n whether
he would be contented with a good trade and the Ten Commandments? Perhaps
the man would like eleven commandments? And, if he gets hold of the
eleventh, he may want to know something more about his fellow-men, a
little geography maybe, and some of Mr. Froude's history, and thus he may
be led off into literature, and the Lord knows where.

The inference is that education--book fashion--will unfit the man for
useful work. Mr. Froude here again stops at a half-truth. As a general
thing, intelligence is useful in any position a man occupies. But it is
true that there is a superficial and misdirected sort of education, so
called, which makes the man who receives it despise labor; and it is also
true that in the present educational revival there has been a neglect of
training in the direction of skilled labor, and we all suffer more or
less from cheap and dishonest work. But the way out of this, again, is
forward, and not backward. It is a good sign, and not a stigma upon this
era of progress, that people desire education. But this education must be
of the whole man; he must be taught to work as well as to read, and he
is, indeed, poorly educated if he is not fitted to do his work in the
world. We certainly shall not have better workmen by having ignorant
workmen. I need not say that the real education is that which will best
fit a man for performing well his duties in life. If Mr. Froude, instead
of his plaint over the scarcity of good mechanics, and of the Ten
Commandments in England, had recommended the establishment of industrial
schools, he would have spoken more to the purpose.

I should say that the fashionable skepticism of today, here and in
England, is in regard to universal suffrage and the capacity of the
people to govern themselves. The whole system is the sharp invention of
Thomas Jefferson and others, by which crafty demagogues can rule. Instead
of being, as we have patriotically supposed, a real progress in human
development, it is only a fetich, which is becoming rapidly a failure.
Now, there is a great deal of truth in the assertion that, whatever the
form of government, the ablest men, or the strongest, or the most cunning
in the nation, will rule. And yet it is true that in a popular
government, like this, the humblest citizen, if he is wronged or
oppressed, has in his hands a readier instrument of redress than he has
ever had in any form of government. And it must not be forgotten that the
ballo