d can write otherwise than in the most clumsy and
awkward manner, and with the grossest blunders in orthography, and not
more than two in a hundred can write a sentence grammatically. Out of
the 700 then in prison, only three were liberally educated, and two of
these were foreigners.

Throughout the State of New York, in 1841, the ratio of uneducated
criminals to the whole number of uneducated persons was twenty-eight
times as great as the ratio of educated inhabitants.

In view of the facts which have been given, and which might be
multiplied to almost any extent, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion
that mere intellectual education has some power to restrain men from the
commission of crime. Assuredly, ignorance and sin are natural adjuncts
and allies.

Schools undoubtedly cost something. The community that undertakes to
educate the masses, or the individual that undertakes to educate his
children, must expect to have a serious bill to pay. It is a pernicious
folly to inculcate the contrary. The advocate of popular education, who
tries to persuade people into the experiment, under the assurance that
the expense will be trifling, misleads his readers, and puts back the
cause which he would fain put forward. But there is a most significant
_per contra_ in the account, and on this there is no danger of dwelling
too much. Nothing is so costly as crime, and no preventive of crime is
more efficient than education. Schoolhouses are cheaper than jails,
teachers and books are a better security than handcuffs and policemen.
There are educated villains, it is true. But they are rare, and they
attract the greater attention by the very fact of their rarity. But go
into a prison, or a criminal court, or a police court, and see who they
are that mainly occupy the proceedings of our expensive machinery of
criminal justice. Nine-tenths of those miserable creatures are in a
state of most deplorable ignorance. Degraded, sensual, with no knowledge
of anything better than the indulgence of the lowest passions, without
mental resources, or any avenue to intellectual enjoyment, they often
resort to crime from sheer want of something better to do. When Dr.
Johnson was asked, "Who is the most miserable man?" his reply was, "The
man who cannot read on a rainy day." There is profound meaning in the
answer. The man who has been educated, who not only can read, but has
acquired a taste for reading, and for reading of a proper kind, is
rarely