ntains what is
called an equipage, has servants in livery, or drives four horses in his
coach, I am not acquainted with him. On the other hand, there are few
who are not able to carry their wives and daughters to church in some
decent conveyance. It is no matter of regret or sorrow to us that few
are very rich; but it is our pride and glory that few are very poor. It
is our still higher pride, and our just boast, as I think, that all her
citizens possess means of intelligence and education, and that, of all
her productions, she reckons among the very chiefest those which spring
from the culture of the mind and the heart.

Mr. President, one of the most striking characteristics of this age in
the extraordinary progress which it has witnessed in popular knowledge.
A new and powerful impulse has been acting in the social system of late,
producing this effect in a most remarkable degree. In morals, in
politics, in art, in literature, there is a vast accession to the number
of readers and to the number of proficients. The present state of
popular knowledge is not the result of a slow and uniform progress,
proceeding through a lapse of years, with the same regular degree of
motion. It is evidently the result of some new causes, brought into
powerful action, and producing their consequences rapidly and
strikingly. What, Sir, are these causes?

This is not an occasion, Sir, for discussing such a question at length;
allow me to say, however, that the improved state of popular knowledge
is but the necessary result of the improved condition of the great mass
of the people. Knowledge is not one of our merely physical wants. Life
may be sustained without it. But, in order to live, men must be fed and
clothed and sheltered; and in a state of things in which one's whole
labor can do no more than procure clothes, food, and shelter, he can
have no time nor means for mental improvement. Knowledge, therefore, is
not attained, and cannot be attained, till there is some degree of
respite from daily manual toil and never-ending drudgery. Whenever a
less degree of labor will produce the absolute necessaries of life, then
there come leisure and means both to teach and to learn.

If this great and wonderful extension of popular knowledge be the result
of an improved condition, it may, in the next place, well be asked, What
are the causes which have thus suddenly produced that great improvement?
How is it that the means of food, clothing, and