station, jealousy of the well-endowed, and the like:--if this be what is
meant, we may well ask whether these factitious prerogatives, that would
thus interfere to render feeble, partial, and slow, any projected exertion
to rescue the nation from barbarism, turpitude, and danger, be not
themselves among the most noxious things in the land, and the most
deserving to be extirpated.

How readily will the proudest descend to the plea of impotence when the
exhortation is to something which they care not for or dislike, but to
which, at the same time, it would be disreputable to avow any other than
the most favorable sentiments, to be duly expressed in the form of great
regret that the thing is impracticable. Impracticable--and does the case
come at last to be this, that from one cause and another, from the
arrogance of the high and the untowardness of the low, the obstinacy of
prejudice, and the rashness of innovation, the dissensions among friends
of a beneficent design and the discountenance of those who are no better
than enemies, a mighty state, triumphantly boasting of every _other_
kind of power, absolutely _cannot_ execute a scheme for rescuing its
people from being what a great Authority on this subject has pronounced
"the worst educated nation in Europe?" Then let it submit, with all its
pomp, pride, and grandeur, to stand in derision and proverb on the face
of the earth.

* * * * *

With a view to a wider circulation than that which is limited by the price
of the volume published in an expensive form and style of printing, it has
been deemed advisable to publish a cheap edition of the "Essay on Popular
Ignorance." It is not in any degree an abridgment of the preceding
edition; the only omission, of the slightest consequence, being in a few