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that men should be compelled into modes of worship, {249} I am only sorry
to see them dissenting. I am an advocate for the toleration of
_conscientious_ scruples; but there is one thing which I think no
government ought to tolerate, and that is public schools openly professing
to banish religious instruction; for they must prove seminaries of
malcontents and democrats. The luxury and aristocracy of a few well
educated rich atheists and deists afford no objection; it is of the low and
of the indigent that these schools are formed, of persons who may be
rendered the most valuable or the most pernicious part of the community.
_Homo sum_: he is not a man, who can be an enemy to the mental improvement
of his fellow creatures. The ignorance of the lower classes is deplorable;
it is the moral duty of those in higher stations, it is the noble task of
governments to raise them on the scale of intellect; education cannot be
too general, but let it be in the true spirit of education. We are
creatures, who depend greatly, perhaps wholly, on instruction. We can in
general do little of ourselves. We must at first have {250} guides, and, to
borrow the pithy expression of the famous bishop of Down, Jeremy Taylor,
"if our guides do not put something into our heads, while children, the
Devil will." The arts of reading and writing are mere mechanical
instruments: to render them a blessing the soul must be fashioned into a
spring of thought and action, and it behoves the fashioner to temper it
justly. How desirable soever it might be, that the rising generation,
enjoying the same constitution, should be united in the same mode of
worship, yet, as that blessing seems unattainable in the present state of
the world, it would be some consolation, if the various dissenters from the
established church would hold themselves bound to insist upon the Christian
religion, according to their own views of it, being taught in the new
schools; and, I am free to confess, that the dissenting ministers in
general are not deficient of zeal in impressing their religious principles
on the minds of their followers; and it is but justice to say, that the
world at large have been indebted to many of them, to Watts, {251} to
Hartley, and to others: nor do I think, that the generality of dissenters
can possibly approve of that plan, which, assembling poor children to be
taught reading, writing, and figures, sends them to learn the relation
between the Creator and