2402. EDUCATION, Law and.—
Laws
will be wisely formed, and honestly administered,
in proportion as those who form and
administer them are wise and honest; whence
it becomes expedient for promoting the public
happiness that those persons, whom nature
has endowed with genius and virtue, should
be rendered by liberal education worthy to
receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit
of the rights and liberties of their fellow
citizens; and that they should be called to
that charge without regard to wealth, birth or
other accidental condition or circumstance;
but the indigence of the greater number disabling
them from so educating, at their own
expense, those of their children whom nature
has fitly formed and disposed to become useful
instruments for the public, it is better
that such should be sought for and educated
at the common expense of all, than that the
happiness of all should be confined to the weak
or wicked.—
Diffusion of Knowledge Bill.
Ford ed., ii, 221.
(1779)
