THE PHILOSOPHY HUMAN NATURE. BY FRANCIS E. BREWSTER. " Shall I write only of the present times, and those wherein no other author has gone before me ? If so, I may probably give offence to many, and please but few. However, this does not at all discourage me, for I want not sufficient resolution to bear testimony to the truth."— Pliny, B. V. L. 8. PHILADELPHIA: GETZ & BUCK, No. 3 HART'S BUILDINC. 1851. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by FRANCIS E. BREWSTER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Penn- sylvania. PHILADELPHIA '. 1'. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. NOTE TO THE BEADEH Much has been written in one place which would seem perhaps to belong to another head. Some things may appear irrelevant and unconnected, many valuable thoughts have, no doubt, been omitted, and some things said may be unprofitable. It may also be objected that there is a repetition of things or principles, and that there are unnecessary or too highly- colored descriptions. To all which it is answered that the subjects treated of in these chapters are in their nature somewhat desultory and fugi- tive, rather than systematic. That they are in some measure complicated with, instead of being independent of, and separated from, each other. Some repetition becomes unavoidable, because the same im- pulses run into, and stimulate different operations of the mind, and are, therefore, explanatory of the various movements and effects of different results. The consequences set forth are after all joint productions of many principles and causes combining to produce them. In treating of these various causes and secret motives, it becomes necessary, therefore, to bring in more than once the same causes and effects to show up the same aims and designs. All measures, be they good or be they bad, are brought about not by a single cause or act, but by a combination of circum- stances, or a series of acts and causes, all concurring to produce them. IV NOTE TO THE READER. Truth will bear repetition, and often requires it to be heard and understood. The causes and acts which tend to destroy the peace and safety of society ought to be repeated often enough, and in language sufficiently loud and severe, to be heard and attended to, and understood by all those concerned. Eepetition is also in lieu of emphasis, or in the nature of a stress laid upon any event or any danger. If, then, by repeating existing evils, and tracing out their secret and hidden causes, the attention of the credulous and the unwary shall be called to them, so as to enable them to avoid danger, infinite good will follow. It must also be remembered that the mental faculties, secret propensities, and animal passions of man are so blended and interwoven together, that it is sometimes difficult from his actions to detect the impulses, or nominate the emotions, by which he is incited or induced to act ; and that he often acts under a combination of influences so hidden and mysterious as to baffle the most acute observation and profound experience. An abstract or theoretical dissertation, however profound and logical, will not expose his dark and lurking propensities. It can only be done by a careful scrutiny upon his sinister and unguarded developments. His craft and sub til ty are so deep and refined that this precaution is necessary to detect him. He must be watched in the first impulse of reason and passion, puberty and maturity, through all the exigencies of life. It cannot be done by hypothesis, generalization, or abstract reasoning. It must be done by the exposure of facts as tangible as physiological demonstrations made upon the vital sensations of the heart and the nerves. The mode adopted for the treatment of this subject is there- fore by chapters, under appropriate titles intended to define and indicate with graphic accuracy the moral and mental phases of his motives, impulses, and actions. NOTE TO THE READER. V The cases and examples employed by way of illustration are faithful representations of events and circumstances which have really occurred, unaided by embellishment or fiction. They furnish an imperfect glimpse at the revolving kaleidoscope of man's cunning devices and mysterious ways. While, for ages past, the popular arts and sciences, those which minister to the passions and cupidity of mankind, have been elaborately investigated and successfully explored, the illimitable and infinite occult mysteries of human nature, a thorough knowledge of which is so intimately essential to man's social safety and moral elevation, have nowhere been made the subject of a distinct philosophical disquisition. This undeniable omission of scientific research has left open and almost wholly unexplored a chasm in the dark mysteries of human nature, the neglect to examine into and penetrate which has come from a cowardly fear of self-exposure, or the egotism of self-sufficiency, self-knowledge, and self-complacency. No pretensions are here affected of a systematic analysis or scientific exposition of " The Philosophy of Human Nature." Its magnitude and importance require the research and learn- ing of ages ; all that is here attempted is to put down faithfully a few suggestions, observations, and developments, the result of the close experience of one man's life of sixty years, which may serve perhaps as a beacon-light for the young, and an in- centive to the aged for their contributions to a work which shall successfully solve the dark and wonderful problems of the human heart. FRANCIS B. BUEWSTEE. Education, CONTENTS CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. Manners, Mental Happiness, The Woof of Woe, Woman, Man and Woman, Before Marriage, After Marriage, Separation, - CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. 25 91 110 133 - 166 180 - 200 213 yiii CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. Inflexible Prejudices, - 239 CHAPTER XL Propensities, ___-.- 263 CHAPTER XII. Aristocracy, ------ 288 CHAPTER XIII. Slavery, 304 CHAPTER XIV. Cities, - - - - - - - 337 CHAPTER XV. The Wen and the Knife, ----- 358 CHAPTER XVI. Politics, ------- 381 CHAPTER XVII. Requisites for Office, ----- 405 CHAPTER XVIII. Public Opinion, Character, Dueling, and Self-Defence, 415 CHAPTER XIX. Governments, ------ 442 CHAPTER XX. Fanatics and Factions, - 462 CORRECTIONS Page 35, line 10, read are instead of " is." 1826 instead of " 1846." 1826, page 414, instead of " 1825, page 4-6." an hypothesis, instead of " a hypothesis." fugitive, instead of " fungative." work, instead of " worth." are, instead of " is." flexanimus : instead of " flexanimis." the second, third, and fourth paragraphs are ex- tracts, and not quotations. malum instead of " malus." 10, omit the word "not." read " Conscia mens recti famce mendacia ridet" for the last line. 40, « 3, 40, (i 4, 43, <( 21, 48, K 7, 63, « .18, 91, u 2, 125, K 13, 146, 186, C( 4, 209, " 10, 262, (( CHAPTER L EDUCATION. Education extensive in U. S, — will test the question— if it improves the morals and mind — If Napoleon had not been educated, query — Quacks, pettifoggers, &c. — But few minds strong enough for professors—Genius will rise — Education does not make mind — Too much expected from education — Ignorant parents cannot educate their children — Army and navy; examination periodically — Should be so with all professors, judges, &c. — But opposite extreme to be avoided — Poor schools like poor re- lief, for bread, &c. ; food necessary, &c. — Schooling a mere bounty — Factionists make it general to flatter the poor — Should be given to poor only ; and to them to read and write, and then learned trades, &c, — Takes time ; they should be at trades, &c— Great men self-educated — Morals — Mind — Passions — Mental Sensation — Will — Impulse — Deprav- ity — Millions ignorant of their own science — Man prone to idle- ness — Proper education useful — If all from 5 to 21 are trained in school, they cannot make livings — To make them work all this time is to be drudges — Should be practical, and before 21 — Apt to deteriorate after this — There should not be too many in the professions— Points dis- cussed, viz. 1. — No power to tax, but to school poo?- — the law. 2.- — If beyond 13, females, and 14 males. 3. — If for any, even below this, but poor. 4. — Effect of education, all from 5 to 21. 5. — Whether, if up to 21, improves the morals. 6. — If an education given by a general police regulation is not enough. Result of this if enforced properly: 1.— Streets clear of vagabonds. 2. — Property, person, and life secured. 3.— Gaming houses, &c, stopped. 4. — The bad would have no encour- agement. 5. — All that is robbed, &c, would be saved. 6. — Myriads would reform. — Childhood, time for education and restraint, indulged— Fine clothes, with pocket money — No boys now ; all are men — Ap- prentices refractory — Swarms of half learned in all employments-— Such of both sexes unfit for matrimony, and rush on it — Females taught music and frivolities, not necessary things — The entire system of educa- te 26 EDUCATION. tion involves life from its germ to the grave — Religion the true founda- tion of all education— Toleration of religion in the United States, infi- nite good. Education, that which we understand by schooling, is now being fully developed in the United States upon a much broader and more enlightened scale than it has before been tried. This will test the proposition whether the intellectual light obtained by a knowledge of the rudiments of learning will improve both the morals and understanding, and arm the mind against the seductions of sin and ignorance. No man in the United States can plead the want of means to learn how to read and study for himself. The Sunday Schools, Free Schools, and other schools, now embrace almost the entire infant population, and the next age will, perhaps, show a race of men superior in intelligence to any other nation in the world. It must be remembered that this light, like the rain from Heaven, falls upon the just and the unjust, fructifying and nour- ishing the rank and poisonous weeds as well as the tender grass. Whether this mental amelioration and education of the poor, who are well disposed, will not be counterbalanced by the ad- vantages in like manner given to the wicked and depraved in better fitting them for adroit perpetrations, remains to be seen. There is at this time a very great number of educated and artful knaves in the United States, who hold positions and places of influence and power, and are employed in, and pre- pared for schemes and plots involving the most pernicious and dangerous consequences to the private pursuits and public wel- fare of the people. Knowledge is power to the bad as well as to the good. If Napoleon had never known how to read, the career of his great genius might have been confined to piratical cruises on the Levant. By learning and knowledge he discovered his mind to be far above the masses. By these means he gained confidence in himself, and in the name of Destiny and Reason skilfully buccaneered upon the lives and treasures of a con- tinent. If the subjects of his venal ambition had been as enlight- ened as the inhabitants of the North American States now are, EDUCATION. 27 lie might have shrunk from ; or have been foiled in his experi- ment. Knowledge cannot be instilled into, or made to improve, or give additional strength to a weak mind — -on the contrary it inflates the vain, magnifies fools and dunces, and misleads the ignorant. A mere quack can be shunned, but it is extremely difficult to guard against the imposition of authorized and plausible blockheads. The American experiment of graduating ignorant clowns, and admitting to the practice as doctors and lawyers, un- schooled and lazy mechanics and presumptuous and broken- f down hostlers and peddlers, and dubbing the highest collegiate / degrees for favor and money on every audacious pretender, j has turned loose upon society an army of professional vaga- \ bonds, who have become a common and notorious nuisance to men of education and to the country at large. Unless oppressed, genius will have light, and to a searching ' and perspicuous intellect, knowledge then becomes power. If the lion knew his strength, he would not suffer him self to be caged. It is a momentous question big with curious reflections. The United States will soon double the force of the great political maxim, that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," for the enemies of its free institutions, by this system of edu- cation, are taught to feel and use their power for bad as well as for honest purposes. Perhaps there is too much expected from education. All men know by observation and experience, that honest labor is productive, and hence some are led to infer that an education must produce similar results. This would seem to be the con- clusion by which almost every mechanic and tradesman is governed, who, if able, most resolutely educate and supply all their sons, however numerous, with learned professions. Nothing can be more absurd. Being uneducated themselves, they do not know how to superintend the education of their children, and are therefore imposed upon by their being but half learned. The parents have no appropriate means of starting their sons in their own professions with the advantages of their ex- perience, credit, character and customers, as they could do if their boys were brought up for and began their father's busi- 28 EDUCATION. ness. And hence such candidates for patronage are compelled to commence life without any paternal or family patronage, to waste years in painful struggles to obtain a foothold, and often fail in the severe and trying experiment. There is no objection to the education of every man, but the error lies in expecting too much from it, in the supposition that it can make mind or create genius, whereas it takes from a boy's early years the time which should be used for acquiring a practical knowledge of some employment upon which he can depend for subsistence, instead of keeping him at schools where he gets nothing but habits of distaste for honest labor. There is not one man in ten thousand who has vigor of in- tellect sufficient for a learned profession. Give children suffi- cient schooling suited for their intended occupations, and set them to work. If they have mental faculties above this sphere, their indications of thought and mind will soon be de- veloped. They will be quiet students, and not brawling dan- dies; obedient and dutiful pupils; and grateful and respectful to their parents, instead of being blasphemers, rebellious, and dissolute. The community suffers the most incredible and serious inju- ries by the ignorance and negligence of persons engaged in scientific pursuits and in the professions. Apothecaries, chemists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, public officers, by favor, presumption, and trick, are permitted to begin without adequate preparation. They, therefore, abandon all research and improvement, and depend upon the plausibili- ties of address and speech for success. In the army and navy, besides an ascertained previous quali- fication, there is a board of aged and experienced gentlemen, who, at short intervals, thoroughly examine the surgeons and other officers. Their duties are placed upon the footing of col- legiate labor, in which the course of studies is for life, and in which there must be unremitted research, and conclusive evi- dence of improvement and progress, or the pupil is put back or dismissed. This wholesome discipline should be rigidly applied to all civi], as well as military and naval functionaries. Perhaps there is more reason for it in the former than with the latter class of individuals. There can be no objection to it on the score of disrespect. Gentlemen of moral rank and eminence in their professions EDUCATION. 29 could be appointed for the examinations, of whose good opinion any one might be proud. If the result is favorable, it will in- crease public confidence, and swell the reputation of the ex- amined ; and if it is unfavorable, they should be dismissed, and the people undeceived. No harm, and much good may come from it. The country is overrun with persons in all the relations re- ferred to, who never read or stud}-, or keep up with the improve- ment and progress of the age. Of doctors and apothecaries, who even lose their recollection of technical words ; of lawyers, who have no books, and spend their time in debauchery ; of judges, who read nothing but newspapers ; who loaf, lounge, eat, drink, and smoke perpetually ; dabble in politics j deal in lots, stocks, and lottery policies. The baker's bread and the butcher's meat can be tested by every one ; but the ability to do this does not apply to, and ut- terly fails in everything which depends upon art and science. The one is palpable to the senses ; and the other is obscured by deep and hidden mysteries. Knowledge and learning may be assumed with impunity by the crafty knave to the ignorant and unskilled, who should be indemnified against such frauds by certain and abundant scru- tiny. Nostrums, astrologers, pedagogues, demagogues, quack doctors, pettifogging lawyers, corrupt and ignorant judges, to which add dram-shops, monopolies, and gambling, have defiled the morals, fed upon the earnings, and tortured and slaughtered the people for ages. It is now high time that the good sense of mankind should banish them forever from the face of the earth, and that intel- lect, genius, true learning, industry, and integrity should every- where prevail. In the measures used to prevent these abuses, care should be taken not to run into the opposite extreme, by educating indis- criminately the whole mass of society. They should not all of them be educated as scholars ; some are required to do the necessary work of society ; and there is but a very small propor- tion who are capable of receiving an education in the arts and sciences, and who have capacities above the dependent occupa- tions of life. The poor school system is carried to an absurd extreme in gome places. The law as it originally was, and really should 30 EDUCATION. be, is, that " the poor shall be taught gratis:" that is, taught to read and write. This is all that was ever taught in the alms-houses, or to the out-door poor in any other country, or in this country, until misguided philanthropists and cunning poli- ticians contrived the present scheme.- Schooling to the poor is a public charity, as much as the sup- ply to them of victuals. The law puts them upon the same footing. It is like all other pauper bounty. The primary rules of organized society did not require from the public any pauper liability, except for animal necessities. There was no moral or mental aid embraced in this public duty. The public has added their agreement as is above recited. This is a gratuity, not a duty, and it is fraudulent to suffer its per- version to the accommodation of individual advantage, or to theoretical notions of general philanthropy. Because the people of Pennsylvania, for example, gratui- tously consent to tax themselves for the cost of teaching the poor, it does not follow that they shall be forced to support academies and colleges, where the arts and sciences are taught to all gratis. And that, by way of excuse for this favor, shall they be told that they also may send their children to these schools, and that they should do so to remove from the poor children the stigma of pauperism. There is no more reason why this benevolence should apply to the pauper relief, granted for the children of the poor to be taught, than for the children of the poor to be fed. The reason is not so strong for the first as the last case, be- cause to feed the poor is necessary, to teach them is a gratuity. A duty may, but a favor may not be demanded. A duty with all its incidents can be claimed and used as a matter of right, a gratuity cannot be claimed with allowances or enlargements. The one carries with it appurtenances, the other is confined and limited to its literal stint. The practical character of this theory would seem to be, that the public being bound to feed the poor, the leaders of factions who seek popularity by sinister pretensions of benevolence for the poor, by the apathy of the people, get the power into their own hands, of raising and using the money for this object, out of those who earn and save it, with which they build and furnish for themselves gorgeous palaces, and feed upon viands more sumptuous than those whose money pays the cost can afford to accommodate themselves with. EDUCATION. 31 Shall they be told to join this fraudulently got-up banquet, this pic-nic of poachers, so that by kind philanthropy the pauper pride of those they feed shall be soothed and compromised? What the public has agreed to do let it be done. But because they feed the poor gratis, it does not follow that they are bound to support them in affluence. And, because they have agreed to teach their children gratis, they are not bound to submit to the preposterous fraud of supporting colleges for the education of the poor, and to be told by these very paupers and their in- fatuated advocates, that the door is open for all children to walk into and be taught. It is an artful subterfuge for popular courtship. Teaching the poor how to read, and write and reckon, is all that was ever expected. These, including the first four or five rules of arithmetic, has been all that for ages has been cove- nanted for by indentures of apprenticeship; all that is necessary for their mental instruction and to enable them to transact their private affairs, and all that is ever required for any child who is not to be prepared for a learned profession or for some scientific pursuit; all that is necessary, and certainly all that is reasonable to require the public to pay for in any country, much more in the United States, where every man who has his health should be able by his own earnings to educate his children, without imposing upon the public, or degrading his offspring by pauper- ism, for their schooling any more than for their victuals or clothing. There is no difference in this respect between provisions and schooling, and no one with means who has the spirit of a man, would humiliate himself by sending his child to a free school any more than he would send him to a soup-house to get his dinner gratis. By this system, children are too often kept at these schools, without any definite object as to their subsequent employment, and for the mere accommodation of ignorant and capricious pa- rents, who are too stupid and vain to set their children at useful labor, by which they can earn honest livings and lay the founda- tions for future habits of industry. In the devise made by Stephen Girard, for the education of "poor orphans" provision is expressly made for their prepara- tion "for some suitable occupation" and it is given upon the ex- press condition : That at fourteen or eighteen years of age, " they shall be bound out to learn agriculture, mechanical trades, &c." n 1 32 EDUCATION, The present system has a tendency to make boys profligate, lazy and insolent, and imposes millions of taxes upon the com- munity in the name of charity, which is not so. Because a boy is destitute of a dinner, it does not follow that he is to be fed all his life. That having no clothes or home, he is to be clothed and accommodated with board and lodging for years, or that while he receives this aid he is to have it better than those who work to give it to him, and that if he does not know how to read, that his neighbors shall work and earn money to school him longer and better than they school their own children, or shall pay to keep him in a college, with expensive teachers and costly appliances for years, to acquire a profession which he may or may not pursue as he chooses, or which he may not have brains enough to follow, when the persons from whom this tax is impertinently extorted cannot afford thus to teach their own children. A common school for all to go to can no more be forced upo the people of the United States, than a common church. The poor school is a part of the pauper law to give the child- ren of the poor necessary mental as well as bodily food. What schooling is necessary is just so much as is required to enable them to read and write, together with the first rudi- ments of grammar, geography and arithmetic. After this they can read and study the Scriptures, and all other books for themselves if they choose and have the dispo- sition to do so. All this is proper, just and honorable. It is the benignant feeling of parental kindness, the benevolent spirit of aid and protection by a wise and righteous government. Beyond this limit the tax for, and the expenses of a free school should not go. None but the children of persons too poor to pay for schooling should go to such a school, and none but pauper children can go there without a gross fraud upon the public. If a boy has genius and is taught how to read and write, he will not be held in. His mind will vault up into the spheres of knowledge. He will acquire learning without being made a pauper to obtain it. There are more men perhaps in the United States, who have been educated in the schools in proportion to the number of their inhabitants, than in any other country. And notwitlu EDUCATION. 