An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance | Page 2

can so easily shape men's
opinions and dispositions to his mind whether they will or not. He must
have been the most charitable or the most obtuse of observers.
It is feared the readers of the following essay will find some defect of

distribution and arrangement. To the candor of those who are practised
in literary work it would be an admissible plea, that when, in a
preparation to meet a particular occasion for which but little time has
been allowed, a series of topics and observations has been hastily
sketched out, it is far from easy to throw them afterwards into a
different order. The author has to bespeak indulgence also, here and
there, to something too like repetition. If he qualifies the terms in which
this fault is acknowledged, it is because he thinks that, though there be
a recurrence of similarities, a mere bare iteration is avoided, by means
of a diversity and addition of the matter of illustration and enforcement.
Any benevolent writer on the subject would wish he could treat it
without such frequent use of the phrases, "lower orders," "subordinate
classes," "inferior portion of society," and other expressions of the
same kind; because they have an invidious sound, and have indeed very
often been used in contempt. He can only say, that he uses them with
no such feeling; that they are employed simply as the most obvious
terms of designation; and that he would like better to employ any less
ungracious ones that did not require an affected circumlocution.
In several parts of the essay, there will be found a language of emphatic
censure on that conduct of states, that predominant spirit and system in
the administration of the affairs of nations, by which the people have
been consigned to such a deplorable condition of intellectual and
consequently moral degradation, while resources approaching to
immensity have been lavished on objects of vanity and ambition. So far
from feeling that such observations can require any apology, the writer
thinks it is high time for all the advocates of intellectual, moral, and
religious improvement, to raise a protesting voice against that policy of
the states denominated Christian, and especially our own, which has,
through age after age, found every conceivable thing necessary to be
done, at all costs and hazards, rather than to enlighten, reform, and
refine the people. He thinks that nothing can more strongly betray a
judgment enslaved, or a time-serving dishonesty, in those who would
assume to dictate to such an advocate and to censure him, than that sort
of doctrine which tells him that it is beside his business, and out of his
sphere, as a Christian moralist, to animadvert on the conduct of
national authorities, when he sees them, during one long period of time
after another, not doing that which is the most important of all things to

be done for the people over whom they preside, but doing what is in
substance and effect the reverse; and doing it on that great scale, which
contrasts so fearfully with the small one, on which the individuals who
deplore such perversion of power are confined to attempt a remedy of
the consequences.
This interdiction comes with its worst appearance when it is put forth in
terms affecting a profound reverence of religion; a reverence which
cannot endure that so holy a thing should be defiled, by being brought
in any contact with such a subject as the disastrous effect of bad
government, on the intellectual and moral state of the people. The
advocate of schemes for the improvement of their rational nature may,
it seems, take his ground, his strongest ground, on religion, for
enforcing on individuals the duty of promoting such an object. In the
name and authority of religion he may press on their consciences with
respect to the application of their property and influence; and he may
adopt under its sanction a strongly judicial language in censure of their
negligence, their insensibility to their accountableness, and their lavish
expenditures foreign to the most Important uses: in all this he does well.
But the instant he begins to make the like judicial application of its
laws to the public conduct of the governing authorities, that instant he
debases Christianity to politics, most likely to party-politics; and a
pious horror is affected at the profanation. Christianity is to be honored
somewhat after the same manner as the Lama of Thibet. It is to stay in
its temple, to have the proprieties of homage duly preserved within its
precincts, but to be exempted (in reverence of its sanctity!) from all
cognizance of great public affairs, even in the points where they most
interfere with or involve its interests. It could show, perhaps, in what
manner the administration of those affairs injures these