With a view to a wider circulation than that which is limited by the price of the volume published in an expensive form and style of printing, it has been deemed advisable to publish a cheap edition of the "Essay on Popular Ignorance." It is not in any degree an abridgment of the preceding edition; the only omission, of the slightest consequence, being in a few places where changes have been rendered necessary by the subsequent conduct of our national authorities, as affecting our speculations and prospects in relation to general education; while, on the other hand, there are numerous little additions and corrections, in attempts to bring out the ideas more fully, or with some little afterthought of discrimination or exception. In some instances the connection and dependence of the series of thoughts have been rendered more obvious, and the sentences reduced to a somewhat more simple and compact construction; but the principal object in this _final revised_ has been literary correction, without any material enlargement or change. It is hoped that this reprint in a popular form may serve the purpose of contributing something, in co-operation with the present exertions, to expose, and partially remedy, the lamentable and nationally disgraceful ignorance to which the people of our country have been so long abandoned. Contents. Section I. Defect of sensibility in the view of the unhappiness of mankind. --Ignorance one grand cause of that unhappiness.--Ignorance prevalent among the ancient Jewish people.--Its injurious operation--and ultimately destructive consequence.--More extended consideration of ignorance as the cause of misery among the ancient heathens. Section II. Brief review of the ignorance prevailing through the ages subsequent to those of ancient history.--State of the popular mind in Christendom during the complete reign of Popery.--Supposed reflections of a Protestant in one of our ancient splendid structures for ecclesiastical use.--Slow progress of the Reformation, in its effects on the understandings of the people.--Their barbarous ignorance even in the time of Elizabeth, notwithstanding the intellectual and literary glories of this country in that period.--Sunk in ignorance still in what has often been called our Augustan age.--Strange insensibility of the cultivated part of the nation with regard to the mental and moral condition of the rest.--Almost heathen ignorance of religion at the time when Whitefield and Wesley began to excite the attention of the multitude to that subject.--Signs and means of a change for the better in recent times. Section III.