33 standing this, almost all of their distinguished statesmen, jurists, and learned men are self-taught. The education of children beyond the first elements, unless it be for some defined pursuit, such as navigation, surveying, mechanics, &c, and for the mere purpose of education, is wholly unnecessary. It cannot make mind any more than light can make the blind see. If the student be a dunce, education is wasted on him, and if he be not a fool, and does not use it for some useful and appropriate purpose, it is sure to do him more harm than good. It wastes all that part of his life in which habits of industry are formed, gives him a disrelish and contempt for labor, and makes him an idle leech, neither an independent, respectable working man, nor with the caste which is looked for in one who has been educated. He is generally a drone or a vagabond. "There is, perhaps, no trade or profession existing in which there is so much quackery, so much ignorance of the scientific principles, and of the history of their own art, with respect to its resources and extent, as is to be met with amongst mechan- ical projectors. The self-constituted engineer, dazzled with the beauty of some perhaps really original contrivance, assumes his new profession with as little suspicion that previous instruc- tion, that thought and painful labor, are necessary to its suc- cessful exercise, as does the statesman or the senator. Much of this false confidence arises from the improper estimate which is entertained of the difficulty of invention in mechanics; and it is of great importance to the individuals and to the families of those who are thus led away from more suitable pursuits, the dupes of their own ingenuity and of the popular voice, to convince both them and the publie that the power of making new mechanical combinations is a possession common to a mul- titude of minds, and that it by no means requires talents of the highest order. It is still more important that they should be convinced that the great merit, and the great success, of those who have attained to eminence in such matters, was al- most entirely due to the unremitted perseverance with which they concentrated upon the successful invention the skill and knowledge which years of study had matured." — B abb age's Economy of Manufactures, p. 212-13. Man has ever shown an irrestrainable propensity for abori- ginal idleness, and lawless liberty. He rebels against the 34 EDUCATION. sober dictates of wisdom ; and reluctantly yields to the con- straints of government. It is by the force of education that these propensities are reformed; it is an arduous and painful task; it requires the appropriate knowledge obtained in schools, practical instruction in the business to be pursued for a living in after life, temper- ance and patient industry. Without these elements of knowledge and self-constraint, there can be no useful education. The work will be but half done, and the pupil will enter life just so far unprepared for its competitions, as the advantages which those who are prepared will have over him. To train all men from five to twenty- one years of age, in school, where the precepts of morality and self-constraint only are taught, however refined in virtue, and purified by religion, they would be altogether helpless to themselves, and useless to society. To give them skill in the mere manual pursuits of life would produce a race of ignorant, sordid serfs; and to bring them all up in schools, would turn them out to scramble amongst each other for the common wants of life, amidst perilous excitements and crime. The theory which involves the exclusive application of either of these plans of education is fallacious and destructive. A mere scholar, a mere mechanic, a mere tradesman, or husband- man, at twenty-one years of age, without any knowledge or mental light, except what he obtains in acquiring these arts, is but half, perhaps not one-third or one-fourth educated. The advocates for the exclusive use of any one of these schemes are manifestly in error. They betray a want of that discrimination which is derived from the rudiments of a sound and general education ; and obviously show, that they are in- fluenced by the prejudices of some one only of these three modes of education, or that they have not been trained in the wholesome discipline of any school. Twenty-one years is the average life of man. All this time is occupied by the precarious and uncertain probations of mi- nority for helpless infancy, and mental and animal growth. In this period the habits and character are inflexibly established, and arc but seldom changed or modified in after-life. To press upon the mind before maturity, all the instruction EDUCATION. 35 and discipline it is able to receive, is of vital importance. It will be more apt to degenerate than improve afterwards. "We soon contrive substitutes for labor and patient toil. If illite- rate, we are too inert, to learn ; make a mark for a signature ; blunder through life in mental darkness ; with ample time and means for research ; and excuse our ignorance by affectations of contempt for learning. So that the imperious occasions for a suitable and appro- priate education, in all these fundamental branches of know- ledge, within the age of twenty-one years, is manifest. They must be obtained within that period of life, or they will, per- haps, never be acquired. The exceptions to this rule are so rare, and the facility with which genius seems to overcome the obstacles of ignorance and condition are so surprising, that the mind is led to the conclusion that there are but few who have faculties for advancement. If this be not a speculation ; if it is a fact that there are no mental energies capable of pro- gress "and improvement, except those which exhibit these pow- ers, the picture of human weakness and debility is humiliating, and the efforts of education are wasted upon ninety out of every hundred. There are, perhaps, more solid grounds for this con- clusion to rest on than the vanity of man, and the reciproca- tions of complacency which he is obliged to make, will con- cede. A candid and thorough scrutiny of this interesting subject might be regarded as invidious and uncharitable, but its statistics would be as curious as its results would be con- founding to the vapid pride of the pompous majority. Distinctions which are not founded in the elements and the useful fruits of education, but which rest upon their profession ODly, are artificial and pernicious. They inflate and puff up the pride, and encourage their possessors to insult modest worth. They pervert the legitimate purposes of knowledge and refinement from useful benevolence to selfish ostentation. Education should imbue the heart with humility, instead of arrogance. The latter too often characterizes the conduct of those who have graduated in the schools. The ignorance and vanity of parents sometimes induce them to heap upon their children classical educations, which they have no mental powers to use. To this they add a learned profession, and start them out into the world to be pitied and jeered at. A day laborer holds an elevated rank compared with such a being. 36 EDUCATION. If, to gratify his ignorance and vanity, a parent sees fit to ■spoil his own offspring, and render them ridiculous, there is no remedy for the evil ; but this responsibility should not be as- sumed by the public. The risk is inevitable and large, if every individual between five and twenty-one years of age is invited into the free schools and colleges to be educated at the public expense. There should be a reasonable certainty that the tree is of a stock that has borne good fruit, before the time and expense of Its nursing and growth are incurred, Not that the same sort of tree has borne fruit, but that the tree from which that seed or root comes, has borne good fruit. If it never has borne good fruit, it never will. There is many a scrubby bush and tree of the same name, which, if pruned, will spread and swell most proudly, but will bear no fruit The mental powers are like the moral propensities. If there is a natural predominance for evil, no act of goodness wilf ever be done, but from sinister motives ; and if there be not suffi- cient intellectual taste and strength to grasp and control the engines of knowledge and science, no teaching or instructio; will infuse these facilities into the mind. These distinguishing great leading traits of human charac- ter are as certain and unerring with men as they are with brutes. There is a race of donkeys with all classes of aniuialsj for which no extra trappings or training was ever intended. The drollery of their hideous heads and slinking tails, their goblin ears, unearthly sounds, is always magnified in an exact ratio to their affectations of the rampant steed. Universal education at the public expense is unlawful beyond its first rudiments for the purposes of business, and for those who are not designed for the professions, it is useless. An exami- nation of this subject is proposed to be made as follows: — 1. The power to compel the people to pay taxes, for the schooling of any but indigent orphans, and the children of those who are unable to pay for their schooling. 2. Whether this can be enforced for their schooling beyond the age of thirteen for girls, and fourteen for boys; or at such age as they may be strong enough to be put to trades. 3. Whether this can be enforced for the schooling of children who are not poor, of any age. EDUCATION. 37 4. The social or political consequences of the schooling of all persons, from five to twenty-one years of age, and turning them upon the world in multitudes, for employment and subsistence as mere scholars. 5. Whether schooling up to the age of twenty-one years improves the morals. 6. And if the nature and influence of legitimate education in all times given to poor children by society, in their guardian- ship, discipline, and employment, with its correlative and inci- dental power over youth, ignorance, laziness and crime, is not abundantly sufficient. Take Pennsylvania as an example. The Constitution of Pennsylvania provides, Article VII. Sect. 1, viz: — "PUBLIC SCHOOLS." "The Legislature shall 'provide by law for the establishment of schools throughout the State, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis," "Article VII. Sect. 2. "Of Seminaries of Learning. u The arts and sciences shall be promoted in one or mor e seminaries of learning." "The poor" are "to be taught gratis/' and "the arts and sciences shall be promoted ." These objects are made the subject of two different and dis- tinct titles and articles in the Constitution, and are free from all ambiguity. The obvious meaning of the second section is, that "the arts and sciences shall be promoted;" not that " the poor may be taught gratis." They do not mean the same thing, nor are they convertible terms. They are separate and distinct expressions, with inde- pendent objects, and different meanings and distinct designs. "Seminaries of learning and the promotion of the ai*ts and sciences" are the expressions in some measure in contradistinc- tion to the language, "the poor may be taught gratis." By the first is meant endowments for buildings, and contributions for the pay and support of professors, and the supply of astronomi- cal and other scientific apparatus, such as are used in universities and colleges. 4 88 EDUCATION. This is what is meant by the words "the arts and sciences shall he promoted ;" and this is not what is meant by the ex- pression, "the poor may he taught gratis." These last words cannot obtain or receive any such interpretation as that which obviously belongs to, and was intended by, the words of the second section, " the promotion of the arts and sciences." "The establishment of schools in such manner that the poor may he taught gratis" cannot mean to teach them "the arts and sciences;" because "the arts and sciences" are not directed to be taught to "the poor" but they are directed to be "pro- moted" not "taught" "in one or more seminaries of learning " " The Legislature shall provide for the establishment of schools, that the poor may he taught gratis ;" but they have no power given to them " to provide for the establishment of schools" for teaching " the arts and sciences" "in seminaries of learning" not to be "established" by them, but such as should be established by other means. "Taught" does not mean "promote;" "taught" is the parti- ciple passive of "teach" and means to "instruct;" "promote" means "to forward" "to advance" "to elevate" "to exalt" "to prefer" The definition of these words is wholly different, and their meanings in this Constitution are manifestly distinct, not only because they are not convertible terms, but because they have been used to express different objects, and are not used in the same sense. There is an obvious distinction between "instruction" and "forwarding, advancing, exalting, and preparing" persons after "instruction" has been given to them. The Legislature have power to "establish schools" for instructing of "the poor gratis;" but they have no power to "establish seminaries of learning" of any description, to "teach the arts and sciences" Their authority in this is limited and confined to "forwarding, advancing, exalting, and 'preferring seminaries of learning ;" the "establishment" of which, and the teaching in which is to be managed by other persons, and not by the functionaries of the law. The Legislature of Pennsylvania have no more power to establish seminaries of learning for teaching " the arts and sciences," than they have to "establish" a church; and any such establishment, such, for example, as the High-school at Philadelphia, where there is "instruction" given in "the arts and sciences," by per- sons appointed and paid under legislative direction, is as open EDUCATION. 39 and direct an infraction of the Constitution, as it "would be to build a church ; and appoint clergymen to preacb ; at the public expense. The first movement made by this State, under the constitu- tional provisions before mentioned, was in 1809. Numerous grants and appropriations had, and since then have been made to u seminaries of learning for the promotion of the arts and sciences;" but no steps had been taken to establish schools, " to teach the poor gratis," until that year. On the 4th of April, 1809, they passed an act (4 Smith's Laws, 73). It is intituled, " An act to provide for teaching the poor gratis." It requires township assessors " to ascertain the names of all the children between the ages of five and twelve, whose parents are unable to pay for their schooling ;" — who shall be informed that they may go to the private schools j — the expenses to be paid by the County Commissioners, out of the public funds. On the 3d of March, 1818, they enacted a law (7 Smith's Laws, 52), reciting the words of the constitution, that " the poor may be taught gratis." It makes a school district of the city and a part of the county of Philadelphia, with a board of comptrollers, who are authorized, at the public expense, to build school houses, and establish schools for all the indigent orphan children; boys, between six and fourteen, and girls, between five and thirteen years of age," in said district j — who are to be in like manner ascertained and notified : the schools to be managed at the discretion of the comptrollers, by such rules " as shall not be inconsistent ivith this act and the Consti- tution" An act of March 27, 1819 (7 Sm. L., 206), provides, that four additional townships, which are named, may avail them- selves of the same advantages, for the schooling of their "poor children." These words, " poor children" are twice used in this act. In 1831 (7 Serg. & Rawle's Rep., 454), the S. C. recog- nized this restriction of free schooling to " the children of the poor." In the same year, a commission of nine persons was raised by a resolution of the legislature (7 Sm. L., 451, N.), to in- vestigate the causes of pauperism in the county of Philadelphia, who reported at a "subsequent session, that they were unable to 40 EDUCATION. prosecute these inquiries, for want of proper information from the guardians of the poor. On the 8th of April, 1846, a resolution was passed (Pam- phlet Laws, 1825-6, page 4-6), requiring the commissioners of the counties, to report annually to the Legislature " the number of poor children educated at the public expense." An ,act was passed June 13th, 1836 (Pamph. Laws, 1836, page 525), " To consolidate and amend the several acts relat- ing to a general system of education by common schools;" es- tablishing and organizing several other school districts, and providing for teachers, and taxes to support them; and several acts were theretofore, and afterwards passed, extending a free schools" to other parts of the State, and indicating rules of direction, management, &c. ; but no change was made in the character or qualification of the beneficiaries. On the 7th of April, 1849, an act was passed (Pamph. Laws, 1849, page 441), directing that " every toionship and borough shall form a common school district;" — organizing directors, with power to assess and levy taxes, build school- houses, and appoint teachers, "for the education of every indi- vidual between the ages of five and twenty-one years, who may apply for a dmission.' ' By this recital it will be seen, that the only constitutional provision, and which is restrictive of all legislative authority, is, "that the poor may be taught gratis" That the first enactment used the words, "children between the ages of five and twelve years, whose parents are unable to pay for their schooling." That the words in the next act are "for all the indigent orphan children, boys between six and fourteen years, and girls between five and thirteen years of age." That the act next after this twice uses the words, "poor children." That the Supreme Court adopted this restrictive language of "the children of the poor." That in this connection, commissioners were directed to "in- vestigate the causes of pauperism ;" — and to report "the number of poor children educated at the public expense." And that no other interpretation or construction for fifty-nine years was put upon the words referred to in the Constitution, except to determine the ages within which*" the poor may be taught gratis." EDUCATION. 41 That this was the definition of the word "poor" from the adoption of the constitution in 1790, retained as it was amended in 1838. That the understanding of the words, as to the cha- racter or description of " the poor" persons to " be taught gratis" was ascertained and determined in 1809, and repeated by the Legislature and the Supreme Court, for more than thirty years, to be "children under the age of thirteen and fourteen years;" — and that all the legislative, judicial and popular interpretations of this "poor school" power has been limited to " children" within these ages, "whose parents are unable to pay for their schooling ;" — until in 1849, when the constitution, and all former laws on this subject are abolished, without any authority or suggestion from the people; and a " common school" system is established throughout the State ; — $200,000 of the public moneys appropriated thereto, with directors and comptrollers, authorized to levy taxes for buying lands and building houses, for supporting a "sufficient number of schools, for the education of every individual between the ages of five and twenty- one years;" and to confer academical degrees in the arts, as are now conferred by the University of Pennsylvania (Pamph. Laws, 1836, 527), is a humiliating commentary on the republican pro- fessions of contempt for titles ! A more bold and arbitrary invasion of constitutional and judicial law was never perpetrated in a free country; and it may not excite the least surprise, that in less than seven months this luxuriant harvest-field should have stimulated the convocation of a self-constituted "national These schools, at which " the poor shall be taught gratis" have been made a pretext for great wrongs. The language is, " that the poor may be taught gratis." The argument that any other person but a pauper, is in- tended by the word "poor," is absurd; the word "teaching," in this connection, means what is understood by " victuals"' — that is, what is necessary, and no more. This construction has never been denied ; the effort has been to dodge and get round its truth by plausible and sympathetic appeals — to excuse, and not to justify the abuse. The test of the constitution for admission to these schools, to wit: " the poor" is never put. The result of its application would be a laughable curiosity. The palpable inconsistency between the rule and the prac- tice will be shown. 4* 42 EDUCATION. Take, for example, the county of Philadelphia for 1848. The children of all the paupers in the almshouse were with their parents, where they were kept at school, and bound out. None of these poor children were out of the almshouse. Only four hundred paupers received out-door aid from the Guardians of the Poor. These persons were all too old for, and they had no infant children. During this same year there were kept in full operation in that county, two hundred and thirty-six free schools, to " teach the -poor gratis," at which there was an aggregate number all the time of 40,290 scholars, at an outlay of $202,614 27, for school-houses, and an annual tax of $285,330 60, for the ex- pense of " teaching the poor gratis" — more than all the other expenses of that county ! This will be found to be a scholar at an annual expense of more than $7 70 for each taxable in- habitant of the city of Philadelphia: and 4,538 scholars more than there were persons between the ages of five and twenty years, (35,752) by the census of 1841, in the city and county of Philadelphia. Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are taken for examples. The same rules, it will be seen, apply to all the States. No poor man ever asked for this ; it is asked for by the lazy and the dishonest, and the political knaves who cringe and court them. The poor are abundantly provided for, schooled and bound out to learn pursuits of honest industry ; they are not ignorant of their rights, or backward in demanding them ; they have had no occasion to complain; nor have they ever found fault with the benevolent solicitude bestowed by the Poor House Guardians upon their children. In the United States, this charity is performed with parental and religious fidelity; the tear and the lisp "of the pauper child finds a passport to every heart. A member of the American Congress, some years since, in a debate upon, and in vindication of the free labor of the north, said : That a pauper boy in Pennsylvania had been schooled and bound out from an almshouse to a farmer, afterwards became^a school teacher, a surveyor, a prothonotary, a lawyer, a member and Speaker of the House of Representatives, and that he then was the Attorney General of that State. It would have been superfluous if the speaker had added, that his pauper boy was a gentleman of the first rank, as a EDUCATION. 43 scholar and a jurist, and that he had no cause to feel ashamed of, nor was he ashamed of his origin. There is no lack of these pupils from the free schools of mind and industry, all over the country ; none such from the free schools of extortion are now recollected. Perhaps the legal test, " children of the poor" would have shut out every individual of this 40,290 persons, who unlaw- fully used and consumed, within twelve months, in Philadelphia, more than half a million of the people's hard earnings, and every cent of which has been extracted from them against law. There is no legislative vote, or order of any County Board, or Board of County Commissioners, assessors or auditors, comptrollers or directors of schools — no affectations of benevo- lence or religion, that can sanction this flagrant disregard and violation of law. It is not authorized upon the ground of a general power to legislate for the public good; for their authority as to this is not left open, but restrained by the express words of the con- stitution. The notion that if this is not law, it should be, and that the end justifies the means, is a hypothesis as fallacious as it is audacious and false. And the position may be fairly put and maintained, that a common school, such as is now established in Pennsylvania, is in direct violation of the constitution of that State, and of the first elements of the free institutions of the United States ; and that if any of the constitutions of the other States contain express clauses for their establishment, such as is in the Pennsylvania statutes, they are void. The States have all pledged themselves for the perpetual and inviolable toleration of religion. The constitution of the United States directs that u Congress shall make no law respect- ing an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Congress has ruled that under this restriction it had no power to stop the Sunday Mails; and it necessarily follows, that any compulsory instruction, for improving or mending the morals, whether it be in school houses or meeting houses, is unlawful ; and that there is no authority in the United States to force a tax upon the people for the support of a common church, or a com- mon school, or any other place designed for moral instruction. They may have an implied power to protect and promote the 44 EDUCATION. arts and sciences, by patronizing seminaries where they are taught, as they have a right to protect and promote the purity of religion, by forbidding blaspheming; but they have no power to "make any establishment of religion ," under the pretext of restraining profanity • nor to establish any schools for the amelioration or reformation of human depravity, and mending the heart, under pretence of teaching the poor. They cannot compel any one to go to a church or a school ; they cannot force any one to listen to, or receive instruction, moral or religious; nor can they force the people to pay for its "establishment." There must be free toleration for both in the United States ; and no authority exists, by direct or indirect means, to exact one cent from any man, for any purpose or object in this re- spect, except for the promotion of "the arts ancl sciences in sem- inaries" and " the schooling of the poor ;" neither of which involves or embraces the abuse referred to. It is therefore clear that there is no constitutional power any- where given to tax the people for a common school for every individual from five to twenty-one years of age, for the mere purpose of improving their minds, without regard to their po- verty, and to be used as the common schools are now used, for the schooling of all persons indiscriminately between these ages. The health of the body is of as much importance to life, as the improvement of the mind. If a law was made providing for the establishment, at the public expense, of hospitals and conservatories for the accommodation of every sick and hungry individual, between the ages of five and twenty- one years, who may apply for admission, without any test of poverty, it would be as reasonable and just as this common school law, and would be no less in open contempt of the first elements of the social compact. Both are agrarian, and both demand from society more than is necessary. This is all that the public is bound to do. They owe each other necessary support and protection, but no more. That which is not necessary is a luxurjf, which the public is not bound to pay for. Too much of this has been forced upon the people in other countries, and in the United States they have resolutely repudiated these oppressions. If it is proposed by schools, not named and defined, for the poor, up to thirteen or fourteen years of age, to improve or change the heart; if the real intention is to produce moral and EDUCATION. 