Henry Wilson

“ William Henry Wilson is one of the oldest of Topeka's merchants. He is an honored veteran of the Civil war, and has been a resident of Topeka since December 17, 1877. Along with success in business he has given his time unselfishly and conscientiously to the betterment of his city, and he should be long remembered for his efficient service while on the city school board. ”

“ First stands Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, preëminent as the leader in the whole movement. He was handsomely sustained by all his associates, and the numerous insidious efforts of the enemy to separate them from him, only attached them the more closely to his side. ”

“ Amidst his severest adversities he frequently sent remittances to his mother, in Scotland, his father having died and left her poor. To the day of her death he manifested an earnest and commendable solicitude for her comfort, and used every means within his power to alleviate her wants and smooth her downward path to the tomb.
With the commencement of British oppression the political career of Mr. Wilson began. He freely spoke and ably wrote in favour of equal rights and liberal principles. He was an early, zealous, and able advocate of the American cause. ”

“ In October, 1895, he received the degrees of the Royal Order of Scotland at Washington, D. C., and in October, 1899, was given the supreme and honorary thirty-third degree at Washington. In May, 1903, during the session of the Imperial Council in Topeka he was made a Knight of the Red Cross of Constantine.
For many years Mr. Wilson has likewise been prominent in Grand Army circles and is a member of Lincoln Post No. 1 of Topeka. His friends have long appreciated the fact that Mr. Wilson has accomplished a great deal in the world and much more than many men whose early advantages were greater. ”

“ Even Washington, the father of his country, often writhed under its withering lash. Some men seem born demagogues, and live under the influence of Gog and Magog during their whole lives.
As a member of the Continental Congress, Mr. Wilson acted well his part, and was esteemed as one of its most active and useful delegates. Coolness and consistency, marked characteristics of the Scotch nation, were the crimes of Mr. Wilson, on which his enemies based an accusation that he was not a pure patriot, and that he opposed the declaration of independence. ”

“ Wilson died on 21 Feb. 1847. At the time of his death he was one of the eight registered proprietors of the ‘Times.’ He was twice married, and left a son, Henry Walter Wilson of the Inner Temple, and a daughter, married to Norman Garstin, colonial chaplain at Ceylon. His library was sold (5–17 July) by Leigh, Sotheby, & Wilkinson; the 3,438 lots realising 1,993l. 3s. 6d., the Defoe collection going to America for 50l. His coins and prints (sold 26 July) produced 270l. 15s. and 19l. 14s. 6d. respectively. He bequeathed his manuscript collections for the history of dissent to Dr. ”

“ Some of the most prominent men of Topeka Were associated with him on the board of education, including P. I. Bonebrake and Edward Wilder. It is noteworthy that while a stanch republican Mr. Wilson has never been a politician, and his public services have been rendered without any expectation of material reward. ”

“ At the commencement of hostilities he was honoured with the commission of colonel, and was one of the commissioners to treat with the Indians. He was continued a member of Congress until 1777, when his enemies again succeeded in their machinations against him.
On the 4th of July, 1776, Mr. Wilson, with a bold and fearless hand, guided by love of country and motives pure as heaven, gave his vote in favour of independence, and subscribed his name to that matchless instrument which records the birth of our nation and liberty. ”

“ If the people are not true to themselves, demagogues may easily ride into office who will not be true to them.
Mr. Wilson was one of the most useful members of the convention that formed our national constitution. He warmly opposed the appointment of delegates to Congress by the legislatures of the several states, and was powerfully instrumental in placing their election in the hands of the people. He was one of the committee which framed that important document, as first reported to the delegates. ”

“ The tide quickly turned against Colonel Harvey and Marse Henry Watterson. Marse Henry, alone in his suite at the New Willard Hotel at Washington, and the Colonel away off in his tower at Deal, New Jersey, were busily engaged in explaining to the public and attempting, in heroic fashion, to extricate themselves from the unfortunate implications created by the story of the Wilson publicity man. What appeared at first blush to be a thing that would destroy the candidacy of the New Jersey Governor had been, by clever newspaper manipulation, turned to his advantage and aid. ”

“ OF all the institutions which we are proud to call American, none makes so great an expenditure as our system of public education, and none receives so little critical attention from those by whom it is supported. ”

“ Thousands seek to throw upon the state the responsibility for miseries brought on by their own injudicious actions. The fact is that, beyond the safety of person and property, government forms one of the least factors in that complex product called happiness. ”

“ Should the glaciers once more descend from the north and sweep before them all that makes us a great people, leaving no vestige of civilization behind, would America be known to future generations and handed down in history as the land of the most expensive school system on the globe, or would it be known as the birthplace of our Franklins, our Greeleys, our Lincolns, whose school-days might be counted on the fingers? ”

“ John Stuart Mill, than whom England has never produced a greater, who united in one mind the wisdom of the ancients and the learning of the moderns, who was at once an Aristotle and a Bacon, who was not only a profound philosopher but also a practical man of affairs, was singularly exempt from the influence of public instruction. ”

“ I believe that the only way in which we. can hope to carry forward our civilization, or even keep it from retrograding, is jealously to guard the integrity of the individual, and to make the temple of the mind so sacred that neither law nor custom shall be able to enter and enslave. ”

