tatesmen? No. (A laugh.) The
honorable gentleman laughs at the notion, and so would I. But you are
going to fit them to be--what? Why, cotton-spinners and pin-makers, or,
if you like, blacksmiths, mere day laborers. These are the men whom you
are to teach foreign languages, mathematics, and the notation of music.
(Hear, hear.) Was there ever anything more absurd? It really seems as if
God had withdrawn common sense from this house." Now, what does this
language of Mr. Drummond mean? Does he not intend to say that it is
unwise to educate that class of society from which cotton-spinners,
pin-makers, blacksmiths, mere day laborers, are taken? Is it not his
opinion that the business of pin-making is to be perpetuated in some
families and classes, and the business of statesmanship is to be
perpetuated in others? And, if so, does he not believe that the best
condition of society is that which presents divisions based upon the
factitious distinctions of birth and fortune? Most certainly these
questions indicate his opinions, as they indicate the opinions of those
who cheered him, and as they also indicate the opinions of a few in this
country, who, through ignorance, false education, prejudice, or sympathy
with castes and races, fear to educate the laborer, lest he may forsake
his calling. With us these fears are infrequent, but they ought not to
exist at all. The question in a public sense is not, "From what family
or class shall the pin-maker or the statesman be taken?" There is no
question at all to be answered. Educate the whole people. Education will
develop every variety of talent, taste, and power. These qualities,
under the guidance of the necessities of life and the public judgment,
will direct each man to his proper place. If the son of a cotton-spinner
become a statesman, it is because statesmanship needs him, and he has
some power answering to its wants. And if Mr. Drummond's son become a
cotton-spinner, it is because that is his right place, and the world
will be the better and the richer that Mr. Drummond's son is a
cotton-spinner, and that he is a learned man too; but, if Mr. Drummond's
son occupy the place of a statesman because he is Mr. Drummond's son,
though he be no statesman at all himself, then the world is all the
worse for the mistake, and poor compensation is it that Mr. Drummond's
son is a learned man in something that he is never called to put in
practice.

When it is said that the statesmen, or thos