45 religious influences and to make men better, then it is covertly and secretly designed for moral and religious instructions which cannot be suffered or allowed, directly or indirectly, in the United States. The people of the United States have unanimously and reso- lutely declared that they will not be forced to pay one cent for moral or religious instruction, in any form or shape ; and that this whole matter, in all its aspects and bearings, rests between God and the conscience, with which man has no concern, and shall not in any wise interfere or meddle. The efforts for legislative inquiry into the moral influences of universal education, it is seen, have failed. Chief Justice Tilghman, who was a wise judge, and a pious Christian, in the case referred to (7 Sergeant & Rawle's Reports), said, in 1821, twenty-two years after the experiment had been fairly tried in Philadelphia upon more than twenty thousand children, under thirteen and fourteen years of age, that "great sums had been expended" for the schools, ll without producing the good that was expected." In 1821 there were two thousand nine hundred and sixty- nine, in 1849, forty thousand, and in 1850, fifty thousand children in the free schools of Philadelphia. More than half a million have had this light profusely shed upon them, at the cost of many millions of the hard earnings of the people; by this time facts and irrefragable statistics demonstrating its moral utility ought to be produced. It was hoped that this National Convention, composed of bishops, congressmen, and philanthropists, men of education, age, and wisdom, would have given the public this important information without being asked for it. They sat four days, no reports were made, but they referred everything suggested to committees who have not been heard from. Why did they omit to notice uncontradicted publications of great interest and magnitude? Should a National Convention shrink from research and scrutiny, and can it be credited, that this body of men might not have raised a committee, who in two days could have examined into, and made a full report upon the alleged advantages of this novel system of universal educa- tion? They might have found in the " Boston Recorder" of 1844, this uncontradicted publication of facts : — 46 EDUCATION. " INCREASE OF CRIME. ""Within forty years commitments for crime have increased in England from 5,000 to 31,000; — more than sixfold; — four times faster than the increase of population. " In Scotland, the increase of crime in the same period has risen from 89 to 3,884; — forty-three fold; — and has advanced twenty-five times faster than the population. " That this prodigious increase has occurred during a period of almost unbroken peace, amid great improvements in criminal legislation, and prison discipline too, and notwithstanding un- paralleled efforts to diffuse education and religion, creates a pro- blem of no easy solution. " It is stated also, that the prevalence of crimes in England is fourteen times greater than in France; that the educated criminals are to the uneducated as two to one ; — facts like these demand thorough investigation : and strongly urge every pious mind to reflection and prayer." Is it possible that this warning was unknown to them ; and that they considered it wholly unnecessary to notice the wise and appropriate police regulations, which the law has furnished in all times for discipline and education ; — or that they did not recognize this wholesome and controlling power, by which juve- nile delinquency is effectually cut up by the roots, so that no minor shall be without custody, guardianship, and education, and no adult without constant employment ; and mobs, riots, torch-light processions, dram-shops, brothels, and gambling-hells wholly stopped? Instead of invoking these legitimate and efficient elements of police power and duty, acknowledging their strength and purity, and constituting them as the groundwork and platform, upon which all plans for education should rest; and making an effort to define, explain, and improve them; their whole time was wasted in popular professions of philanthropy, theoretical schemes for national display, and for coaxing young vagabonds from the street into the shades of science, music, and poetry; not a word of wholesome restraint and discipline, necessary labor, trades, diligence, industry, personal maintenance, and provision for children and old age. And although they were called on through the public press, to answer the following queries, not a word of reply is made, as to EDUCATION. 47 1. " Whether education improves the morals ; — if knowledge is not power for the bad, as well as the good; and if educa- tion does improve the heart ; — if this is in proportion to the advantages imparted to the intellect. 2. " Whether, if education has produced mental improvement, it has not failed to improve the moral sense ; — and if, by im- parting knowledge, it does not create or substitute caution or craft, in place of ignorance and impulsive depravity, producing no regeneration, but only changing the open perpetrations of crime to covert and fashionable subtilty. 8. "Whether free-school education has diminished pauper- ism, or convictions for crime ! V Whatever future conventions in this respect may do to pro- mote the true cause of education, it cannot be denied, that this convention was composed of persons who are the special advocates of the present scheme of universal free-schooling, up to the age of twenty-one years, in place of the other essential branches of education and instruction; and that their zeal for the auxiliary aid of national power, in measures exclusively for domestic supervision and local expense, is officious and uncalled for. There were a few sincere and pious men amongst them, as there always will be in every convocation professing to aid the public weal; and there were a few such to the end, amidst the frauds that signalized the black and diabolical career of the chartered monopolies of 1836 and ; 40; in which more crime was committed than has been perpetrated by all the convicts in the United States since the Revolution. It is said that man is born in sin, and brought forth in ini- quity; that his moral conversion is as much a work of the Almighty, as his first creation; — that the secret exercises of the heart are exclusively between the conscience and God; — that man's wisdom tempts him to pride and vain-glory, and the invention of substitutes for the true causes of creation; that if there is any kind of education that will humble his stubborn spirit, it is religious instruction, which appeals to his affections; that the wise men of this world have not been examples of purity, and that millions have been regenerated under religious excitement, whose intellectual capacities were too weak to re- ceive or retain the rudiments of human knowledge; and that education, with all its best appointments, does not change the heart, much less its natural propensities. Who has forgotten the beautiful ode upon an Indian boy, 48 EDUCATION. who was taken from his dead mother's breast, reared and edu- cated with all the delicate refinements of civilized life, and gra- duated at the age of twenty, in one of the best universities of the country ? After, when, although he had never seen an In- dian, he embraced the feet of his pious benefactor, and obtain- ing leave to visit his native shades, was pursued, and found in the wigwam of his fungative ancestors, far in the recesses of the western wilderness, tattooed, and girdled with his wampum and tomahawk, revelling in transports amidst the savage nudity and aboriginal barbarism of his tribe. The heart is smitten down with humility and awe in the solemn contemplation of the high and unchanging law which fashions all things by an inscrutable will. It would seem, therefore, to follow, that the present system of free education will not secure the attainment of m|jral or religious reformation. There is no historical evidence that knowledge from schools, and in the sense here meant, ever pro- duced these results. It certainly will improve the mind, if judiciously blended with industrial instruction, but it does not control or constrain the conscience; it may make us more dis- creet and careful, but not more conscientious and pious; these reformations are accomplished by religious instructions. The actual wants and necessaries of life are few and simple ; independent of the refinement suggested and made fashionable by civilized society, man would be as in the pastoral ages, liv- ing amidst the shades and rural employments of husbandry — his tent and mantle, his corn and cattle, would limit the entire range of his desires ; and these supplies would be so productive and abundant in proportion to his wants, that his cares and labor would be rich and romantic recreations. The present or- ganization of society has created wants so numerous and urgent, that the stock for supply is scarce and dear, and its procure- ment is made an object of secret and keen pursuit by millions, with the sharpest activity of wit, skill, labor, science, fraud, and violence. To supply these impending personal necessities is a formida- ble and appalling work, from which the heart shrinks back with fear and distrust, and to embark upon which, with any reasonable prospect of honorable and successful competition, re- quires all the careful preparation which can be given to the physical and mental powers during the probation of minority. This knowledge is not obtained exclusively in schools or from EDUCATION. 49 books, but from domestic instruction. A child brought up in leisure, with all his wants supplied, may reach maturity in- deed — may pass through life with an utter ignorance of the urgent occasions and special qualifications required for obtain- ing his own subsistence. Personal exertions in this view, and as being essential to his animal existence, do not occur to his mind, and if wakened up to reality, he is confounded and amazed. The first mental step to be taken in life is to acquire a knowledge of this fact, and then to prepare and fit the mind and body for its practical execution : to teach man what it means, and how to do it—this is a matter of policy and neces- sity, not morality or religion. It is the first, most essential, and difficult task in life, to pre- pare and arm the mind and body both for this irksome and re- pugnant occupation, and for a patient and cheerful submission to the doom imposed upon man at his fall, that the ground should be cursed for his sake— that briers and thistles should grow up in his path, and that by the sweat of his face should he earn his bread. So imposing is the magnitude of these obstacles to the per- formance of the necessary labors of life, that one-half of the human race now live by trick and violence off of the rest, and their numbers would be fearfully augmented if it was not from the dread of punishment. Every one can readily see and clearly understand the pressing necessity for an accomplished and thorough preparation for this unavoidable and painful journey; but the faculty of intimately feeling and sufficiently appreciating the true nature and character of this mental exer- cise, is most difficult and perplexing. It would seem to require the necessary and practical presence of both the faculties of understanding and appreciating at the same time, to which must be added the simultaneous convic- tions of necessity, with a knowledge of the means for relief. The knowledge without the want, or the want without the knowledge, does not form this mental crisis; they must concur, or there will be no pungent and perfect appreciation. This thought is beautifully illustrated by the thrilling reve- lations of David Copperfield (Dickens) who, at the age of ten years, timid, feeble, afflicted, and crushed by adversity, is placed on the lowest form of Doctor Strong's school at Canter- bury, where the contrast between himself, and the advance- 5 50 EDUCATION. merit and rank of the head boy, Adams, struck his mind with dread. He felt most keenly the occasion for, but utterly de- spaired of ever obtaining the position then enjoyed by Adams. Passing up through all the courses of discipline and study, at seventeen, Adams is gone, and he has his place. He looks clown upon a crouching, timid child, sitting in painful bewilder- ment upon his first form ; and with all his earnest aspiration for moral and Christian sympathy, he is utterly unable to rouse or excite it, even with the pungent recollections of his first dreary hours in that school; he cannot feel for and appreciate the fluttering emotions which swell the bosom of his humble successor. The exercises of his understanding alone, and not his feelings, were moved. His early excitements were fear, hope, and help; he could understand and appreciate all these, even at the age of eight or ten, most eminently, when it was for himself; but when the exciting emergencies, that had roused into action these vivid impulses, had subsided, and the mind was relieved from the pressure of its own fears and wants — the feeling, the sympathy, the power of appreciation had vanished, and would not return. The feeling could be excited by urgencies for himself, but not for another. The ability to understand, and the wish to feel are clear and distinct; but the power to feel was gone: nothing but necessity will bring it into practical activity. It is the "art and mystery" to be learned by the apprentice in every trade and pursuit, the capacity to feel and do what cannot be explained ; to appreciate his necessities, and the re- sponsibility of providing for them. This is the primary object of all instruction, without which man is pushed into a busy world, as helpless and useless as a naked and hungry infant would be amidst the frightful agitations of a flood or a con- flagration. This intense sense of appreciating and blending knowledge, duty, necessity, and resolution, is alone the work of a practical education, and not of a school-house. The w T ay to make good men is to make good boys. This is not to be done by coaxing them into schools, and keeping them there till they are twenty- one years old; teaching them the beauties of morality and the pursuits of religion : man must first be civilized and disciplined in the religion of supplying his own personal wants. To ac- complish this, take him in his crude condition from the nursery to the school-room, at the age of five or six years, and there EDUCATION. 51 commence the work of constraint, instruction, and discipline. Put no violence upon his mind or body; but force him to keep out of the streets, away from temptation, bad company, and evil examples; refresh him by wholesome keep and exercise; train him in the ways of mental reflection and useful knowledge; and by the time he is thirteen or fourteen years old, he will have acquired sufficient bodily and mental strength to be put into employment, by which he may learn some useful trade, gra- dually help to earn his own living, and assist to cheapen and increase, instead of enhancing the price, and diminishing the stock of public supply. Give him time to study and to go to school at least one quarter every winter, and an opportunity thoroughly to obtain all the science belonging to the occupation he is learning. By this course of education, up to the age of twenty-one, if there is not more bad than good in his breed and blood, he will turn out to be an intelligent, thinking, and more useful man than the enervated and puffed-up graduate, who has occupied the whole of his minority in a free-school. If he has bad propen- sities, no education will ever change his nature; it may polish, and better fit him for trick and cunning; but it will not alter or reform the secret impulses of his heart. The first described graduate will carry his diploma in his mind, and can practically explain it; he will have a thoughtful, serious sense of the solemn fact that he now has to take care of and provide for himself in a world where millions struggle, in sharp and successful conflict, for all the gains and advantages in every pursuit of life. He will have learned the practical capacity of entering into, and taking his part, in this wide and open field of fearful strife; how, if he fails in one effort, to begin another; how to control his appetites, his pride, and his wants; how to persevere in toil, endure exposure, self-denial, and poverty, and patiently submit to reproach and persecution ; how to maintain resolute and cheerful habits of industry, fru- gality, punctuality, and integrity in dealing; and how to be humble, thankful, and reverent to his Creator. The other will be wholly ignorant of, and suddenly surprised to learn, that his pressing wants must be supplied by his own personal exertions; that he is hurried into a rude and selfish crowd, fiercely snatching from his grasp the necessaries of life; that he is jostled, pushed aside, and sneered at; that his help- less powers and unskilled wits will be overreached and bafiied, 52 EDUCATION, by adroit and dexterous adversaries; that he will not have courage, patience, practical experience, or physical strength, to hear the drudgeries of labor, and the severities of poverty j that the way men earn their livings, and get houses and lands, and property, is by incessant toil and sweating work ; that the em- ployments of the scholar are secondary and subsidiary to the creative pursuits and productive occupations of society; and that about one educated man to every fifty or one hundred is enough; that schooling up to twenty-one years of age does not make mind; and that the practical education, here described, will most aptly fit the intellect, and prepare the genius for the profoundest researches of learning, knowledge, and science. All these mournful realities will fall like the mildew of des- pair upon his ardent and blighted hopes; too late, alas ; too late ; to stanch the gushing sorrows of his broken heart. The individual last described is the unfortunate graduate of a common school; and if his compatriots are multiplied by the threatened follies of these times, the multitude will literally require the hospitals and conservatories before referred to; and there can be no more sure or certain course to make them ne- cessary than to encourage every individual, between the age of five and twenty-one years, to adopt the plan now proposed for spending his minority. The well educated and independent nobleman first described has had his preparations for an honorable and useful life wrought out under wholesome and benign institutions, ordained by the wisdom of ages, for the appropriate protection of the virtuous and industrious from the arts and wiles of the wicked and the lazy. The right of society to enforce a system of just and necessary police, upon all these domestic matters, lies with the primitive elements of the social compact. It has for its basis the common wants and rights of all men; it blends its benevolent reciprocalities with the most intimate necessities of life, and the brightest consolations of death ; it lights up the rich and glorious sunbeams of time, and trims the golden lamp of eternity. We have no right to compel any one to go to church, or to receive religious instruction; this is a cardinal rule of primary and natural liberty, resting with the conscience, the infringe- ment of which has repeatedly bathed the world in tears and blood, and for the consecration of which the people of the EDUCATION. 53 United States have pledged themselves by mutual and eternal covenants. But, inasmuch as society is bound, by its social compact, for mutual protection and support, it has an indis- putable right to maintain a reciprocal security for these objects. It is bound to furnish a sufficient supply of food, raiment, and shelter, for its helpless and indigent members; and there is necessarily incident to this duty the correlative right to use and employ all lawful means for sustaining its power to fulfil that duty. These means are moral as well as physical. They involve the right to forbid and prevent all acts which have a tendency to weaken or destroy the functions required for the performance of this obligation. Hence the right, independent of all reli- gious considerations, to forbid and punish crimes; because, the direct consequences of crime are, to disturb and interrupt so- ciety, and thereby consume its time and diminish its moral powers and physical energies, and to wrong it out of its ac- quired means and stock for the public supply. Society has the right, and it is its duty to compel every one who is able to support himself to do so by some honest and useful employment ; because, if he will not support him- self, his subsistence must come out of the earnings of those who do work; and every meal he eats diminishes the stock of subsistence, and increases the labor of those who earn and pro- duce the supply. Every man who does not earn his living, and is not fed and sustained off of the fruits or productive results of property pre- viously acquired, is subsisted by the public ; and this living off of others is accomplished by fraud, or obtained by bounty. If by trick or fraud* the act is criminal; the perpetrator is a swindler, and forfeits to the public his personal liberty, and is thereby rendered liable to its custody and control. If his support is obtained as charity, by reason of inability to support himself, the public has a right to obtain from him any remuneration he is able to give by his own labor ; and also to his personal custody, so as to make his support as cheap, and to render his labor as productive, as possible. The obligation is reciprocal; he is just as much bound to support himself, and to aid society in the support of others who are in want, as the public is bound to support him, if he is in want. He can force them to help him if in need, and they can compel him to forego a part, or the whole of this help, by 5* 54 EDUCATION. his own labor or means, if he has them, for the benefit of others requiring assistance. The theory is plain and simple, and mutually equitable in all its bearings. The divisions of labor demanded by the wants and required for the comforts and refinements of society, put in requisition a wide range of official, professional, commercial, artistical, and other employments which add nothing to the productive stock. They minister to the wants and wishes rather than to the necessities of man, and cannot be dispensed with in any civil- ized community. The burthen is heavy on those who really create and produce the necessary supplies, and no means should be spared to lighten this load by a careful restriction of the numbers and emoluments of the supernumeraries. The prices of produce and necessary supplies increase just as the disproportions with these two classes prevail; and whenever the latter exceeds its due and appropriate weight, the effort is made to balance the scales by the artificial and fraud- ulent employment of false and spurious currencies. There cannot be too many farmers, growers of stock, miners, and manufacturers, nor too much encouragement given to their skill and industry; all this serves to increase and cheapen the necessaries of life ; but the accumulation of too many of those engaged in the non-productive employments of life decreases these productions and enhances their cost. The proposed free schools will have a tendency to produce these pernicious redundancies. The refinements of society sufficiently encourage their increase, and they should be pre- vented by restraining the propensity to educate too many and too much. Neither the public industry nor morals* are promoted by coaxing " every individual/' white and black, male and female, to learn things which they will have no opportunity to practice, and place millions in dependence, and diminish the public facul- ties for produce and supply. To avert these calamities, the preventive policy of society should be enforced rigidly, without the least regard to miscon- ceived notions of delicacy, or the slightest relaxation of its universal application. Every habitation and person should be carefully registered, and placed under the strictest surveillance of township and ward police. No honest man ever suffered in his reputation by a search EDUCATION. 