Take the preparation of our youth for their duties as citizens. Here, again, a knowledge of political and social economy is indispensable. We have seen the attention it receives; and while two lessons a week for one hour, and that only to the senior class in its last term, are given to American citizens on the Constitution of the United States and on International Law, _none whatever is given on the science of Government throughout the entire course of five years_!
I might go through the whole course of studies with similar results. Here and there, in this or that class, a small amount of attention is given to some of the sciences omitted in the other classes; but the entire record is one of the most disheartening character.
_Words! words!_ engross almost exclusively the attention of the students from the hour they enter the College until they leave it; and it is not to the five-and-twenty graduates the palm of useful industry should be awarded, but to the many who, in discouragement, abandon a course which tends to _unfit_ them for the great battle of life!
What, then, are the reasons generally assigned for this perverse conventionalism of devoting the time of youth to the acquirement of dead words, to the unavoidable exclusion of nearly every thing that is of value? First, we are told that we can not understand the English language without a knowledge of Latin, from which it is derived. The inaccuracy of this pretension is at once made manifest by reference to Webster, where he states:
"_First._ Saxon and Danish words of Teutonic and Gothic origin.
"_Second._ British or Welsh, Cornish and Amoric, which may be considered as of Celtic origin.
"_Third._ Norman, a mixture of French and Gothic.
"_Fourth._ Latin, a language formed on the Celtic and Teutonic.
"_Fifth._ French, chiefly Latin corrupted, but with a mixture of Celtic.
"_Sixth._ Greek formed on the Celtic and Teutonic, with some Coptic.
"_Seventh._ A few words directly from the Italian, Spanish, German, and other languages of the Continent.
"_Eighth._ A few foreign words, introduced by commerce, or by political and literary intercourse.
"Of these, _the Saxon words constitute our mother-tongue_, being words which our ancestors brought with them from Asia.