It is a not uncommon opinion, that the business of education should be left, like other kinds of business, to the laws of trade. It is said if a carpenter is wanted in any community, or a blacksmith, or a tailor, or a lawyer, or a doctor, carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, lawyers, and doctors will make their appearance. If a store is wanted, a store will spring up. Why not a school-house? Those who use this argument forget the essential difference between the two classes of wants to be supplied. All men equally feel the distress, if naked, or hungry, or sick, or suffering from any material want. The poor man, no less than the rich, feels the pinchings of hunger, and will exert himself to remedy the evil. The sick man, even more than the well, appreciates the value of medicine and the necessity of a physician. Not so in the matter of knowledge. A man must himself be educated, to understand the value of education. There are exceptions, of course. Yet it is substantially true, that the want of education is not one of those felt and pinching necessities that compel men's attention, and that consequently may be left to shift for themselves. A man who has himself enjoyed the blessing of a good education, expects to provide schools for his children, as much as he expects to provide for them food and clothing. The wants of their minds are to him pressing realities, as much as are the wants of their bodies. Not so with the ignorant and debased neighbors, who live within stone's throw of his dwelling. They, from their own experience, know nothing better, and are quite content, both for themselves and their children, to live on in the debased condition in which we see them. If these wretched creatures are ever moved to seek a higher style of living and being, the movement must originate outside of themselves. It is a case in which the man of higher advantages must think and act for those below him. It is a case in which people have a pressing need without knowing it, and in which consequently the laws of supply and demand do not meet the emergency.