Educate the whole people. Education will
develop every variety of talent, taste, and power. These qualities,
under the guidance of the necessities of life and the public judgment,
will direct each man to his proper place. If the son of a cotton-spinner
become a statesman, it is because statesmanship needs him, and he has
some power answering to its wants. And if Mr. Drummond's son become a
cotton-spinner, it is because that is his right place, and the world
will be the better and the richer that Mr. Drummond's son is a
cotton-spinner, and that he is a learned man too; but, if Mr. Drummond's
son occupy the place of a statesman because he is Mr. Drummond's son,
though he be no statesman at all himself, then the world is all the
worse for the mistake, and poor compensation is it that Mr. Drummond's
son is a learned man in something that he is never called to put in
practice.
When it is said that the statesmen, or those 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.
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