ADDRESS. THE place of our meeting, the season of the year, and the occasion, which has called us together, seem to prescribe to us the general topics of our discourse. We are assembled within the precincts of a place of education. It is the season of the year, at which the seminaries of learning throughout the country are dismissing to the duties of life that class of their students, whose collegiate course is run. The immediate call, which has brought us together at this time, is the invitation of the members of the literary societies of this highly respectable and fast rising institution, who, agreeably to academical usage, on the eve of their departure from a spot endeared to them, by all the pleasant associations of collegiate life, are desirous, by one more act of literary communion, to strengthen the bond of intellectual fellowship and alleviate the regrets of separation. In the entire uncertainty of all that is before us, for good or for evil, there is nothing so nearly certain, as that we, who are here assembled to-day, shall never, in the Providence of God, be all brought together again in this world. Such an event is scarcely more within the range of probability, than that the individual drops, which, at this moment, make up the rushing stream of yonder queen of the valley, mounting in vapor to the clouds and scattered to the four winds, will, at some future period, be driven together and fall in rains upon the hills, and flow down and recompose the identical river, that is now spreading abundance and beauty, before our eyes. To say nothing of the dread summons, which comes to all when least expected, you will scarce step out of this sanctuary of your intellectual worship, before you will find how widely the paths of life di 6504 verge, not more so in the literal sense of the word, than in the estrangement, which results from variety of pursuit, opinion, party, and success. Influenced by the feelings, which this reflection inspires, it is natural that we should pause;—that we should give our minds up to the meditations, which belong to the place, to the occasion, and the day :-that we should inquire into the character of that general process, in which you are now taking so important a step ;-that we should put our thoughts in harmony with the objects, that surround us, and thus seek from the hour as it flies, from the occasion, which once passed will never in all its accidents and qualifications return, to extract some abiding good impression, and to carry away some memorial, that will survive the moment. The multiplication of the means of education and the general diffusion of knowledge, at the present day, are topics of universal remark. There are twelve collegiate institutions, in New England, whose commencement is observed, during the months of August and September, and which will send forth the present year, on an average estimate, about four hundred graduates. There are more than fifty other institutions of the same general character, in other parts of the United States. The greater portion of them are in the infancy of their existence and usefulness, but some of them compare advantageously with our New England institutions. Besides the colleges, there are the schools for theological, medical, and legal education, on the one hand; and on the other, the innumerable institutions for preparatory or elementary instruction, from the infant schools, to which the fond and careful mother sends her darling lisper, not yet quite able to articulate, but with the laudable purpose of getting him out of the way, up to the high schools and endowed academies, which furnish a competent education for all the active duties of life. Besides these establishments for education of various character and name,societies for the promotion of useful knowledge, mechanics' institutes, lyceums, and voluntary courses of lectures, abound in many parts of the country, and perform a very important office, in carrying on the great work of instruction. Lastly, the press, by the cheap multiplication of books, and especially by the circulation of periodical works of every form and description, has furnished an important auxiliary to every other instrument of education, and turned the whole community, so to say, into one great monitorial school. There is probably not a newspaper of any character published in the United States, which does not, in the course of the year, convey more useful information to its readers, than is to be found in the twenty-one folios of Albertus Magnus,-light as he was of the thirteenth century. I class all these agencies, under the general name of the means of education, because they form one grand system, by which knowledge is imparted to the mass of the community, and the mind of the age,—with the most various success according to circumstances,—is instructed, disciplined, and furnished with its materials for action and thought. These remarks are made in reference to this country; but in some countries of Europe, all the means of education enumerated, with an exception perhaps in the number of newspapers, exist to as great an extent, as in our own. Although there are portions of Europe, where the starless midnight of the mind still covers society, with a pall as dreary and impervious, as in the middle ages, yet it may be safely said, upon the whole, that not only in America, but in the elder world, a wonderfully extensive diffusion of knowledge has taken place. In Great Britain, in France, in Germany, in