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An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance

By John Foster.

Revised and Enlarged Edition.




"A Work, which, popular and admired as it confessedly is, has never
met with the thousandth part of the attention which it deserves. It
appears to me that we are now at a crisis in the state of our country,
and of the world, which renders the reasonings and exhortations of
that eloquent production applicable and urgent beyond all power of
mine to express."

Dr. J. Pye Smith.




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If the circumstance of a manner of introduction somewhat different from
what would be expected in a composition of the essay class were worth a
very few words of explanation, it might be mentioned, that the
following production has grown out of the topics of a discourse,
delivered at a public anniversary meeting in aid of the British and
Foreign School Society.

When it was thought, a good while after that occasion, that a more
extensive use might be made of some of the observations, the writing was
begun in the form of a Discourse addressed to an assembly, and commencing
with a sentence from the Bible, to serve as a general indication to the
subject. But after some progress had been made, it became evident that
anything like a comprehensive view of that subject would be incompatible
with the proper limits of such a composition.

In relinquishing, however, the form of a public address, the writer
thought he might be excused for leaving some traces of that character to
remain, in both the cast of expression and the theological sentiment; for
reverting repeatedly to the sentence from Scripture; and for continuing
the use of the plural pronoun, so commodious for the modest egotism of
public discoursers.

In the general design and course of observations, the essay retains the
character of the original discourse, which was, in accordance to the
presumed expectations of a grave assembly, an attempt to display the
importance of the education of the people in reference, mainly, to moral
and religious interests. There are special relations in which their
ignorance or cultivation are of great consequence to the welfare of the
community. Some of these are of indispensable consideration to the
legislator, and to the political economist. But it is in that general and
moral view, in which ignorance in the lower orders is beheld the cause of
their vice, irreligion, and consequent misery, that the subject is
attempted, imperfectly and somewhat desultorily, to be illustrated in the
following pages.

Nor was it within the writer's design to suggest any particular plans,
regulations, or instrumental expedients, in promotion of the system of
operations hopefully begun, for raising these classes from their
degradation. His part has been to make such a prominent representation of
the calamitous effects of their ignorance, as shall prove it an aggravated
national guilt to allow another generation to grow up to the same
condition as the present and the past. In the course of attempting this,
occasions have been seized of exposing the absurdity of those who are
hostile to the mental improvement of the people. If any one should say
that this is a mere beating of the air, for that all such hostility is now
gone by, he may be assured there are many persons, of no insignificant
rank in society, who would from their own consciousness smile at the
simplicity with which he 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 interests; but it would
degrade its sacred character by talking of any such matter. But
Christianity must have leave to decline the sinister compliment of such
pretended anxiety to preserve it immaculate. As to its sacred character,
it can _venture that,_ on the strength of its intrinsic quality and of
its own guardianship, while, regardless of the limits thus attempted in
mock reverence to be prescribed, it steps in a censorial capacity on what
will be called a political ground, so far as to take account of what
concern has been shown, or what means have been left disposable, for
operations to promote the grand essentials of human welfare, by that
public system which has grasped and expended the strength of the
community, Christianity is not so demure a thing that it cannot, without
violating its consecrated character, go into the exercise of this
judicial office. And as to its _right_ to do so,--either it has a right
to take cognizance now of the manner in which the spirit and measures of
states and their regulators bear upon the most momentous interests, or it
will have no right to be brought forward as the supreme law for the final
award on those proceedings and those men. [Footnote: A censure on this
alleged desecration of religious topics, which had been pronounced on the
Essay (first edit.) by a Review making no small pretensions both
religious and literary, was the immediate cause that prompted these
observations. But they were made with a general reference to a
hypocritical cant much in vogue at that time, and long before. That it
_was_ hypocritical appeared plainly enough from the circumstance, that
those solemn rebukes of the profanation of religion, by implicating it
with political affairs, smote almost exclusively on one side. Let the
religious moralist, or the preacher, amalgamate religion as largely as he
pleased with the _proper sort_ of political sentiments, that is, the
servile, and then it was all right.]

