ur first
men, either in government or the professions, are the sons of
comparatively poor and obscure persons. In places where the wealthier
portion of the community have placed their children in select schools,
they are found much less likely to excel, than when placed in contact
and collision with the mass, where they are compelled to come in
competition with those whose physical condition prepares them for mental
labor, and whose situation in society holds forth every inducement to
their exertions. To this system, which is co-eval with the foundation of
the State, I attribute, in a great degree, that wonderful energy of
character which distinguishes the people of New England, and which has
filled the world with the evidences of their enterprise."

The preceding statements refer to New England, the oldest portion of the
free States. The more recently settled Northern and Western States are
necessarily less advanced, yet their educational statistics would
probably bear comparison with any country in the world, except the most
favored portion of their own. In the slave States the aspect of things
affords a striking contrast. Not only is the slave population, with but
few exceptions, in a condition of heathen barbarism, a condition which
it is the express object of those laws of the slave States, forbidding,
under the heaviest penalties, the instruction of the slaves, to
perpetuate; but the want of common elementary education among large
numbers of the privileged class is notorious. Compare Virginia with
Massachusetts,--"The American Almanac for the year 1841, states, (page
210) there are supposed to be hardly fewer than 30,000 adult white
persons in Virginia who cannot read and write!" An able writer gives the
following facts.

"No one of the slave States has probably so much general education as
Virginia. It is the oldest of them--has furnished one half of the
Presidents of the United States--has expended more upon her University
than any State in the Union has done during the same time upon its
colleges--sent to Europe nearly twenty years since for her most learned
professors; and in fine, has far surpassed every other slave State in
her efforts to disseminate education among her citizens; and yet, the
Governor of Virginia in his message to the legislature, (Jan. 7, 1839)
says, that of four thousand six hundred and fourteen adult males in that
State, who applied to the county clerks for marriage licences in the
year