An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance | Page 4

diffuse a value and grace
throughout the general youthful character under such a discipline, and
then changing his view to what may be seen all over his own
country--an incalculable and ever-increasing tribe of human creatures,
growing up in a condition to show what a wretched and offensive thing
is human nature left to itself.
When neither opprobrium, nor prospective policy, nor sense of duty,
can constrain the attention of the officially and virtually ruling part of
society to an important national interest, it is sure to come on them at
last in some more alarming and imperative manifestation. The present
and very recent times have afforded significant indication of what an
ignorant populace are capable of believing, and of being successfully
instigated to perpetrate. It is not to be pretended that such ignorance,
and such liabilities to mischief, exist only in particular spots of the land,
as if the local outbreaks were merely incidental and insulated facts,

standing out of community with anything widely pervading the mass.
Within but very few years of the present date, we have had the
spectacle of millions, literally millions, of the people of England,
yielding an absolute credence to the most monstrous delusions
respecting public questions and measures, imposed on them by
dishonest artifice, and what may be called moral incendiarism; and
these delusions of a nature to excite the passions of the multitude to
crime. It is difficult to believe that all this can be seen without serious
apprehension, by those who sustain the primary responsibility for
devising measures to secure the national safety, (that we may take the
lowest term of national welfare;) and that they can be content to rest
that security on expedients which, in keeping the people in order, make
them no wiser or better. It would truly be a glorious change in our
history, if we might at length see the national power wielded by
enlightened, virtuous, and energetic spirits, not only to the bare effect
of withstanding disorder and danger, but in a resolute, invincible
determination to redeem us from the national ignominy of exhibiting to
the world, far in the nineteenth century, a rude, unprincipled,
semi-barbarous populace.
Thus far the hopes which had flattered us with such a change, as a
consequence of a political movement so considerable as to be
denominated a revolution, have been grievously disappointed. We must
wait, but with prognostics little encouraging, to see whether a professed
concern for popular education will result in any effective scheme. That
profession has hitherto been followed up with so little appearance of
earnest conviction, or of high and comprehensive purpose, among the
majority of the influential persons who, perhaps for decorum's sake,
have made it, as to leave cause for apprehension that, if any such
scheme were to be proposed, it would be in the first instance very
limited in its compass, indecisive in its enforcement, and niggardly in
its pecuniary appointments. Many of our legislators have never thought
of investigating the condition of the people, and are unaware of their
deplorable destitution of all mental cultivation; and many have formed
but a low and indistinct estimate of the kind and measure of cultivation
desirable to be imparted. Very slowly does the conviction or the desire
make its way among the favorites of fortune, that the portion of
humanity so far below them should be raised to the highest mental

condition compatible with the limitation and duties of their subordinate
allotment.
No doubt, the most genuine zeal for the object would find difficulties in
the way, of a magnitude to require a great and persevering exertion of
power, were they only those opposed by the degraded condition of the
people themselves; by the utter carelessness of one part, and the
intractableness of another. Nor is it to be denied, that the differences of
religious opinion, among the promoters of the design, must create
considerable difficulty as to the mode and extent of religious
instruction, to form a part of a comprehensive system. But we are told,
besides, of we know not what obstruction to be encountered from
prejudices of prescription, privileged and peculiar interests, the jealous
pride of venerable institutions, assumed rights of station and rank,
punctilios of precedence, the tenacity of parties who find their
advantage in things as they are, and so forth; all to be deferentially
consulted.
If this mean that the old horror of a bold experimental novelty is still to
be yielded to; that nothing in this so urgent affair is to be ventured but
in a creeping inch-by-inch movement; that the reign of gross ignorance,
with all its attendant vices, is to be allowed a very leisurely retreat,
retaining its hold on a large portion of the present and following
generations of the children, and therefore the adults; that their