55 warrant against himself or his property, and he will be proud and rejoiced, if suspected or doubted, to establish his character for industry and integrity. It is not the virtuous and honorable who murmur at this scrutiny; on the contrary, they invite and encourage these conservative measures of self-protection against drones and vagabonds. Magistrates and guardians of the poor have the power, and it is their duty, to arrest all beggars, gamblers, prostitutes, vaga- bonds, criminals; all lazy and able-bodied persons, who do not work ; all those who have secret means for subsistence ; — all paupers, destitute and neglected minors, and all persons of both sexes, and of all ages and nations, who are unable or un- willing to be employed in some honest calling. They have the power, and it is their duty, to enter into every house within their ward, parish, or township. They can go and search out the lawful means of subsistence of every person, whose conduct, condition, and behavior fur- nish reasonable ground to suspect that they do not live by honest means, and put them to the proof of a lawful livelihood; and if they are unwilling to vindicate themselves, and will not go to work at some proper employment, to commit them to prison as vagrants. If they are infirm and needy, to supply their wants, and give them shelter; and if they are neglected minors, to support, protect, educate, and bind them out to good places. If these good and wholesome regulations were resolutely en- forced, and rigidly imposed upon a second offence, there would be the following reformations : — 1. The streets would be clear of drunken, obscene, and re- volting exposures. 2. The persons and property of society would be secure from violence and murder. 3. All gambling-houses, grog-shops, and brothels would be banished. 4. The weak, ignorant, lazy, and proud would have no en- couragement or bad example. 5. The millions of the hard earnings, of which the honest are plucked and filched, by profligate living, reckless dealing, gaming in stocks, trade, banks, monopolies, and swindling, would be saved ; and the boundless waste of money on pri- sons, refuges, almshouses, free schools, and corporations would also be saved, minus the inconsiderable outlay for bread and 56 EDUCATION. water to the rabble ; and thousands of the pure and virtuous who are stricken down with poverty and disease, and who perish in want and obscurity, would be sought out, succored, comforted, and saved. 6. And myriads, from this refreshing discipline, would ho- nestly reform, and go to work, or incontinently abscond to parts unknown ; or, if they remained, would be placed where their bad examples would not disturb the public, and they would be compelled to earn their own living. These whole- some elements of practical education and constraint would do more in one age to moralize, purify, refine, elevate, make learned, industrious, useful, rich, and religious, the young men and women, than all the free schools and their graduates can accomplish in fifty generations. There is no sphere so important for mental education as childhood and home. Domestic authority should be pure, but as unyielding as patriarchal power. The parent and the master should know that temperance in all things, rigid habits of cleanliness, economy, and self-denial, contentment, resigna- tion, and reverence of religion, are the essential elements of family-government, and he should never flinch from their un- conditional enforcement. Home is the only sphere where morals and religion are in- stilled into the heart. These duties are much neglected from ignorance and inex- cusable indulgence. Many who have had no opportunities of proper information marry early, become the heads of, and half bring up, families before they are themselves matured. Others yield to a spirit of censurable fondness for their offspring, which excludes all training, constraint, or instruction ; and others, from small beginnings, obtain wherewith for ease, and sometimes plenty, aspire to ape their more opulent neigh- bors in all their bad qualities, without having sense or discri- mination to imitate their commendable habits. They infer that, because they see the children of others dressed well, and in company, the way to make their own children genteel is to give them fine clothes and pocket money, and permit them to promenade the streets by day, and frequent places of amusement at night ; to slight and shun their equals, and obtrude themselves into the society of those they think genteel; to neglect their trades, business, and education • and to cherish a contempt for labor, restraint, and religion. EDUCATION, 57 No respectable rich man would thus indulge his children ; and if he did, it would lead them to ruin. The instances of lads who, from these causes, have flunked at school, and from idleness and insubordination have left their trades, are almost without number. What comes of the boy who, from thirteen to twenty, has not had fastened upon his mind the rudiments of a sound edu- cation, well grounded knowledge of some trade or employment, with habits of cheerful industry and pure morals ? Nothing but ruin. It is the critical period when the character is formed, and if he does not obtain these advantages, and have them then firmly engrafted upon his nature, he will never get them, and there will be in their place, ignorance, presumption, vanity, idleness, impatience, and loose morals. This state of the propensities seeks kindred association, leaves the mind open to the influences of temptations for drinking, mixing with tavern haunters, fire companies, rowdies, becoming reckless, dissolute, and abandoned. The present system of domestic discipline is in all these re- spects radically wrong. Persons under age are too much in- dulged, and allowed to be in the streets by day and night, chew- ing tobacco, smoking cigars, drinking, swearing, and bullying about at corners, engine-houses, whooping in the theatres, shoot- ing and strolling over fields and meadows, treading down grass, and despoiling crops and gardens, and stealing fruit. It would seem as if there were no more boys or girls — that now they were all men and women. "Among all the changes that mark the nineteenth cen- tury, there is no other so great as that in the use of the word authority. In the time of our fathers, the power of authority was understood and felt — the authority of the God of the Bible, of the husband, the parent, the pastor, the teacher, the law. Now, the feeling is so different as to tempt us to believe that those perilous times are come when men shall be lovers of their own selves — covetous, boasters, proud blasphemers, diso- bedient to parents, heady, high-minded. Influence has come to be all — authority nothing. The son expects to govern the father — the daughter the mother. The rod of discipline is thrown away, and the scholars govern the schools. Even in the administration of justice, the same spirit leads jurors to fol- low their own notions in spite of the law ; and the sacred bonds 58 EDUCATION. of matrimony are coming in certain quarters to be despised. Established usage, which our fathers were wont to venerate, is almost regarded as proof of error. The lecturer would by no means be understood to say that there was no good connected with the movement. Doubtless some old things that were bad have been done away. But some laws there are that ought to be venerated. Woe to that spirit which rushes on in pursuit of its own devices, regardless of all ancient wisdom and of all legitimate authority/' — Bishop Hopkins. Disobedience, rebellion, and laziness of apprentices are absurd- ly countenanced by the courts. For appropriate and necessary correction, judges and juries convict and punish masters for assaults and batteries. Respectable persons are deterred from taking apprentices, for, as soon as they have obtained a glimpse of their trades, the slightest pretext is made to vacate the indentures, or they are encouraged to abscond, cheat their masters out of the balance of their time, and set up for themselves, but half learned. Hence the swarms of lazy, extravagant, and bad workmen all over the country. They live too freely, and work too little : cannot make full wages, and strike, hold brawling meetings, and agitate the community with ridiculous clamors about the rich and the poor, liberty and oppression, freedom, slavery, and aristocracy. The country is overrun with men and women at maturity, wholly unwilling and unqualified for the duties and responsi- bilities of life — not prepared or willing to creep before they walk; to begin as their parents started in the world, patiently, cheerfully, and thankfully j to economize, save, and work hard, till, by persevering industry and frugality, they have obtained a foothold, and made for themselves a legitimate position in society. They revolt at these reasonable and necessary probations, covet the better condition of others, chafe their tempers by absurd projects and impracticable hopes, and impiously disdain their fate. They shift and shirk, and vacillate from place to place, soon fall off into settled habits of wickedness, and become confirmed in vice and sin. This neglect to educate and properly discipline the young prevents early and suitable marriages — the true and rational policy of life. Men and women are designed and fitted in all their sym- EDUCATION. 59 pathies for each other. They are never contented, unless honorably united, and it is a reproach to the community to allow any obstacles to this heaven-intended union of the sexes. Men, and sometimes women, carelessly and dissolutely brought up, have their loose propensities as well gratified by remaining single. They have no relish for the retirement and faith of marriage, and prefer the novelties of a single state. Neither man nor woman thus brought up is fit for the sober fidelities of matrimony. They are too fond of change and variety — not domestic, industrious, and saving. Their desire is for company and rounds of pleasure, instead of the settled quiet of home and labor. When such persons get married, or one such to a well brought up and properly disposed person, it generally turns out badly : for mutual fitness, industry, and economy are as essential elements of matrimony as chastity and truth. Humble men, who begin the world with limited intercourse with it, and whose children have been encouraged to press themselves into the company of those above them, adopt the mistaken notion that the criterion of respectability consists in showing off all these extravagancies, and thus acquire a familiarity with idleness, and the wanton use of luxuries in dress and pocket-money, which their actual means and circum- stances will not justify. Every nerve is strained to keep up these indulgences, to get a daughter off into what they suppose is a good marriage, or a son into a genteel position. From these and similar causes, prudent men are deterred from marriage, and women of similar discretion also act upon the same principle. Thousands of men and women, who but for this might have taken honorable caste in society, and been happy and honor- ably married, wander about unsettled, precarious in reputation, and wholly useless to themselves and society. The effect of this loose and reckless mode of education has been as pernicious to girls as boys. Girls are now but seldom taught to regard an entire practical knowledge of the details of housewifery as essential qualifications for a wife. On the contrary, they have masters for singing, music, dancing, French, &c. ; are encouraged to avoid house- work, and to consider it filthy and degrading to do it 5 and are 60 EDUCATION. brought up wholly ignorant and averse to what they should know, and superficially instructed in that which is not only useless, but certain to make them lazy, haughty, fretful, and worthless. Music and dancing are not very often given to young females with any serious intention of qualifying them as teachers, nor with any view to improve the taste or refine the judgment, and they are not so used, but they are often and very erroneously used to attract the attention of giddy young men who place no value on them. Not one woman in ten thousand adopts music or dancing for a living, or shows that her manners, her mind, or her heart has been improved by them. Some dozen, perhaps, within the last fifty years, have obtained popularity as public singers and dancers, but it is an ephemeral distinction which no respectable gentleman would covet for his wife or daughter. They are precarious and uncertain occupations, with licentious and sensual exposures. They cost much valuable time, and are seldom blended with the fireside employments of home. Few women have composed one bar of standard music, or made or contrived anything new or important in any art or science. Whenever they have attempted it, they have abjured the charms of wife and mother. Their minds, tastes, and propensities were not designed for these spheres of action, and it is as absurd and unreasonable to push upon or exact these efforts from them as it would be to enlist them for active service in the army or marine. They are intended for occupations infinitely more refined and essential for the morals and security of society. In their proper sphere, if they are appropriately prepared and encouraged, they obtain greater elevation than man can in his occupations; and it is ridiculous and cruel to withhold from them the means of a competent and thorough knowledge for the fulfilment of their high and glorious destiny. Boys are accomplished, without regard to expense, in every branch of science necessary to fit them for their intended busi- ness; and why not give a girl the same chance? If a lad is intended for a learned profession, he is not only drilled in all the elements of that particular science, but he is taught the ancient and foreign languages, by which to find out the learning of others in his art in all times past. Why not; give his sister the same opportunity for the inevitable and com- EDUCATION. 61 plicated duties of wife and mother? She is professedly edu- cated for these solemn functions, and not for cloistered celibacy. Why is she, by the bad taste or ignorance of her mother, ex- posed to absurd displays of extravagant dress, awkward per- formance upon a piano or guitar, or of a mimic squall of some vagrant singer; to gallopade in a public ball-room, for all which she may entertain great disgust, to obtain proficiency in which requires long and patient labor, which may be hateful to her suitors, and which an intelligent and respectable husband might not regard as a necessary accomplishment? Is it not wonderful that parents can regard these frivolous and equivocal accomplishments as recommendations for their daughters ? and, is it not to be supposed that a prudent man wanting a decent wife will be deterred by such repulsive over- tures ? that his own good sense will admonish him to avoid such matrimonial undertakings ? If he is a prudent man, rich or poor, he will avoid the proposal ', if he is so thoughtless and indiscreet as to be drawn in by such deceptions, he is not worth having. Mothers do not want their daughters married to worthless men who cannot support them ; and they should not judge so meanly of their daughters, or of their suitors, as to show their daughters up by fine dress and display. They should know that young men of intelligence and re- spectability compare the personal and domestic qualifications of their intended wives with their recollection of the virtues of their own mothers ; and that propensities at variance with these just and virtuous attributes of the female character will be shunned. That every discreet man, in pursuit of a wife, will recollect the cheerful, prompt, quiet, unseen, and patient industry of his home, the well-aired apartments, clean lodgings and ward- robe, punctual and refreshing meals, welcome home times, happy greetings in health, and quiet vigils and tender watch- ing in sickness. So constant, serene, mysterious, heavenly, that its silent con- templation with every man who has a heart brings forth tears of pious joy. The mother and the daughter who think that men are not to be judged by these standards, but by their licentious appe- tites, are prepared for stratagems, and treat their intended hus- bands as if they were not gentlemen. 6 62 EDUCATION. cued res! How many thousands of honest women have been doome to lonely wretchedness by these cruel and scandalous exposur or, when married, have, in shame, deplored their unfitness for domestic life, and have been compelled to submit to the severe humiliation of learning their duty after marriage ! A girl should be adequately skilled and thoroughly practiced in every branch of housekeeping, from the trimming of a lamp and the kindling of a fire to the genteel reception and enter- tainment of the friends of her husband and herself. The ne- cessary supplies for her pantry and her kitchen — their prices, qualities, preservation, appropriate use and combinations ; the quality, value, use, and care of all the culinary utensils, furni- ture, linen, and bedding, together with all the chemistry re- quired for the scientific management and execution of her cooking, baking, and washing ; with enough of geography, grammar, history, and things in general for reading and con- versation. She should be taught to cherish and maintain a sweet tem- per and industrious habits, and to be a good mistress and house- keeper ) to be content with her home ; to be a loving wife and pious mother. Every girl should be well tried, and carefully disciplined in all these essential elements of her destiny, without which mar- riage is a perjury, and married life is a fraud ; with which it is honorable in all things, fills up more blanks, lights up more stars, secures more peace, gives more joy, and approaches nearer to the raptures of heaven than all other earthly felici- ties combined. 0, ye that are thus blessed, be charitable to the lonely and forsaken wanderers from the paths of virtue and religion ! "Without hope, they sigh for and gaze in anguish on your paradise, as the first garden was looked back upon by its smit- ten down and cast out fugitives. The entire system of education involves the whole range of man's existence and control from the time he first germs until death. All require care, subsistence, instruction, constraint, and punishment. In the last branch of this great code of necessary discipline, there has ever been the most inexcusable and gross relaxation. Under the plausible pretensions of philanthropy, morbid sympathies* fanaticism, and ignorance have had full play. Necessary restraints and imperious moral vindications have EDUCATION. 68 yielded to ridiculous substitutes, the jest and laughing-stock of criminals. ' Human nature is made up of all the grades of virtue and vice, from the natural ruffian to the pure saint, from man made in the intellectual image of Grod down to the brute. They must therefore be treated as they are found ; and any management not adapted to this assortment of character is wholly useless. All intelligent men agree that an efficient compact for their security is essential to the existence of organized communities. And as incident to this contract, it is as necessary that the helpless should be protected as that the strong and predatory should be restrained. The first cannot be sustained without keeping off the other. There can be no useful education without religion. We fear not each other or ourselves, but we fear Grod. And, if the mind, when tender, is deeply and solemnly imbued with reli- gion, the worth of moral subjugation is begun. Impressions of right and wrong are then made upon the un- polluted soul of a child, which no temptation can overcome. They enter into, and are engrafted upon, his nature. It is very seldom that a child who has had a proper domes- tic, moral, and religious education, who has been to church and tenderly trained, carefully watched, and kept out of wicked company, and away from evil examples, turns out bad. He is not seen drinking and smoking about corners, swearing and shouting at theatres, running and fighting with fire compa- nies, in riots, watch-houses or prisons. Everything connected with religion seems to prosper and flourish. Much sin has been committed in the name of religion. Jews, Pagans and Christians, each in their turn, have drenched the earth with blood in the name of religion. But this does not militate against true religion ; it only exposes the wickedness of those who profane religion. In the United States, where all religious persuasions are tolerated, there has been no opportunity to use it for political purposes j and there have ceased to be any public abuses under its sanction. Its prosperity has been unexampled. The different sects have forms, governments, and ceremonies suited for every prejudice and taste, and at every corner and turn throughout the land, there is a temple for public worship. 61 EDUCATION. The eagerness for religious instruction exceeds the supply of teachers; and there are more preachers of the Gospel, wholly dependent upon the people for patronage and support, than there ever has been in any other country. They have no earthly incentive but the approbation of their hearers. Their labor and devotion are extraordinary. There is nowhere a class of men so blameless and pious. Instances of improper conduct or lack of zeal are few, and religion unaided by law is more pure, more universal, and more fashionable, than where it is forced upon the people. There is nowhere so much valuable pulpit teaching and pure piety as there is with the people and their clergy in the United States. The doctrine of legal religion has been by this toleration triumphantly refuted. Eeligion is too pure to be touched or used by human laws or their functionaries. Eeligion has been less helped, and done more good in the United States than in any country. The Methodists have retrieved and saved millions of aban- doned wretches, and raised them from the lowest depths of infamy to honest and honorable reformation. All acrimony has been subdued, and conventions and asso- ciations of different persuasions are extensively formed for the universal diffusion of Gospel knowledge. To those who have witnessed the state of the churches in Europe, and compared them with this country, it would seem that here the Millennium had really begun. The freedom of the churches removes all occasion for disputes upon doctrinal questions, which are never listened to with com- placency, and leaves open for their ministers the broad field of repentance and faith. Sermons most diligently prepared, profound and learned, by men of great talents and genius, are most eloquently preached, with extemporaneous devout and fervent prayers in every part of the country. All the denominations have theological schools and colleges, and vie with each other in the competent education of their ministers. No one can spend his Sabbath-clay to more profit and advan- tage than by listening to the splendid and eloquent productions of these accomplished orators and profound scholars. EDUCATION. 65 There never has been a people favored with so much light and learning from the pulpit, The man who can hear these sublime lessons without feeling devout homage, who can listen to these beautiful and precious elucidations, and scoff at religion, is indeed a fool. Throughout this free and glorious country, every Sabbath throngs the churches numerously with men, and with all the women and children, clean, healthy, cheerful and respectable in all their appointments. The morning dawns upon the prayers and songs of millions of these blessed babes, early from their slumbers, leaping to the Sunday schools, where the first elements of learning and the Holy Scriptures are zealously inculcated till the hour for worship. Who has witnessed the beautiful exercises and the long and interesting processions of these innocent children, from their school-rooms to the church, without a fervent prayer in holy faith that they may be preserved from the pollutions of this sinful world? And who has seen that hope blighted? Scoff at Religion ! ! ! It is 11 The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." Ask these intelligent Sabbath-school children w'hat is the meaning of religion, and they will calmly and rationally tell you that to love God and hate sin is to secure peace here and hope hereafter. Follow them to maturity, and mark their settled habits of patient and honest industry, their thrifty gains, their temperate and peaceful lives, and their reasonable expectation of a blessed immortality beyond the grave. Pure and undefiled religion is the source and fountain of all knowledge and virtue, the corner-stone of every government. No man can justly claim the respect and confidence of his family and his fellow men, unless his religious conversation and deportment demonstrate to the world that he is worthy of the countenance and confidence of his Maker. There can be no morality, private worth, or public safety with- out religion; and the man who derides the Bible, the holy Sab- bath and religion, is worse than a heathen. He banishes the fears of the sinner and encourages wickedness. He strikes away the foundations of the hopes of the true believers, and blurs and blights all that restrains crime and rewards virtue. 