Our people still differ from their English cousins (as they are fond of
calling themselves when they are afraid we may do them a mischief) in a
certain capacity for enthusiasm, a devotion to abstract principle, an
openness to ideas, a greater aptness for intuitions than for the slow
processes of the syllogism, and, as derivative from this, in minds of
looser texture, a light-armed, skirmishing habit of thought, and a
positive preference of the birds in the bush,--an excellent quality of
character _before_ you have your bird in the hand.
There have been two great distributing centres of the English race on
this continent, Massachusetts and Virginia. Each has impressed the
character of its early legislators on the swarms it has sent forth. Their
ideas are in some fundamental respects the opposites of each other, and
we can only account for it by an antagonism of thought beginning with the
early framers of their respective institutions. New England abolished
caste; in Virginia they still talk of "quality folks." But it was in
making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on
all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically
settled. Every man was to be trained, not only to the use of arms, but of
his wits also; and it is these which alone make the others effective
weapons for the maintenance of freedom.
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