It is now more than twenty years since a national plan of education for
the inferior classes, was brought forward by Mr. (now Lord) Brougham. The
announcement of such a scheme from such an Author, was received with hope
and delight by those who had so long deplored the condition of those
classes. But when it was formally set forth, its administrative
organization appeared so defective in liberal comprehension, so
invidiously restricted and accommodated to the prejudices and demands of
one part of the community, that another great division, the one in which
zeal and exertions for the education of the people had been more and
longer conspicuous, was constrained to make an instant and general protest
against it. And at the same time it was understood, that the party in
whose favor it had been so inequitably constructed, were displeased at
even the very small reserve it made from their monopoly of jurisdiction.
It speedily fell to the ground, to the extreme regret of the earnest
friends of popular reformation that a design of so much original promise
should have come to nothing.

All legislative consideration of the subject went into abeyance; and has
so remained, with trifling exception, through an interval in which far
more than a million, in England alone, of the children who were at that
time within that stage of their life on which chiefly a general scheme
would have acted, have grown up to animal maturity, destitute of all that
can, in any decent sense of the word, be called education. Think of the
difference between their state as it is, and what it might have been if
there had at that time existed patriotism, liberality, and moral
principle, enough to enact and carry into effect a comprehensive measure.
The longer the neglect the more aggravated the pressure with which the
subject returns upon us. It is forcing itself on attention with a demand
as peremptory as ever was the necessity of an embankment against the peril
of inundation. There are no indications to make us sanguine as to the
disposition of the most influential classes; but it were little less than
infatuation not to see the necessity of some extraordinary proceeding, to
establish a fortified line between us and--not national dishonor; _that_
is flagrantly upon us, but--the destruction of national safety.

As to national dishonor, by comparison with what may be seen elsewhere, it
is hardly possible for a patriot to feel a more bitter mortification than
in reading the description, as recently given by M. Cousin, of the state
of education in the Prussian dominions, and then looking over the hideous
exhibition of ignorance and barbarism in this country; in representing to
himself the vernal intelligence, (as we may rightly name it,) the
information, the sense of decorum, the fitness for rational converse,
which must quite inevitably diffuse a value and grace throughout the
general youthful character under such a discipline, and then changing his
view to what may be seen all over his own country--an incalculable and
ever-increasing tribe of human creatures, growing up in a condition to
show what a wretched and offensive thing is human nature left to itself.

When neither opprobrium, nor prospective policy, nor sense of duty, can
constrain the attention of the officially and virtually ruling part of
society to an important national interest, it is sure to come on them at
last in some more alarming and imperative manifestation. The present and
very recent times have afforded significant indication of what an ignorant
populace are capable of believing, and of being successfully instigated to
perpetrate. It is not to be pretended that such ignorance, and such
liabilities to mischief, exist only in particular spots of the land, as if
the local outbreaks were merely incidental and insulated facts, standing
out of community with anything widely pervading the mass. Within but very
few years of the present date, we have had the spectacle of millions,
literally millions, of the people of England, yielding an absolute
credence to the most monstrous delusions respecting public questions and
measures, imposed on them by dishonest artifice, and what may be called
moral incendiarism; and these delusions of a nature to excite the passions
of the multitude to crime. It is difficult to believe that all this can be
seen without serious apprehension, by those who sustain the primary
responsibility for devising measures to secure the national _safety_,
(that we may take the lowest term of national welfare;) and that they can
be content to rest that security on expedients which, in keeping the
people in order, make them no wiser or better. It would truly be a
glorious change in our history, if we might at length see the national
power wielded by enlightened, virtuous, and energetic spirits, not only to
the bare effect of withstanding disorder and danger, but in a resolute,
invincible determination to redeem us from the national ignominy of
exhibiting to the world, far in the nineteenth century, a rude,
unprincipled, semi-barbarous populace.