6* CHAPTER II. MANNERS. Not always index of the heart- — Intimacies — Strangers — Deportment — Con- fidence — Singularity of speech or manners — May choose our own com- pany — John Randolph — Jefferson — The art is simple — It is to be unaf- fected — Sexes — Marriage — Some covet society above them — True stand- ard, learning and virtue — All talk too much — Friends should be few — Proper restraint — Good for all — Matrimony best society — Should be general — Distinctions — Orders — Bad motives — Idleness — To buy and sell on. credit — To live extravagantly — Large houses — Insolvency — Public stock of supply not enough — Productive labor certain source of riches — Wrong to speculate in trade, or live on it — No law can excuse from paying debts without explanation — Or force creditors to allow debtors tools, furniture, and $300 worth of property — If this should be so, let the public do it, and not creditors — It opens doors to defraud creditors out of $300 as often as it is spent, and that amount can be obtained again — Travelers — Ignorance and neglect — Skill in science, &c. — Mo- rality — Taxes on churches, colleges, graves, &c. — Taxes of England — Tariff protection to labor, &c. — Religion, &c. The habits and manners are not always an index of the heart. Some are judged proud because they are naturally timid, quiet, and reserved ; others as haughty, because they are watch- ful, cautious, and shy amongst strangers, when they may be as liberal and benevolent as those of polished speech and ready intercourse. Nor is the use of singular words, or pronunciation, or appa- rent awkwardness of behavior, evidence of ignorance, vulgar- ity, or carelessness towards the feelings of others. Such per- sons, in their own circles, may hold a consistent position, have appropriate caste, and be distinguished for hospitality and be- nevolence, while the conventional manners of others, according to their prejudices of education, might appear to be frigid and ridiculous affectations of kindness and good breeding. Every one has an unquestionable right to choose his own MANNERS. 67 company. No one is at liberty to be dissatisfied because his society is not desired; the rule is reciprocal; if this was not so, we might force ourselves upon others against their will, and be obliged to submit to the same obnoxious annoyance from them. The occasions for business, accidental meetings, and intro- ductions of mere ceremony, supply impromptu all the re- quirements for casual intercourse, and leave the parties to their option for future recognition without any breach of good taste. Hasty intimacies are unnecessary and indiscreet. They place the parties in false positions, and expose them to censure and suspicion. All proper decorums and courtesies may be consistently maintained without the reciprocations of personal disclosures. A departure from this simple rule of discretion comes from the irrestrainable propensity that some have to talk incessantly about themselves; a practice that betrays great egotism, igno- rance, and vulgar breeding. It is said that John Randolph knew more men than any man living, and gave to all a free and cordial greeting, accord- ing to their sphere and condition ; but that there was but one person on earth who ever had his confidence, and that was his mother. This ready and singular expert in the natural phi- losophy of human nature was never known, in his personal intercourse, to trifle with the prejudices or sensibilities of any one, and yet his apparent manner was somewhat severe. " It was this readiness which made John Randolph so terrible in retort. He was the Thersites of Congress — a tongue-stab- ber. No hyperbole of contempt or scorn could be launched against him, but he could overtop it with something more scornful and contemptuous. Opposition only maddened him into more brilliant bitterness. 'Isn't it a shame, Mr. Presi- dent/ said he one day in the Senate, ' that the noble bull-dogs of the administration should be wasting their precious time in worrying the rats of the opposition V Immediately the Senate was in an uproar, and he was clamorously called to order. The presiding officer, however, sustained him; and pointing his long, skinny finger at his opponents, Randolph screamed out — Elats, did I say? mice, mice.' " — E. P. Whipple. This was the result of great firmness, independence, and ma- turity of thought; for, although he would not contradict or debate in private conversation, he maintained a resolute, but 68 MANNERS. respectful denial of whatever he held to he false or in "had taste; and if his sense of respect for himself was invaded, he dis- tinctly and promptly resented the affront. He did not con- form to the princely refinements of Chesterfield, nor the shin- ing accomplishments of the Count d'Orsay; but there was in his bearing all the delightful pleasantry of Lafayette, the polished wit of Franklin, the winning seriousness of Jefferson, the brilliant intellectuality of the younger Adams, and the independence of Washington. While these may be regarded as models of good taste and refinement, it is not expected that every one can imitate them. Few have had occasion to consult so much circumspection, or have been so much in the fashionable world as the persons re- ferred to, but every one has judgment and discretion sufficient to see that, as a matter of self-respect, and to avoid prejudices against himself, it is his policy to maintain towards strangers the most exemplary and unaffected simplicity of speech and deportment; to avoid contradiction, vain and supercilious be- havior, and on no account to speak of himself, or anything that concerns his private affairs; to listen, not talk; not to say anything against any one, or call in question the motives, per- suasions, and conduct of any one. The propensity of the vain is to attract attention amongst strangers. They assume a pompous air, affect to be wise and grand, dress foppishly and extravagantly, talk loudly to each other in personal and ambiguous abstractions, and generally make themselves not more conspicuous than ridiculous, whereas a true gentleman or lady will carefully avoid all such vapid exposures. The art of being genteel and civil is simple and easy. It requires a small amount of the forbearance to others that we constantly impose upon ourselves. We wander over the world in rigid self-denial, and voluntarily subject ourselves to every exposure and privation for wealth and fame ; and may we not to others yield a modicum of love ? It may not be said that this circumspection will mar social intercourse, for no safe or comfortable personal interchanges can be had without them, and it is' far the better that there should be no intercourse than that which makes trouble. The stringent exercise of these rules proceeds from the er- roneous and mistaken delusion that the standard of our merits is above that of others. MANNERS. 69 "Where there is no crime or vulgarism, this is a dangerous and unjust conclusion. No man is bound to hold any inter- course with those of bad habits, or with one who is profane, coarse or filthy, but if free from these objections, it is absurd and selfish to hold ourselves above them. A neglect of these wholesome regulations with strangers oversteps the limits of the occasion which brings us together, and turns the interview into an embarrassing effort by one or both for abrupt sociability; and if the spasmodic feeling is not mutual, one plays the blockhead, while the other suffers an ob- trusion. A man is no more bound to have his time and his thoughts obtruded upon by untimely, prolonged, and unwished- for visits, than he is required to have his house or his table thus abused. And, to hold one by the button in the cold or the rain, and press upon him an uninvited colloquy, is as rude as to push him from his right seat at a public place, or to jostle him in the street, or to puff cigar-smoke into his face. There is with some an itching and ridiculous inclination to make the society of those they think above them. If this ad- vantage be wealth, they may be mistaken. Nothing is so uncertain as the reputation of being rich. If we are sure the person is rich, it is degrading to bow to money. If it be learning, morals or intellect, there may be a like mistake ; and if not so, we may seek that which we cannot appreciate. The secret of all good breeding is, to press no man for his conversation, and suffer no one to annoy us. Inter- course is not so essential as is supposed; there is too much of it ; and hence come strife and bickerings. Out of the circle of our familiar friends, we should not be so free, nor permit others to be so with us, as to exceed the limits of appropriate conver- sation upon indifferent subjects, or of such matters as properly belong to the occasion. There are topics of general interest that may be run over and adverted to, to preface business and precede departure, but further is wholly unnecessary. We all talk too much. We should think twice and speak once, and keep a bridle on our tongue. This is a dictate of discretion. With our friends be free and unreserved, but even to them be merciful, and let them not be deluged by words and gabble. There is, perhaps, no habit that so soon exposes ignorance, or lack of knowledge, as a propensity to talk too much j to pun, 70 MANNERS. or joke, or jibe, contradict, criticise, or sneer at what others say or do ; nor anything that excites so much disgust as habitual filth or intemperance in language, liquor, and tobacco. Every man's correct sensibilities, cleanliness of person, deli- cacy and taste, are his property, his own prerogative ; they belong to, and are essentially and exclusively his personal franchise, and no one has any more right to invade them, or disturb or inter- rupt him in their peaceable enjoyment, than to intermeddle with his wardrobe, or his wife and children. No one can ask excuse, or claim ignorance of this plain rule of common law, acknowledged by all the world. An omnibus-boy will chide the impertinent obtrusion of a passenger by the rebuke, " That man don't want to talk to you. Let Mm alone, or leave the coach" In private life, at a ball or other place of amusement, no one, without an open disregard of propriety, may break the delicate crust of non-acquaintance without introduction, unless specially for business or just excuse; and with females, the rule requires her previous consent. It may be asked, how anything can be more just, reciprocal, and fair? It creates no obstacles to proper acquaintance; on the contrary, it guards, purifies, and secures all the streams of social intercourse. Every one has an undeniable right to husband, and make the best possible use of, his intellectual and social capital, just as if it were money or any other thing of value. If, in an honorable way, we can obtain the acquaintance and confidence of those whose learning and influence may better and improve our condition, it is as legitimate and laudable as to use harmless and lawful means to attract the public patronage to our occupations and pursuits. The careful and skillful employment of these judicious pre- cautions leads individual enterprise in every path to the most substantial and permanent results; and when discreetly and delicately appropriated to the preliminaries of marriage, in the happy concurrences of age, family-blood, education, taste, and fortune, there is a capital in the copartnership which never rusts or wastes. What fruitions must inevitably attend such propitiations, when heterogeneous mating blooms in glory! These chaste and wholesome rules for social safety are some- times superseded by incidents that excuse their use. For ex- MANNERS. 71 ample, parties who know that they are known to each other, or from good cause assuming mutual wishes for acquaintance ; but as a general rule, there should be no breach of well-settled de- corums. They contribute too largely to the comforts and safety of society to be trifled with. They are not intended to rebuke the honorable desire for social intercourse, but to encourage its legitimate increase and diffusion ; to conform its exercise and spread to laws, which will secure confidence and mutual respect. On the contrary, there is too little safe and lasting sociability for lack of a sound currency. The mediums of exchange are at heavy discount, and often spurious and counterfeit. Unless there is some voucher, some introduction, we fear to take for good each other's coin. Let the currency be sound, and bear upon its face the stamp and certainty of truth, and its bright and virgin purity delights the hearts of all. Let these wise and simple rules govern. Abridge the cursed love for gain and glory; diminish the useless and gaudy pagean- tries of houses, furniture and dress; devote more time to intel- lectual culture, refreshing exercise, social intercourse, kindness [and love; conspire to drive off temptations, vice, and anger, to [blend labor with cheerfulness, and gladden life with harmless mirth and joy. There is a proper regard for all the formalities of life well ^understood and prudently observed by all discreet and sensible [■persons. True benevolence and good manners demand from I every one kindness and courtesy, but no more. "The powers of the human mind are of greater extent than .'is generally imagined. He who, either from taste or necessity, exercises them frequently, soon finds that the highest felicities of which our nature is capable reside entirely within ourselves. The wants of life are, for the greater part, merely artificial. I Had we courage to seek our happiness in ourselves, we should (frequently find in our own breasts a greater variety of resources ( than all outward objects are capable of affording." I " A long life may be passed without finding a friend in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and sincerity. A weak man, however honest, is not qualified to judge. A man of the world, however penetrating, is not fit to counsel. Friends arc often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each . palliates the other's failings, because they are his own. Friends 72 MANNERS. are tender and unwilling to give pain, for they are interested, and fearful to offend." — Dr. Johnson. Confidence exclusively belongs to our real friends, to those identified with our fortunes; benefactors, parents, brothers and sisters, wives and children. These should be our household gods ; their fate and ours are linked together, they cannot break our cords of love without cutting theirs asunder : they are of our blood, and the tie should be preserved with bright and sacred faith. When these affections are absent, there are no kind or amiable feelings left. No mercy, no charity, no love. In all these essential elements of mental and moral philosophy, the women far excel the men. They are not so morose, ava- ricious, and intractable ; they are more unaffected, sincere, chaste, loyal, temperate, and domestic; they seldom err if untempted and not misled by the other sex. And if all the courts, elections, political festivals, and other public meetings and private convocations of the men were so conducted that their mothers, wives, and daughters might delight to witness them, there would be an end to drunkenness, smok- ing, riot and murder. Again. — Bad manners consist not only in rude deportment, conduct, and conversation, but in the dishonest motives and unjust intentions and purposes of the heart. "The Worthless Poor. — Not every one that begs is poor; not every one that wanteth is poor; not every one that is poor is poor indeed. They are the poor whom we private men in charity, and you that are magistrates in justice, stand bound to relieve, who are old, or impotent, and unable to work; or in these hard and depopulating times [1623] are willing, but can- not be set on work; or have a greater charge upon them than can be maintained by their work. These and such as these are the poor indeed: let us all be good to such as these. But we that are private men as brethren to these poor ones, and show them mercy; be you that are magistrates as fathers to these poor ones, and do them justice. But as for those idle, stubborn, professed wanderers, that can and may and will not work, and under the name and habit of poverty rob the poor indeed of our alms and their maintenance, let us harden our hearts against them, and not give to them; do you execute the seve- rity of the law upon them, and not spare them. It is St. Paul's order — nay, it is the ordinance of the Holy Ghost, and we should MANNERS. 73 all put to an helping hand to see it kept; he that will not lahor let Mm not eat. These ulcers and drones of the commonwealth are ill worthy of any honest man's alms, of any good magis- trate's protection." — Sanderson's Fourteen Sermons, p. 107. It is bad manners to be lazy, idle, useless, and without a good cause ; not to be engaged in some pursuit, productive to our- selves aDd society; and to run id debt. These derelictions are no more excusable than any other wrong, because they are done by others, and are fashionable. To live expensively or carelessly, because others do so, and to say that it is uncomfortable to live with dry and stringent economy, when the means are at hand for free and liberal in- dulgences when we are in debt, is also bad manners. And it is also bad manners for tradesmen and mechanics to increase their style of living according to the means within their reach, without the least regard to a rigid calculation from day to day of the proportion which their disbursements bear to their profits. They involve themselves in a course of extravagant living, which requires constant and dead expenses, without regard to what this may lead to; and without any certain source of de- pendence to fall back upon, if it is not met by their business. Large houses, with costly furniture, servants, entertain- ments, conveyances, traveling and fashionable dress, jewelry, and plate are bought, and a style of expensive living is per- manently started on credit, or paid for with business funds not laid by, without the slightest regard to whether this indulgence can rest upon the basis of sure profits and certain collections. The result is speedy ruin, murmurs about uncollected debts, and the false and imprudent assertion that a failure in business is evidence of enterprise, without which no trade can prosper. Then come the shameful subterfuges of bankrupt releases, insolvent protections, perjured concealments, fraudulent exemp- tions, and unlawful protections of property. There is not one broken mechanic or tradesman in ten thou- sand whose failure cannot be directly traced back to his pro- fligate expenses of living, and his reckless and censurable sales on credit. The passion is to push business; to make large sales on time, without proper caution, to distant and unknown and improper persons; to swell and inflate business; to count up and com- 7 74 MANNERS. pare purchases with sales, and draw on the nominal balance as if it were in bank ; when this flattering and visionary result is mere figures, to which should be added thousands of the unpaid liabilities for the goods purchased, which never may be realized. No honest man will thus trifle with the rights of his creditor. Meantime, habits of living and affectations of high life are indulged in, which exactly correspond to the propensities and appetites of the dissolute and successful gambler. Without the slightest pretensions to education or refinement, with the coarsest propensities, ignorance and low breeding, and vulgar connections and associates, they presumptuously and vainly attempt to copy the style and imitate the habits of re- spectable persons. The gross inclinations with which they began life are in- creased and aggravated. The little of industry and decency of character they ever had is blunted and banished by depraved indulgence. No man of stern integrity and pure honor will ever engage in mere speculations, depending upon uncertain and perilous contingencies, without capital. No prudent or discreet man will do so, even with sufficient capital to back his adventures. The ordinary pursuits immediately connected and identified with the wants and necessary occasions of society are not speculations. The produce of grain and stock of mechanics, manufacturing, commercial interchanges and trade, and all the incidents there- to, are subjects of certain and honorable pursuit. If they are judiciously commenced, and honestly and care- fully prosecuted, they never fail of success. So far from their being uncertain, the public suffer great inconvenience and injury for want of honest mechanics and traders. It is a constant source of trouble and vexation with the com- munity to encounter their falsehoods, delays, deceptions, and tricks. There is not a respectable person in any community that will not bear testimony to the fact, that every honest, industri- ous, and competent mechanic and tradesman, who attends faith- fully to his business, is an object of interest and liberal patron- age by the public. Such persons, with economy and prudence, if they have their health, and meet with no unavoidable accident, such as fire or MANNERS. 75 floods, never fail to prosper. They will always find employ- ment and patronage. This spirit of idleness, loose conduct, extravagance, and neg- lect lies at the basis of all failures in business. It is the secret cause of the poverty of the journeyman ; the arrogance, petty falsehoods, and breaking down of the employer ; the dashing profligacy and disgraceful bankruptcy of the trades- man, the manufacturer, and the merchant. No man has any right to begin any business upon a scale beyond his capital and custom. He may commence without one cent of money, with a capital in character and credit, which he is criminal to misuse or put in jeopardy. He has no right to buy or contract for goods which he has not a reasonable certainty that he can turn into cash, and pay for within his stipulated credit; and whenever he does this upon an adventure to hold on to for an unexpected rise in the market, or to push off on credit to uncertain, doubtful, and dis- tant purchasers, whose means and integrity he does not and cannot know to be good, he lends his integrity to his cupidity, and puts upon his creditors the peril of his secret enterprise. If he succeeds, it is the luck of the gambler. His heart is debased by familiarity with secret fraud, and he will repeat the villainy. All these malversations are bad manners, and it is bad man- ners to demand an excuse for, or furnish any legal exoneration from, the payment of all lawful debts. The proposition is impudent and unjust, that any man who has obtained your labor, goods, or money is not to be after- wards held to have them, or their equivalent in value. And that he shall not be personally required to give an ample and sufficient reason for their non-production. He has obtained them from you with honest or fraudulent intentions. If the object was dishonest, he is a thief, against whom you cannot defend yourself. No one can fathom the secret motives of the artful and smooth-faced swindler. If he obtained them upon the representation of his having property acquired by inheritance or personal acquisition, then he has just that much more in addition to your property ; the latter is yours until it is paid for, and the other is pledged for your indemnity. If you trusted him upon the faith of his integrity alone, still he has got your goods; and where are they? Is there any 76 MANNERS. reason why he should not tell where they are, and what he has done with them, if he will not pay you ? Let him pay you the price of your goods, or give them back to you, or explain what he has done with them. Is he not bound to do one of these ? Your father has worked for, or you have earned and saved, the money you paid for your goods : it was yours ; you honestly obtained it. It is the means by which you live. You cannot live with- out it ; and he has got it. He takes your life, when he takes your means to sustain it. And is he not to pay you, nor re- turn your goods, nor explain the reason why he will not ? He sets you at defiance — calls you inhuman, cruel, and per- secuting, and claims sympathy, excuse, exemption, and protec- tion from that law which he has violated. No man has ever pretended but that such an individual is amenable to his creditors, and that this is a personal liability. You obtain your judgment when all offsets and defences have been made ; take out your process; place it in the hands of the proper officer, who is commanded to call upon the de- linquent, and obtain your debt. The demand is met by a flat refusal to pay ; and then he is required to produce property — your property, or its substi- tute, out of which satisfaction of the debt may be made. He has had your property ; the presumption is that he still has it • but this he denies. What is to be done ? Is he to go Scot free ? This is not pre- tended. He is to explain — to give an account of what has become of the property; and, inasmuch as the presumptions of unfairness rest upon him until he does this, he must now go and explain. He has made the crisis himself, and he must meet it. He has got your goods ; defaulted in payment ; been sued ; suf- fered judgment ; and now the time has come for him to pay, give up his property, or show why he cannot do one of these things. He must therefore now go into custody until he removes the just suspicion of fraud that rests on him. This has ever been the law ; but such is the loose and scan- dalous disregard of right and justice in the hands of poli- ticians, who never pay their debts, that recently they have re- pudiated it; and this just redress against knaves and profli- gates has been reproached as a relic of the barbarous ages. MANNERS. 