Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/28

22 shall be so, as agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case, while there remains vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there."

We see here why he was an expansionist and what was the relation of his long cherished project of transcontinental exploration to the cardinal aims of his life, making with them an organic whole. He wished a continent reserved for an American civilization. He wanted room for normal conditions of life, and the separation that would insure against embroilment in the chronic strife and wars of Europe. He devoted his life to the securing of an unhampered development of a people under conditions of liberty and through means of a system of education including all the state-supported agencies from the primary schools to the most highly equipped state university. He encountered the turmoil of politics not from choice, and had a patriot's part in the securing of liberty and independence not as ends, but as conditions under which in fortunate America men might live the life of reason and of virtue.

He proposed that America should not repeat the sad experience of Europe. The burden of his advice, written at. this time from Europe, was: "Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles, who will rise among us if we leave the people in ignorance. In Europe, under the pretense of governing, they [their governing classes] have divided [the people of] their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate.