Excerpt from The Duties of Men It is now almost universally admitted by all parties, in civilised communities, that, without education, without a more liberal diffusion of knowledge, and cultivation of the social duties and affections in the great mass of the people, the most serious evils may be apprehended. In the impending changes, which the state of the human mind - half unshackled by the press from its old political bondage, and which polilical knowledge renders inevitable, - therc cannot be otherwise any durable peace, any security to life and pro perty, any safeguard or barrier powerful enough to resist the torrent of popular revolutions - a torrent of opinion far wider and more resistless in its course than that of brute, barbaric force, which plunged the world into the long-enduring darkness of the middle ages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.