must be able to weigh and decide upon questions which involve national interests. Hence the higher the civilization embodied, the wider the extent of territory embraced, and the more various the pursuits and physical conditions of the people, the higher the degree of intelligence required for the right exercise of sovereignty.

But intelligence is not enough. Sovereignty is to be exercised for the happiness and well-being of all; and this involves the moral capacity to act in accordance with the dictates of intelligence. The second great law of civil liberty as well as of religion, is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Wherever the moral sense of the people is too feeble to impel the public will to regard the general welfare, democracy becomes the livery of despotism. To general intelligence we must, therefore, add public virtue as one of the essential conditions of the right exercise of sovereignty by the people.

In his Centennial Address at Plymouth, in 1820, Webster assigned three fundamental conditions as essential for the maintenance of republican institutions, namely: universal education, religious training, and the general division of landed property. The same conditions are laid down by De Tocqueville and other writers upon democratic governments.

If we turn to the pages of history we shall find abundant confirmation of these views. We shall certainly search in vain for a single example where an ignorant and corrupt people have exercised sovereign power wisely and justly, or have even retained such power for any length of time. In all the past, wherever the intellectual and moral condition of the people has been low, there civil liberty has been lost. Universal liberty without universal intelligence has ever been the sport of civil tempests. Stolid ignorance and moral degradation tread above the grave of civil liberty, all along the shores of the Mediterranean; but free government still abides with the intelligent and virtuous descendents of Tell, among the mountains of Switzerland-that diamond of liberty, set by a Divine hand in the very center of European despotism! Passing to the New World, I need only point to Mexico, where civil liberty lies prostrate and helpless beneath the crossed bayonets of two European despotisms. In a word, both reason and history compel the conclusion that republican institutions can rest upon no other basis than intelligence and virtue, and that these must pervade all heads and all hearts.

But general intelligence and public virtue are not the spontaneous fruits of civil liberty, although it is favorable to their development. As a necessary condition of their existence, they must be assid

uously cultivated and diffused among the people. No human agency but the common school is capable of accomplishing this great work. Aided and vitalized by religion, it is the only sure foundation of the sovereignty of the people-the strength and shield of liberty.

This great fact was well understood by the founders of the American Republic. They sought to found free institutions, not upon the quicksands of human instinct and passion, but upon the abiding rock of universal education and religious training. This was the grandest of all their innovations upon the moss-grown ideas of the Old World.

But the idea that education must be co-extensive with sovereignty, was not original with our fathers. This has been the favorite doctrine of aristocracy the world over. Wherever the heel of despotism rests upon the neck of humanity, the ignorance of the oppressed has been urged as the justification of the oppressor. Despotism clamors for a restricted education, because she maintains a restricted sovereignty. The former is made just as wide as the latter.

Nor is the idea of universal sovereignty distinctively and originally American. Democracy had drawn her sword to give the people political power, long before the Mayflower cradled the new Republic; and had won the prize, too, but only to see it turn to ashes in their hands. The grand, distinctive, original idea of the American Republic is the union of these two principles, by making the one the basis of the other. With matchless wisdom our fathers joined liberty and learning in a perpetual and holy alliance, binding the latter to bless every child with instruction which the former invests with the rights and duties of citizenship. They made education and sovereignty co-extensive by making both universal. Here is the grandest conception of civil history, the hope and strength of civil liberty. And yet how few the successive steps by which our fathers passed from a conception of this idea to its practical embodiment. Truly they must have builded better than they knew.

Who can measure the results which the union of these two principles has already accomplished? When the sources of the nation's wonderful vitality and power during the great civil conflict through which it has just passed, shall be determined, then first and foremost will stand the common school. The rebellion, which was a gigantic conspiracy against democratic institutions, found a people trained to a comprehension of their duties and interests, with hearts to dare and hands to strike in their defense. The flame of civil liberty now burns with increasing brightness and new splendor, because our fathers, like the wise virgins, put into the lamp of free government the exhaustless oil of Universal Education.

I am thus brought back to the proposition with which I started, namely, that universal education is in this country a matter of deep national concern. Our experiment of republican institutions is not upon the petty scale of a single municipality or state, but it covers half a continent, and embraces peoples of widely diverse interests and conditions, but who are to remain "one and inseparable." Every condition of our perpetuity and progress as a nation adds emphasis to the remark of Montesquieu, that it is in a republican government that the whole power of education is required.

The

one imperative necessity of this nation is that the public school be planted on every square mile of its peopled territory, and that the instruction imparted therein, be carried to the highest point of efficiency.

But what can the general government do to aid in securing this object? In view of the startling fact that the great body of the people that occupy nearly one-half of the national territory, are wholly destitute of the means of education, this inquiry has the deepest significance.

