But increase of power simply, is not the only or the chief benefit derived to society, from placing the vast resources of nature at the disposal of the people. So far as all the operations of life necessary to be performed at home are concerned, every new application of inanimate force diminishes the number of manufacturers in the country. The more machinery we employ within this limit, the greater number of the people we emancipate from the condition of machines, and permit to enter upon nobler occupations. Beyond the point alluded to, it is true, beyond our necessary home operations, every machine we set up, and every factory we build, withdraws some of our citizens from philanthropic labors, from the healthful and ennobling business of cultivating the soil. Whether it be wise to call our sons and daughters away from this fresh green world; from the quiet cottage and fertile field; from the hills and streams with which they have grown up in dear communion, and then, in confined air and dusty rooms, drill them to follow the biddings of a dumb machine, to push the awl, drive the shuttle, tie parted threads, ply the hammer and sledge, and all this for other nations; this is a grave question. Every labor, however, necessary to be performed by our own citizens, which we shift off from them and lay upon the strong arms of nature, releases from servitude, gives leisure for every good word and work, and ministers thereby to the highest interests of the community.

Here it will be inquired, whether, in relieving man from the personal efforts he has been heretofore compelled to make, we do not offer an opportunity, and admit a lure to idleness and the whole train of evils usually attendant? Certainly we do. There is imminent danger from this quarter; danger that must be contemplated and provided for. The only security in this exigency is a moral and religious education made to accompany all intellectual culture, passibus æquis.

It is an interesting fact that we cannot approach a human being to improve his condition in any one particular, without being shut up to the necessity of improving him in many others. This arises from his original constitution, and should be regarded as an indication of the design and will of Heaven, that we take all his faculties and circumstances into the scope of our improvements. And all high-minded teachers, so far from being discouraged from efforts to confer advantages upon the community, because the bestowment creates a new demand

upon them for higher benefits, feel on this account, the presence and impulse of stronger motives to duty, and gather new interest in their employment. We have alleged that the grand effect of that popular education which they are to diffuse, is to cast upon athletic nature a great proportion of the sweating labors of life, to facilitate and shorten the rest without limit, and thereby to afford the people leisure for all philanthropic, intellectual, ennobling employments. As contributors to such a result, we allege here that teachers hold a place of very high responsibility. If the literary duty which they perform, begets necessity, as doubtless it does, for another and more important service, the cultivation of the morals and religion of the community, the fact, instead of diminishing, greatly increases that responsibility.

Another happy effect of popular education, serving to develope the responsibility of teachers, is an increased frugality, industry, thrift, competence and comfort in the community. The truth of this statement is one so palpable to readers of history, and observers of men and things around them, one so familiar to most men and so readily admitted, I shall give it but a brief space in this discussion.

The more education an individual has, the higher will his value and respect for himself be likely to rise. In improving his own condition, therefore, he will feel that he is acting for a more important being, for greater interests, and be more strongly impelled to those frugal, industrious, enterprising habits which lead to competence and comfort. Education apprizes a people of advantages beyond and above them, and then discovers to them more successful methods of reaching them. The first information puts them upon new endeavors, the last gives practicability to their enterprises. As knowledge is diffused among a people by means of education, superstitious notions and vain fears are dissipated; many diseases and fatal accidents are prevented; roads, dwellings, modes of travelling are improved, subjects of conversation are furnished, and many fire-sides, as intellectual occupations eschew noise and confusion, are turned into quiet and peace. In these results you discover rich sources of competence and comfort. These, as well as all other valuable effects of education, may be neutralized by the power of depravity; but popular instruction has a natural tendency to improve society in these respects so strong, that thrift and wealth and happiness have

never failed to rise up, wherever in the world such instruction has elevated the general mind. This fact confirms the responsibility of teachers.

An additional happy effect of popular education, evincive of the responsibility of teachers, is an elevation of the literary and professional classes.

If Dr. Johnson intended, by the often quoted assertion, "That knowledge in Scotland is like bread in a besieged city, affording each person a mouthful and no man a full meal," to intimate that its general diffusion was what rendered it impracticable to get a full meal, he was certainly erroneous.

The higher the general mass of a community is raised in intellectual culture, the more fully and ardently the deserving efforts of the literary and professional classes are welcomed and appreciated, and consequently the more substantial and hearty the encouragement given to their labors.

The greater the intelligence, and the more refined the taste, on the part of the readers and listeners of the people, the more intellectual and tasteful the productions which they will demand from those who write and speak for them.

