Article #195 - Education

[Evidently a fragment]

2ndly    We do not legally owe service to our fellow man neither can he compel us to obey his mandates only as we prefer to follow in the old and beaten track, in preference to breaking a better one for ourselves over the rough surface of reformation, and removing the briers and thorns of unpopularity and long established customs.

3ly   Is this Slavery brought upon us voluntarily or involuntarily. In a free country like this where we an enjoy our opinions on every subject free from molestation what is there to prevent

us from being free men and free women. If man is permitted the exercise of freedom of thought speech and action in an enlightened nation like this what more can he ask? Possessing such ample means of dissevering the ties of slaves, and an opportunity to forever throw from our neck the heavy yoke of oppression, mischievous it is that we so humbly yield to such bonds and oppressions. This involves the question is man a free agent or a creature of circumstance?

            One glance at this I presume will be sufficient to settle this question though there is another interogitary [sic] that naturally presents itself for illucidation [sic], which is how far is man dependent upon himself and independent of God.

            In the creation we find that numerous changes were produced in and upon the earth preparatory to the construction of man in which it appears from the regular line of progression that there was every thing suited to his passions when Adam was placed in the garden. He who is perfect in all things never created the beasts of the fields or the fowls of the air without providing them an abode and food adapted to their wants, and would it not be an outrage in the face of our heavenly father to presume for one moment that his masterpiece should because endowed with reason and intelligence be left to live in a haphazard state and should be dependent upon circumstances.

            So unreasonable is such an hipothesis [sic] that one moment’s reflection is all sufficient to settle the question beyond the possibility of a doubt.

            So if we are free agents we possess the power and unquestionable right as granted from the rular [sic] of all rulars so why do we remain in slavery? The tale has already been told. Society as it now stands is founded [on] faulse [sic] principles, with its basis covering the whole of our county so far as it is peopled whose cornerstone was laid as Columbus touched our

shoars [sic], superintended in structure by the greatest genius of America sons, composed of the best materials from church, state and individuals, cemented with unphilosophic logic and soared step by step until its vertex is lost amid the clouds. Mental volcanic actions have at times shaken its might[y] structure from its centre to its surface, but nothing short of an explosion of its whole foundation will completely demolish it and ??livenater its oppressors.

            Great, glorious, and ever memorable will be the day when this might[y] work will be done. Then will faulse [sic] theology cease to be taught to the juvenile mind and we will have ministers of the gospel among us inspired from the fountain of Knowledge to pour on the wind and the oil without adulteration as originating in the divine mind and free from the poison[ou]s effluvia originating among higherlan [hireling] ministry. Then will our church rest upon the broad

basis of our nation, with natures chandeliers to illume her ample halls with whose canopy will be the blue vault above, whose individual pughs [pews] will be beneath the spreading branches of the towering oak of the forest, whose bell will be our conscience whose tolling sounds will ever

be reverberating through the auditories of the soul and whose minister will be Jesus Christ the

sun [sic] of God through whom we will receive the pure and undefile[d] principals [sic] of christianity upon which the soul may rest assured of everlasting bliss in the world to come.

            And when the human mind has thus progressed or rather escaped from the strong hold in which it has for ages been enslaved, it will set at rights all political disturbances and no more will nation declare war against its neighbouring nation, for all the inhabitants of the earth will yield to the teachings of their conscience which will be an infallible guide to right.

            Then will we be free men in a free country, with an atmosphere free from the contaminating influence of slavery what need we anticipate but true happiness. Glorious would be such a reformation yet I fear that we will not be permitted to see the old institutions shaken to pieces, much less the establishment of laws properly adapted to the wants and disposition of man. Though we may feel and know that we may not live to reap the rich rewards, yet this should not deter us from performing our part, or contributing our might in the scale of right, truth and justice that evil, injustice and oppression may forever be banished as exiles to the T[i]erra del Fuego. For we are found by the ties of consanguinity to exercise our influence in behalf of future generations who may gather hundredfold from the seeds of truth we have sown in the human heart where they germinated at an early period and matured in the chilling blast of popularity overtook them.