Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/44

40 a sound argument to justify oppression. Is it stronger for ignorance? Let us look more carefully at this same history, which shows that there always has been an ignorant class: perhaps it has other things to say likewise. It shows a progress in man's condition, almost perpetual, from the first beginnings of history down to the present day. To look at the progress of our own ancestors: two thousand years gone by no man within the bounds of Britain could read or write; three-fourths of the people were no better than slaves; all were savage heathens. If a cultivated Greek had proposed to bring in civilization and the arts, no doubt Adelgither, or some other island chief, would have mocked at the introduction of agriculture and the mechanic arts, and would foretell the sinking of the firm land through the wrath of “all-powerful Hu,” if such measures were attempted. Within a very few centuries there was no man in England who could read and write except the clergy, and very few of that class. No doubt it was then a popular maxim with bishops and prebends, that men of each other class, from the cobbler to the courtier, were so engaged in their peculiar craft, they could not be taught to read and write. The maxim, no doubt, was believed. Nay more, even now there are, in that same England, men of wealth, education, rank, and influence, who teach that the labouring people ought not to be taught to read and write, and, therefore, they hang—perilous position—as heavy weights on the wheels of reform. Yet agriculture and the arts came into the land; one by one, as time passed by, men came up from the nobles, the gentry, the people, learned to read and write, and that to good purpose, and labouring men are now beginning to thrive on what has been branded as poison. Now, then, these opinions, that labouring men ought not to be taught even to read the Bible; that none but the clergy need literary education; that agriculture would sink the island—are not these worth quite as much as that oft-repeated maxim, that a sound, generous, manly education is inconsistent with a life of hard work? Experience has shown that civilization did not provoke the vengeance of Hu, the all-powerful; that men can be instructed in letters and science, though not priests; that a labouring population, one most wofully oppressed by