Some zealous promoters of education set great value on books as a means of improvement, and much has been done towards supplying all classes of society with better elementary works. This is a department that perhaps should not be overlooked by the State ; for good books are of course better than bad. But no elementary books for learners will ever effect any great change. If the teachers are made what they ought to be, books are of little importance for learners; and if the teachers are not well trained, a good book in their hands will not be much more efficacious than a bad one. The kind of elementary books most wanted are books for the use of teachers. Those who lay so much stress- on books for learners, and especially for the child ren of the poor, speak as men who know little of practical education.
It may appear almost superfluous to state that the true interest of the sovereign power, considered in all its bearings, must coincide with the interest of the governed ; the difference in forms of government or in the distribution of the sovereign power being mainly to be con sidered a difference in the instruments or means by which an end is to be obtained. But still this difference is important. Where the sovereign power is in all those who as individuals are subject to it, the coincidence of power and of interest is complete ; and the nearer any form of go vernment approaches to this distribution of power, the more obvious and the stronger is the principle laid down. The principle may express a commonplace truth ; but the consequences that flow from it are numerous and important. When it is clear that the state can promote the general good by its regu lations, its business is to make regula tions. If regulations will not promote the general good, that is a reason for not making them. Now, to protect a man in the enjoyment of his property, and to preserve him from the aggressions of others, is a main part of the business of governing. For this purpose restraints and punishments are necessary : imme diately, to protect the injured, and give compensation, when it can be given ; remotely, to prevent others from being injured, and, so far as it can be done, to reform the offender. But the punishment of any offender, in its extremest shape, can do little more than prevent the same person from offending again. Those who are deterred from crime by his example can at any rate only be those to whom the example is known, and they are a small portion even of the actual society. Gener ally, then, those who do not offend against the laws, do not offend, either because they have been sufficiently educated to avoid such offence, or because the opportunity and temptation have not been presented to them, or because they know that punish ment may follow the crime. But a large class of offenders have not been sufficiently educated to enable them to avoid the com mission of crime ; a very large number are brought up amidst the opportunities, the temptations, and the example of crime, to oppose all which the single fact of knowing that the crime may be punished (and even that amount of knowledge is not always possessed by the criminal) is all the means of resistance that such per sons are armed with. In societies which boast of their wealth, their civilization, and their high intellectual cultivation, such is the feeble barrier opposed by those who have the government of a people between thousands of their fellow-citizens and the commission of crimes the penal ties of which are always severe and often cruel.
If the general considerations which we have urged are of any weight, there is no branch of legislation which comprehends so many important questions as are com prehended in the word Education, even when taken in its ordinary acceptation ; but when viewed in all its bearings, it is of all questions most peculiarly that which it concerns the present age and the present state of society to determine. That Edu cation was an integral, an essential part of legislation, was clearly seen by the Greeks, to whom belongs the merit of having approached, and often having solved, nearly all the important (mations that affect the constitution of society. It was their good fortune to contemplate many truths from a nearer point of view and in a clearer light than we can do now. The relations of modern society are so numerous and complicated, that the mind is bewildered amidst the multiplicity and variety of facts, the claims of opposing interests, and the number and magnitude of the objects which are presented for its consideration. It is only by keeping our selves as free as possible from mere party influences, and steadily looking to the general welfare as the end to be attained by and the true test of all political insti tutions, that we can hope to discover and apply the principles which shall secure, so far as such a thing can be secured, the universal happiness of a nation.
"That the legislator should especially occupy himself with the education of youth, no one can dispute ; for when this is not done in states, it is a cause of damage to the polity (form of govern ment). For a state must be administered with reference to its polity ; and that which is the peculiar characteristic of each polity is that which preserves and originally constitutes it ; as, for instance, the democrati cal principle in a democracy, and the oligarchical in an oligarchy ; and that which is the best principle always constitutes the best polity. Further, in every occupation and art a person must receive previous instruction and discipline, in order to the exercising of the occupa tion or art ; consequently also to the enabling him to the exercise of virtue. Now, since the end of every state is one, it is evident that the education must be one, and of necessity the same for all, and that the superintendence of the education must be with the public and not with indi viduals, as it now is, when each indi vidual superintends his own children singly, and teaches them what he chooses. But when things are matter of public concern, the discipline pertaining to them must also be matter of public concern ; and we must not consider any citizen as belonging to himself, but all as belonging to the state ; for each is a part of the state, and the superintendence of each part has naturally a reference to the superin tendence of the whole. In the matter of education, as well as in other matters, the Lacediemonians deserve praise ; for they take the greatest pains about the educa tion of their children, and that, too, as a public concern. That, then, a state ought to legislate on education and make it a public concern, is clear ; but what educa tion is, and how education must be con ducted, is a subject for consideration.' (Aristotle, Politick, viii. c.)