If all the
sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work, to emancipate the
minds of their subjects from their present ignorance and prejudices, and
that, as zealously as they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years
would not place them on that high ground, on which our common people
are now setting out. Ours could not have been so fairly placed under the
control of the common sense of the people, had they not been separated
from their parent stock, and kept from contamination, either from them,
or the other people of the old world, by the intervention of so wide an
ocean. To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here. I
think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the
diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can
be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If any body
thinks, that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the
public happiness, send him here. It is the best school in the universe
to cure him of that folly. He will see here, with his own eyes, that
these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the
happiness of the mass of the people.
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