In the first place, then, we hold with Chalmers, that it is unquestionably the right and duty of the civil magistrate to educate his people, altogether independently of the religion which _he himself holds_, or of the religious differences which may unhappily obtain among _them_. Even should there be as many sects in a country as there are families or individuals, the right and duty still remain. Religion, in such circumstances, can palpably form no part of a Government scheme of tuition; but there is nothing in the element of religious difference to furnish even a pretext for excluding those important secular branches which bear reference to the principles of trade, the qualities of matter, the relations of numbers, the properties of figured space, the philosophy of grammar, or the form and body which in various countries and ages literature and the _belles lettres_ have assumed. And this right and duty of a Government to instruct, rest, we hold, on two distinct principles,--the one _economic_, the other _judicial_. Education adds immensely to the _economic_ value of the subjects of a State. The professional and mercantile men who in this country live by their own exertions, and pay the income tax, and all the other direct taxes, are educated men; whereas its uneducated men do not pay the direct taxes, and, save in the article of intoxicating drink, very little of the indirect ones; and a large proportion of their number, so far from contributing to the national wealth, are positive burdens on the community. And on the class of facts to which this important fact belongs rests the _economic_ right and duty of the civil magistrate to educate.