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 (£)c£oc/s^J^<-'<n^^ c?u^i.^ij0\^ 
 
 Eiiibcrsit|) of tl^e State of Belxi g^orh* 
 
 FIRST COMMENCEMENT 
 
 Albany, July 10, 1879. 
 

 nxbtxBxt^ oi tht Btutt ai ^^to ftorh* 
 
 FIRST OOMMEIsrOEMENT. 
 
 ASSEMBLY CHAMBER, NEW CAPITOL, JULY 10, 1879 
 
 J^t IS o'clool?:, IS/L. 
 
 ORDER OF EXERCISES. 
 
 Prayer — Rev. Dr. FAIRBAIRN, Warden op St. Stephen's College. 
 Introduction by the CHANCELLOR. 
 Commencement Address : 
 
 "Education and the State. The obligation of the State to provide for the 
 education of its citizens — the extent of the obligation and the grounds 
 on which it rests." 
 
 By FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, D. D., LL. D., L. H. D., 
 
 President of Columbia College. 
 
 TDZEG-iaiEIBS C01sr:FEiaE,ElD. 
 Benediction — Ret. Dr. Regent WARREN. 
 

 CHANCELLOR BENEDICT'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Ladies and Gtentlemen : 
 
 To-day is an epoch in the healthy and conservative growth of the 
 University of the State of New York, during its corporate life of 
 nearly one hundred years. Created as soon as the alarms of the Revo- 
 lutionary war had passed away, it has never ceased to be felt in the 
 educational growth of the State, and its influence has increased in a 
 geometrical ratio. 
 
 Before this time, however, signalized as it is by the occupation of 
 this new capitol, it has not seemed to the Regents that the fulness of 
 time had come for the establishment of this characteristic anniversary 
 — a public commencement. The separate institutions, in which 
 the work of actual instruction and educational culture is carried 
 on, have always had their commencements which constitute literary 
 festivals of inestimable value, in every quarter of the State. Not 
 till now have the time and the occasion come, for a commence- 
 ment of the University. 
 
 This we now inaugurate, and I introduce to you the Rev. Dr. 
 Barnard, the distinguished president of Columbia College, the oldest 
 college in the State, as the orator of this our first commencement. 
 
 By transfer 
 
 N 8 '06 
 
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS. 
 
 Education and the State. The obligation of the State to provide for the edu 
 cation of its citizens — the extent of the obligation and the grounds on which 
 it rests. 
 
 By FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, D. D.,LL. D., L. H. D., 
 President of Columbia College. 
 
 Mr. Chancellor : 
 
 It was on the 25tli day of November, 1783, that the British troops 
 under Sir Guy Carleton withdrew from the city of New York. Thus 
 ended the last act in the tragedy of blood and fire, which for seven 
 anxious years had filled the country witli gloom. On the same day 
 the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, accom- 
 panied by his Excellency, G-eorge Clinton, Governor of the State of 
 New York, made his entrance into the city. Salvoes of artillery, fired 
 from the Battery, welcomed his arrival, and saluted the star-spangled 
 banner as it went up on the flag-staff of Fort George. 
 
 The heavily afflicted city breathed once more freely. 
 
 Almost in the very beginning of the struggle this unhappy town 
 had fallen into the possession of the enemy, and during the long 
 period of hostile occupation which followed, it had suffered far more 
 than the ordinary miseries attendant on military rule. Even in the 
 hour of its downfall, and while the shame and grief of its humiliation 
 were still fresh, there fell upon it a new and frightful disaster, which 
 to the pain of subjugation superadded the menace of an immediate 
 and more material distress. 
 
 It was the 20th of September, 1776, a date memorably dismal in the 
 annals of New York, The hour was midnight. A corps of occupation, 
 detached from the main body of the invading army, had just reached 
 their camping ground on the northern limit of the city, and were still 
 engaged in pitching their tents, when a vast cloud of smoke arose upon 
 the southern horizon. Tongues of fire were presently seen shooting up 
 in the neighborhood of Whitehall Landing, and, directly after, an im- 
 mense sheet of flame spread rapidly from river to river, and sweeping 
 along the great central thoroughfare through the heart of the district in 
 which the wealth, the refinement, and whatever of architectural beauty 
 
the city might have to boast, were concentrated, reduced, in a few 
 brief hours, the whole region extending from tlie Bowling Green on 
 the south to the streets above St. Paul's on the north, to a waste of 
 black and smoking ruins. Of the better class of citizens, a fourth 
 part were left houseless in one night, and of their accumulated wealth 
 a large proportion had vanished in smoke and flame. 
 