Three plans have been suggested:

1. The government may establish and maintain throughout its territory a national system of education.

2. It may by Congressional legislation enforce the maintenance of a public school system upon every State.

3. It may by conditional appropriations and by a system of general inspection and encouragement through the agency of a National Bureau of Education, induce each State to maintain an efficient school system.

Notwithstanding the cogency of the argument which may be adduced in favor of the first plan suggested, it is, in my judgment, too wide a departure from the settled educational policy of the country, to be seriously entertained. Such a system would doubtless prove highly advantageous in a portion of the country, but it would be very disastrous in those States that have already carried the work of general education to a high point. Besides, all experience shows, and I regard it a law of school progress, that the nearer the responsibility of maintaining schools is brought to those directly benefited by them, the greater the vital power and efficiency of a school system.

These remarks do not apply to the education of the freedmen. On the contrary, I believe it is the sacred and bounden duty of the general government to undertake, for a time, the education of the emancipated millions who through the war have received back their

birthrights of liberty and manhood. Deprived of the uplifting power of education they can but become idle and dissolute, and sink, if possible, still deeper in degredation and misery. Besides the faith of the nation is solemnly pledged for the protection of these people in all their rights as freemen. But there is no protection so secure as the power of self-protection. Until the freedmen have their liberties in their own keeping they are not really free. They are now in a condition of abject ignorance, homeless and landless, subject to the heartless exactions of capital and the helpless victims of class prejudice and persecution. No protection of the government that fails to bring them intelligence, can save them from impending peril. No standing army can so effectually maintain the plighted faith of the government toward these people, as an army of schoolmasters. Let bayonets protect, if need be, the school-house of the freedmen, and they will soon take care of their rights and liberties. They will do more. As free, self-directing, self-supporting laborers, they will bring prosperity again to the South, and make her war-ravaged fields smile with plenty.

To the second plan suggested, there are manifestly serious objections. The imposition of a system of public instruction upon the several States by compulsory legislation, can be justified only on the ground of public necessity in a great national crisis. And I am free to admit that so great is the necessity for the establishment of public schools throughout the South, that even such a measure would be imperatively demanded if no other course to attain the same end, were practicable.

The third plan is clearly in harmony with the settled educational policy of the country. It will neither cripple nor endanger any part of our educational system; and it calls for the assumption of no questionable power by the general government. What is proposed is that the government shall undertake to do efficiently what it has, in the part, always done generously through its munificent grants of land for the encouragement of education.

Instead of unconditional grants of land or appropriations of money, such assistance should be proffered to the several States on condition that they reach a prescribed standard in the maintenance of free schools, and further, that a specified portion of such grants or appropriations be applied to the support of institutions for the professional training of teachers.

The fact that a State could by maintaining an efficient school system, receive from the national government, say from $100,000 to $300,000 annually, would certainly prove a potent influence in

securing such action. I could, if necessary, fortify this statement by referring to experiments of the kind in other countries, and also in several of the States of the Union where State appropriations for school purposes are conditioned on a compliance by the local school authorities with certain stipulations. This policy has uniformly, so far as my information goes, been successful. Communities indifferent to the advantages of free schools, if not prejudiced against them, have, with this assistance to their judgment, come to a wiser conclusion respecting their value. There is no eye-salve so efficacious in removing mental blindness as self-interest, and instances of States permitting the bounties of the government to pass by them have, at least, not been frequent. I am confident that the adoption of the plan suggested would speedily secure a common school system in every State now destitute of such a system, and that it would lift up the schools, as it were bodily, in those States in which they are indifferently sustained. The impetus which it would give to the professional training of teachers throughout the country, would be of incalculable value as a means of elevating and vitalizing school instruction.

There is one other consideration worthy of mention just here. The sparsely settled States of the far West and South need the assistance of the general government in the establishment of systems of education, commensurate with their growing necessity—a fact the government has always recognized. There is not a State west of the Alleghanies that is not greatly indebted to the munificent grants of land made by Congress, for the early establishment of its school system. Nor have common schools alone been aided. Several State Universities are maintained entirely from the proceeds of such grants. It is estimated that if the land grants of Congress for educational purposes had been properly managed, they would now present an aggregate educational fund of about five hundred millions of dollars.

On account of the unfortunate land-holding system of the South and the consequent sparseness of population, it would be difficult to sustain an efficient general school system there, even in times of prosperity. A proper division of landed property is as essential to universal education as it is to democratic institutions. At all events, in the present financial condition of the South the assistance of the government in establishing public schools is needed, and clearly that assistance will prove the best, which is conditional.

As a means of paying the national debt, I know of no one measure fuller of promise than the increase and diffusion of intelligence