Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/217

Rh them a personal power which will make them sober, temperate, healthy, and wise; that shall keep them at peace, abroad and at home, organize them be wisely that all shall be united, and yet, each left free, with no tyranny of the few over the many, or the little over the great? Shall we enable them to keep, to improve, to double manifold the political, social, and personal blessings they now possess; shall we give them this power to create riches, to promote order, peace, happiness — all forms of human welfare, or shall wo not ? That is the question. Give us intelligent men, moral men, men well developed in mind and conscience, heart and soul, men that love man and God,—industrial prosperity, social prosperity, and political prosperity, are sure to follow. But without such men, all the machinery of this threefold prosperity is but a bauble in a child's hand, which ho will soon break or lose, which he cannot replace when gone, nor use while kept.

Rich men, who have intelligence and goodness, will educate their children, at whatever cost. There are some men, even poor men's sons, born with such native power that they will achieve an education, often a most masterly culture; men whom no poverty can degrade, or make vulgar, whom no lack of means of culture can keep from being wise and great. Such are exceptional men; the majority, nine-tenths of the people, will depend for their culture on the public institutions of the land. If there had never been a free public school m New England, not half of her mechanics and farmers would now be able to read, not a fourth part of her women. I need not stop to tell what would be the condition of her agriculture, her manufactures, her commerce; they would have been, perhaps, even behind the agriculture, commerce, and manufactures of South Carolina. I need not ask what would be the condition of her free churches, or the republican institutions which now beautify her rugged shores and sterile soil; there would be no such churches, no such institutions. If there had been no such schools in New England, the revolution would yet remain to be fought. Take away the free schools, you take away the cause of our manifold prosperity; double their efficiency and value, you not only double and quadruple the prosperity of the people, but you will enlarge their welfare—political, social,