indiscriminate than I could wish it, the purposes and aims of those who acquire that Culture, are too generally special and personal to an extent equally faulty and even more pernicious. Nine-tenths of our Educated Youth pass through College to fit themselves for this or that profess- ion—very rarely that they may be simply better men. If they intently explore and unseal the fountains of Knowledge, it is not that they, and all men, and the parched earth, may be freely refreshed by the bubbling element, but that they may sell it by the penny's worth to the thirsty wayfarer. I am not satisfied with the aspect here presented. I do not object to the adequate reinforcement of the Professions from the ranks of the Educated ; but I demur to the devotion of the Educated Class, of the entire facilities and means of a lib- eral Culture, to the filling of the Professions. It seems to me, if not a profanation, at least an impotent conclusion, when a young man who has spent some years in intimate and delight- ed communion with the Philosophers, Poets and Sages of all times, subsides into a mere dispenser of medicines or drawer of declarations. I would not undervalue the Professions as spheres of usefulness, though I am in small danger indeed of overvaluing them ; but I insist that the Man and the Scholar shall not be swallowed up in the Lawyer or the Doctor. I insist that he shall not consider the Profession the object and end of his Education, but shall still employ the latter to qualify him for higher and more varied usefulness through all the scenes of life. What he has learned from Plato and from Newton, from the master-minds of our Race, let him, as opportunity shall offer, dispense freely and gladly to his less favored neighbors, till they too shall recognize and bless pro- found Learning as the guidance and the solace of mankind. 32 I have come naturally to the consideration of the position of the Educated Class in our existing Society, and the influ- ence they therein exert. Will any contend that this is what it should and must be ? Is our Public Opinion usually shaped and directed by that of the more elaborately Educated ? I think no one will pretend it. There are points wherein, no settled or strenuous opposition being offered, the sentiment of the College-bred class is accordant with that of the uneduca- ted ; but let a vital question arise, on which the oracles of the grog-shops shall generally take ground against the oracles of the schools, and can we hesitate as to which will triumph? Were our Educated Class really the leader of Opinion in the Country, could such atrocities as Lynch-Law and Repudia- tion ever be countenanced ? There is manifestly unsoundness here — evil which needs to be probed and cured. The Edu- cated Class is far less potential than it should be ; the mischief may be the Country's, but the fault is primarily its own. Its sources I have throughout been endeavoring to detect and ex- pose to your apprehension. It has been said by one of the most eminent scholars* of our time and country that " It is difficult for cultivated Pride to put its ear to the ground and listen to the teachings of lowly Humanity." I see how this may be difficult for Pride of any sort, but I deny that the voice of Humanity, however lowly, ought to be less welcome or less intelligible to the truly cultivated than to the uncultivated ear — far otherwise. But there is a half-truth at the bottom of this sentiment, and it bears to us an admonition. There is too little cordial sympathy — too little familiar and friendly inter- change of thought — between the better educated and the imperfectly instructed. There are too many barriers of form and usage between them. Each might learn much from the other — profit much by a nearer relation. Each may find ad- monition in the experiences of the other, if freely imparted. In the great convulsions now dimly apprehended but certainly * Hon. Geo. Bancroft — Address of Massachusetts Democratic Convention. 33 at hand, the well-meaning and right-thinking of each class will find a union essential to both. That enlightened Conser- vatism, which asks what it is that we should conserve, and what there is of abuse or injustice that should be cut away in order that what is valuable and precious mai/^be conserved—- that genial Reform which recognizes Harmony and Love as the elements of all true Progress, and shrinks from any changes impelled by Hatred and compassed through Disorder — are learning to know each other as brethren and natural allies. On the altar of a common danger, a common interest, may their union be indissolubly consummated ! I have said that the practical and treasured acquirement of the Educated Glass seems to me too special and individual, while their culture appears indiscriminate and general. Here in one of our rural townships is a limited number of persons — perhaps ten or twenty — who have enjoyed the benefits of a College education. Their literary acquirement of course far surpasses that of the great mass around them. But how are their neighbors and townsmen permitted to realize this ? Is it not quite common that their only experience of it is based on the hard words in an attorney's twenty fohos or an apothecary's account — words subsidiary to a still harder charge at the bottom of it ? May we not hope