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Dr. Channing next adverts to the fact of the creation of a popular literature, which puts within the reach of the laboring class, at very cheap cost, the means of knowledge in whatever branch they wish to cultivate-books of great value in all departments, mines of inestimable truth open to all who are resolved to think and learn, being constantly published for the benefit of the mass of readers, amid all the countless volumes of trash which are issued for the mere purpose of frivolous amusement. He anticipates, too, that literature will continue more and more to adapt itself to this class of readers, as the demand shall increase for the gratification of their intellectual

wants.

Another circumstance to which he refers is to be found in the juster views the laboring class are beginning to adopt in regard to the education of their children. From his remarks on this point we make the following extracts:

"Vastly more, I believe, is hereafter to be done for children, than ever before, by the gradual spread of a simple truth, almost too simple, one would think, to need exposition, yet up to this day wilfully neglected, namely, that education is a sham, a cheat, unless carried on by able, accomplished teachers. The dignity of the vocation of a teacher is beginning to be understood. The idea is dawning on us, that no office can compare in solemnity and importance with that of training the child; that skill to form the young to energy, truth, and virtue is worth more than the knowledge of all other arts and sciences; and that of consequence the encouragement of excellent teachers is the first duty which a community owes to itself. I say the truth is dawning; and it must make its way. The instruction of the children of all classes, especially of the laboring class, has as yet been too generally committed to unprepared, unskilful hands, and of course the school is in general little more than a name. The whole worth of a school lies in the teacher.

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"The object of education is not so much to give a certain amount of knowledge, as to awaken the faculties, and give the pupil the use of his own mind; and one book, taught by a man who knows how to accomplish these ends, is worth more than libraries as usually read. It is not necessary that much should be taught in youth, but that a little should be taught philosophically, profoundly, livingly. For example, it is not necessary that the pupil be carried over the history of the world from the deluge to the present day. Let him be helped to read a single history wisely, to apply the principles of historical evidence to its statements, to trace the causes and effects of events, to penetrate into the motives of actions, to observe the workings of human nature in what is done and suffered, to judge impartially of action and character, to sympathize with what is noble, to detect the spirit of an age in different forms from our own, to seize the great truths which are wrapped up in details, and to discern a moral Providence, a retribution, amid all corruptions and changes; let him learn to read a single history thus, and he has learned to read all histories; he is prepared to study, as he may have time in future life, the whole course of human events: he is better educated by this one book than he would be by all the histories in all languages as commonly taught. The education of the laborer's children need never stop for want of books and apparatus. More of them would do good, but enough may be easily obtained. What we want is, a race of teachers acquainted with the philosophy of the mind, gifted men and women, who shall respect human nature in the child, and strive to touch and gently bring out his best powers and sympathies; and who shall devote themselves to this as the great end of life. This good, I trust, is to come, but it comes slowly. The

establishment of normal schools, shows that the want of it begins to be felt. This good requires, that education shall be recognised by the community as its highest interest and duty. It requires, that the instructors of youth shall take precedence of the money-getting classes, and that the woman of fashion shall fall behind the female teacher. It requires, that parents shall sacrifice show and pleasure to the acquisition of the best possible helps and guides for their children. Not that a great pecuniary compensation is to create good teachers; these must be formed by individual impulse, by a genuine interst in education; but good impulse must be seconded by outward circumstances; and the means of education will always bear a proportion to the respect in which the office of a teacher is held in the community. Happily in this country the true idea of education, of its nature and supreme importance, is silently working and gains ground. Those of us who look back on half a century, see a real, great improvement in schools and in the standard of instruction. What should encourage this movement in this country is, that nothing is wanting here to the intellectual elevation of the laboring class, but that a spring should be given to the child, and that the art of thinking justly and strongly should be formed in early life; for, this preparation being made, the circumstances of future life will almost of themselves carry on the work of improvement. It is one of the inestimable benefits of free institutions, that they are constant stimulants to the intellect; that they furnish, in rapid succession, quickening subjects of thought and discussion. A whole people at the same moment are moved to reflect, reason, judge, and act on matters of deep and universal concern: and where the capacity of thought has received wise culture, the intellect unconsciously, by an almost irresistible sympathy, is kept perpetually alive. The mind, like the body, depends on the climate it lives in, on the air it breathes; and the air of freedom is bracing, exhilarating, expanding, to a degree not dreamed of under a despotism. This stimulus of liberty, however, avails little, except where the mind has been trained to think for the acquisition of truth. The unthinking and passionate are hurried by it into ruinous excess."

