Rhode-Island constitutionalist. [volume] (Providence [R.I.]) 1834-1834, 1834-03-12
EDUCATION.
Extracts from the Producing Mans
Companion, by Junius RediciUas,
LOadOu.

"There is vulgar saying that Prov
idence never makes mouths, without
making food to put in them" This might
be very well in the olden times of scanty
numbers, ere DIR. Jenner and the rest of
the physicians had interiered to thwart
| Providence in the annual Trimmings of
disease. 1t would be very well now in
Turkish community of fatalists, where
plague, pestilence and famine, battle,
murder and sudden death, are left to
wend OH their way, unheeded and un-
checked but even in the sunny and half
peopled lands of Asia, where intellect is
at a low ebb, as there is no commerce to
arouse the energies of agricultural indus
try, it will be found that on the extreme
verge of society there is fringe of abb
iect misery based on the hideous work
ings of starvation.
"The lover of his species will lament
over this horrible reality, and ask if it
must 90 OH forever-if there are no means
of preventing so much misery. The an
swer is, yes Education wiH remedy all;
not that which is commonly called edu-
cation, the mere tools of knowledge, read
ing and writing, but the development Of
the reasoning power, which all human
beings possess in a greater or less de-
gree the bringing forth OF mind, and
teaching it the exercise of thinking
Shallow persons cry out against educa-
ton as tending to unfit human beings for
the laborious and drudging duties Of life.
More interested persons cry out against
education, because it is the means of
bringing forth latent intellect, which will
push them from their stools of dleness
and force them to fresh exertions in order
to retain their places as men in authori-
ty: for they well understand the axiom
of Bacon, that knowledge is power"
and that the highest degree of knowledge
must reign paramount. But those who
really believe that education is mischiev-
Gus in practice, and tends to unfit poor
people for the discharge of their duties,
would do well to reflect that the pcrpe-
traitors of arsons and other outrages, dur
ing state of public excitement, have
been the miserable pauper peasantry; the
people without education. 1t is ignor-
ance alone which resorts to violence; be-
cause ignorance, not being able to rea-
son from cause to effect, resorts to blind
destruction. What was it which produ-
ced the difference between the first and
second French Revolution ? Why did the
population of Paris in the eighteenth CEN
tury delight in butchery, and, in the nine
teenth, shine forth race of heroes, bril-
liant with exalted courage, and at the
same time exercising the sublimest traits
of mercy and stole forbearance The
mists of ignorance were expelled by the
accumulated knowledge of forty years,
gained in the school of experience. This
was really education.
"It is then the bounden duty of all
lovers of their species to promote, by ev-
cry means in their power, the education
that is, the mental training of their fel-
lows, especially Of the poorer classes ::
and the task is much easier than is gen.
eTdlly suppOScu. IL 10 SoiiihiChiy "
marked that boys who are strongly incli-
ned to mischief generally turn out clever.
The reason is that mischief is merely a
mark of overlooking mental energy which
cannot be expressed, and finds itself a
crooked path, because the parents or
guardians take no pains to direct it right
ly; to give it legitimate object on which
to expend itself Drunkenness is very
common English vice at the present day;
but is evidently on the decline as educa-
ton progresses. In the olden time, it
was all but universal. Drunken people
are commonly persons of much mental
energy, who in some cases take to alco-
hol as a refuge from thought, and in 9TH
ers as a refuge from idleness, just as en-
ergetic boys take to mischief. Were such
persons accustomed to instructive read
ing in early youth, the habit could never
desert them, and it would be almost i'm
possible that drunkenness should become
passion in them. But uneducated, un-
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