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Untitled Article
should look abroad in the world , and , from among the innumerable channels of profitable industry , choose some other
occupation than that of grinding corn for the Philistines . Away with the notion that knowledge is the parent of discon tent : where discontent exists , it is because of our ignorance o . the means to remove the evils of which we complain . Knowledge animates with hope and inspires with confidence ; or where evils are irremediable , it teaches patience . Discontent is found where want and privation exist by the side of wealth and luxury The starving tenant of the mud cabin , surrounded by the mansions of the rich , repines , where there is none to teach him to
repine . He is discontented , from the circumstances of his position ; and the bitterness of his spirit , and the danger it may threaten to the peace and order of society , is in exact proportion to his ignorance of the true causes of his sufferings , and the degree in which his views are circumscribed of the means for betterin ' g his condition .
Too much knowledge cannot yet , at least , be charged to the account of the peasantry of England and Ireland , yet they are discontented ; and not only so , but , in a practical sense , greater enemies to the rights of property than any other portion of the working classes . Is not this a striking fact ? The most discontented class , the class of which almost exclusively machine breakers and incendiaries are now composed , is at the same time
the most ignorant class ! It has , however , been gravely asserted , that we should have heard nothin g of incendiarism but for the influence of newspapers and popular education . Education Why , scarcely an individual concerned in such outrages has been found able to read or write ; and who ever sees a newspaper in the hands of an agricultural labourer ? It has been proved before the Poor-law Commissioners , that there are even now whole
parishes in England , and that within twenty miles of London , in which no person employed in field-work is possessed of the elementary arts of reading and writing ; and as to newspapers , how little do they penetrate beyond the immediate vicinity of the great towns ! There are innumerable villages in which a ne \ . > paper is never seen from January to December ; and in the few exceptions to this rule , it is only in a public-house used by the better sort of farmers , where a stale copy of a county ciironicle , filled with advertisements of farms to let , and sheep to be sold , may sometimes be discovered . It is not so in towns however , and to the fact that it is not so , may be traced the almost entire absence of those scenes of mob violence which up to the present moment disgrace our agricultural districts . Whoever will take the trouble to examine the habits of the working classes where they have the readiest access to newspapers , will find that a gradual change has for many years been working upon their minds , and that they are daily becoming
Untitled Article
104 The Taxes on Knowledge .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 104, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/20/
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