77 They cannot morally vindicate or justify themselves behind the screen of legislative authority. Such an enactment ob- tains no force or virtue from that source of arbitrary power any more than any other act inherently wrong in itself; any more than a papal indulgence would justify murder, or a statute in- validating the validity of a contract. They have not only excused and indemnified a debtor from all answerability to his creditor of what he has done with his property, but they have openly legalized plunder, under the pretext of compassion and philanthropy to the poor. They have not ordered that, if a mechanic is poor, and has no tools to work with, and no furniture, &c, to keep house with, and says that he wants them, the public shall be taxed to get him $20 worth of tools, and some $100 worth of furniture, which shall be loaned to him on a free and perpetual lease, ex- empt from liability for all rent and debts; but they have gone further, and decreed that any man who can by trick, covin, or fraud, get this amount of goods on credit, shall hold it in- exorably against all the world, and especially against the iden- tical subject of his fraud. Crime is stimulated by indulgence. So soon as this license for private plunder was understood, and its fruits obtained and enjoyed, the luxury was repeated every few days. There was no limit or restraint to it; and it has been indulged in with impunity by thousands, as often as the possession of the same amount of goods could be obtained by art and duplicity. This practice of the migrating and wandering poor had passed into a common joke. A poor man obtains on credit $150 worth of tools, furniture, cows, sheep, &c; assumes the mask of honest simplicity by rolling up his sleeves, going to work, and invoking the confidence of other verdants; renews the purchase, sells the goods, spends the money, and repeats; the cheat, as often as he can find a victim to prey upon. But this bad manners was not sufficiently refined. Another act has passed into a law, carrying this accommov dating exemption to the sum of $300. So that this sphere of plunder is enlarged to an extent fair beyond their original expectations. The genteel and fashion- able may now participate in felicitous bounty. Every man may hold, in defiance of his creditor, $300, in ready money, in household furniture, loan upon mortgage, in 7* 78 MANNERS. gold or silver plate, in a stock of dry goods or groceries, in a boot-shop, or tailor's mart, or in a farm and stock of cattle. With these capacities for display and credit, he may every day impose upon the honest confidence of others, in the sum of $300 more, and feed upon their hard earnings with legal impunity. When his powers of research into their pockets is exhausted in one place, he can change the locality of his munificent swindling to a new sphere, and repeat his pauper frauds, with- out limit or restraint, upon another community of unprotected, honest laborers. The bankrupt remedy is compulsory. The creditor can enforce it upon a defaulting debtor. Its requirements are stringent, and its penalties are severe. The presumptions of unfairness lie with the bankrupt to explain. It gives him but one discharge. No man can obtain a second release under this law. These are its leading and distinct characteristics every- where. And still this remedy always meets with resolute and intelli- gent opponents, who maintain that no lawful contract can be annulled by law. The Congress of the United States, against great opposition, enacted this law twice ; but very soon, and almost unanimously, repealed it. But this new code abolishes the liability of the debtor to ap- pear and explain what he has done with the property of his creditor, to any amount, and for his whole life ; and gives him an indemnity for the undisturbed possession and enjoyment of $300 worth of property, even though it should be the identical property out of which the creditor has been cheated. The only remedy left for the creditor is by bill of discovery or indictment for swindling. These are idle and insulting mockeries. Swindling is always perpetrated under the cloak, and with the usual circumstances which attend every purchase and sale. The secret motives and fraudulent designs of the defendant will be cautiously concealed ; they cannot be proved j the law will not permit fraud to be implied or inferred. And in a proceeding by bill for discovery, the defendant, in his answers to the interrogatories filed, will of course deny every insinuation against his honest intentions. MANNERS. 79 On a recent occasion, under a bill of discovery, the defendant acknowledged that he had reiterated his dexterity three times within two months. He said he had spent the money for the necessary occasions of his family ; denied the fraudulent intent — it could not be proved upon him, and he escaped with im- punity; thus encouraged himself, and with an example for others to plunder and prey upon society. These legal immunities were never intended for the poor, which means the " destitute." No poor man, or honest man, ever asked for them. They were proposed by the ignorant, under the influence of morbid sympathies and a mistaken view of the rights of debtor and creditor; and these erroneous pro- jects have been exposed and advocated by the lazy, unprinci- pled, and driveling politicians for popularity. It is the same spirit of injustice and wrong, which has got up the scheme called "free schools" in which the poor have no part, but in which the dishonest, the reckless, and the lazy revel at the public expense. It is aside from all the provisions for help to the poor ; it was made ostensibly for the poor, but with the secret design to bene- fit knaves ; the poor are not advantaged, but injured by it. The rights of creditors, and the validity of contracts, have been dragged into the pauper police and profanely desecrated, for the exclusive accommodation of the sinister. What business has a pauper to be in debt? What right has any man to run in debt, with the intention of not paying his creditor ? And what right has the legislature to force credit- ors to support their debtors ? They have power to compel the public to contribute money for the necessary support and comfort of the poor, for which all are compelled to pay their respective proportions. But they have no right " to levy unequal taxes" and to com- pel creditors to support their debtors, under the pretext that they are poor, and thus say to every creditor that his debt shall be converted into a poor rate, and a pauper contribution, at the option of the debtor. They have no right to invert the use of words, and in the name of the poor laws, which provides for " want!' and " desti- tution" (for these are the defining words of the term "poor") to decree that he who has run in debt to any amount, and re- fuses to pay it, shall be embraced within the meaning of the 80 MANNERS. word "poor" and upon this false and naked allegation be ex- cused from telling what he has done with his pauper booty. Whenever this debtor finds himself, by laziness or extrava- gance, unable or unwilling to pay his debts, he may say to his creditor, as the law now stands : — " Yes, it is true I owe you this thousand, or ten thousand dollars ; the amount is immaterial; my property is all gone except this six hundred bushels of corn, or one hundred bushels of wheat, I bought of you to-day; or this three hundred dollars in cash I borrowed from you yesterday, with my word and honor to pay you. But since then I have resolved to be an exempt, a pauper, a poor man ; and you must not touch that three hundred bushels of corn at your peril; the law gives me this liberty against you, and I shall hold you to it." The legislature has no authority to legalize these scandalous mockeries, and in the name of, and on behalf of the poor, to enable men who are not poor, and who should resent the impu- tation of pauperism as an insult, to rob and plunder the honest and industrious. They have no right to establish immunities for the lazy and the wicked, nor for the honest, under the pretence of giving them capital to begin with, which will oblige every prudent man, who has earned and saved his means, to refuse to the poor a pound of meat and the rent of a house without payment in advance, and thus magnify and increase the wants and desti- tution of the real poor, necessarily throw them back upon, and increase the poor taxes, and encourage extravagance and crime, by giving them license, not only to swindle the public, but to compel their creditors to make individual contributions of three hundred dollars to every adroit knave who can obtain it from them. All the rights and remedies of creditors have thus been taken from them, and given to their debtors. There is but one step more to be taken to complete the stride obviously meditated. The child, perhaps, is now alive who will live to see a fur- ther exemption made by law of a thousand dollars freehold, to be ycleped a homestead, and an annual exaction by taxes upon those who own anything above these two exemptions ($1,300) to pay the expenses of the living of these modern pirates, unless the honest men, who do earn and save, rouse themselves MANNERS. 81 up, and wrench from the rabble the power of the nomination for office, and the control of the elections. It is bad manners not to fulfil with fidelity our private and public undertakings. The natural inclination for sloth, and repugnance to careful study and patient labor, and the sordid desire to grasp at the fruits of industry and genius, without having claim to them, are the cause of all the bungling and superficial performance of duty. There are but few who honestly perform their duty. They either do not understand it, or do not care how it is done. They are restless, and blame their neglected employments because they do not supply their accommodations for idleness and pro- digality. Every respectable employment, properly and faithfully pur- sued, will prosper, with a thorough knowledge of it, and a dili- gent attention to all its details. Too much should not be un- dertaken by one person at one time. Tanning, shoemaking, farming, storekeeping, grog-selling, and squiring cannot all be done by one man ; nor can any one efficiently be a conveyancer, attorney, and congressman at the same time ; nor a bleeder, dentist, apothecary, and physician at one time. These different professions were practiced by different per- sons in former ages. A single fact, which has more power with the ignorant than arguments, will show the force of this proposition. It is of a gentleman who had an obstinate cutaneous erup- tion on the end of his nose, for the cure of which he had for five years invoked the medical skill of the United States, and London and Paris. He held a public post of distinction, in which he was con- stantly exposed to observation ; possessed a large fortune, and enjoyed high rank for learning, talents, and integrity. With all these enviable concurrences, in the mid-day of life, his health, peace, and pride were crushed, and despair settled upon all his hopes like a thick cloud. At length he resigned his office, covered up with a mask the advancing and horrid fungus, and resigned himself to voluntary imprisonment for life. On his way home, he halted for the night at the city of , where he was spied out by a sagacious old friend, who inquired for, and upon being informed of the names of the doctors who 82 MANNERS. had been consulted, remarked that none of those gentlemen, he thought, were specially regarded as cutaneous physicians; and that there was a young doctor of education and good character in that city, who, it was said, had turned his attention with considerable success to diseases of the skin. Hope flashed upon his agonized heart. The gentleman re- ferred to was consulted; the story and the symptoms of the patient carefully written down; and time was modestly pro- posed for thought and research. The next day a prescription was ordered, which was made up for fifty cents; the blistered and persecuted nose was released from its brutal harness, and covered with soft and cooling ungu- ents ; a tablespoon ful of the preparation was taken three times a- day, with generous living, and free exercise in the open air for twelve days; during which time the disgusting deformity gra- dually vanished, and the perishing feature resumed its natural form, color, and texture. Thus far the doctor and his patient were strangers to each other. Now there had been miraculously vanquished a revolt- ing fatal monster, and a new-born tangible member of the human face in its place. The senses and imagination of the patient were struck with bewildering amazement ! ! Was it a treacherous delusion, or a cunning trick to excite hope and betray him to despair ? Was this a certain cure, or would the hideous leper again fasten its unrelenting and deathly fangs upon his face ? These were mental agitations fraught with thrilling horrors. The doctor calmly allayed his fears, and gave him an intelli- gible, lucid, unassuming, and scientific explanation of the re- mote, internal, latent, and secret causes of this malady; which, like many other diseases, have their seat sometimes in insen- sible parts, and develop their symptoms by sympathy on remote and healthy surfaces of the body. He told him that it was not inherent or chronic ; and that it could be prevented or removed by the same remedy ; and upon being requested to name his charge, diffidently asked if $15 was too much. The curious may be informed that this true and faithful servant of the public received, in place of his modest charge, a munificent benefaction as a just reward for his fidelity, skill, and learning. How much bright light is shed upon the sub- ject under consideration by this true revelation ! MANNERS. 83 Developments of the practical results of real knowledge and untiring industry are thus constantly made in all the spheres of mental and moral activity. The true philosophy of all moral and social usefulness con- sists in diligent fidelity and singleness of purpose. No man, with idle, eccentric, or vacillating habits, and super- ficial knowledge of his business, should be encouraged or pa- tronized. There is no dependence to be placed in his integrity, stability, or capacity. Such men are presumptuous in manner, extortionate in their prices ; dishonest to the public, stand in the way of, and discourage honest industry, talents, learning, morals, and modest worth. G-ood manners do not merely consist in amiable deportment and civil conversation, but involve the honest and faithful discharge of all the personal and conventional duties which we expressly and impliedly assume, and are required to perform, in whatever we undertake to do. Those who are too stupid, or lazy, or ignorant, or depraved to perform these duties in good faith, always have art enough to screen themselves by appealing to the morbid sympathies of the bad, with the pretext that it is uncharitable and bad manners to be ungenerous or severe towards any one. They live by deception and fraud, and presumptuously invert all the laws by which the conduct of honest men are governed, to conceal their deceptions and treachery to the public. So that they abuse all the elements of good manners by their deliberate violation of them; and insolently invert these con- servative rules of right, to maintain their fraudulent perpetra- tions on others. It is a much greater breach of good manners to charge one with bad manners for exposing hypocrisy, quackery, and vice, than it is to insult one with coarse and profane language. It is bad manners, also, to countenance or encourage, by ex- ample, pretexts for evading moral restraints, and a due respect for order and law, and a proper reverence for religion, however these vulgarisms may be sanctioned by popular and fashionable toleration. And it is, perhaps, more than bad manners to deride the motives, and sneer at the unostentatious labors of those who, by charities, schools, and religion, without reward, quietly and I meekly strive to ameliorate and improve the physical and moral condition of man ; and perhaps it is also something worse than bad 84 MANNERS. manners to tax their gratuitously obtained means to pamper the prodigality, and pay the rash and reckless debts of politicians and factionists. When it suits the morbid vanity or sordid cupidity of these demagogues, levies, without stint, are made to build temples, and pay armies of teachers, selected by ignorant politicians, to catch the applause of the rabble, by the establishment of poor schools ) and millions of debts are contracted ostensibly for public improvements; but covertly, for fraudulent contracts and embezzlements. And when the State becomes bankrupt by their licentious prodigality, they impiously propose to tax the sanctuaries for God's worship, and the graves of the dead. No associations should be permitted, under any pretext, to accumulate property beyond their legitimate occasions. This is a monopoly which nowhere should be allowed; but all the property required for the necessary and liberal accom- modation of charitable and religious institutions should be ex- empt from taxation. Let corporation monopolies, who subsist upon the public, and make no pretensions of benevolence, be taxed. They are impregnable to oppression, because their success depends on trick and deception. The politicians have no right to take or tax a fund, or hos- pital, or a house raised by gratuitous contributions, and hon- estly dedicated to the comfort of the helpless or the promotion of knowledge, morals, or religion. No government has the right to tax or clip the loaf given to the hungry, or touch the sacred vestments of the altar, under the profane pretext that there should be no individual benevo- lence, and that the rulers of the people should have an exclus- ive monopoly in chanty, and that the toleration of religion, without taxation, is a special privilege, and has a tendency to encourage a union of church and state, which means a test and a pledge of conformity to the laws and a support of an established church. The constitution of all the States, and the constitution of the United States disclaim all assumptions of theocracy ; on the contrary, they guarantee to every one permission to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, and expressly refuse to furnish to this object any preference, aid, or favor. The necessary result is that persons using this franchise, as MANNERS. 85 incident thereto, may hold and enjoy all the appliances and immunities necessary for its enjoyment, at their own expense. And the practical operation of the theory is that, so long as they keep themselves within their lawful sphere, and out of the range of the reserved powers of government, these pri- vileges are as sacred as the immunities of liberty and life ; and if they contribute to the general good, upon all rules of public policy, they are entitled to, and should receive, the com- placent and benignant patronage and encouragement, and not the discountenance and persecutions of, government. Suppose that most excellent society called Quakers — whose system of police and morals is as near perfection as any similar human contrivance can be, if we judge of it by its undisputed success — could satisfy the public that they could, at the same cost, and free of the pay and venal contingencies of official duplicity, take better care of the poor, the idiots, the insane, the criminals, and the whole army of fanatics and political jockeys; that they would keep better schools and turn out more learned men, make wiser laws, and administer justice better, more quickly and quietly, than these things are now done by this noisy scrambling public ; would it not be an obvious saving to make a contract with them for the performance of these important undertakings ? And is there any pretence but that these efforts have been everywhere more thoroughly and honestly accom- plished by unpaid and voluntary contributions, when theorists and politicians can be kept away from them, than any muni- cipal functionaries, with all their ostentation, pageantry, and pomp, have ever been able to execute them? Such contributions and benevolence can no more be legiti- mate objects of taxation than the healing oil or the brotherly love of the good Samaritan. That which is held for use or profit may be lawfully taxed, but not that which is raised for help and light to the blind and feeble. It would be just as reasonable to tax the funds raised for, and the buildings and edifices constructed for, poor schools, paupers, criminals, court-houses, and legislation, and which in no respect contribute more to the maintenance of order and public security than these institutions do. The argument that by their exemption from taxation they become the objects of the grant of a special favor or privilege by government, when, by taxing them, their means and capaci- 86 MANNERS. ties for usefulness are diminished, is another refinement of the impudent, ignorant, and vulgar demagogues to delude, defraud, and oppress the people. Their secret purpose is to complicate the tricks and obscuri- ties of faction fraud, so as to bewilder and cheat the people by- compound taxations out of their hard earnings and honest sav- ings, to gratify their sordid and venal appetites. Every meal and all the shelter and covering given to the hungry, the orphan, the sick and infirm, by the hand of charity, leave that much less for the public to pay for. Every person restrained from evil, and led into and encouraged to follow the paths of virtue and religion, diminishes the bur- thens of the depravity and crime resting upon the community, increases the industry, and strengthens the moral and physical resources of society. The wants and occasions of millions are thus supplied by the hand of benevolence, instead of being taunted and soul-smitten by the grudging and hired minions of the law. Thousands are instructed through all the courses of learning and science, in the endowed colleges and schools, not by igno- rant politicians, but by competent and refined scholars. Is it not a false and fraudulent sophistry, that the means voluntarily granted by the public, and the donations, devises, and contributions voluntarily bestowed by individuals for sus- taining the health and lives, enlightening the minds and puri- fying the hearts, of man; that the purse and the scrip, the books of songs and music and prayers, and the holy Gospels, the churches, the altars, the tabernacles for God's worship, and the sepulchres of the dead, should not escape the taxation fangs of the politician? They insolently assume that these charitable and laudable objects of gratuitous and pious foundation, conducted for ages by the brightest and purest men that live, have no agency in ameliorating and sustaining the physical and moral exigencies of the human race. Whereas they are the conservative elements which sustain the entire fabric of social order and security. If the politicians had thrown all their extortions by taxation into these safe and honest channels of wise and judicious ap- propriation, very many of the riots, conflagrations, election, judicial, legislative, and executive outrages which have degraded this country for several years past would have been averted. MANNERS. 