



Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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    THE KNICKERBOCKER.

    VOL. X.      NOVEMBER, 1837.       NO. 5.




'NURSERIES OF AMERICAN FREEMEN.'

NUMBER ONE.


GENERAL EDUCATION is the attribute and glory of republican America.
It constitutes one of the strongest pledges of the success of
that interesting experiment in politics, which has astonished and
enlightened the nations of the eastern continent, and which promises,
in future times, to be the grand means of extending the blessings
of freedom to the civilized world. Education, in some of the most
enlightened European countries, is like the sun rising in majesty,
and gilding with surpassing brightness a few mountain tops. Education
in the United States is like the sun pouring his cheering radiance
over every hill, and into every valley.

The peculiar importance of universal and well-conducted education,
in a republican government, must be evident from the slightest
consideration. Every American citizen is a juror, before whom each
officer of the government is on trial, in regard to his capacity and
fidelity. The public prints are the pleaders, oftentimes very artful,
and sometimes not altogether honest; and these jurors need to be well
furnished with an enlightened understanding, that they may not be
imposed upon by misrepresentation and sophistry. Universal suffrage
can never be safely trusted but in the hands of an intelligent and
virtuous population. And it is questionable whether another country
can now be found, beside the United States, where education is
sufficiently general, and conducted upon such principles, as to form
a sufficient basis on which to rest the structure of a republican