 Through all the sad years that followed, no hand was lifted to repair 
 the desolation, or to remove its disheartening evidences from sight. 
 Neither motive nor encouragement existed to stimulate the attempt. 
 With the military occupation all the arts of peace had been paralyzed, 
 all commerce, foreign and domestic, extinguished, and the spirit of 
 enterprise was thoroughly broken. Gradually, on the other hand 
 there crept into this desolate scene new features, lending to what was 
 at first merely mournful, an aspect of repulsiveness. Houseless 
 wretches, many of them Tory refugees from the country, the rest 
 made up of the more destitute or profligate of the local population 
 and the army, built for themselves among these ruins hovels for 
 shelter, using, as far as possible, the still standing walls for the pur- 
 pose, and completing and roofing in the comfortless and unsightly 
 structures, with canvas stretched on spars from the shipping. 
 
 But, miserable as was the aspect of this doomed and blasted quar- 
 ter, the plight of that portion of the town which the conflagration 
 had spared was not much better; so that when at last the exiled 
 patriots, who had seven years previously fled in haste at the approach 
 of Howe, returned to their long deserted and now dilapidated dwell- 
 ings, the melancholy spectacle which met their eyes filled them with a 
 sadness which even the remembrance of their newly established liber- 
 ties could not dispel. 
 
 With the restoration of the legitimate authority of the State came 
 the return of hope ; but "it was only by slow and almost impercepti- 
 ble degrees that the stricken town recovered the visible semblance of 
 its earlier prosperity. And when about two months later, the Legisla- 
 ture of the State of New York assembled for the first time in its prin- 
 cipal city, it was under the influence of circumstances of the most 
 depressing character that it entered on its labors. By what means 
 most speedily to lift up the prostrate prosperity of the country, was 
 the question which swallowed up every other in the anxious thoughts 
 of the members. For not the city only, but the entire commonwealth, 
 had sunk down in a common ruin. The exigencies of the war had 
 drained its resources to exhaustion. All industries were stagnant. 
 Agriculture alone maintained a feeble vitality. The public credit 
 was at the lowest ebb, and private credit had ceased to exist. A 
 worthless legal tender medium of exchanges gave to every ordinary 
 
business transaction the charactor of a game of chance, and arrested 
 completely the operations of general commerce. 
 
 Such was the state of things when the first message of the Governor 
 after the peace was laid before the assembled Legislature. This mes- 
 sage shows the profound conviction of the Chief Magistrate that, of 
 all the calamities which war had brought with it, there were none 
 greater than the ignorance which the dispersion of the colleges and 
 the closing of the schools had entailed upon the rising generation. 
 Among the matters of pressing urgency which, in the low state of the 
 public fortunes, seemed to call for early consideration, none in his 
 mind could take precedence of this ; and therefore, after reverently 
 acknowledging the favor of an overruling Providence by which the 
 seal had been put to the national independence, and indicating the 
 principal matters of public concern requiring immediate legislative 
 action, he continued in the following memorable words : 
 
 " Neglect of the education of youth is among the evils consequent 
 on war. Perhaps there is scarce any thing more worthy of your at- 
 tention than the revival and encouragement of seminaries of learning; 
 and nothing by which we can more satisfactorily express our gratitude 
 to the Supreme Being for his past favors ; since piety and virtue are 
 generally the offspring of an enlightened understanding." 
 
 This wise recommendation of the Governor received the prompt ap- 
 proval of both Houses. A bill was speedily introduced, and on the 
 first day of May following was passed into a law, providing, among 
 other things, "/or erecting an Univei'sity within this State." In this 
 act are delineated the features of an organization the most comprehen- 
 sive in its plan of all the educational instrumentalities yet created on 
 this continent. Under it has grown up, during the century which has 
 since elapsed, the splendid system of superior and secondary education 
 of which we have so much reason to be proud ; and which places New 
 York in many respects so far in advance of her sister States. 
 
 The original act was found in some respects imperfect ; but chiefly 
 in the respect that it was complicated by the attempt to combine the 
 principle of general supervision with the special administration of the 
 affairs of particular institutions. Its imperfections were remedied by 
 substituting for it, three years later, a more perfect law, carefully pre- 
 pared by the accomplished scholar and far-seeing statesman, Alexan- 
 der Hamilton. Under this more perfect law was constituted the uni- 
 versity of to-day — the organization which, nearly at the close of a 
 century of signal and uninterrupted usefulness, has gathered its friends 
 together to unite with it on this occasion in inaugurating a new era in 
 its history. 
 
