the people have begun to think, to ask reasons for what
they do and suffer and believe, and to call the past to account. Old
spells are broken, old reliances gone. Men can no longer be kept down
by pageantry, state-robes, forms, and shows. Allowing it to be best
that society should rest on the depression of the multitude, the
multitude will no longer be quiet when they are trodden under toot, but
ask impatiently for a reason why they too may not have a share in
social blessings. Such is the state of things, and we must make the
best of what we cannot prevent. Right or wrong, the people will think;
and is it not important that they should think justly? that they should
be inspired with the love of truth, and instructed how to seek it? that
they should be established by wise culture in the great principles on
which religion and society rest, and be protected from scepticism and
wild speculation by intercourse with enlightened and virtuous men? It
is plain that in the actual state of the world, nothing can avail us
but a real improvement of the mass of the people. No stable foundation
can be laid for us but in men's minds. Alarming as the truth is, it
should be told, that outward institutions cannot now secure us.
Mightier powers than institutions have come into play among us,--the
judgment, the opinions, the feelings of the many; and all hopes of
stability which do not rest on the progress of the many must perish.

But a more serious objection than any yet considered, to the
intellectual elevation of the laboring class, remains to be stated. It
is said, "that the laborer can gain subsistence for himself and his
family only by a degree of labor which forbids the use of means of
improvement. His necessary toils leave no time or strength for
thought. Political economy, by showing that population outstrips the
means of improvement, passes an irrepealable sentence of ignorance and
degradation on the laborer. He can live but for one end, which is to
keep himself alive. He cannot give time and strength to intellectual,
social, and moral culture, without starving his family, and
impoverishing the community. Nature has laid this heavy law on the
mass of the people, and it is idle to set up our theories and dreams of
improvement against nature."

This objection applies with great force to Europe, and is not without
weight here. But it does not discourage me. I reply, first, to this
objection, that it generally com