e engaged in the business of
government, shall come from one-tenth of the population, is not the
state, according to the doctrine of chances, deprived of nine-tenths of
its governing force? And may not the same suggestion be made of every
other branch of business?

But I pass now to the last leading thought, and soon to the conclusion
of my address. The great contribution of learning to the laborer is its
power, under the lead of Christianity, to break down the unnatural
distinctions of society, and to render labor of every sort, among all
classes, acceptable and honorable. Ignorance is the degradation of
labor, and when laborers, as a class, are ignorant, their vocation is
necessarily shunned by some; and, being shunned by some, it is likely to
be despised by others. Wherever the laboring population is in a
condition of positive, or, by a broad distinction, of comparative
ignorance, society will always divide itself into two, and oftentimes
into three classes. We shall find the dominant class, the servient
class, and then, generally, the despised class; the dominant class,
comparatively intelligent, possessing the property, administering the
government, giving to social life its laws, and enjoying the fruits of
labor which they do not perform; the servient class, unwittingly in a
state of slavery, whether nominally bond or free, having little besides
physical force to promote their own comfort or to contribute to the
general prosperity, and furnishing security in their degradation for a
final submission to whatever may be required of them; and last, a
despised class, too poor to live without labor, and too proud to live by
labor, assuming a position not accorded to them, and finally yielding to
a social and political ostracism even more degrading, to a sensitive
mind, than the servient condition they with so much effort seek to shun.

All this is the fruit of ignorance; all this may be removed by general
learning. If all men are learned, the work of the world will be
performed by learned men; and why, under such circumstances, should not
every vocation that is honest be equally honorable? But if this, in a
broad view, seem utopian, can we not agree that learning is the only
means by which a poor man can escape from his poverty? And, if it
furnish certain means of escape for one man, will it not furnish equally
certain means of escape for many? And if so, is not learning a general
remedy for the inequalities among men?