William Manning Quotes
The few are always crying up the advantages of costly colleges, national acadimys and grammar schools, in order to make places for men to live without work .... But [they] are always opposed to cheep schools and woman schools, the only or princaple means by which learning is spred among the Many.
William Manning, 1747-1814, Farmer, Soldier, Tavern Owner and Political Philosopher, The Key to Libberty, 1798
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There are two things that make this quotation interesting, First it tells us about the educational gender discrimination in early Massachusetts. But not his phrase “light soon broke in”. He obviously saw the lack of education for girls as undesirable and unenlightened. But the fact that he had this attitude and would express is so readily in 1857 tells us that, at least in the Northeast girls’ education was assumed by many as part of civilized society.
The phrase “national care and expense” was one that was seen as precedent for those advocating federal aid to education and a strong Department of Education. However, the majority of Adams contemporaries saw education, even public education, as a local matter. The word “education” or “school” never appeared in the Constitution. Adams was well before his time on this point.
Public schools were a radical idea at the time, but public schools for girls is astounding, especially coming from the clergy. This Cahier was the consensus of the Clergy of Blois in 1789. There were cahiers of several provinces of France—some by the clergy, some by the nobles. What is fascinating is the emergence of many of the pre-Revolutionary French concepts. The example of the American revolution and its principles was known throughout the educated classes of France.
William Manning (1747–1814) was a New England farmer, foot soldier and author. After fighting in the American Revolutionary War, he began to believe that his service and labor meant little to those in charge. He soon became a member of the Jeffersonian Republican Party (otherwise known as the Democratic-Republican Party) in response to the day’s ruling Federalist Party. As the years passed and his distrust in government grew, he wrote multiple papers on what he deemed was the corruptness of the "Few" and what the "Many" endured because of it. In 1798, Manning wrote his most famous work, The Key of Libberty (later corrected to The Key of Liberty), in which he wrote that the goal of the Few was to distress and force the Many into financially depending on them, creating a continued cycle of dependence. He continued that the Many’s only hope was to vote for leaders that would fight for those with lesser power and urge for smaller government. His work, however, would not be published for more than a century, mostly due to its controversial content.
