"A Work, which, popular and admired as it confessedly is, has never met with the thousandth part of the attention which it deserves. It appears to me that we are now at a crisis in the state of our country, and of the world, which renders the reasonings and exhortations of that eloquent production applicable and urgent beyond all power of mine to express."
Dr. J. Pye Smith.
If the circumstance of a manner of introduction somewhat different fromwhat would be expected in a composition of the essay class were worth avery few words of explanation, it might be mentioned, that thefollowing production has grown out of the topics of a discourse,delivered at a public anniversary meeting in aid of the British andForeign School Society.
When it was thought, a good while after that occasion, that a moreextensive use might be made of some of the observations, the writing wasbegun in the form of a Discourse addressed to an assembly, and commencingwith a sentence from the Bible, to serve as a general indication to thesubject. But after some progress had been made, it became evident thatanything like a comprehensive view of that subject would be incompatiblewith the proper limits of such a composition.
In relinquishing, however, the form of a public address, the writerthought he might be excused for leaving some traces of that character toremain, in both the cast of expression and the theological sentiment; forreverting repeatedly to the sentence from Scripture; and for continuingthe use of the plural pronoun, so commodious for the modest egotism ofpublic discoursers.
In the general design and course of observations, the essay retains thecharacter of the original discourse, which was, in accordance to thepresumed expectations of a grave assembly, an attempt to display theimportance of the education of the people in reference, mainly, to moraland religious interests. There are special relations in which theirignorance or cultivation are of great consequence to the welfare of thecommunity. Some of these are of indispensable consideration to thelegislator, and to the political economist. But it is in that general andmoral view, in which ignorance in the lower orders is beheld the cause oftheir vice, irreligion, and consequent misery, that the subject isattempted, imperfectly and somewhat desultorily, to be illustrated in thefollowing pages.
Nor was it within the writer's design to suggest any particular plans,regulations, or instrumental expedients, in promotion of the system ofoperations hopefully begun, for raising these classes from theirdegradation. His part has been to make such a prominent representation ofthe calamitous effects of their ignorance, as shall prove it an aggravatednational guilt to allow another generation to grow up to the samecondition as the present and the past. In the course of attempting this,occasions have been seized of exposing the absurdity of those who arehostile to the mental improvement of the people. If any one should saythat this is a mere beating of the air, for that all such hostility is nowgone by, he may be assured there are many persons, of no insignificantrank in society, who would from their own consciousness smile at thesimplicity with which he can so easily shape men's opinions anddispositions to his mind whether they will or not. He must have been themost charitable or the most obtuse of observers.
It is feared the readers of the following essay will find some defect ofdistribution and arrangement. To the candor of those who are practised inliterary work it would be an admissible plea, that when, in a preparationto meet a parti