“ It is the tendency of state education to make all intellectually alike, by urging the slow and restraining the fast, by giving a surface polish to the dull and bedimming the brilliant. Its tendency is to crush genius and enthrone mediocrity. It is the great leveling influence of modern times. This procrustean system binds its tender victims upon its inexorable bedstead of iron, and if found too short it cruelly attempts to stretch them out, until not unfrequently the brittle thread of life itself is broken in the effort ”

“ It is therefore high time to cry a halt in this rapid encroachment of the state upon the domain of the individual. It now becomes the imperative duty of every friend of America to strive to limit the state to its true function, and thus avert, if possible, those evils which have buried historic nations beneath their classic ruins. ”

“ The demand is not for cultured minds filled with facts tumbling over each other in the dark, but for minds trained to independent thought. The question is repeated more and more emphatically, not what do you know, but what can you do? Every vocation of life is crying itself hoarse for men—men with the intellectual audacity to think and the moral courage to do. ”

“ For the conclusion, however unpalatable it may be, is forced upon us, that the perfection of our system of state education implies the destruction of individuality, and that the destruction of individuality means social, political, intellectual stagnation, the last symptom of that fatal disease to which China long ago fell a victim, which is even now gnawing at the vitals of France and Germany, and of whose insidious approach America may well beware. ”

“ I do not wish to see the whole system of state instruction destroyed at one fell swoop. Revolutions, in educational as well as in political and religious systems, should be gradual, lest the destruction of an institution so interwoven with the various interests of men should prove too great a shock for the ever-frail structure of society. Even at best we shall be compelled to educate a portion of the community at public expense, so must we also feed and clothe them. ”

“ This gigantic system, the pride of the Old World and the wonder of the New, is fast reducing the German mind to a mere repository of facts and figures. It will be remembered that no one can enter a German university until he has spent nine years in the gymnasium, chiefly upon Latin and Greek. ”

“ What, then, is the true object of education? It is, if I mistake not, to aid Nature in perfecting the individual. Its aim should be to promote, not to destroy, individuality. Its object is human development, but, in the language of Von Humboldt, it is human development in its richest diversity. ”

“ I purpose, in the few minutes allotted to me, to discover, if possible, the true sphere of the state in reference to the education of the young. I shall use the word state in its broadest sense—a community of persons living within a limited territory and bound together by political ties. If such a community has a right to exist, then it has a right to do anything that is necessary to maintain that existence—to appropriate private property and even to take life itself. ”

“ A powerful mind which has been long employed in such studies may be compared to the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to small dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and, when his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape from the narrow boundaries to the measure of which he had reduced himself. ”

“ China, whose philosophers first recognized the supremacy of force, and whose moralists gave us a code which, after twenty-five centuries have elapsed, is yet too exalted for practical life, was reduced to her present condition, not for want of talent, of which she had much, but by a most rigorous system of state education, which consisted, not of investigating new phenomena, but of conning by rote what their ancestors had taught them. But we need not go to the Orient to witness the effects of state education. Germany has a most unyielding system, whose fruits are already beginning to ripen. ”

“ Moreover, the state, by supporting these institutions of special education, inflicts a positive injury upon society in crowding these favored professions, by thus interfering with those laws of social equilibrium which alone should govern the choice of vocation. Whenever the state by special legislation renders one vocation more accessible than another, it injures society by turning into one channel the intellectual energy that rightfully belongs in another. If, then, our premise be correct, these expensive institutions of technical learning are beyond the true province of the state. ”

“ There are reasons why the effects of state education will not so readily discover themselves in America. In the first place, our system is yet very imperfect. But the chief reason is our extensive foreign immigration, whose heterogeneity tends to counteract the unifying influence of our education. This, however, can not always last, and we shall hope in vain if we hope to escape the effects of those influences which are shaping the destinies of other nations. True, we permit parents to educate their own children, but at the same time we tax them to support the education of all ”

“ Our greatest danger is the danger of being governed too much. As a result of this tendency to increase the domain of government, we have technical and professional colleges established and maintained by the state. When tried by our first criterion, I apprehend that it would be difficult to show that it is necessary to educate physicians and lawyers at public expense in order to protect persons and property; and it may well be doubted whether the rapid increase in the membership of these professions, due in no small degree to these institutions, is a national blessing. ”

“ The great poet Goethe saw and the naturalist Von Baer formulated the truth that in all organic life development consists of a change from a state of homogeneity to a state of heterogeneity; that, as we ascend the scale of animal life, there is a gradual transition from the like to the unlike, from unity to diversity. The social organism is no exception to this general law, and so we find among savages a marked similarity in costume, food, habits of life and in opinions. ”

“ The vastness of the enterprise demands the most rigorous system. But the more rigorous the system the less room will there be for the development of individual differences. The tendency of such a system is to make the mind a mere receptacle which receives its daily portion of mental pabulum. Even if trained to think at all, they must of necessity be trained to think very much alike, which is but little better than no thought. In other words, as the system grows stronger the individual grows proportionally weaker. ”

“ While for this purpose no sacrifice is too great, yet to exact from the subject more than is necessary for this purpose is legalized spoliation; for, when you take of a man's property more than is necessary to protect his person and the remainder of his property, you violate those very rights for the protection of which alone governments are instituted among men. ”