87 In this country, as there is no established connection between the government and the church and the institutions referred to, the politicians have a fair chance at the people, without any temptation or occasion to do it under pretensions of religion ; and it is amusing to see how they revel in open profanity. In countries where all these objects are under government super- vision — and it becomes the interest of the rabble to join them — it is amusing to remark the swelling congregations of devout and solemn rogues. There has never before now been so fair a chance for the undisguised development of the real materials which govern good and bad men as there is furnished by the wise discrimination here made between politics and religion. It has placed both parties, the good and the bad men, in solid column, face to face. The latter resist all the arts which education can supply, and all the power which brutal force can employ, and criminal public sympathy can furnish, and with no opposition to en- counter, are waging the most sanguinary war upon the ardor, industry, and religion of the country. It is this latent influence, perhaps, that explains the reason why the elder Adams remarked, after a six weeks' visit to one of the largest cities in the country, that he had not during his whole stay met one public man with unaffected good manners. Holding an elevated office, he was, of course, surrounded by political Shylocks, whose habits and manners are impelled by their selfish propensities, and who are never influenced by the purifying restraints of decorum, morals, and religion. As to graveyards, every man dies with the hope, at least, that he will be decently buried and let alone. The World's Convention would unanimously say amen to this, although no more respect has ever been paid by the rabble to a dead than to a living body. Everything bends to their rapacity. The Egyptians embalmed, mummied, and carefully packed away their dead, to be used in after ages for fuel and clap-trap shows for the ignorant. Some have made bonfires of their dead. Perhaps this is the best way to keep them from being seized by politicians. The friends of the dead soon scatter and die too ; the graveyards get full, and no brimful eye or loving heart is left to watch them. The bailiff comes; the dead man can't give him black mail. The tax is levied, the grave is sold, and the vendee makes manure and merchandise of the land. 88 MANNERS. The savages do not tax, but sacredly cherish and revere the tombs of their dead. No government has ever indulged in the brutal luxury of taxing a graveyard. The bad manners of England, as to taxation, will be found in the following extract. Hitherto, they have not taxed the dead, an example, it seems, their descendants in this country are not inclined to follow. TAXES IN GREAT BRITAIN. In the Edinburgh Review is an article upon Dr. Seybert's statistics of this country. The article consists principally of an abstract of the principal statements in the book. In the course of the article, is an admonition to us to abstain from martial glory, if we would avoid taxation, for the writer had no idea that we were so in love with taxation that we would increase our taxes without any intention of enhancing the revenue. — Repertory. " We can inform Jonathan (says the Reviewer, for so able a writer cannot abstain from the childish humor of applying to us a nickname) what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory. Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under foot — taxes upon everything which is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell or taste : taxes upon warmth, light, or locomotion — taxes on every- thing on earth, and the waters under the earth — on every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home — taxes on raw materials — taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of men — taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health — on the ermine that decorates the judge, and on the rope which hangs the criminal — on the poor man's salt and the rich man's spice — on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride — at bed or at board, couchant, levant, we must pay! The schoolboy whips his taxed top — the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle on a taxed road ; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty- two per cent., makes his will on an eight pound stamp, and ex- pires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then taxed from two to ten per cent., besides the MANNERS. 89 probate. Large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel : his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble ; and he is then gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more !" These are objects of direct taxation. This is an art, like all the other plots of faction. They call it a science of government, but it is no more a science than the game at cards by which cheating is plausibly and secretly per- petrated. By indirect taxation, under the disguise of imports upon the productions of foreigners, and under the pretext of encouraging and equalizing the exigencies of commerce and revenue, mil- lions .are extorted from home consumers. Judicious protection is a cardinal duty of government. In this country, it has been a subterfuge for monopoly and oppres- sion ; not only by the politicians who raise by it, and squander immense revenue, but by incorporated combinations, who, under cover of fictitious capital and credit, and desperate experiments, frighten and drive from the field of industry individual enter- prise. If these incorporated and pernicious monopolies were abo- lished, and producing and manufacturing activity were left free, the competition would be so lively and healthy in its activity as to prevent the burthen of high prices falling on consumers. The result would be that, however high the tariff on import- ations might be, even if it went to interdictions, it would not fall on the consumers, and the wealth, • industry, and resources of the country would be augmented. If this wise and judicious policy of protection by tariff on one hand, and the stimulation of individual enterprise by keep- ing down reckless and irresponsible corporations and combina- tions on the other hand, had been adopted by the government of the United States at its commencement, and adhered to up to this time, there would not have been such a pernicious taste for foreign luxuries excited, nor any underhand impositions of double prices upon consumers; and an immense field would have been thrown open for honest and profitable employment in all the departments of produce and manufacture ; so wide in its emulations, and conservative and wholesome in its results, that the country now would be independent of the world, with an enormous surplus for foreign supply, and the capacity for the employment of the largest carrying marine of any other nation. 8* 90 MANNERS. These two plain and simple elements of practical national policy and prosperity, so often and ineffectually urged, are worth more than all the visionary schemes of crafty and factious statesmen. CONCLUSION. There can be no good manners without morality, nor morality without religion. No savage ever had good breeding. No pagan ever had pure morals. Both feel and know the essential worth of decency and integrity, but do not practice either, al- though they exact them from others as vanity or cupidity de- mands. Religion, the love and fear of G-od, is the substratum of every- thing good. No charity, no charm in all creation, can find its spring in aught but G-od. No blur or blight of Heaven but comes from hell. Men sometimes scoff at religion to snub conscience; women love religion. They almost all of them go to church, if not prevented by the men. They secretly influence most extensive works of piety in schools, prayer meetings, and private praise. They encourage all denominations, and revere true religion. They do not bicker about tenets and doctrines, but, by their bright examples, rebuke sin and persuade to every honorable act. There is no restraint upon man's evil passions like religion. It softens the hard heart, curbs the ferocious temper, humbles the pride, and imbues the soul with charity. All its aspirations are for the glorious employments of Heaven ; not for selfish and sulky avarice, but for free and cheerful benevolence ; not for cruelty, but mercy ) not for op- pression, but liberty • not for lust or gluttony, but temperance and virtue ; not for war and blood, but peace and joy ; not for martial parades to provoke revenge and violence, and torchlight processions to encourage hatred and defiance, but for schools and Sabbath instruction for innocent and lovely children, churches, prayer, worship, concerts, lectures, social parties, temperance processions, songs, and harmless amusements for all. These refreshing and innocent excitements, prompted and governed by good manners and religion, stir up no bad pas- sions. Man is a social creature, requires society and profits by it. Let him have it, however large and free, if pure. CHAPTEE III. MENTAL HAPPINESS. We are all prone to repine at our lot— To wish for what we have not-^ Miseries of idleness (extract from Burton)— Employment, secret of con- tentment — Maybe unfit for all but what we are at— Distinctions— Rich- Poor — Excelling— Popular notice— Difference in minds — Fitness— Power — Taste — Susan Nelson — Professor Morse— But few who have the intel- lect of Washington — Franklin — Lafayette — Moses ■ — Julius Caesar- Luxury — The rich man — Opulence— Apathy— Comparisons— Old age — Learning is awork for life— Acquired bydegrees — Napoleon inyouth,&c. — Character — The causes of these secret aspirations — The mind — The soul — Brutes — Instinct — Passion — Impulse — Remorse- — Reflection — ■ Affection — Mental power— Religion. 11 Miseries of Idleness. — In a commonwealth where there is no public enemy, there is likely civil wars, and they rage upon themselves; this body of ours, when it is idle, and knows not how to bestow itself, macerates and vexeth itself with cares, grief, false fears, discontents, and suspicions; it tortures and preys upon its own bowels, and is never at rest. Thus much I dare boldly say; he or she that is idle, be they of what con- dition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy, let them have all things in abundance, and felicity that heart can wish or desire, all contentment — so long as he or she or they are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in body and mind, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or else car- ried away with some foolish fantasy or other. And this is the true cause that so many great men, ladies, and gentlewomen, labor of this disease in country and city; for idleness is an appendix to nobility; they count it a disgrace to work, and spend all their days in sports, recreations, and pastimes, and will therefore take no pains, be of no vocation ; they feed liber- ally, fare well, want exercise, action, employment (for to work I say they may not abide), and company to their desires; and thence their bodies become full of gross humors, wind, crudities; 92 MENTAL HAPPINESS. their minds disquieted, dull, heavy, &c. ; care, jealousy, fear o some diseases, sullen fits, weeping fits, seize too familiarly on them. For what will not fear and fantasy work in an idle body ?"-— Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 86. "Occupation the best Cure for Discontent. — When you shall hear and see so many discontented persons, in all places where you come, so many several grievances, unnecessary complaints, fears, suspicions, the best means to redress it, is to set them a-work, so to busy their minds; for the truth is, they are idle. Well they may build castles in the air for a time, and soothe up themselves with fantastical and pleasant humors; but in the end they will prove as bitter as gall; they shall be still, I say, discontent, suspicious, fearful, jealous, sad, fretting and vexing of themselves; so long as they be idle it is impossible to please them. Otio quinescit uti, plus Jiabet negotii qudm qui negotium in negotio, as that Agellius could observe ; he that knows not how to spend his time, hath more business, care, grief, anguish of mind, than he that is most busy in the midst of all his business." — Ibid., pp. 868-9. We are naturally prone to find fault with and repine at our fate. All children, little and big, think everything they see others have is better and prettier than their own things. We are also prone to imagine the pursuits of others prefer- able to ours. The laborer, mechanic, shopkeeper, and farmer fancies how superior to his are the occupations of professional life. He knows not of the monastic seclusion, solemn medita- tions and painful responsibilities of the priest, the incessant toil and cloistered solitude of the scholar, the perpetual and revolt- ing contaminations with vice and crime of the lawyer, the loathsome and disgusting employments of the physician, the wanderings and perils of the sailor and soldier, the uncertainty and duplicity of politicians, the hateful and hideous nightmare of vacant leisure. This principle is beautifully elucidated by the great Latin poet (Horace, Ode i.), and is the observation of every day's experience. "Aptitudes in Men.- -It is very certain that no man is fit for everything; but it is almost as certain, too, that there is scarcely any one man who is not fit for something, which something nature plainly points out to him by giving him a tendency and propensity to it. Every man finds in himself, either from nature ■ MENTAL HAPPINESS. 93 or education (for they are hard to distinguish), a peculiar bent and disposition to some particular character; arid his struggling against it is the fruitless and endless labor of Sisyphus. Let him follow and cultivate that vocation; he will succeed in it, and be considerable in one way at least; whereas, if he departs from it, he will, at best, be inconsiderable, probably ridiculous." Lord Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 65. The secret art of happiness is to be content; not to be listless or unambitious, but to employ our faculties for useful and well- timed emulation ; not to neglect, but discreetly encourage appro- priate enterprise. These aspirations should be restrained by prudence, and on no occasion suffered to ruffle the judgment. We might have been born idiots or Hottentots, and any point above that mark on the scale of existence is a prize in the great lottery of creation. Our natures may be specially adapted to our present position, and wholly unfit for a different sphere. However humble our lot, we may accommodate ourselves to it, and it is uncertain if this could be accomplished under dif- ferent circumstances. Hasty movements and sudden changes should be avoided, and no man can safely begin another trade or employment with which he is ignorant. Discontent is caprice and self-treachery. He who is dissatis- fied with his fate, if gratified might still be restless and grasp for more. There was a warrior who conquered all the world and wept for further conquest. All distinctions, except those resting upon virtue and talents, are artificial and speculative; matters of whim and fancy. Those poorer than we are think we are rich, and envy our estate with the same nervous anxiety that we covet the supposed wealth of others. So, too, as to every object of desire. The fables of the dog and the shadow, and the man and his goose, teach us that he who catches at more than belongs to him justly deserves to lose what he has; and that we are too prone to entertain a desire for jthings at a distance, which, if we had them, might work destruc- tion. Happiness does not therefore consist in the possession of a 94 MENTAL HAPPINESS. particular thing. It is the mental satisfaction we feel for what we have which makes happiness. The weary laborer may feel a charm at eventide, in the sweet shadow of his humble cottage, that finds no place with the sceptered monarch in his gilded palace. Happiness is a creature of the mind, a child of the imagina- tion, a deity which may be enshrined in any heart and wor- shiped without idolatry. It is a cheerful sprightly god, and flies suddenly and swiftly from the lazy, the stupid, and the wicked; it cares not for riches, and loves steady work and harmless fun, and calmly and soberly will vindicate the wisdom of its theories by rational arguments and minute details. The clean, or dusty, or the sedentary, or laborious nature of an employment does not ascertain the respectability of its cha- racter. Those whose engagements are sedentary and confined suffer for want of fresh air and exercise, while those upon the waters and in the fields suppose there is more comfort and ease in the seclusion of shade and shelter. Those engaged in the cleanest occupations, say the tailor, or cedar-cooper, might prefer the athletic exercise of the smith or the mason with their dust and mortar. All these are trifling and immaterial considerations, producing no abrasion to a mind not disposed to repine and fret. Whatever may be the self-denial and personal exposure of manly toil, if it does not affect the health, the spirit of industry will disregard it, and each should strive to excel in his own pursuit. These are the true sources of mental happiness, and lay the foundations of true fame and human glory. He who is more proficient in raising crops or cattle, in build- ing ships and houses, or making flour or cloth, than any other person is in the same pursuit or occupation, is the greatest man in his business. Mrs. Susan Nelson is the most distinguished spinner, and Professor Morse is the most exalted inventor, of this age; be- cause Mrs. Nelson spun more flax in one day than any woman ever spun before or since; and Professor Morse has more suc- cessfully discovered the control and practical use of electricity than any other man. It is wholly immaterial what the employment is, if it be respectable; perseverance in its pursuit verifies the maxim that u Practice makes perfect." MENTAL HAPPINESS. 95 The attainment of this conceded point in any sphere, me- chanics, agriculture, or science, secures acknowledged distinc- tion. The same law of reason and justice governs all the relations of life, and embraces all the successful energies and moral as- pirations of man. Washington was not less illustrious as a soldier, patriot, and statesman than he was as a farmer, a gentleman, and a Chris- j tian. Franklin was not more distinguished for scientific re- i search and skillful diplomacy than for his surprising faculties ; of simultaneous mental and mechanical composition; the rapid [ translation of his thoughts with his types directly from his mind to his printing-press. j This wonderful accomplishment was acquired by the intense . and patient industry of an ignorant and fugitive soap-boy. Every man, with equal mind and industry, has the same ) chance for the attainment of all these objects; and every man j of the same merits, if he does not reach the same points of ele- ; vation, is entitled to equal regard and admiration. j If he is not known to so many as those more distinguished, s he will be certain of the confidence and esteem of all good men I who do know him; and he will enjoy the highest point of mental ( happiness, a positive and sure consciousness of his own worth. The exact amount or summit of popularity or fame is not ) so important to a contented mind as a well-founded sense of •respect for our own virtues. We cannot all be governors and [generals; and those with subdued and refined feelings, who have reached high places, have not the appreciation of their value which is entertained by the crowd. They feel distrust and modesty, rather than ostentation. Their duties involve great severities of mental toil, research, and public scrutiny, by which the lives of sensitive persons are tortured and abridged; and thousands, for these reasons, shrink from or decline office. If Washington, Jefferson, or Jackson, now covered with post- humous glory, could speak to us from the tomb, they would say, that the drawbacks to their fame far outweighed their joys. The desire to be extensively known is absurd. There is no : meaning in the wish; it is ridiculous; and no one can give a good reason for it. The strongest proof of a man's good character is that he is aot known. Persons of sound good sense, whose employments have incidentally or necessarily thrown them into public notice, 96 MENTAL HAPPINESS. always avoid and shun, rather than court, empty and tumultu- ous receptions, levees, and parades. General Washington submitted to them with great reluctance, and only yielded from their conceded propriety as a revolution- ary finale. Dr. Franklin, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. John Quincy Adams, Mr. Thomas H. Benton, and General Scott, and every other gentle- man of judgment and true pride who has been before the American people, have peremptorily declined to unite in these riotous displays. And the recollection may be appealed to in support of the assertion that no one who has used them has been distinguished for wisdom, or has been successful as a leader. They are got up for an effect which they fail to produce. The succession of gorgeous pageantries, which were so rich and glorious from the time of the unanimous vote of invitation by the people and their representatives to General La Fayette, to visit, in the evening of his life, the early scenes of his patri- otism and suffering, until he left the country, was one grand and universal jubilee of thanksgiving for the commencement of a millenium in this refuge of persecuted man. They were songs of pure and pious joy. No looked for favors occupied the hearts of the millions who joined this throng. There were more tears than laughter; it was a solemn festival of religious love and gratitude by the generations of a disen- thralled and delivered nation, with this last apostle and his venerable cotemporaries, for their guests, in the only revolution that has been wrought out, and its objects successfully achieved, under the overruling providence of Almighty God. Men widely differ in their faculties, and very few possess ex- traordinary powers for any one pursuit, much less special and extraordinary capacities for a number of occupations. The individuals referred to were amongst the few very great men that have lived. Moses, Julius Caesar, Newton, "Washington, Franklin, Jef- ferson, are instances of intellectual glory, scattered with other luminaries over the arch of time, and outshining countless myriads of other lights as suns and twinkling satellites, with dimmer stars which decorate the skies. With affluence and ease, some imagine there is perpetual and certain joy. MENTAL HArPINESS. 97 " Use of Luxury. — In the present imperfect condition of so- ciety, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution of property. The diligent mechanic and the skillful artist, who have obtained no share in the division of the earth, receive a voluntary tax from the possessors of land; and the latter are prompted by a sense of interest to improve those estates with whose produce they may purchase additional pleasures." — Gib- bon, vol. i. p. 87. "In a civilized state, every faculty of man is expanded and exercised; and the great chain of mutual dependence connects and embraces the several members of society. The most nu- merous portion of it is employed in constant and useful labors. The select few, placed by fortune above that necessity, can however fill up their time by the pursuits of interest or glory, by the improvement of their estate or of their understanding, by the duties, the pleasures, and even the follies, of social life." — Ibid.., vol. i. p. 357. This he contrasts with the life of the barbarians. The mind readily draws and lavishly embellishes such a pic- ture. It is, for example, of a newly-married pair, young in health, refined and rich, of pure lineage, and spotless reputation, surrounded by luxury and friends, to gaze upon them through a long life of ease and happiness, and fancy over all their golden days of joy and peace. To feel the certainty that this bright and dazzling mirror is no delusion, and to contrast its shining glories with the dull obscurity of poverty and manual toil. This is crushing to the eager wish, and snubs the panting hope as does the sudden bit, the spurred and rampant steed. Covetous appetites are planted in our nature, and nourished up to madness, by being doomed to drudge like brutes for bread before the transparent gates of Paradise. All the curse on man would seem in this to be fulfilled. Yet reason bids restless poverty repine no more, but listen to the fretful murmurs of this opulent and idle neighbor ; to mark his listless days and sleepless nights, his hunger surfeited, and sated thirst, his vacant eye, and ear, and thought, his never- ending eagerness for something new j his torturing temptations, his innate humiliation for his useless existence, his instinctive shame to hear the clamorous shouts of free and manly labor scoffing his effeminate imbecility; his pampered frame, nervous irritability, precarious health, uncertain life, early death, dilapi- 9 98 MENTAL HAPPINESS. dated fortune, helpless degenerated children, his scattered and extinguished name and habitation. Reason and truth will thus brush down the radiant beams of borrowed burnish cast round this early picture of our hasty youth, and to the heart hold out the cheering words of peace within, for him whose willing hands have wrought out for him- self an independent life, with health and strength, proud satis- faction, temptation baffled, green old age, triumphant death, and stalwart virtuous progeny, in habitations free, by equal laws forever fastened to their country's soil. " Luxurious Selfishness. — He sits at table in a soft chair at ease, but he doth not remember in the meantime that a tired waiter stands behind him, an hungry fellow ministers to him, full ; he is athirst that gives him drink (saith Epictetus) ; and is silent whiles he speaks his pleasure; pensive, sad, when he laughs. Pleno se proluit auro ; he feasts, revels, and profusely spends, hath variety of robes, sweet music, ease, and all the pleasure the world can afford; whilst many an hunger-starved poor creature pines in the street, wants clothes to cover him, labors hard all day long, runs, rides for a trifle, fights perad- venture from sun to sun; sick and ill, weary, full of pain and grief, is in great distress and sorrow of heart. He loaths and scorns his inferior, hates or emulates his equal, envies his su- perior; insults over all such as are under him, as if he were of another species, a demi-god, not subject to any fall, or human infirmities. Generally they love not, are not beloved again; they tire out others' bodies with continual labor, they them- selves living at ease, caring for none else, sibi nati; and are so far many times from putting to their helping hand, that they seek all means to depress, even most worthy and well deserv- ing, better than themselves, those whom they are by the laws of nature bound to relieve and help, as much as in them lies ; they will let them caterwaul, starve, beg, and hang, before they will anyways (though it be in their power) assist, or ease : so unnatural are they for the most part, so unregardful, so hard- hearted, so churlish, proud, insolent, so dogged, of so bad a disposition. And being so brutish, so devilishly bent one to- wards another, how is it possible but that we should be discon- tent of all sides, full of cares, woes, and miseries V — Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 110. Just in proportion to the stock of good sense and sound judg- ment is the heart at ease as to the multitude of grades and MENTAL HAPPINESS. 