 The interest of the occasion is heightened by the incidental circum- 
 stance that we meet for the first time in this maarnificent edifice, erected 
 
6 
 
 to be the seat of legislative and executive authority for the great State 
 of New York. The splendor of the structure is in harmony with the 
 grandeur of the Commonwealth. As we survey its massive propor- 
 tions, or study the detail of its exquisite decorations, we cannot but 
 feel gratified at the evidence they furnish that our lawgivers have 
 ceased to be wholly controlled by the spirit of a narrow utilitarianism ; 
 that the craving for the beautiful is at length recognized by them as a 
 laudable, salutary, elevating, and refining sentiment ; and that, for 
 the cultivation and improvement of the popular taste, that kind of 
 teaching by object lessons which it is in the power of a legislature to 
 employ, is perhaps no less effectual, than that for which the same leg- 
 islature provides for other purposes in the public schools. 
 
 Further, since beauty is an inspiration, and since the contemplation 
 of its visible forms tends to purify the thought, soften the manners, 
 and ameliorate the moral tone, may we not hope that these exquisite 
 creations of art which we see around us may react upon the members 
 themselves of the august body who here assemble, and give us more 
 dignity in their proceedings, more kindliness in their discussions, more 
 single-mindedness in their aims, more sincerity in their arguments, 
 and more wisdom in their laws. 
 
 Upon ourselves, too, may we not hope that the same influences will 
 produce efi'ects equally salutary ? In that unpretending old building 
 which still stands on the brow of the hill below us, we have met for 
 many years to interchange sympathies, to compare opinions, to speak 
 to each other words of cheer, and by union of action to endeavor to 
 promote the advancement of the cause in which we are unitedly en- 
 listed. The grimy floors, the time-stained and crumbling walls, the 
 discolored ceilings, and the plain unpretending upholstery of the cham- 
 ber in which our annual reunions were held, little as there was about 
 them to kindle enthusiasm or excite the imagination, did not, to our 
 consciousness, sensibly dampen our zeal, or check the genial flow of 
 soul among us. In fact, in the deep interest concentrated upon the 
 objects which brought us together, we gave no heed to our surround- 
 ings. As we came not to indulge the pleasures of fancy but to gather 
 the treasures of thought, so having found what we wanted, we went 
 away feeling that it was good for us that we had been there. 
 
 But now that we meet in this Aladdin-like palace, where it is impos- 
 sible not to give heed to our surroundings, shall not we too find some- 
 thing in these outward circumstances to quicken our sensibility to the 
 beauty of moral truth, even as we perceive our taste to be improved in 
 the discernment of the physical ? Shall there not be gradually in- 
 fused into the communications here presented an aesthetic element the 
 presence of which has hitherto been less perceptible, or at least percepti- 
 ble less universallv ? And Avill there not be, in attending these re- 
 
unions, an added pleasure, the nature of which, though it may be dif- 
 iicult to distinguish and define, may nevertheless with reason be 
 referred to this cause ? At any rate, I am sure that it will not detract 
 from the interest of these meetings, or from the literary merit of the 
 performances that accompany them, whether as it regards profundity 
 of thought or grace and polish of style, that they are held where the 
 presence of beauty will always be exerting its silently ameliorating in- 
 fluence alike upon the spirit and upon the intelligence. 
 
 I have, I fear, extended too far these remarks, intended purely as 
 introductory. 
 
 Honored by the Eegents of the University Avith an invitation to 
 deliver an address appropriate to the occasion of their first annual 
 commencement, it has seemed to me that I could best discharge this 
 duty by devoting the hour allotted to me to the discussion of a topic 
 partly suggested by a consideration of the functions which they them- 
 selves fulfill in our educational system, and partly by the discordant 
 views of educational questions which I have encountered from time to 
 time in the public journals. 
 
 This topic is the relation of the State to education— the obligation 
 of the State to provide for the education of its citizens — the extent of 
 the obligation — and the ground on which it rests. 
 
