New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1857-05-23

mics of high grade in each county provided the
citizens shall provide stated amount for the same
purpose The Female Colleges of the State are to
receive $1,000. To prepare the minds OF the
people for this PLAN the Governor has sent the Rev.
William A. Smith, DID,, President Of Randolph
Macon College" upon kind Of missionary excur
sion throughout the State; and the way this min
lister of the Gospel (who ia described as veners-
bic and digniied-looking' demonstrates the value
Of education, religion and negroes, is exceedingly
curious He addressed the citizens of Nansemond,
Va, the other night, and We find in that dingy Ia.
minary, The Suffolk Christian San, sketch OF his
remarks. This apostle of primers and patrarchism
took good care in his exordium 10 remove any
latent prejudice which might reside in the Nanse'
mOnd bosom against education as a rsscally
Yankee notion. He began with some
very saponsceous remarks, in which he proved,
no doubt TO the satisfaction of all present,
that Slavery is " in accordance with the Divine
Principle and not wrong" Having fully i'm
pressed this axiom upon his hearers, he went on to
show that the satanic and willy opponents of " the
Divine Principle had conceived, written and
printed scsndalous and heretical collection of
Biographies primers, spellingbooks, grammsrs,
readers and works on Moral Science and Political
Economy" with the intention of poisoning the
minds Of Southern youths against the sacred
- Principle" aforesaid. For this bane, there must
be an antidote. The slaveholding mind must be
strengthened to bear its part in the great contro-
versy Of the day without discredit, while the South
ern States must have their private and personal
horn.books, philosophical trestises and other
manuals. We wish the Doctor had been little
more explicit in stating his ideas of expurgatorial
reform, and of what may be considered precisely
the proper pabulum for the "nfant reason OF
those who are destined to breed negroes and to sell
them 1t would not only have given us instruc-
ton but would have been of immense benefit to the
American Tract Society if he had told US how
many exact sciences were to be discarded, hoU
much history was to be ignored, what proportion
of the moral, religious and legal writers Of all ages
was to be cut off, and how many poets were to be
mutilated. We should like to know whether Dr.
Smith or any other slaveholding d. ID. has any very
precise notion of the way in which this work is to
be accomplished or whether he seriously thinks that
perpetuity of the institution can be accomplished
by little exscission and defalcation of boOks-by
the submission Of them to the doctorng OF all
the censors in Virginia. OF all the alb
surd things which ever entered into the
minds of slave.mongers to vex and to
besOt, this crOtchet of DR.. Smiths is the
absurdest. He seems to think Mat literature
can be built up just as easily as barn, and that
nothing is necessary in order to lead the mind of
the pupil into unquestiOnng devotion to Slavery
except to strike out Anti Slavery opinions wherever
they may occur in volume. We do not say that
collection of books might not be made which would
in some degree answer DR.. Smiths purpose, but it
would be collection more fit for B90tans and
Goths than for civilized people. But reformers
of the Smith school are utterly unconscious that
every noble sentiment is an AntSlsvery sermon
that every truth is protest against the fasity of
that Remembering system - that every page of
history, carefully studied, will point out to the
young and ingenious Virginian the terrible mistakes
of his ancestors; and that whatever may in any way
increase the refinement the intelligence, the hu-
manity and the knowledge, of the Virgnian people
will also prepare them for the overthrow of an in
stituton which can only be palatable to the coarse,
the ignorant and the cruel. Probably all this never
occurred to DR.. Smith, as how should it to one
who defines ;" education" to be thinking" as if
it were impossible to think enormously. This is
fayorite definition of the Doctor who repeats it 10
various forms. "A thinking man is an educ ,ted
man, is his aphorism. And so We suppose think
ing parrot is educated parrot Paddy's bird, if
still in feather ought TO be grateful to DR.. Smith
In the Utopia of DR.. Smith Gas we deduce from
his Nan,emondian oration) the education is to be
Of two knds-pupit training for "niggers" and
school training for white folks. Religion is just
the thing for what the Doctor calls the humble
poor, but the higher classes must have modicum
of reading, writing and arithmetic. This is very
convenient arrangement, especially IN Virginia.
School education being thinking" and it being
demonstrated that the negro has right to think,
of course he has no right to school education.
Pulpit education, We suppose, is not thinking"
At any rate, DR.. Smiths education for the pulpit
appears to have made him rather an Indifferent
thinker. The poor blacks may have their fill of
the Smith theology without receiving any danger
Gus IDEAS We have no doubt of it.