2770. EUROPE, Ignorance in.—
Ignorance,
superstition, poverty, and oppression of
body and mind, in every form, are so firmly
settled on the mass of the people, that their
redemption from them can never be hoped.
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.—
To George Wythe. Washington ed. ii, 7.
(P.
1786)
