To persons who are to engage in any of the industrial or professional pursuits, a preparatory course of training or discipline is deemed indispensable to success. Yet many assume the weighty responsibilities of freemen, and allow their sons to do the same, with scarcely any knowledge of a freeman's duties. On the intelligent exercise of political power, the public prosperity and the security of our liberties mainly depend. Every person, therefore, who is entitled to the rights of a citizen, is justly held responsible for the proper performance of his political duties. And any course of popular instruction which fails to impart a knowledge of our system of government, must be materially defective.
With a view to supply this deficiency, the author, many years since, prepared his "Introduction to the Science of Government." This work soon attained considerable popularity, both as a class book in schools, and as a book for private reading and reference for adults. Not being deemed, however, sufficiently _elementary_ for the children and youth in most of our common schools, another work, entitled, "_First Lessons in Civil Government_," was written to meet the capacities of younger or less advanced scholars than those for whom the previous work was designed.
The favorable reception of these works by the public, and the assurances of their usefulness to thousands who have studied them, are to the author a source of high gratification, and an ample reward for many years of arduous labor. The value of these works has, however, been in a measure impaired by changes in the government and laws since the time of their first publication. The latter, especially, descending so minutely into the details of the government of the state for which alone it is intended, requires frequent revisions.
It has occurred to the author that a new work, more permanent in the character of its matter, and adapted for use in all the states, is demanded to supply the deficiency in the present course of education. Stimulated by a desire to bear some part in laying a solid foundation for our republican institutions, and encouraged by the success of his former labors in this department of education, he has, after a suspension of several years, resumed his efforts in this enterprise, in the hope that, with the coöperation of teachers, and those having official supervision of the schools, it may be carried forward to an early consummation; when the principles of government shall be made a subject of regular study in the schools, and the elements of a sound political education shall be accessible to the mass of American youth. And he flatters himself, that the attention he has given to this subject has enabled him to prepare a work adapted, in a good degree, to meet the existing want of the schools.