If A Man Can Forget His Own Miseries In His Journeyings, And Think
Of The People He Comes To See
Rather than of himself, I think he
will find himself driven to admit that education has made life for
the
Million in the Northern States better than life for the million
is with us. They have begun at the beginning, and have so managed
that every one may learn to read and write - have so managed that
almost every one does learn to read and write. With us this cannot
now be done. Population had come upon us in masses too thick for
management, before we had as yet acknowledged that it would be a
good thing that these masses should be educated. Prejudices, too,
had sprung up, and habits, and strong sectional feelings, all
antagonistic to a great national system of education. We are, I
suppose, now doing all that we can do; but comparatively it is
little. I think I saw some time since that the cost for gratuitous
education, or education in part gratuitous, which had fallen upon
the nation had already amounted to the sum of 800,000l.; and I
think also that I read in the document which revealed to me this
fact a very strong opinion that government could not at present go
much further. But if this matter were regarded in England as it is
regarded in Massachusetts, or rather, had it from some prosperous
beginning been put upon a similar footing, 800,000l. would not have
been esteemed a great expenditure for free education simply in the
City of London.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 474 of 538
Words from 126116 to 126383
of 143277
