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NECESSITY

OF

POPULAR EDUCATION,

AS

A NATIONAL OBJECT;

WITH

HINTS ON THE TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS, AND
OBSERVATIONS ON HOMICIDAL INSANITY.

BY JAMES SIMPSON,

ADVOCATE.

Serene Philosophy!......

Effusive source of evidence and truth,

Without thee, what were UNENLIGHTENED man!

Seasons.

EDINBURGH:

ADAM & CHARLES BLACK,

LONGMAN REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMAN,

LONDON.

MDCCCXXXIV.

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PREFACE.

A deep conviction and solemn feeling of the necessity-the urgency-of a great National measure for enlightening, and morally elevating, the great body of our countrymen, are the author's motives for offering the following pages to the deliberate consideration of the public. Whether they shall think his views juster and more practical than those that may have been before them, in a hundred other works on the "interminable theme of education," it is not for him to anticipate; but he ventures to hope that they will find the subject placed in a light somewhat different from any with which they are already familiar. He appeals to the Crisis-a great increase of popular power, an immense extension of popular influence, without commensurate directing knowledge, and controlling virtue; and he claims a patient hearing, as the right of the humblest contributor to the difficult subject, to receive, and the duty of every well wisher of his country and his species, to bestow. In this treatise the reader's attention will be called to larger views of the subject of education, in its principles and prac

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