In America things are quite other and different. I speak of the Free States of the North; the Slave States have the worst features of an oligarchy combined with a theocratic pride of caste, which generates continual unkindness; there the idea of the state is found inconsistent with the general and public education of the people; it is as much so in South Carolina as in England or Rome; even more so, for the public and general culture of all is only dangerous to a theocracy or aristocracy while it is directly fatal to slavery. In England, and still more in Catholic Rome, the churches--themselves a wonderful museum of curiosities, and open all the day to all persons--form an important element for the education of the most neglected class. But slavery and education of the people are incommensurable quantities. No amount of violence can be their common measure. The republic, where master and slave were equally educated, would soon be a red-republic. The slave-master knows this, and accordingly puts education to the ban, and glories in keeping three million barbarians in the land, and, of course, suffers the necessary degradation which comes thereof. But in the free states of the North the government is not a theocracy, or an aristocracy; the state, in theory is not for the few, nor even for the majority, but for all; classes are not recognized, and therefore not protected in any privilege. The government is a democracy, the government of all, by all, for all, and in the name of all. A man is born to all the rights of mankind; all are born to them, so all are equal. Therefore, what the state pays for, not only comes at the cost of all, but must be for the use and benefit of all. Accordingly, as a theocracy demands the education of priests, and an aristocracy that of the nobility and the gentry, so a democracy demands the education of all. The aim must be, not to make priests and gentlemen of a few, a privileged class, but to make men of all; that is, to give a normal and healthy development of their intellectual, moral, affectional and religious faculties, to furnish and instruct them with the most important elementary knowledge, to extend this development and furnishing of the faculties as far as possible. Institutions must be founded for this purpose--to educate all, rich and poor, men well-born with good abilities, men ill-born with slender natural powers. In New England, these institutions have long since been founded at the public cost, and watched over with paternal care, as the ark of our covenant, the palladium of our nation. It has been recognized as a theory, and practised on as a fact, that all the property in the land is held by the state for the public education of the people, as it is for their defence; that property is amenable to education as to military defence.