In correcting public evils, great reliance is placed on schools.… But schools no more make statesmen than human learning makes christians. Literature & scientific attainments have never prevented the corruption of government. Knowledge derived from experience & from the evils of bad measures may produce a change of measures to correct a particular evil. But learning & sciences have no material effect in subduing ambition & selfishness, reconciling parties or subjecting private interest to the influence of a ruling preference of public good.

His Grammatical Institute of the English Language, in three parts, speller, grammar, and reader (1783-85), was the first of a list of publications which made him for many years the chief American authority on English.