The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
EDUCATION / AS A MEANS TO END PREJUDICE
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 anybody 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. The omnipotence of their effect
cannot be better proved, than in this country particularly, where,
not-withstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under
heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable
character of which the human form is susceptible; where such a people,
I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are loaded with
misery, by kings, nobles, and priests, and by them alone. Preach, my
dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law
for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know, that the
people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax
which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth
part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise
up among us if we leave the people in ignorance. The people of
England, I think, are less oppressed than here [France]. But it needs
but half an eye to see, when among them, that the foundation is laid
in their dispositions for the establishment of a despotism. Nobility,
wealth, and pomp are the objects of their admiration. They are by no
means the free-minded people we suppose them in America. Their learned
men, too, are few in number, and are less learned, and infinitely less
emancipated from prejudice, than those of this country.
to George Wythe, 13 August 1786
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