Jeffersonian Republican. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1840-1853, 1850-07-18
MONROE COUNTY Pa THURSDAY JULY 49, 1850

selves, or are becoming invested with new social
and political prerogative. The freeman who may
go where he pleases and select whatever occupa-
ton he pleases, needs vastly more judgement and
intelligence than the subject of despotism who is
born into some niche of labor and must stay where
he is born. The citizen who manages not only
his own personal affairs but those of his municp-
ality; who governs himsek in all his political re-
lations through representatives chosen by HIMSELF
whose vote may determine not only who shall be
rulers, but what measures of national or inter-na-
tonal policy shall be established or annulled on
whose will peace or war, national honor or ma
tional infamy may depend such citizen. i'll
capacity, in knowledge, and in wisdom, should be
as god. in comparison with Russian serf or a
Hndoo pariah. At this time then, say, there is
vastly more for the mind of man to do and to un-
derstand than there ever was before; and, there
fore, that mind must be proportionately strength
ened and illumined.
There never was tins when the moral natu re
of man needed culture and publication more than
it needs them at the present hour. What we call
civilization and progress, have increased tempta-
tions thousand fold in this country, ten thou
sand fold. The race for wealth, luxury, ambition
and pride, is open to all. With our multiplied
privileges, have come not only multiplied obliga-
tons, which we may contemn, but multiplied dan
gers into which we may fall. Where oppression
and despotism regn all the nober faculties of man
are dwarfed, stunted and shorn of their power
But oppression and despotism dwarf, and stunt,
aud despoi OF their power, all the evil passions OF
men, not less than their nobler impulses. In this
country, all that is base and deprayed in the hu-
man heart has such full liberty and wide compass,
and hot stimulus of action, as have never been
II N.-1,z j. aHop
ture T; diabolism, not less than utilitaIiansm, has
its steam engines. and its power presses, and its
lightning telegraphs. Those exteral restraints OF
blind reverence for authority, and supersitlous
dread of religious guides, and fiery penal codes,
which once repressed the passions OF men and
paralyZed all energy, are now lifted off. Ii inter-
nal and moral restraints be not substituted Tor the
external and arbitrary that removed, the
people, instead of being conquerors and soyereigns
their passions, will be their victims and their
slaves. Even the clearest revelations from Heav-
en-, and the ,sanctifying influences of God, unless
youchsafed to US so daily and momently as to su-
persede all volition and conscience of ours, would
not preclude virtuous training as an indispensa-
BILE prerequisite TO happy and honorable life
He takes but a limited view of the influences and
the efficacy of Christian ethics who does not strive
to incorporate and mould them into the habits and
sentiments of YOUTH who, as fast the juvenile
and of truth, has not an exhaustless store of NOR
al wonders and beauties and truths ready for trans
fusion into it.
By force ofthese weighty considerations, which
pertain to the whole circle of human interests,
individual and social, mortal and immortal, | am
instructed to entreat those most effective guides
and reformers of mankind,-those guides and re
formers who act most efficiently upon the race,
because they act upon it in the ducte and i'm
pressible state of childhood and adolescence, and
who can act also upon the largest numbers as we'll
as with the greatest power,-to assemble at the
time and place specified in the first of the rosolu
tons, deliberate upon the great interests of ed
ucation, to increase the intensity of its action 10
enlarge the compass of its benefcence, and to
cheer and stimulate each other in the discharge OF
their respective duties. Ifeach shall bring, though
it be but tapers light, their united rays will pour
food of illumination upon the whole path of du-
ty If each shall inspire the others, though it be
with but one fash of enthusiasm, their union shall
become as it were tongues offame. uttering proph-
ecies and hymns of gladness If each shall i'm
part to his brethern, though it be but feeble i'm
pulse, their combined force will endue every arm
with yigor and every heart with a resolution un-
known before so that each shall return to his own
sphere of duty, to work no longer in a lonely field
and by his.o own solitary strength, but with an en-
ergy borrowed from thousand arms and with a
living consciousness that all good men and angels
and our Father in Heaven are co-workers with
him for the improvement Of mankind.
HORACE MANN,
President of the late National Convention of the
Friends Of Education.
WASHINGTON, MAY 18th, 1850.
RIVALS IN VITA speaker who under
stands himself, will give his audience occa
n II T..