As to their being rendered liable by more knowledge to be caught by declaimers, projectors, and agitators, we may confidently ask, whether it be the natural effect of more knowledge and understanding to be less suspicious of cajoling professions, less discerning of what is practicable and impracticable, and more credulous to extravagant doctrines, and wild theories and schemes. Is it the well-instructed and intelligent poor man that believes the demagogue who may assert or insinuate that, if things were ordered right, all men might live in the greatest plenty? Or if we advert to those of the lower order whom a diminutive freehold or other qualification may entitle to vote for a member of parliament, is it the well-instructed and intelligent man among them that is duped by the candidate's professions of kind solicitude for him and his family, accompanied with smiling equivocal hints that it may be of more advantage than he is aware for a man who has sons to provide for, to have a friend who has access and interest in a certain high quarter? Nor is it among the best instructed and most thinking part of the subordinate class, that we shall find persons capable of believing that a community might, if those who govern it so pleased, be rich and prosperous by other means than a general industry in ordinary employments. If, again, it is apprehended that a great increase of intelligence among the people would destroy their deference and respectful deportment toward their superiors, the ground of this apprehension should be honestly assigned. If the claim to this respect be definable, and capable of being enforced upon good reasons, it is obvious that improved sense in the people will better appreciate them. Especially, if the claim is to owe any part of its validity to higher mental qualifications in the claimants, it will so far be incomparably better understood, and if it _be_ valid, far more respected than it is now. By having a measure of knowledge, and of the power and practice of thinking, the people would be enabled to form some notion of what it must be, and what it is worth, to have a great deal more of these endowments. They would observe and understand the indications of this ampler possession in the minds of those above them, and so would be aware of the great disparity between themselves and those superiors. And since they would value _themselves_ on their comparatively small share of these mental advantages, (for this is the very point of the objection against their attaining them,) they would be compelled to estimate by the same scale the persons dignified by so far surpassing a share of this admired wealth. Whereas an ignorant populace can understand nothing at all about the matter; they have no guess at the great disparity, nor impression of its importance; so that with them the cultivated superiors quite lose the weight of this grand difference, and can obtain none of the respect which they may deserve on account of it.