refinement in their instructer?

Such is the personal influence of an instructer in a common school, that whether he is refined or vulgar, or whether he attends to the manners of his pupils or not, his manners will infallibly be imitated and copied by all, for the time, as a model of perfection. The different sections of our country are more free from dialects of the same language than any other in the world. What has produced this uniformity of language, so desirable on every consideration, but our public and common seminaries of learning,—the frequent and intimate commercial and literary intercourse between different parts of the country, and the numerous points of contact between the educated and uneducated parts of the community? For the interest and happiness of the whole, and especially, the lower and uneducated classes of the community, it is certainly desirable these points of contact and intercourse should be multiplied, rather than diminished. For these reasons, the employment of instructers in our schools, who have had the advantages of some publick school or college, is an object of great consideration. Besides being the most direct and effectual means, of inculcating "decent behaviour,"—of reconciling the prejudices of different parts of the country, and different classes of the community; there is still another point of view, in which the measure is not less important. It tends more than any thing else, to lessen the distance and weaken the jealousies, which very generally subsist between

the educated and uneducated. The talents and acquirements of a young man of publick education are often lost to the unlettered community for some years, while they have a delicious season of mutually hating and despising each other. These evils are in some degree obviated, when, by the kind of intercourse usually subsisting between a publick instructer and the publick, they are taught by experience their mutual worth and dependence as members of the same body politick.

As the Academies are not entirely free schools, we cannot calculate upon them to supply instruction to the mass of the people. These are most respectable establishments, and some of them are hardly inferior in the advantages, they afford for acquiring a thorough education, to some institutions, which are dignified with the name of colleges. It is not desirable, that their condition should be impaired. Nor need any fears be entertained, that their condition will be impaired. There are enough in the community, who duly estimate the advantages of a good education, and who are able to sustain the expense of these schools, to ensure their permanent support. And as the other classes of schools, which are free, are annihilated or decline in their character and condition, the academies will be encouraged by those, who can better appreciate the advantages of good schools, and better afford the necessary expense. So far as it regards the accommodation and pecuniary interest of the rich, and those of moderate prop

erty, it is matter of indifference, whether the legislature or publick make any appropriations or provisions for schools or not. They can and will take care for themselves. These are not the classes of the community to suffer, when government withhold encouragement from the schools. It is the poor, who are to suffer. They must educate their children in free schools, and in their own neighborhood, or not educate them at all. The expense of tuition, of books, and of board at the academies are so appalling, as to put the advantages of those schools quite beyond the power of a vast proportion of the community. In the towns where academies happen to be fixed, the poor will of course derive some increased advantages; but these towns are so few compared with the whole, and the incident expenses for books and tuition are so considerable, that for all purposes of directly and efficiently educating the whole mass of the people, the academies may be left out of calculation. For not one in twenty, if one in fifty, throughout the State, will ever find their way to any

of them.

LETTER IV.

If there is any one cause which has contributed more than others, to produce that remarkable degree of happiness and contentment, which pervade all classes of the people in New England, that cause is the successful operation of the system of Free Schools. The basis of the system is, that the property of all without distinction, shall be applied to the education of all. The principle and its operation were thus eloquently described by Mr. Webster, in the late convention for revising the constitution of Massachusetts. "For the purpose of publick instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation, in proportion to his property, and we look not to the question, whether he, himself, have, or have not, children to be benefitted by the education, for which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which property, and life, and the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent, in some measure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge, in an early age. We hope to excite a feeling of respectability, and a sense of character, by enlarging the capacity, and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as possible, to purify the

whole moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law, and the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We hope for a security, beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence of enlightened and well principled moral sentiment. We hope to continue, and to prolong the time, when, in the villages and farm houses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep, within unbarred doors. And knowing that our government rests directly on the publick will, that we may preserve it, we endeavour to give a safe and proper direction to that publick will. We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers, or statesmen; but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of general knowledge, and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabrick may be secure, as well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow but sure undermining of licentiousness.

"I rejoice, that every man in this community may call all property his own, so far as he has occasion for it, to furnish for himself and his children, the blessings of religious instruction and the elements of knowledge. This celestial, and this earthly light, he is entitled to, by the fundamental laws. It is every poor man's undoubted birth-right, it is the great blessing, which this constitution has secured to him, it is his solace in life, and it may well be his