If a man can forget his own miseries in his journeyings, and think of the people he comes to see rather than of himself, I think he will find himself driven to admit that education has made life for the million in the Northern States better than life for the million is with us. They have begun at the beginning, and have so managed that every one may learn to read and write--have so managed that almost every one does learn to read and write. With us this cannot now be done. Population had come upon us in masses too thick for management, before we had as yet acknowledged that it would be a good thing that these masses should be educated. Prejudices, too, had sprung up, and habits, and strong sectional feelings, all antagonistic to a great national system of education. We are, Isuppose, now doing all that we can do; but comparatively it is little. I think I saw some time since that the cost for gratuitous education, or education in part gratuitous, which had fallen upon the nation had already amounted to the sum of 800,000l.; and Ithink also that I read in the document which revealed to me this fact a very strong opinion that government could not at present go much further. But if this matter were regarded in England as it is regarded in Massachusetts, or rather, had it from some prosperous beginning been put upon a similar footing, 800,000l. would not have been esteemed a great expenditure for free education simply in the City of London. In 1857 the public schools of Boston cost 70,000l., and these schools were devoted to a population of about 180,000 souls. Taking the population of London at two and a half millions, the whole sum now devoted to England would, if expended in the metropolis, make education there even cheaper than it is in Boston. In Boston, during 1857, there were above 24,000 pupils at these public schools, giving more than one-eighth of the whole population. But I fear it would not be practicable for us to spend 800,000l. on the gratuitous education of London. Rich as we are, we should not know where to raise the money. In Boston it is raised by a separate tax. It is a thing understood, acknowledged, and made easy by being habitual--as is our national debt. I do not know that Boston is peculiarly blessed, but I quote the instance, as I have a record of its schools before me. At the three high schools in Boston, at which the average of pupils is 526, about 13l. per head is paid for free education. The average price per annum of a child's schooling throughout these schools in Boston is about 3l. for each. To the higher schools any boy or girl may attain without any expense, and the education is probably as good as can be given, and as far advanced. The only question is, whether it is not advanced further than may be necessary. Here, as at New York, I was almost startled by the amount of knowledge around me, and listened, as I might have done to an examination in theology among young Brahmins. When a young lad explained in my hearing all the properties of the different levers as exemplified by the bones of the human body, I bowed my head before him in unaffected humility. We, at our English schools, never got beyond the use of those bones which he described with such accurate scientific knowledge. In one of the girls' schools they were reading Milton, and when we entered were discussing the nature of the pool in which the devil is described as wallowing. The question had been raised by one of the girls. A pool, so called, was supposed to contain but a small amount of water, and how could the devil, being so large, get into it? Then came the origin of the word pool--from "palus," a marsh, as we were told, some dictionary attesting to the fact, and such a marsh might cover a large expanse. The "Palus Maeotis" was then quoted. And so we went on till Satan's theory of political liberty, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,"was thoroughly discussed and understood. These girls of sixteen and seventeen got up one after another and gave their opinions on the subject--how far the devil was right, and how far he was manifestly wrong. I was attended by one of the directors or guardians of the schools; and the teacher, I thought, was a little embarrassed by her position. But the girls themselves were as easy in their demeanor as though they were stitching handkerchiefs at home.
It is impossible to refrain from telling all this, and from making a little innocent fun out of the superexcellencies of these schools; but the total result on my mind was very greatly in their favor. And indeed the testimony came in both ways. Not only was Icalled on to form an opinion of what the men and women would become from the education which was given to the boys and girls, but also to say what must have been the education of the boys and girls from what I saw of the men and women. Of course it will be understood that I am not here speaking of those I met in society or of their children, but of the working people--of that class who find that a gratuitous education for their children is needful, if any considerable amount of education is to be given. The result is to be seen daily in the whole intercourse of life. The coachman who drives you, the man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the girl who stitches your wife's dress,--they all carry with them sure signs of education, and show it in every word they utter.
It will of course be understood that this is, in the separate States, a matter of State law; indeed, I may go further, and say that it is, in most of the States, a matter of State constitution.
It is by no means a matter of Federal constitution. The United States as a nation takes no heed of the education of its people.