JUDAH PHILIP BENJAMIN EDUCATION THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT [Judah Philip Benjamin, an Anglo-American jurist and a leading statesman of the Confederacy, was born a British subject in the West Indies in 1811. His parents settled in the United States and he went for a few years to Yale. He afterward took up the practice of law in New Orleans, and became prominent in the political affairs of the South. He was elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat, seceded with his state, became the Confederate Secretary of War, and finally Secretary of State. His influence over Jefferson Davis was always considerable. When the Civil War ended he took refuge in England, where he practiced law with great success, and wrote a work, "The Law of Sale," which is a recognized legal classic. He died in 1884. The address that follows, on the subject of popular education, was delivered before a gathering of the Free Schools in the city of New Orleans in 1845.] O NE of the most eminent philosophers of modern times, who had made the science of government his peculiar study, after investigating what were the principles essential to every mode of government known to man, has announced the great result that virtue was the very foundation, the corner-stone of republican governments; that by virtue alone could republican institutions flourish and maintain their strength; that in its absence they would wither and perish. Therefore it was that the enlightenment of the people by an extended system of moral education, their instruction in all those great elemental truths which elevate the mind and purify the heart of man, which, in a word, render him capable of self-government, were objects of the most anxious solicitude of our ancestors; and the Father of his Country, in that farewell address which has become the manual of every American citizen, when bestowing the last counsels of a heart glowing with the purest and most fervent love of country that ever warmed a patriot's breast, urged upon his countrymen the vital necessity of providing for the education of the people, in language which cannot be too often repeated: "It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.' Recreant indeed should we prove to the duty we owe to our country, unworthy indeed should we be of the glorious heritage of our fathers, if the counsels of Washington fell disregarded on our ears. But if that great man had so decided a conviction of the absolute necessity of diffusing intelligence amongst the people in his day, how unspeakably urgent has that necessity become in ours! In the first attempts then made to organize our institutions on republican principles, the most careful and guarded measures were adopted in order to confine the powers of the government to the hands of those whose virtue and intelligence best fitted them for the exercise of such exalted duties. The population of the country was sparse; the men then living had witnessed the revolution that secured our independence; its din was still ringing in their ears; they had purchased liberty with blood, and dearly did they cherish, and watchfully did they guard, the costly treasure; the noblest band of patriots that ever wielded sword or pen in freedom's holy cause were still amongst them, shining lights, guiding by their example and instructing by their counsels, to which eminent public services gave added weight. Now, alas! the latest survivor of that noble band has passed away. Their light has ceased to shine on our path. The population that then scarce reached three millions now numbers twenty; and the steady and irresistible march of public opinion, constantly operating in the infusion of a greater and still greater proportion of the popular element into our institutions, has at length reached the point beyond which it can no farther go; and from the utmost limits of the frozen North to the sunny clime of Louisiana, from the shores washed by the stormy Atlantic to the extreme verge of the flowery prairies of the Far West, there scarce breathes an American citizen who is not, in the fullest and broadest acceptation of the word, one of the rulers of his country. Imagination shrinks from the contemplation of the mighty power for weal or for woe possessed by these vast masses of men. If swayed by impulse, passion, or prejudice to do wrong, no mind can conceive, no pen portray, the scenes of misery and desolation that must ensue. But if elevated and purified by the beneficent influence of our free public education, if taught from infancy the lessons of patriotism and devotion to their country's good, if so instructed as to be able to appreciate and to spurn the counsels of those who in every age have been ready to flatter man's worst passions and to pander to his most degraded appetites for purposes of self-aggrandizement-if, in a word, trained in the school and imbued with the principles of our Washington, the most extravagant visions of fancy must fall short of picturing the vivid colors of the future that is open before us. The page of history will furnish no parallel to our grandeur; and the great republic of the western world, extending the blessings of freedom in this hemisphere and acting by its example in the other, will reach the proudest pinnacle of power and of greatness to which human efforts can aspire. And for the attainment of this auspicious result, how simple yet how mighty the engine which alone is required!-a universal diffusion of intelligence amongst the people by a bounteous system of free public education. It has been said by the enemies of popular government that its very theory is false-that it proceeds on the assumption that the greater number ought to govern; and the records of history, and the common experience of mankind, are appealed to in support of the fact that the intelligence and capacity required for government are confined to a small minority; that only a fraction of this minority are possessed of a leisure or inclination for the study and reflection which are indispensable for the mastery of the impor tant questions on which the prosperity and happiness of a country must depend; and that those men best qualified to be the leaders and guides of their countrymen in the administration of the government have the smallest chances of success for the suffrages of the people, by reason of the secluded habits engendered by application to the very studies required to qualify them for the proper discharge of public duties. Those who are attached to free institutions can furnish but one reply to these arguments: the premises on which they rest must be destroyed; the foundation of fact must be swept away, and the majority, nay, the whole mass of the people must be furnished with that degree of instruction which is required for enabling them to appreciate the advantages which flow from a judicious selection of their public servants, and to distinguish and reward that true merit which is always unobtrusive. Nor is this an utopian idea; if not easy of attainment, the object is at least practicable with the means that a kind Providence has supplied for us. The most sanguine advocates for public schools cannot, nor do they, pretend that each scholar is to become a politician or a statesman, any more than it would be practicable or desirable to make of each an astronomer or a chemist. But in the same manner as it would be useful to instruct all in the general outlines and striking facts of those sciences, it will not be found difficult to give to the youth of America such instruction in the general outlines and main principles of our government as would enable them to discriminate between the artful demagogue or the shallow pretender and the man whose true merit should inspire their confidence and respect. This alone would suffice for all purposes connected with the stability and prosperity of our country and its institutions; for not even the stanchest opponent of free government pretends that the mass of the people are swayed by improper motives, that their impulses are wrong, but only that their ignorance exposes them to be misled by the designing. The same eminent philosopher to whom I have already alluded, Montesquieu, after establishing the principle that virtue is the mainspring of democracies, alludes to this very subject of the education of the people in free governments, and remarks that it is especially for the preservation of such governments that education is indispensable. He defines what he means by virtue in the people, and declares it to be the love of our country and its laws; the love of country which requires a constant preference of public interest to that of the individual, and which, to use his own language, is peculiarly affected to republics. "In them," says he, "the government is confided to all the citizens. Now, government is like all other earthly things-to be preserved, it must be cherished. Who ever heard of a king that did not love monarchy, or a despot who detested absolute power? Everything, then, depends on establishing this love of country, and it is to this end that education in republics ought specially to be directed." If this distinguished writer be correct in these remarks-and who can gainsay them?-how boundless the field for instruction and meditation which they afford! How is a love of countrythat love of country on which our existence as a nation. depends to be preserved, cherished, and made within us a living principle, guiding and directing our actions? Love of country is not a mere brute instinct, binding us by a blind and unreflecting attachment to the soil, to the earth and rocks and streams that surrounded us at our birth. It is the offspring of early associations, springing up at the period when the infant perceptions are first awakened by the Creator to the beauteous works of His power which surround us, sustained and cherished by the memory of all the warm affections that glow in the morning of life. reminiscences of our childish joys and cares, of the ties of family and of home, all rush back on the mind in maturer years with irresistible force, and cling to us even in our dying hour. England's noble bard never clothed a more beautiful thought in more poetic language than when he depicted the images that crowded into the memory of the gladiator dying in the arena of Rome: "He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize- The But although these feelings are natural to man in all climes and ages, how intensely are they felt, how deeply do |