Sir, during the last ten years I have had a most extensive correspondence with the intelligent friends of education in the slave states. They yearn for progress, but they cannot obtain it. They procure laws to be passed, but there is no one to execute them. They set forth the benefits and the blessings of education; but they speak in a vacuum, and no one hears the appeal. If a parent wishes to educate his children, he must send them from home, and thus suffer a sort of bereavement, even while they live; or he must employ a tutor or governess in his family, which few are able to do. The rich may do it, but what becomes of the children of the poor? In cities the obstacles are less; but the number of persons resident in cities is relatively small. All this is the inevitable consequence of slavery; and it is as impossible for free, thorough, universal education to coëxist with slavery as for two bodies to occupy the same space at the same time. Slavery would abolish education, if it should invade a free state; education would abolish slavery, if it _could_ invade a slave state. Destroying common education, slavery destroys the fruits of common education,--the inventive mind, practical talent, the power of adapting means to ends in the business of life. Whence have come all those mechanical and scientific improvements and inventions which have enriched the world with so many comforts, and adorned it with so many beauties; which to-day give enjoyments and luxuries to a common family in a New England village, that neither Queen Elizabeth of England nor any of her proud court ever dreamed of, but a little more than two centuries ago? Among whom have these improvements originated? All history and experience affirm that they have come, and must come, from people among whom education is most generous and unconfined. Increase the _constituency_, if I may so speak, of developed intellect, and you increase in an equal ratio the chances of inventive, creative genius. From what part of our own country has come the application of steam to the propulsion of boats for commercial purposes, or of wheels for manufacturing purposes? Where have the various and almost infinite improvements been made which have resulted in the present perfection of cotton and woollen machinery? Whence came the invention of the cotton-gin, and the great improvements in railroads? Where was born the mighty genius who invented the first lightning rod, which sends the electric fluid harmless into the earth; or that other genius, not less beneficent, who invented the second lightning rod, which sends the same fluid from city to city on messages of business or of affection? Sir, these are results which you can no more have without common education, without imbuing the public mind with the elements of knowledge, than you can have corn without planting, or harvests without sunshine.