Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/19

Rh unquestionably there are grave defects, arising partly from the excess of the democratic spirit, which will not suffer academical authority to be exercised to the needful extent, and lavishes literary and scientific degrees through unqualified institutions, which afford no security for the proper tests. But America is the land in which the duty of educating the people has been most distinctly recognised, and most universally performed; in which, let me add, that duty has been performed most for its own sake, and least with the object of training children up in allegiance to any political or ecclesiastical system. And the nation receives its reward in high political intelligence pervading the whole people, and in industry which is the source of doubled wealth, because it is not only active but skilful, and not only skilful but inventive. The Patent Museum, at Washington, bears striking testimony to the inventiveness of American industry. The mansion of the President, at Washington, has now twice borne striking testimony to the political intelligence by which the whole people is pervaded, and which can, of a farmer or mechanic, make a ruler, the peer of those who were born to rule.

The first Christian society had all things in common. So for a time had the Puritan settlement in New England. This was in each case a primitive state destined soon to give way to the exigencies of existing civilisation. But perhaps before the final consummation of Christian history that primitive state may again be virtually realised, not by violence or sudden revolution, but through the gradual operation of Christian influences, which, whenever they decisively prevail, without taking away the landmarks of property, transmute proprietorship into duty. Possibly the communistic aspirations which break forth whenever the