that this shall be amended ? — that the Educated Class shall yet be related to the less instructed many in a manner very different from this ? Why should not this class create an atmosphere, not merely of exemplary morals and refined manners, but of palpable utility and blessing ? Why should not the Clergy- man, the Doctor, the Lawyer, of a country town be not merely the patrons and commenders of every generous idea, the teachers and dispensers of all that is novel in Science or noble in Philosophy — exemplars of Integrity, of Amenity, and of an all-pervading Humanity to those around them — but even in a more material sphere regarded and blessed as universal benefactors ? Why should they not be universally — as I rejoice to say that some of them are — models of wisdom 5 34 and thrift in Agriculture — their farms and gardens silent but most effective preachers of the benefits of forecast, calculation, thorough knowledge and faithful application ? Nay, more : Why should not the Educated Class be everywhere teachers, through lectures, essays, conversations, as well as practically, of those great and important truths of Nature, which Chem- istry and other sciences are just reveahng to bless the Indus- trial world ? Why should they not unobtrusively and freely teach the Farmer, the Mechanic, the Worker in any capacity, how best to summon the blind forces of the elements to his aid and how most effectually to render them subservient to his needs ? All this is clearly within the power of the Edu- cated Class, if truly educated ; all is clearly within the sphere of duty appointed them by Providence. Let them but do it, and they will stand, where they ought to stand, at the head of the community, the directors of Public Opinion and the universally recognized benefactors of the Race. I stand before an audience in good part of Educated* men, and I plead for the essential Independence of their class — not for their sakes only or mainly, but for the sake of Man- kind. I see clearly, or I am strangely bewildered, a deep- rooted and wide-spreading evil which is palsying the influence and paralyzing the exertions of Intellectual and even Moral superiority all over our Country. The Lawyer, so far at least as his livelihood is concerned, is too generally but a lawyer ; he must live by law or he has no means of living at all. So with the Doctor ; so, alas ! with the Pastor ! He, too, often finds himself surrounded by a large, expensive family, few or none of whom have been systematically trained to earn their bread in the sweat of their brows, and who, even if approach- ing maturity in life, lean on him for a subsistence. This son must be sent to an academy, and that one to College ; this daughter to an expensive boarding-school, and that must have a piano — and all to be defrayed from his salary, which, how- ever liberal, is scarcely or barely adequate to meet the de- mands upon it. How shall this man — for man, after all, he 35 is — with expenses, and cares, and debts pressing upon him — hope to be at all times faithful to the responsibilities of his high calling? He may speak ever so fluently and feelingly against sin in the abstract, for that cannot give offence to the most fastidiously sensitive incumbent of the richly furnished hundred-dollar pews. But will he dare to rebuke openly, fearlessly, specially, the darling and decorous vices of his most opulent and liberal parishioners — to say to the honored dis- penser of liquid poison, " Your trade is murder, and your wealth the price of perdition!" — To him who amasses wealth by stinting honest Labor of its reward and grinding the faces of the Poor, " Do not mock God by putting your reluctant dollar into the Missionary box — there is no such heathen in New Zealand as yourself!" — and so to every specious hypocrite around him, who patronizes the church to keep to windward of his conscience and freshen the varnish on his character, ' Thou art the man ! ' I tell you, friends ! he will not, for he cannot afford to, be thoroughly faithful! One in a thousand may be, and hardly more. We do not half comprehend the profound significance of that statute of the old Church which inflexibly enjoins celibacy on her Clergy. The very existence of the Church, as a steadfast power above the multitude, giving law to the People and not receiving its law day by day from them, depends on its main- tenance. And if we are ever to enjoy a Christian Ministry which shall systematically, promptly, fearlessly war upon every shape and disguise of evil — which shall fearlessly grapple with War and Slavery, and every loathsome device by which man seeks to glut his appetites at the expense of his brother's well-being, it will be secured to us through the in- strumentality of the very Reform I advocate — a Reform which shall render the clergyman independent of his parish- ioners, and enable him to say manfully to all, "You may cease to pay, but I shall not cease to preach, so long as you have sins to reprove, and I have strength to reprove them ! I live in good part by the labor of my hands, and can do so 36 wholly whenever that shall become necessary to the fearless discharge of my duty ! " A single illustration more, and I draw this long dissertation to a close. I shall speak now more directly to facts within my own knowledge, and which have