As it requires more intellectual power and more delicacy of taste to make a book and a speech, than to understand and appreciate them; and as, on this account the writers and speakers of a community must always stand at several degrees of elevation above the general mass, every elevation of the common people by education pushes proportionably upward literary and professional men. All must have observed that an improvement of a congregation in intellectual character and literary taste are invariably answered to from the pulpit, by a greater richness of thoughts, an appeal to deeper motives, and a chaster and loftier eloquence. The more cultivated the courts and juries, the more argumentative, classical and effective the eloquence of the bar. The more instructed and discerning the electors of the country, the more intellectual, and sound, and brilliant the eloquence of our legislative assemblies. Having no patronage of princes or of aristocratic estates in this country, literary efforts, to a great extent, must grow up from the wants, the demands and the encouragements of the common people; increase all these and you give new richness and new power to the productions of those who minister intellectual nutriture to the general mind.

Another effect of popular education, closely allied to the one just considered, and well worthy of mention as proof of the literary responsibility of teachers, is an elevation of the mass of the people to an intellectual position, where they may feel a stronger influence from books and educated men.

There is, among the shoals of publications with which the press is groaning, and teeming, and disgorging itself, a respectable portion of works well adapted to instruct and refine the population; but, for want of that taste and appreciation produced by general education, great numbers derive little or no advantage from them. Their dull susceptibilities are not reached, no matter how important and useful the subjects of these books, no matter how richly fraught they may be with good things, or how brilliant with illustrations. They are all as the nightly heavens with all their glories to a world asleep. For the same reason the acquisitions, tastes, mental habits, professional and conversational exhibitions of educated men, upon multitudes, produce little effect. Their minds are below the region of their natural influence.

The productions and exhibitions of intellect; the useful knowledge and practical science lodged in the minds of the desultory and self-educated; the thoughts that float in newspapers, pamphlets, and larger periodicals; the discussions contained in public speeches, popular orations, and itinerant lectures; the weekly pulpit services; the valuable printed books; all produce effect upon the people in proportion as their education shall bring them up to a suitable mental sympathy and appreciation. There is a blessed sunshine upon the tops of the high forest trees; when the smaller trees and shrubs thrust up their heads to the same height, they will feel the general warmth.

The business of school teachers is to bring up the people to the elevated place where salutary intellectual influences will reach and bless them. Their responsibility is one of very interesting character.

The effect of a cultivation of the understanding on moral character is too important to be overlooked in estimating the responsibility of teachers in reference to popular education.

I am aware that the old favorite doctrine, that the head influences the heart, that the culture of the intellect softens the affections, is by many given up as an exploded one. It occurs to us all, that the barbarous age of a people is often more vir

tuous than its succeeding cultivated one; that the corruptions and crimes, which proved the ruin of Greece and Rome, were contemporary with their intellectual ascendency.

The names of Mirabeau and Voltaire are immediately suggested to us, men of well cultivated minds, but of abandoned morals. It is admitted that highly educated communities are sometimes luxuriant in crime; that many men have appeared and by some of their productions become the ornament of their country and age, whose hearts were rotten to the core. But such communities and such men are proofs, not that intellectual cultivation and refinement have no softening and reforming power, but that the depraved passions of men have greater power. Many, however, are ready to remind us here that intellectual pursuits and acquisitions, instead of meliorating the heart, are oftentimes made the means and incentives to vice. We remind them in turn that, in consequence of an internal disease in the physical system, the nutritious matters received into the stomach are frequently taken up and perverted to nourish the morbid excrescence, so that the patient pines and dies. But must we give up, on this account, our system of dietetics and believe our markets are filled with poisons? This was not the natural influence nor the general influence of the same articles of food. Neither is it the natural nor the general tendency of intellectual cultivation to demoralize, though it may be so perverted as to increase moral evil. The natural and general effect, no doubt, is to encourage all the amiabilities of our nature. Even those persons, whose depravities have done most to counteract and pervert their intellectual advantages, occasionally show that a refined understanding has made favorable impressions too deep to be wholly obliterated by opposing influences. He, who could pour forth from his foul mind the numbers of Don Juan, and introduce almost every where a dark misanthropy, and a contempt for revealed religion, which, amid and beneath the richness of his beauty and the power of his conceptions look like the creeping serpent in paradise, wrote the Prisoners of Chillon, the fourth canto of Childe Harold, and other pieces in the same spirit, which none read without admiration.

He, whose mind was impure and noisome enough to give birth to "January and May," and other similar profane and loathsome things, produced the Dying Christian, which has "lent wings" to many a freed spirit as it passed away. The volup