Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/190

186 moans of a public education, partly at the individual's cost, chiefly at the cost of the public. The amount of education depends on three things:—on the educational attainments of the human race; on the wealth and tranquillity of tho special nation, enabling it to avail itself of that general attainment and on tho natural powers and industry of tho particular individual in the nation. Such is the solidarity of mankind that the development of the individual thus depends on that of the race, and tho education of a priest in Rome, or a gentleman in England is the resultant of those three forces,—the attainment of mankind, tho power of the nation, and the private character and conduct of the man himself. Each of these three is a variable and not a constant quantity. So the amount of education which a man can receive at Oxford or at Rome fluctuates, and depends on tho state of the nation and of the world; but as the attainments of mankind have much increased within a few years, as the wealth of England has increased, and her tranquillity become more secure, you see how easy it becomes for the State to offer each gentleman an amount of education which it would have been quite impossible to furnish in the time of the Yorks and the Lancasters.

In America things are quite other and different. I speak of the free States of the North; the slave States have the worst features of an oligarchy, combined with a theocratic pride of caste, which generates continual unkindness; there the idea of the State is found inconsistent with the general and public education of the people; it is as much so in South Carolina as in England or Rome; even more so, for the public and general culture of all is only dangerous to a theocracy or aristocracy while it is directly fetal to Slavery. In England, and still more in Catholic Rome, the churches—themselves a wonderful museum of curiosities, and open all the day to all persons—form an important element for the education of the most neglected class. But Slavery and education of the people are incommensurable quantities. No amount of violence can be their common measure. The republic, where master and slave were equally educated, would soon be a red-republic. The slave-master knows this, and accordingly