made on me a deep and mournful impression. I speak to your experience, too, friends of the Phoenix and Union Societies — to your future if not to your past experience — and I entreat you to heed me I Every year sends forth from our Colleges an army of brave youth, who have nearly or quite exhausted their little means in procuring what is termed an education, and must now find some remunerating employment to sustain them while they are more specially fitting themselves for and inducting them- selves into a Profession. Some of them find and are perforce contented with some meagre clerkship ; but the great body of them turn their attention at once to Literature — to the instruction of their juniors in some school or family, or to the instruction of the world through the Press. Hundreds of them hurry at once to the cities and the journals, seeking employment as essayists or collectors of intelligence — bright visions of Fame in the foreground, and the gaunt wolf Famine hard at their heels. Alas for them ! they do not see that the very circumstances under which they seek admission to the calling they have chosen almost forbid the idea of their succeeding in it. They do not approach the public with thoughts struggling for utterance, but with stomachs craving bread. They seek the Press, not that they may proclaim through it what it would cost their lives to repress, but that they may preserve their souls to their bodies, at some rate. Do you not see under what immense disadvantages one of this band enters upon his selected vocation, if he has the rare fortune to find or make a place in it ? He is surrounded, elbowed on every side by anxious hundreds, eager to obtain employment on any terms ; he must write not what he feels, but what another needs ; must ' regret' or * rejoice' to order, working for the day, and not venturing to utter a thought 37 which the day does~not readily approve. And can you fancy that is the foundation on which to build a lofty and durable renown — a brave and laudable success of any kind ? I tell you, no, young friends ! — the farthest from it possible. There is scarcely any position more perilous to generous impulses and lofty aims — scarcely any which more immi- nently threatens to sink the Man in the mere schemer and striver for subsistence and selfish gratification. I say, then, in deep earnestness, to every youth who hopes or desires to become useful to his Race or in any degree eminent through Literature, Seek first of all things a position of pecuniary inde- pendence ; leain to live by the labor of your hands, the sweat of your face, as a necessary step toward the career you contemplate. If you can earn but three shillings a day by rugged yet moderate toil, learn to live contentedly on two shillings, and so preserve your mental faculties fresh and unworn to read, to observe, to think, thus preparing yourself for the ultimate path you have chosen. At length, when. a mind crowded with discovered or elaborated truths will have utterance, began to write sparingly and tersely for the nearest suitable periodical — no matter how humble and obscure — if the thought is in you, it will find its way to those who need it. Seek not compensation for this utterance until compen- sation shall seek you ; then accept it if an object, and not involving too great sacrifices of independence and disregard of more immediate duties. In this way alone can something like the proper dignity of the Literary Character be restored and maintained. But while every man who either is or believes himself capable of enlightening others, appears only anxious to sell his faculty at the earliest moment and for the largest price, I cannot hope that the Public will be induced to regard very profoundly either the lesson or the teacher. Graduates, Students of Hamilton College ! a parting word with you ! Some of you have completed your studies and are now passing out into the actual world, to be followed in successive years by your brethren whom you now leave 38 behind you. I will not doubt that you bid adieu to these scenes with lofty purposes of usefulness — with a proper appreciation of the advantages over the great mass of your countrymen which have been here afforded you, and of the obligations which these advantages draw after them. I am not so far removed from youth as to have forgotten all its sanguine visions and generous aspirations. I bid you cherish them each and all, for they are wiser than the cold lesson which disappointment and experienced treachery may after- ward teach us. O be assured, above all things, that no generous and self-forgetting aspiration can ever be unwise or mistaken while the Universe obeys a sceptre and Earth revolves beneath the eye of a benignant Father ! I know not whether I may hope in this hurried communion to have implanted in one breast a clearer or nobler idea of the true purposes and aims of Life — I may not confidently trust that I have imparted to one mind a deeper disdain of those bubbles surnamed Luxury, Ease, Wealth, Power, Popularity, Honors, by which many an ardent and capacious soul has been deluded to its ruin. But you are by position Scholars, and by virtue of that position you must realize — at least, in your calmer and better moments, when that which is immor- tal is not stifled within you — that a true