this department is not true economy
But we are not to encourage parsimony in education; for parsimony in
this department is not true economy. It is true economy for the state
and for a town to set up and maintain good schools as cheaply as they
can be had, yet at any necessary cost, so only that they be good.
Massachusetts is prosperous and wealthy to-day, respected in evil report
as well as in good, because, faithful to principle and persistent in
courage, she has for more than two hundred years provided for the
education of her children; and now the re-flowing tide of her wealth
from seaboard and cities will bear on its wave to these quiet valleys
and pleasant hill-sides the lovers of agriculture, friends of art,
students of science, and such as worship rural scenes and indulge in
rural sports; but the favored and first-sought spots will be those where
learning has already chosen her seat, and offers to manhood and age the
culture and society which learning only can give, and to childhood and
youth, over and above the training of the best schools, healthful moral
influences, and elements of physical growth and vigor, which ever
distinguish life in the country and among the mountains from life in the
city or on the plain. And over a broader field and upon a larger sphere
shall the benignant influence of this system of public instruction be
felt. In the affairs of this great republic, the power of a state is not
to be measured by the number of its votes in Congress. Public opinion is
mightier than Congress; and they who wield or control that do, in
reality, bear rule. Power in the world, upon a large view, and in the
light of history, has not been confided to the majorities of men.
Greece, unimportant in extent of territory, a peninsula and archipelago
in the sea, led the way in the civilization of the west, and, through
her eloquence, poetry, history and art, became the model of modern
culture. Rome, a single city in Italy, that stretches itself into the
sea as though it would gaze upon three continents, subjugated to her
sway the savage and civilized world, and impressed her arms and
jurisprudence upon all succeeding times; then Venice, without a single
foot of solid land, guarded inviolate the treasure of her sovereignty
for thirteen hundred years against the armies of the East and the West;
while, in our own time, England, unimportant in the extent of her
insular territory, has been able, by the intelligence and enterprise of
her people, to make herself mistress of the seas, arbiter of the
fortunes of Europe, and the ruler of a hundred millions of people in
Asia.