Thus far the hopes which had flattered us with such a change, as a
consequence of a political movement so considerable as to be denominated a
revolution, have been grievously disappointed. We must wait, but with
prognostics little encouraging, to see whether a professed concern for
popular education will result in any effective scheme. That profession has
hitherto been followed up with so little appearance of earnest conviction,
or of high and comprehensive purpose, among the majority of the
influential persons who, perhaps for decorum's sake, have made it, as to
leave cause for apprehension that, if any such scheme were to be proposed,
it would be in the first instance very limited in its compass, indecisive
in its enforcement, and niggardly in its pecuniary appointments. Many of
our legislators have never thought of investigating the condition of the
people, and are unaware of their deplorable destitution of all mental
cultivation; and many have formed but a low and indistinct estimate of the
kind and measure of cultivation desirable to be imparted. Very slowly does
the conviction or the desire make its way among the favorites of fortune,
that the portion of humanity so far below them should be raised to the
highest mental condition compatible with the limitation and duties of
their subordinate allotment.

No doubt, the most genuine zeal for the object would find difficulties in
the way, of a magnitude to require a great and persevering exertion of
power, were they only those opposed by the degraded condition of the
people themselves; by the utter carelessness of one part, and the
intractableness of another. Nor is it to be denied, that the differences
of religious opinion, among the promoters of the design, must create
considerable difficulty as to the mode and extent of religious
instruction, to form a part of a comprehensive system. But we are told,
besides, of we know not what obstruction to be encountered from prejudices
of prescription, privileged and peculiar interests, the jealous pride of
venerable institutions, assumed rights of station and rank, punctilios of
precedence, the tenacity of parties who find their advantage in things as
they are, and so forth; all to be deferentially consulted.

If this mean that the old horror of a bold experimental novelty is still
to be yielded to; that nothing in this so urgent affair is to be ventured
but in a creeping inch-by-inch movement; that the reign of gross
ignorance, with all its attendant vices, is to be allowed a very leisurely
retreat, retaining its hold on a large portion of the present and
following generations of the children, and therefore the adults; that
their condition and fate shall be mainly left at the discretion of
ignorant and often worthless parents; that there shall be no considerable
positive exaction of local provision for the institution, or of attendance
of those who should be benefited by it; that, in short, there shall not be
a comprehensive application of the national power through its organ, the
government, by authoritative, and, we must say, in some degree coercive
measures, to abate as speedily as possible the national nuisance and
calamity of such a state of the juvenile faculties and habits as we see
glaring around us; and all this because homage is demanded to anticipated
prejudices, selfishness of privilege, venerable institutions, pride of
station, jealousy of the well-endowed, and the like:--if this be what is
meant, we may well ask whether these factitious prerogatives, that would
thus interfere to render feeble, partial, and slow, any projected exertion
to rescue the nation from barbarism, turpitude, and danger, be not
themselves among the most noxious things in the land, and the most
deserving to be extirpated.

How readily will the proudest descend to the plea of impotence when the
exhortation is to something which they care not for or dislike, but to
which, at the same time, it would be disreputable to avow any other than
the most favorable sentiments, to be duly expressed in the form of great
regret that the thing is impracticable. Impracticable--and does the case
come at last to be this, that from one cause and another, from the
arrogance of the high and the untowardness of the low, the obstinacy of
prejudice, and the rashness of innovation, the dissensions among friends
of a beneficent design and the discountenance of those who are no better
than enemies, a mighty state, triumphantly boasting of every _other_
kind of power, absolutely _cannot_ execute a scheme for rescuing its
people from being what a great Authority on this subject has pronounced
"the worst educated nation in Europe?" Then let it submit, with all its
pomp, pride, and grandeur, to stand in derision and proverb on the face
of the earth.

* * * * *

With a view to a wider circulation than that which is limited by the price
of the volume published in an expensive form and style of printing, it has
been deemed advisable to publish a cheap edition of the "Essay on Popular
Ignorance." It is not in any degree an abridgment of the preceding
edition; the only omission, of the slightest consequence, being in a few
places where changes have been rendered necessary by the subsequent
conduct of our national authorities, as affecting our speculations and
prospects in relation to general education; while, on the other hand,
there are numerous little additions and corrections, in attempts to bring
out the ideas more fully, or with some little afterthought of
discrimination or exception. In some instances the connection and
dependence of the series of thoughts have been rendered more obvious, and
the sentences reduced to a somewhat more simple and compact construction;
but the principal object in this _final revised_ has been literary
correction, without any material enlargement or change.