Life is the one thing desirable to Man on earth, for and in itself — that Virtue, being truly suehy transcends all idea of reward, and becomes to the spiritual What gravitation is to the material world — a law which will not be evaded. He who truly, fully appre- hends the one fact that God reigns knows all that can be of morality — knows that no conceivable divergence from the line of strictest rectitude, of loftiest endeavor, can possibly be otherwise than calamitous in and of itself, wholly apart from all extraneous conditions and consequences. I shall not, then, exhort you to follow Purity and Righteousness, since the admonition would imply a possible ignorance on your part of the existence of the All-Wise — of the laws of your own being. But I may warn you, friends 1 of the mistake so commonly 39 made by our educated youth of lingering long by the wayside of active life, under the pretence — very often alleged in good faith — of a w^ant of opportunity. O, deceive not yourselves thus, young men ! To the rightly constituted mind, to the truly developed Man, there always is, there always must be op- portunity — opportunity to be and to learn, nobly to do and to endure — and what matter whether with pomp, and eclat, with sound of trumpets and shout of applauding thousands, or in silence and seclusion, beneath the calm, discerning gaze of Heaven ? O realize that no station can be humble on which that gaze is approvingly bent — that no work can be ignoble which is performed uprightly and not impelled by sordid and selfish aims. It is a vital defect of our Society and our Culture, which you are bound to wrestle against and to overcome, that while an immensity of effort is ever needed, of true work remains undone, we are too generally dissatisfied with that which lies broad and plain before us, and waste our hours in seeking long and far for something loftier and nobler. We wander to the Poles and the Antipodes, vainly seeking for that which to the man at peace with himself is every- where, to the unquiet nowhere. Vainly sighing for the opportunity of some other, which his genius and ready accept- ance have made the basis of an illustrious and dazzling career, we neglect and sacrifice our own. We speak regretfully of the age of Chivalry, the age of Heroism or of perilous and doubtful struggle for Freedom, as if we did not recognize that Man's struggle with darkness and evil is ever in progress, and that to render any age one of heroism nothing is wanting but heroic souls. Waiting for the dead Past to be acted over again for our selfish gratification and aggrandizement, we suffer the precious and living Present to ghde away from us, undervalued and unimproved. Says a deep, fearless thinker^ of our time, " To-Day is a king in disguise. To-Day always looks common and trivial, in the face of a uniform experience '^ Ralph Waldo Emerson — Lecture on ' the Times.' 40 that all great and happy actions have been made up of these same blank To-Days. Let us unmask the king as he passes." Yes, my young friends, here is our high privilege and our imperative duty — to discern and honor the disguised angels vv^hom God is ever sending to illumine and bless his earth. Not from among the children of monarchs, ushered into being vrith boom of cannon and shouts of revehng millions, but from amid the sons of obscurity and toil, cradled in peril and ignominy — from the bulrushes and the manger come forth the benefactors and saviours of Mankind. So when all the babble and glare of our age shall have passed into a fitting oblivion — vi^hen those who have enjoyed rare opportunities and swayed vast empires, and been borne through life on the shoulders of shouting multitudes, shall have been laid at last to rest in golden coffins, to moulder forgotten, the stately marble their only monuments, it will be found that some humble youth, who neither inherited nor found but hewed out his opportunities, has uttered the thought which shall render the age memorable by extending the means of enlightment and blessing to our Race. The great struggle for Human Progress and Elevation proceeds noiselessly, often unnoted, often checked and apparently baffled, amid the clamorous and debasing strifes impelled by greedy selfishness and low ambi- tion. In that struggle, maintained by the wise and good of all parties, all creeds, all climes, I call you to bear the part of men. Heed the lofty summons, not the frail messenger, and, with souls serene and constant, prepare to tread boldly in the path of highest duty. So shall Life be to you truly exalted and heroic ; so shall Death be a transition neither sought nor dreaded ; so shall your memory, though cherished at first but by a few humble, loving hearts, linger long and gratefully in human remembrance, a watchword to the truthful and an incitement to generous endeavor, freshened by the proud tears of admiring affection, and fragrant with the odors of Heaven ! 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 29JUN' ^9AB HflY3-'Bfi-10A|yt LOAN PEPT. 'N STACKS JON 151959 REC'D LD JULi i959 :^^W7^ KUgg ' ^ US JAN 3 1960 MAY 1 6 1968 LD21A-50m-9,'58 (6889sl0)476B General Library University of California Berkeley Gaylamount Pamphlet Binder Gaylord Bros.. Inc. Stockton, Calif. T. M. Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. Y.C ! O^-^f^^