Holland, in Sweden, in Denmark, the press is active, schools are numerous, higher institutions for education abound, associations for the diffusion of knowledge flourish, and literature and science, in almost every form, are daily rendered more cheap and accessible. There is in fact no country in Europe, from which the means of light are wholly shut out. There are universities in Austria and Russia, and newspapers at Madrid and Constantinople. It is the impulse of the liberal mind to rejoice in this manifest progress of improvement, and we are daily exchanging congratulations with each other, on the multiplication throughout the world of the means of education. There are not wanting, however, those, who find a dark side even to such an object as this. We ought not therefore either to leave a matter so important exposed to vague prejudicial surmises, on the one hand; nor on the other, should we rest merely in the impulses of liberal feeling and unreflecting enthusiasm. We should fortify ourselves, in a case of such magnitude, in an enlightened conviction. We should seek to reduce to an exact analysis the great doctrine, that the extension of the means of education and the general diffusion of knowledge are beneficial to society. It is the object of the present address to touch briefly, and in the somewhat desultory manner required on such an occasion,-on some of the prominent points, involved in this great subject; and to endeavor to show that the diffusion of knowledge, of which we have spoken, is favorable to liberty, to science, and virtue ;-to social, intellectual, and spiritual improvement; the only three things which deserve a name below. I. Although liberty, strictly speaking, is only one of the objects, for which men have united themselves in civil societies, it is so intimately connected with all the others, and every thing else is so sunk in value, when liberty is taken away, that its preservation may be considered, humanly speaking, the great object of life in civilized communities. It is so essential to the prosperous existence of nations, that even where the theory of the government, as in many absolute monarchies, seems to subvert its very principle, by making it depend on the will of the ruler, yet usage, prescription, and a kind of beneficent instinct of the body politic, secure to the people some portion of practical liberty. Where political interests and passions do not interfere, (which they rarely do, in respect to the private rights of the mass of the community,) the subjects of the absolute monarchies of the north and east of Europe enjoy almost as large a share of liberty, as under some of what are called the constitutional governments, in their neighborhood. Where this is not the case, where a despotic theory of the government is carried out into a despotic administration; and life, rights, and property are habitually sacrificed to the caprice and passions of men in power, as in all the despotisms which stretch across Asia, from the Euxine to the Pacific, there the population is kept permanently degenerate, barbarous, and wretched. Whenever we speak of liberty, in this connexion, we comprehend under it legal security for life, personal freedom, and property. As these are equally dear to all men; as all feel, with equal keenness and bitterness, the pang which extinguishes existence, the chain which binds the body, the coercion which makes one toil for another's benefit, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that all governments, which are hostile to liberty, are founded on force; that all despotisms are, what some by emphasis are occasionally called, military despotisms. The degree of force required to hold a population in subjection, other things being equal, is in ese ratio to its intelligence and skill; its acquaintance with the arts of life; its sense of the worth of existence; in fine, to its spirit and character. There is a point indeed beyond which, the most thoroughly organized military despotism cannot be extended over the least intellectual race of subjects, serfs, or slaves. History presents us with the record of numerous servile wars and peasants wars, from the days of Spartacus to those of Tupac-Amaru and Pugatschef; in which, at the first outbreak, all the advantages of authority, arms, concert, discipline, skill, have availed the oppressor nothing, against humanity's last refuge, the counsel of madness, and the resources of despair. There are two ways, in which liberty is promoted by the general diffusion of knowledge. The first is by disabusing the minds of men of the theoretical frauds, by which arbitrary governments are upheld. It is a remark almost, if not quite, without exception, that all governments unfriendly to wellregulated liberty are founded on the basis of some religious imposture; the arm of military violence is clothed with the enervating terrors of superstition. The Oriental nations, as far back as our accounts run, worshipped their despots as divinities, and taught this monstrous adulation to the successors of Alexander. The Roman emperors, from the time of Julius Cæsar, were deified; and the thrones of modern European absolutism rest on a basis a little more refined, but not more rational. The divine right of Henry VIII. or of Charles V. was no better, in the eye of an intelligent Christian, than that of their contemporary, Solyman the magnificent,-the Turkish Sultan. Superstitions like these, resting, like all other superstitions, |