In England and Rome, the most important spiritual function of the state is the production of the gentleman and the priest; in democratic America it is the production of the man. Some nations have taken pains with the military training of all the people, for the sake of the state, and made every man a soldier. No nation has hitherto taken equivalent pains with the general education of all, for the sake of the state and the sake of the citizens;--"the heathens of China" have done more than any Christian people, for the education of all. This was not needed in a theocracy, nor an aristocracy; it is essential to a democracy. This is needed politically; for where all men are voters, the ignorant man, who cannot read the ballot which he casts; the thief, the pirate, and the murderer, may, at any time, turn the scale of an election, and do us a damage which it will take centuries to repair. Ignorant men are the tools of the demagogue; how often he uses them, and for what purposes, we need not go back many years to learn. Let the people be ignorant and suffrage universal, a very few men will control the state, and laugh at the folly of the applauding multitude whose bread they waste, and on whose necks they ride to insolence and miserable fame. America has nothing to fear from any foreign foe; for nearly forty years she has had no quarrel but of her own making. Such is our enterprise and our strength, that few nations would, carelessly, engage in war with us; none, without great provocation. In the midst of us, is our danger; not in foreign arms, but in the ignorance and the wickedness of our own children, the ignorance of the many, the wickedness of the few who will lead the many to their ruin. The bulwark of America is not the army and navy of the United States, with all the men at public cost instructed in the art of war; it is not the swords and muskets idly bristling in our armories; it is not the cannon and the powder carefully laid by; no, nor is it yet the forts, which frown in all their grim barbarity of stone along the coast, defacing the landscape, else so fair: these might all be destroyed to-night, and the nation be as safe as now. The more effectual bulwark of America is her schools. The cheap spelling-book, or the vane on her school-house is a better symbol of the nation than "The star-spangled banner;" the printing press does more than the cannon; the press is mightier than the sword. The army that is to keep our liberties--you are part of that, the noble army of teachers. It is you, who are to make a great nation greater, even wise and good,--the next generation better than their sires.