The following is the last of the circumstances to which Dr. Channing adverts. Painful and disheartening as it may appear, the correctness of the picture which he presents of the character of the present civilization of the Christian world cannot be denied-a civilization, as he remarks in another place, selfish, mercenary, sensual -standing in direct hostility to the great ideas of Christianity—a civilization which cannot, must not, endure for ever.

"The last ground of hope for the elevation of the laborer, and the chief and the most sustaining, is the clearer developement of the principles of Christianity. The future influences of this religion are not to be judged from the past. Up to this time it has been made a political engine, and in other ways perverted. But its true spirit, the spirit of brotherhood and freedom, is beginning to be understood, and this will undo the work which opposite principles have been carrying on for ages. Christianity is the only effectual remedy for the fearful evils of modern civilization; a system which teaches its members to grasp at everything, and to rise above everybody, as the great aims of life. Of such a civilization, the natural fruits are, contempt of others' rights, fraud, oppression, a gambling spirit in trade, reckless adventure, and commercial convulsions, all tending to impoverish the laborer and to render every condition insecure. Relief is to come, and can only come from the new application of Christian principles, of universal justice, and universal love, to social institutions, to commerce, to business, to active life. This application has begun, and the laborer, above all men, is to feel its happy and exalting influ

ences.

Such, then, our wise, pure, and eloquent author proceeds—

"Such are some of the circumstances which inspire hopes of the elevation of the laboring classes. To these might be added other strong grounds of encouragement, to be found in the principles of human nature, in the perfections and providence of God, and in the prophetic intimations of his word. But these I pass over. From all, I derive strong hopes for the mass of men. I do not, cannot, see why manual toil and self-improvement may not go on in friendly union. I do not see why the laborer may not attain to refined habits and manners as truly as other men. I do not see why conversation under his humble roof may not be cheered by wit and exalted by intelligence. I do not see why amid his toils he may not cast his eye around him on God's glorious creation, and be strengthened and refreshed by the sight. I do not see why the great ideas which exalt humanity, those of the Infinite Father, of Perfection, of our nearness to God, and of the purpose of our being, may not grow bright and strong in the laborer's mind. Society, I trust, is tending toward a condition, in which it will look back with astonishment at the present neglect or perversion of human powers. In the developement of a more enlarged philanthropy, in the diffusion of the Christian spirit of brotherhood, in the recognition of the equal rights of every human being, we have the dawn and promise of a better age, when no man will be deprived of the means of elevation but by his own fault; when the evil doctrine, worthy of the arch-fiend, that social order demands the depression of the mass of men, will be rejected with horror and scorn; when the great object of the community will be to accumulate means and influences for awakening and expanding the best power of all classes; when far less will be expended on the body and far more on the mind; when men of uncommon gifts for the instruction of their race, will be sent forth to carry light and strength into their sphere of human life; when spacious libraries, collections of the fine arts, cabinets of natural history, and all the institutions by which the people may be refined and ennobled, will be formed and thrown open to all; and when the toils of life, by a wise intermixture of these higher influences, will be made the instruments of human elevation."

But while expressing these high hopes of the intellectual, moral, religious, social elevation of the laboring class, Dr. Channing does not leave the subject without confessing some fears which sometimes intrude themselves upon them—the uncertainty which human imperfection casts upon the future-the fearful character of some of the elements which society, like the natural world, holds in its bosom. "It is possible," he says, "that the laboring classes, by their recklessness, their passionateness, their jealousies of the more prosperous, and their subserviency to parties and political leaders, may turn all their bright prospects into darkness, may blight the hopes which philanthropy now cherishes of a happier and holier social state." But well assured are we of the groundlessness of this alarm. The direction of flame is upward, when left free to mount; nor can we doubt the upward tendency of depressed and degraded humanity, in proportion as it is relieved from the weight of the adverse influences beneath which it has been crushed, and as it is left free to the healthy developement of its own native energies. Nor is it by any means to be admitted that the defects here alluded to, as endangering the prospect of their progress, are peculiarly characteristic of our laboring classes. There is, indeed, another danger of a more real and serious VOL. VIII. NO. XXXI.-JULY, 1840. E

