often of laborers, have the greater part of their time until they are married, at their own disposal. They may waste it in the frivolities of gossip and dress and fashion, or they may employ it for the noble purposes for which it is given them. Intellect is equally distributed. How often, in the brief period of our country's history, have the finest geniuses emerged from what, in the older countries, are called the lower classes of society. What then is to prevent the females of all portions of our community from being highly educated? And why should they not be so? The future lights of the nation, those who are to guide us in literature, in religion, in arts and the glories of peace, are as likely to spring up among the villages and in the remote districts of the country, as in the cities. Give them mothers worthy to educate them, and then will they be more likely to imbibe the generous spirit of self-devotion, the contempt of difficulties, and the love of liberty, of country and of truth, which should be the heritage of the citizens of a free republic. There is scarcely a family in New-England which has not the privilege of sending its children to a public school for a large part of the year. On the instructers of these schools, especially on the female instructers, who are employed for a greater portion of the time, does it depend to elevate the standard of education to what its importance demands. As long as an instructer is considered well qualified for his office, who knows no language but his own, and that, of consequence, imperfectly, who is not acquainted with any branch of natural science with which he should store his own mind and that of his pupil, nor of mathematical or moral science, by which to discipline the mind and form the character, so long must the schools remain in their present condition, and the unimagined advantages of a better system be lost. But there is not a teacher who has not leisure, each year, to make important additions to his own acquirements, and valuable improvements in his modes of teaching. Hitherto, it has been considered of more importance that men should be well educated, than that women should be. It is not so. With the exception of what belongs to the professions and to the business of government, it is more important to the community that women should be well educated. No human being is so completely isolated among his fellow creatures, but that his possessing a highly cultivated mind shall be a common good. In man the good is communicated indirectly. A highly cultivated female, on the contrary, exerts an immediate influence upon her children, and through them upon the human race. Educate all the men of a generation, and leave the woman uneducated, and every child under their influence begins his public education with all the disadvantages of his father. Educate all the females, and you will give a permanent impulse to the onward movement of the race, which it can never lose. Each individual begins his progress from a higher level, and, with equal exertion, will bequeath a richer inheritance of knowledge and wisdom to his successors. It has been urged, and with great justice, to account for the little that has until recently been done by our countrymen, in literature and the sciences, that our men want leisure, that, in consequence of the equal division of property, almost every man has some profession or business to which he must devote the greater part of his time. It is not so with our women. They have as much leisure as the females of the most favored community in the old world. We are not willing to think that they have less capacity for improvement. They have already afforded some illustrious examples which would lead us to infer no inferiority to the most distinguished of their sisters beyond the ocean. We cannot think that literature or the arts and sciences would suffer, in consequence of a higher degree of favor. At least the influence could not be inauspicious, which would be shed upon them by females of sentiment heightened by religious principle, and taste refined by a generous education, who should breathe into infant genius in his cradle, the love of nature and beauty, with aspirations after excellence and perfection. Education cannot be universal which is not shared in at least an equal degree by females. The magnanimous virtues, disinterested and devoted love of country, cannot be communicated but by mothers of the pure minds and dignified character which virtue and self-respect alone can give. The spirit of Grecian liberty failed not until her mothers were corrupted by the softness and vices of the East. And the Romans lost not all the freedom of the old republic, until Roman matrons had abandoned the care of their children to nurses and schoolmasters who were Grecian slaves. No nation ever acquired permanent liberty in which marriage was not sacred, and the female character respected and deserving of respect. That our liberty may be permanent, our females must receive a high, pure, liberal, religious education, such as shall qualify them to educate men; and it is only by giving them such an education, that we can diffuse through our community the universal knowledge of right and justice, on which our institutions depend, and without which they will disappoint the hopes of the world. 6 |