nited States annually die drunkards, when we consider
that this is only one in twenty of the number who are unable to read and
write!

The Hon. Edward Everett has expressed the opinion that the expenses of
the manufacture and traffic of intoxicating drinks in the United States
exceed annually _one hundred and fifty millions of dollars_. General
Cary, in alluding to this statement, says, "This, it is believed, is but
an approximation to the cost of these trades to the people. This
estimate does not include the money paid by consumers, which is worse
than thrown away. An English writer, well versed in statistics, and
having access to the most reliable sources of information, says that
'the strong drinks consumed in England alone cost nearly _four hundred
millions of dollars annually_.' The expenditure for these sources of all
evil in the United States must be equal, at least, to that of
England."[66] Now _one half of this sum would maintain a system of
common schools in every state of this Union equal in expense and
efficiency to that of Massachusetts or New York_.

[66] See Tract on "The Liquor Manufacture and Traffic," prepared by
request of the National Division of the Sons of Temperance, by S. F.
Cary, Most Worthy Patriarch.

But I need not extend these observations. Enough, I trust, has been said
to show that every thing connected with the good of man and the welfare
of the race depends upon the attention we bestow in perfecting our
systems of public instruction and rendering their blessings universal. I
will therefore close what I have to say upon this topic with a summary
of the conclusions we have arrived at in the progress of the last two
chapters.

We have seen that a good system of common school education--one that is
sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all our country's youth in its
benevolent design--would free us as a people from a host of evils
growing out of popular ignorance; that it would increase the
productiveness of labor, as the schools advance in excellence,
indefinitely; that it would save to society, in diminishing the number
of paupers and criminals, a vast amount of means absorbed in the support
of the former, and in bringing the latter to justice, a tax which upon
every present generation is more than sufficient for the education of
the next succeeding one; that it would prevent the great majority of
fatal accidents that are now depopulating communities wherever ignorance
preva