It is hoped that this reprint in a popular form may serve the purpose of
contributing something, in co-operation with the present exertions, to
expose, and partially remedy, the lamentable and nationally disgraceful
ignorance to which the people of our country have been so long abandoned.




Contents.



Section I.

Defect of sensibility in the view of the unhappiness of mankind.
--Ignorance one grand cause of that unhappiness.--Ignorance prevalent
among the ancient Jewish people.--Its injurious operation--and
ultimately destructive consequence.--More extended consideration of
ignorance as the cause of misery among the ancient heathens.


Section II.

Brief review of the ignorance prevailing through the ages subsequent to
those of ancient history.--State of the popular mind in Christendom
during the complete reign of Popery.--Supposed reflections of a
Protestant in one of our ancient splendid structures for ecclesiastical
use.--Slow progress of the Reformation, in its effects on the
understandings of the people.--Their barbarous ignorance even in the
time of Elizabeth, notwithstanding the intellectual and literary glories
of this country in that period.--Sunk in ignorance still in what has
often been called our Augustan age.--Strange insensibility of the
cultivated part of the nation with regard to the mental and moral
condition of the rest.--Almost heathen ignorance of religion at the time
when Whitefield and Wesley began to excite the attention of the
multitude to that subject.--Signs and means of a change for the better
in recent times.


Section III.

Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of the
popular character.--Entire want, in early life, of any idea of a general
and comprehensive purpose to be pursued--Gratification of the senses
the chief good.--Cruelty a subsidiary resource.--Disposition to cruelty
displayed and confirmed by common practices.--Confirmed especially by
the manner of slaughtering animals destined for food.--Displayed in the
abuse of the laboring animals.--General characteristic of the people an
indistinct and faint sense of right and wrong.--Various
exemplifications.--Dishonor to our country that the people should have
remained in such a condition.--Effects of their ignorance as appearing
in several parts of the economy of life; in their ordinary occupations;
in their manner of spending their leisure time, including the Sunday; in
the state of domestic society; consequences of this last as seen in the
old age of parents.--The lower classes placed by their want of education
out of amicable communication with the higher.--Unhappy and dangerous
consequences of this.--Great decline of the respect which in former
times the people felt toward the higher classes and the existing order
of the community.--Progress of a contrary spirit.


Section IV.

Objection, that a material increase of knowledge and intelligence among
the people would render them unfit for their station, and discontented
with it; would excite them to insubordination and arrogance toward
their superiors; and make them the more liable to be seduced by the
wild notions and pernicious machinations of declaimers, schemers, and
innovators.--Observations in answer.--Special and striking absurdity
of this objection in one important particular.--Evidence from matter of
fact that the improvement of the popular understanding has not the
tendency alleged.--The special regard meant to be had to _religious_
instruction in the education desired for the lower classes, a security
against their increased knowledge being perverted into an excitement to
insubordination and disorder.--Absurdity of the notion that an improved
education of the common people ought to consist of instruction
specifically and almost solely religious.--The diminutive quantity of
religious as well as other knowledge to which the people would be
limited by some zealous advocates of order and subordination utterly
inadequate to secure those objects.--But, question what is to be
understood by order and subordination.--Increased knowledge and sense
in the people certainly not favorable to a credulous confidence and a
passive, unconditional submission, on their part, toward the presiding
classes in the community.--Advantage, to a wise and upright government,
of having intelligent subjects.--Great effect which a general
improvement among the people would necessarily have on the manner of
their being governed.--The people arrived, in this age, at a state
which renders it impracticable to preserve national tranquillity
without improving their minds and making some concession to their
claims.--Folly and probable calamity of an obstinate resolution to
maintain subordination in the nations of Europe in the arbitrary and
despotic manner of former times.--Facility and certain success of a
better system.

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