99 degrees in mind, means, and position making up the extremes, and filling up the intermediate spaces of existence. The mental capacities vary in their strength and tendencies, as much as the taste and choice for place, and change from the humblest efforts of the infant mind to the refinement of art and the creations of genius, from the contented rustic to the roving mariner, from penury and want to health and luxury, the meal-satisfied beggar and the unsated miser, the slave and the monarch, the contented eunuch and weeping Alexander. Who can gaze on all these wonderful dispensations, the mys- teries and magnitude of the moral and material world, and not be smitten down with humility and thankfulness, for any place, however humble, in this wonderful majestic panorama of God's glory, and acknowledge his infinite bounty in giving us talents for any one of the innumerable pursuits which his infinite providence has ordained, in the division of labor amongst his rational creatures? There may be mental happiness with great bodily sufferings. Persons afflicted with acute and stubborn diseases, griping poverty, and cruel captivity, may possess faculties for endur- ance, resolution, and religious confidence so strong, as to hold a triumphant and unsubdued serenity of soul. These instances of intellectual power are rare, for our temperaments are impa- tient and restless; and the emotions of the mind, and the sen- sations of the body, are so closely blended that they almost maintain a reciprocal control, so that we are apt in seasons of affliction to increase our sorrows by despondency and mourn- ing. Adversity should stimulate us to resignation and religious faith, and, if sincere, the humblest efforts for the attainment of these blessings by the true believer will be mercifully en- couraged. The same great law of mental and physical dependence, which governs and sustains us in adversity, prevails amidst the blessings of health and prosperity. The impelling and mutual necessities of the sexes are no more important for their social and rational enjoyments, than the concurrent facilities of the body and mind are essential for the security of individual happiness and tranquillity. Upon the continued activity of both, within an appropriate sphere, suited to our strength and capacity, down to the sunset of life, depend the sources of true happiness. 100 MENTAL HAPPINESS. CULTIVATION OF TEMPER. " If, happily, we are born of a good nature ; if a liberal edu- cation has formed in us a generous temper and disposition, well- regulated appetites, and worth j inclinations, 'tis well for us, and so indeed we esteem it. But who is there endeavors to give these to himself, or to advance his portion of happiness in this kind ? Who thinks of improving, or so much as of preserving his share in a world where it must of necessity run so great a hazard, and where we know an honest nature is so easily cor- rupted ? All other things relating to us are preserved with care, and have some art or economy belonging to them; this which is nearest related to us, and on which our happiness de- pends, is alone committed to chance : And temper is the only thing ungoverned, whilst it governs all the rest." — Shaftes- bury's Characteristics, vol. ii. p. 293. A wanton disregard of these connecting and mysterious con- structions of our physical and mental organs is instantly re- buked by the significant and fatal hand of Providence. They must mutually serve each other, and cannot separately and in- dependently exist without destructive consequences to both. Let man be chained by bondage or avarice, and he becomes a brute, and his mind a chaos, and both decay. If the mind feasts with avidity upon the charms of poetry or science, however rapturous or sublime, without exercise for the body, there soon will come apathy and wasted health, and both must perish. Sensual and voluptuous pleasures inevitably and speedily waste and banish life. Instances have often occurred of persons, whose pursuits were laborious and tiresome, suddenly relinquishing business and seeking relief in retirement and leisure, who have found them- selves insupportably perplexed, and have gradully sunk into listless and apoplectic extinction. As mid-day approaches, and experience has ripened, a careful and prudent discrimination may dispense with the heavy and trying portions of any employment or profession, and retain those parts which can be made convenient, and the familiar and accustomed pursuit of which may be used commendably to fill up time and comfortably occupy the body and the mind. The great error into which we fall is the headstrong resolu- tion formed in youth for sudden and speedy affluence, and sub- sequent repose and luxury. The impetuous eagerness for this MENTAL HAPPINESS. 101 gilded prize too often precipitates its followers into ruin and despair : and if the perilous adventure is crowned with success, its consummations are realized amidst spasmodic excitements, uncongenial and inconsistent with the listless indulgences and unexciting relaxations of retirement and leisure. The constant, temperate, and moderate occupations of the mind and body are essential to human happiness. This is an undeniable law of our nature. Its practical illus- tration is demonstrated by misery and ruin for the listless and idle, and grace and glory for the thrifty and industrious. Just so far as we may advance in any lawful desires or wishes from the sphere we are placed in, by patient and legiti- mate means, without wrong to ourselves and others, we may go with safety, but the moment we break this law, we are in peril; and the world is as full of fugitives and malefactors from the primary paths of discretion and prudence as hell is said to be of penitent sinners. There is no reason why every man should not make choice of a learned profession, or any other lawful occupation. No one has a right to criticise upon aspirations, however extrava- gant. Surprising results have come from humble undertakings. The triumph of mind and patient industry over circumstances, with Franklin and others, are examples of genius and perse- verance, which prove the power these human qualities have over circumstances. But there is not one human being in ten thousand who has the mind of Franklin. It is intellect, not luck, that produces these triumphant changes j and the rock upon which we too often split is in an over-estimate of our ability, or in the ignorant conclusion that the means by which professional and mental elevation is attained are artificial; that it is only neces- sary to get legal permission to put up the tin of " Doctor" or " Attorney at Law," in order to acquire the coveted rank and position of others. If the lazy shoemaker, tailor, or carpenter were to witness this propensity inverted, to see a doctor mend- ing his boots, or a lawyer cutting out a coat, he would ridicule the absurd effort. And yet these men aspire to be convey- ancers, lawyers, and justices, and place on their shutters "Alderman," "Deeds, wills, and oilier legal instruments drawn here," and advertise to do without knowledge or skill the things which require education, teaching, and experience, just 9* 102 MENTAL HAPPINESS. as much as the " art, trade, and mystery" of making a coat or a shoe. Let such men go into the professions after they are fit, if they desire to do so, but not without a suitable preparation, or they must be quacks and pettifoggers, and hold a degraded condition, without one tithe of the character they had in their workshop. To know that we hold rank but with the mean, is crushing to the spirit. To be laughed at by those we have left, where we might have held a respectable position, and to be cut and shunned by those we profess to belong to, is humiliating. What is the mortification and chagrin of a quack doctor for others to know that he has crippled or lost a patient from ignorance ! How does he feel as he passes the averted eye or scornful look of an educated and successful physician, who re- fuses to hold professional consultation with him ! How deep must throb the heart of an ignorant, half-educated lawyer, when he finds himself estopped by pleadings he does not understand, blocked in the face of a court and jury by the skill of his antagonist, and afterwards insulted by his client for stupidity and ignorance ! Both have very many opportunities to hide their ignorance, and to cheat, neither of which would be done except by a scoundrel. Professional delinquency is so palpable, especially with a lawyer, that want of learning is soon detected, and the pre- sumptuous pretender, however noisy and obtrusive, is speedily put down upon the roll of fools and rogues, from whence he can never escape or be crossed oiF. Singular instances of this restless spirit and its consequences are seen in the eagerness with which persons rush into the pro- fessions without previous preparation. The lazy mechanic, or the impudent and broken tradesman, sees a doctor riding about to his patients, or a lawyer trying a cause in court, and amuses himself with the delusion that these are easy and conspicuous occupations, by which one can always be in company and live in affluence. They do not pause to reflect that neither of these professions can be honorably or honestly embarked in without a primary collegiate and a scientific course of studies that should consume the whole period of minority. No man can be suitably qualified for the office of instruction, MENTAL HAPPINESS. ' 103 minister of the gospel, principal of academy, professor of col- lege, lawyer or doctor, without a full and thorough course of educational discipline and drill, from the time he is able to say his A B C's until he has reached maturity. With all these advantages, no man can be more than fit to take stand with respectable cotemporaries, and, with becoming ability and skill, acquit himself to his patrons. Can any one find himself more effectually rebuked and hu- miliated for his restless folly in superficially translating him- self into the iron harness of a learned profession than to dis- cover — too late, alas ! for all his manly sensibilities — that, instead of ease and comfort, he is doomed to a life of drudging, rivalry, and competition ? and that, instead of pleasant opportunities for personal display, every professional effort is checkmated and exposed by the skillful dexterity and refined accomplishments of an unsparing and triumphant adversary? And it is no excuse for ignorance to assume these efforts of learning upon the ground of want of means to obtain an edu- cation, any more than it is consistent to murmur at our inability to hold a ship or a farm for lack of capital. Patient industry and saving will acquire one, perseverance and genius will accomplish the other; and he who attempts banking, or professional responsibility, upon speculation and without stock, must look for bankruptcy and humiliation. Success in both is by slow and legitimate steps, in taking which, the mind and judgment become adapted to the object, without which the effort is as absurd as the result is disastrous. Napoleon is said to have aspired to a crown in early life. If he could have obtained it then, he would have passed into the tutelage of a Regent, and never gained, perhaps, the intellect- ual force for which, by a succession of desperate struggles, he subsequently was eminent. A citizen of the United States, who recently died, possessed of several millions, would not have husbanded his treasures with so much care and thrift, if, instead of its acquisition by slow and gradual steps, he had found it at his feet, when his whole stock and estate were limited to a single jar of prunes. GENEROSITY A VIRTUE OF HEALTH. " If it was necessary here, or there was time to refine upon this doctrine, one might further maintain, exclusive of the happiness which the mind itself feels in the exercise of this 104 MENTAL HAPPINESS. virtue, that the very body of man is never in a better state than when he is most inclined to do good offices : that, as nothing more contributes to health than a benevolence of tem- per, so nothing generally was a stronger indication of it. " And what seems to confirm this opinion, is an observation, the truth of which must be submitted to every one's reflection — namely — that a disinclination and backwardness to good is often attended, if not produced, by an indisposition of the ani- mal as well as rational part of us : — so naturally do the soul and body, as in other cases so in this, mutually befriend, or prey upon each other. And, indeed, setting aside all abstruser reasoning upon the point, I cannot conceive but that the very mechanical motions which maintain life must be performed with more equal vigor and freedom in that man whom a great and good soul perpetually inclines to show mercy to the miserable, than they can be in a poor, sordid, selfish wretch, whose little, contracted heart melts at no man's affliction; but sits brooding so intently over its own plots and concerns as to see and feel nothing; and, in truth, enjoying nothing beyond himself." — Sterne's Sermons, vol. i. p. 80. The foregoing remarks describe some of the causes of mental discomfort and happiness in the social relations. It will be found that they have a wider sphere of action, and hold more control over our conduct and characters, than is supposed. They are shut up in the secret recesses of the heart, and give impulse to almost every act of our lives, however other reasons may be ostensibly given for them. The hidden source of these mental impulses is the soul, the spiritual, rational, and immortal substance in man, which dis- tinguishes him from brutes; by which he is enabled to think and reason, and is rendered a subject of moral government. It is the understanding, the intellect, the vital principle, the mind, the mental faculty, the seat and source of intention, pur- pose, design, inclination, will, desire, opinion, memory, intelli- gent power, thought, affection, and grace. Man is born without innate ideas. The rudiments of all knowledge are communicated to him by sensation. The mind derives knowledge from observation and experience. The senses convey into the mind distinct perceptions, such as color, heat, cold, figure, &c. ; and those things are called sensible qualities. The notions or ideas acquired in this way are called MENTAL HAPPINESS. 10£ sensible knowledge, and the source of that knowledge is termed sensation. The other fountain which experience furnishes the under- standing with knowledge is, that attention we can give to. the operations of our own minds, when employed about those ideas which were originally suggested by objects of sense. When the soul reflects on these, we are furnished with a set of notions entirely different from the ideas of sense — -such as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different energies and passions of our minds. The mind does not seem to have any ideas or notions but those which it obtains by sensation and reflection. These are the sources and first materials of all knowledge. This may be considered as the maturity of intellect, and then it should be strengthened by useful knowledge and experience, carefully cultivated by industrious research and habits of close thinking. This is true mental and moral education ; it is within the reach of every one with moderate mental capacities, whose true pride of character is above his frivolous and brutal appe- tites; and from these sources alone is mental happiness to be derived. This course of private education opens and invigorates the understanding, strengthens the judgment and the memory, controls the eccentric and vacillating excitements of temper, i refines the emotions of the heart, and settles the mind down i with rational and intelligible conclusions, and prepares us to i meet without alarm the severest exigencies of life, and arms the soul with hope and faith for death and eternity. Without going any further into an examination of this sub- ject, it is clear, from these acknowledged metaphysical laws, that man is born without any understanding; and that all his mental powers are acquired through the medium of his senses; and that these ideas and notions, which finally grow to what is understood to be mind, are communicated to the soul by sensa- tions which are acted upon by external objects, simultaneously with the power for moral discrimination. The notions conceived by the senses are the natural result of their being brought into action ; for example, the idea of bitter- ness would not be excited by the taste of sweetness, nor the Qotion of pleasure by the sensation of pain ; nor can the distinc- tions between right and wrong enter into the mind through the 106 MENTAL HAPPINESS. senses. This must be the work of intelligent power, a faculty of the mind which is gradually brought into action with its other powers : and experience has established that these faculties are governed by their own secret impulses, and not by any innate sense of right or wrong. The process of these moral and mental inductions is referred to, to show their simultaneous action upon the soul, and to show also the moral responsibilities that fall upon us at the first dawn of reason. For that which occurs before the mind has sufficiently acquired the rudiments of knowledge we are not accountable; but after we have obtained sufficient information to comprehend the will of the Creator, and to understand the distinctions between right and wrong, there is no further probation of irresponsibility; good and evil are set before us, which are as susceptible of dis- crimination as tangible objects, and we are accountable for our choice. An infant will detect the difference between heat and cold, and sweet and sour, before it can speak; and its capacities for moral discriminations are simultaneously exhibited by the exer- cise of the will. It manifests design, inclination, opinion, and memory, with the first germs of reason and instinct; and de- velops the passions of joy, grief, and resentment before it can speak or walk. Just to the extent that it has intelligence to conceive these thoughts, and enact these passions, does it under- stand that it is wrong to indulge them. The capacity to appre- ciate a good act is as strong as the ability to understand and perpetrate a bad action. This is unquestionably true, if there is mind sufficient to know them apart. If there is not under- standing enough to make this discrimination, then the animal is just so far human as the functions are concerned, and perhaps no further. The power of speech is no evidence of mind. Natural fools, who will clutch fire, can talk; and possess, with the subtilty and craft of some brutes, the plausible appearances without the realities of intellect. Brutes learn the use of letters and figures, and understand the meaning of words, although they have not the power to articulate them. Dogs and horses will lie down, and rise up, and fetch and carry as bid ; and dogs will spell words and make numbers, with loose letters and figures. Dogs too are obviously influenced by affection, in which they display wonderful intelli- MENTAL HAPPINESS. 107 gence by acts of fidelity ; all of which is short of the powers of intellect, but which is equal, and sometimes superior, to the understanding possessed by human beings; and wherever this standard of thought is found — where there is no capacity to appreciate the distinctions between right and wrong, there can be no intelligent power; it is but mere instinct, without the vital or spiritual principle of the soul; and the animal passions hold entire dominion. It is admitted, that brutes give no indications of immortality. Dean Sherlock .says : "For though we allow them to be imma- terial, they have no natural indications of immortality; they have no happiness or pleasures but what result from, and depend on, their bodies : and therefore, however God disposes of them after death, as far as we can judge, they are not capable of any life or sensation when they are separated from this body." — Immor- tality of the Soul, p. 112. If this proposition is true, it inevitably leaves all human beings, with similar mental limitations and restrictions, upon a footing in this respect with brutes. Perhaps it is so. If this question could be solved by giving dumb beasts the gift of speech, it would be found, perhaps, that some of them hold a higher intellectual rank than some of our own race. It will be seen, therefore, that man is much more controlled and managed by his own will, and much more responsible for his own actions, than he is willing to acknowledge. His rest- less and inconsistent temper makes him deny his guilt and .shift it upon others. If he cannot read and write, he is too stubborn to learn; if he is without a trade or a profession, he is too obstinate to acquire them; if he is poor, he is too lazy to earn wealth by honest industry; if he is not in the sphere or condition of life he would aspire to, he will not patiently employ the means by which these preferments are obtained : but indulges his wicked temper in abusing his parents for his bad fortunes, and devours his peace in murmurs, jealousy, and bitterness. The pernicious springs of all these secret impulses are found with the brutal propensities. USE OF OUR PASSIONS. "Our passions were given us to perfect and accomplish our natures, though by accidental misapplications to unworthy objects they may turn to our degradation and dishonor. We may indeed be debased as well as ennobled by them ; but then 108 MENTAL HAPPINESS. the fault is not in the large sails, but in the ill conduct of the pilot, if our vessel miss the haven. The tide of our love can never run too high, provided it take a right channel." — A Col- lection of Miscellanies, by John Norms, p. 326. The prevalence and strength of the passions vary; some- times one or more, and frequently all of them, appear to hold dominion — wine and lust being peculiar to youth ; arrogance and ambition with middle life ; and avarice and hatred with old age. Some of the passions are more firmly seated than others ; but no one can claim exemption from their overruling sway. Whatever may be the repelling strength of conscience, or the efforts of dissimulation, the involuntary and secret influences of some or all of these passions constantly dart through the mind. And they will hold entire control over us, without the most resolute and constant resistance. The mind is not only constantly under the influence of these vigorous passions, but it is perpetually exposed to temptations, stimulated by desire, encouraged by examples, and the certainty that all our thoughts are concealed. Everything within and around conspires to prick forward the selfish and licentious spirit of indulgence. The prevalence of these active and predominating propensi- ties holds this additional advantage over the conscience and the reason. Their strength and power are but. seldom counteracted or confronted by the repulsions of intellect. While the pas- sions are vigorous, the mind, with most of us, is apt to be feeble.. Perhaps there are ten to one of all the human race whose mental strength is but barely sufficient to provide against the common wants and exigencies of life ; so that the secret pro- pensities and selfish inclinations preponderate, and perhaps really govern the conduct of the largest portion of mankind. Is it, therefore, difficult to explain or account for the immense amount of mental misery with weak and wayward man — the anguish, poverty, ruined health, blasted reputation, shame, re- morse, and despair produced by pride, ambition, anger, sloth, lust, debauchery, avarice, and crime ? FINALE. Think twice before you speak or act once ; combine and put in requisition all the mental powers, resist the passions of the heart, and restrain the desires of the eye and the flesh; cast MENTAL HAPPINESS. 109 out pride, anger, and lust ; shun and stifle temptation ; curb in and break down the appetites ; avoid and detest fashionable vices; encourage and discipline the mind by habits of strict temperance and constant industry ; cheerfully and loyally blend the destinies of life with the inevitable and recuperative rela- tions of honorable marriage and glorious paternity ; fervently cherish and sustain the divine inspirations of the immortal substance of the soul, and humbly walk, and devoutly revere God. Do these plain works of righteousness and truth, per- severe, be resolute, and help, peace, security, and salvation must come as surely as there is trust to be reposed in the promises of the Almighty Creator of the universe. 10 CHAPTEIl IV. THE WOOF OF WOE. Jealousy — Hatred— Riots — Temper— Recklessness — Murmurs — Neglect of health—Peculiarities — Wilfully bad — Giddy — Idleness — Public opin- ion—Love of approbation— Vanity— Pride— Egotism — Violence — Self- destruction — Mind and morals not reciprocal— Should not be too social — nor too precipitate in marriage, &c— Drinking — Gaming — Bad