Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/629

"that school masters can keep us out of tyranny, so as to enable nations to dispense with political law," is a dependence like that upon priests, to keep us out of purgatory. But if a mode of education, like a standing army, can change the nature of a government, and constitute the most formidable contrivance for despotism, a nation, to preserve its liberty, must have wisdom enough to influence this moral mode of destroying it, just as it must control a standing army, for the same purpose, by the superior physical force of a militia. Education must be supervised by the same vigilant national wisdom necessary to defend liberty against whatever can be used to destroy it; and the same care must be taken to prevent it from being converted into an instrument by a sect, religious, political or chartered, as to withhold from avarice and ambition the use of a standing army. The benefits derived by mankind from academical institutions, though fettered or corrupted by despotism or superstition, are a pledge for their effect when nurtured by the principles of a free government. How great is our debt to those of Athens only, during a short period! The objection to an expense, of which a proportion falls on those who can receive no part of the education, would be stronger against publick taxes to support government, because many more people participate in the good effects of academical institutions, than in the salaries or benefits of publick offices. An augmentation of knowledge always dispenses some good to the whole nation, whereas the majority frequently suffers much evil from certain modes of civil government. The access to wealth and power is widened by education, and contracted by its absence, because genius, however poor, will acquire knowledge if it is introduced into a country, just as the art of weaving has spread from a few looms throughout the civilized world. A publick patronage of a few good colleges, is therefore a patronage of genius; and as the chance for it is equal among all, the poor, from their superiority of number, will draw most prizes in the lottery of knowledge, established by means of colleges, chiefly supported by the