66 On the Elevation of the Laboring Portion of the Community. [July, nature to which our author briefly alludes. "It is also possible," he remarks," in this mysterious state of things, that evil may come to them from causes which are thought to promise them nothing but good. The present anxiety and universal desire is to make the country rich, and it is taken for granted that its growing wealth is necessarily to benefit all conditions. But is this consequence sure? May not a country be rich, and yet great numbers of the people wofully depressed? In England, the richest nation under heaven, how sad, how degraded the state of agricultural and manufacturing classes! It is thought that the institutions of this country give an assurance that growing wealth will here equally benefit and carry forward all portions of the community. I hope so; but I am not sure.” In this remark Dr. Channing approaches a very important political truth which lies at the foundation of the great issue now pending between our political parties. Well may he express himself "not sure," whether the republican freedom of our institutions will enable us to avoid the lamentable state of things to which he alludes as the result of the financial polity which has governed England during the last century, if we shall persevere in an infatuate imitation of the poisonous principles of that fatal system. But even from this most insidious of national dangers, to which the profound sagacity of Pitt looked as an ample antidote against the theoretic democracy of our form of government, even from this we have now no great apprehension. True, the poison is still in our system, vitiating the life-blood of our currency; and it must take many a year of struggle and agony before the fatal disease of our paper-money banking system can be eradicated, and a state of natural and healthy circulation can be restored. But we are at least fully aware of the disease. The attention of the Democracy has become, and is daily more and more becoming, aroused to a sense of its nature and magnitude; and if an immediate and total cure is not possible, we are at least assured, not only that the disease will not be allowed to proceed farther, but that the course of gradual reform-of recurrence to sound principles of currency and banking-which has now been begun, under the auspices of the Democratic party, will be resolutely persisted in, till it shall result in a radical and permanent cure. The establishment of the policy of the Independent Treasury, so far as relates to the affairs of the Federal Government, is an important step in the direction of this great reform-important not merely in its own value and operation, but also as an index of such a maturity of opinion on the subject as cannot stop short at that point of progress. The snake is scotched, if it is not killed; and with a continuance of the same blessing of God which has thus far crowned with success the high mission of democratic reform in which our party is engaged, it shall ere long be crushed in the dust, never again to rear its head to pollute our atmosphere with the foul and fatal poison of its breath. This great object once accomplished, and all is well!

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THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY.

OUR modern lord of song, Shelley, has said that "naught may endure but mutability." Paradoxical as the expression appears, it may, nevertheless, be considered literally true. On all sides the world presents one vast scene of incessant mutation. Nothing abideth in one stay. Night alternates with day, and seed-time with harvest. Moons wax and wane, and the ebb of the stream follows its flow. The grass grows up, is cut down and withereth. Mighty oaks fall and acorns sprout. The myriad forms of animal life spring forth into being, enjoy their ephemeral existence, perish and pass away. One generation of men pursues another to the grave, and the father descends to the tomb, that his place may be filled by one who was but a short time before an infant prattling on his knee. The breath of the destroyer, Time, blows upon the monuments of human power and skill, and they crumble into dust. Seas are sweeping where once stood populous cities, and some lone column in the desert is all that marks where the princes of the earth reared their stateliest palaces. Empires have risen and grown till the nations quailed before them, when they have been suddenly swept away by the might of some newer power. Dynasties have fallen, customs have become obsolete, laws have perished, even religions have vanished away like a tale that is told. On all hands we behold the same wild career of change, of mingled dissolution and reproduction, of vigor and decay. Everything we see is hastening to its destruction, that new forms may arise upon its ruins, and run the same rapid course toward the goal of death. Is this, then, one is naturally led to ask, indeed a chaos? Is it no more than a lawless tumult of conflicting principles, without object or system? Does it tend to no results? Must the human race, like a blind mill-horse, travel for ever the same unvarying round, grinding out hopelessly the self-same evil products? Far from it. Where our imperfect vision can see but wild confusion, there exists harmonious order. Where we can see no plan, every element fulfils the mission assigned it by omniscience. Look out upon the hosts of shining worlds that crowd the arch of heaven. The mind is bewildered, lost, in contemplation of the countless throng, and all seem scattered there by the wildness of accident, yet each rolls swiftly and surely on its predestined circle, departing no iota from it, in its course through infinity and eternity. So is it with the history of mankind. Through all its strange vicissitudes, the reflecting mind can observe the operation of one mighty principle, leading on to the accomplishment of as mighty purposes. On all is written the great law of Progress. This is indeed the distinguishing mark of our species, obviously dividing it from

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