 The question, What is the duty of the State towards education ? 
 has never been distinctly settled to the universal satisfaction. It has 
 been debated very generally upon grounds more sentimental than logi- 
 cal, especially by those whose views of the subject are most Hberal. 
 With such, the elevating influence of education, the dignity of the 
 human intellect and the necessity of culture to its development, the 
 abject condition of a community where ignorance prevails, and the 
 vice which usually follows in the train of ignorance, are fruitful 
 themes of plausible argument. Such considerations show very con- 
 clusively that education is a good thing, but they prove nothing clearly 
 as to the duty of the government in regard to it. Health, piety, tem- 
 perance are good things, but it does not follow that the government 
 should establish agencies to make men pious, healthy or temperate. 
 Moreover, the elevating influence of education is not strikingly per- 
 ceptible, except where the process has been carried far ; so that the 
 weight of this argument applies mainly to that higher education which 
 can be the privilege only of the few. 
 
 As to the importance of education, however, whether to the welfare 
 of the State or the well-being of the individual, opinions are not at 
 all divided. That provision ought to be somehow made for the edu- 
 cation of the young, is matter of common agreement. But to what 
 extent the State should charge itself with this important interest 
 should devise the systems and establish the institutions of education, 
 
should exact and enforce the attendance of the individuals who are to 
 be educated, and should defray the cost attending these operations, 
 is a question in regard to which intelligent persons widely differ. It 
 is not even universally agreed that the State should concern itself with 
 the matter at all. There are radicals who hold that education is a 
 purely individual interest, with which the State has nothing to do, 
 and with which it should not meddle. There are extremists opposed 
 to these, who [maintain that education is a universal interest with 
 which the State has every thing to do, for which it should generously 
 provide through all the grades even to the highest, and should throw 
 freely open to all comers without charge. Neither of these parties is 
 numerous relatively to the population ; but the one last named is 
 locally very strong, and its views are practically illustrated in the per- 
 manent maintenance of the only absolutely free college in the world, 
 which is also the most largely attended institution of its name in the 
 State of New York. The common opinion lies somewhere between 
 the extremes here indicated ; if it is proper to say that there is any 
 common opinion where there is no agreement as to the point up to 
 which the obligation of the State extends, or as to the limit beyond 
 which it cannot be pressed. 
 
 This great diversity of views indicates the absence of any general 
 recognition of the fact that there are settled principles to which the 
 question at issue may be referred, and by which the extent of the 
 obligation of the government to maintain education may be ascer- 
 tained. The discussions which take place upon the subject scarcely in 
 the least involve these ultimate principles, but are almost exclusively 
 concerned with the immediate effects of education as making the in- 
 dividual a better man, and therefore by inference a better citizen. In 
 this form the argument is necessarily inconclusive, because it proves 
 too much. It proves as well that we should have free national uni- 
 versities and free state colleges, as that we should have free common 
 schools. Becanse the prosperity of a community is dependent on the 
 general intelligence of its members, because educated men become 
 naturally the leaders of society, because the exclusion of the poor from 
 the higher education handicaps them unfairly in the race of life, 
 because the largest education freely offered is the only means by which 
 the genius lurking in the ^humbler ranks of society can surely be 
 detected and developed and made serviceable — these are all apparently 
 potent reasons why opportunities for the highest culture should by 
 freely open to all. 
 
 But these arguments are just as applicable to special, technical, or 
 professional education, as to that which is called general or liberal, 
 and perhaps even more so. When we say that the prosperity of a peo- 
 ple is dependent on its general intelligence, we mean that it is indi- 
 rectly or remotely so dependent. But between the same prosperity 
 
9 
 
 and the condition of the mechanic arts among the same people, the 
 connection is immediate and direct. And if, in regard to general cul- 
 ture, it is an unjust disci'imination to deny to the indigent the oppor- 
 tunities enjoyed by their more fortunate fellow citizens, why not 
 equally so to close against them the avenues to the scientific and 
 learned professions ? Every argument in this category which can be 
 urged in favor of opening literary colleges at the public expense free 
 to all comers, can be advanced with equal propriety in favor of simi- 
 larly opening free schools of agriculture and the mechaiiic arts, free 
 schools of engineering, metallurgy, chemical analysis, and other 
 branches of technology, and finally free schools of law, medicine, and 
 why not even theology ? 
 
 In reference to agriculture and the mechanic arts, the arguments 
 have been so used, if not as yet pushed to their logical limit ; for Con- 
 gress has been called upon to contribute largely to the endowment of 
 such schools in every state, and has liberally responded to the call. It 
 does not follow that because Congress has done this, its action has 
 been wise. As to that I say nothing ; but merely remark in passing 
 that the considerations which induced this legislation were not proba- 
 bly those large and liberal ones I have above suggested — considerations 
 which should logically lead to the endowment just as freely of schools 
 for lawyers and engineers as of schools for mechanics and farmers — 
 but the fact that there are, as politicians are quite well aware, a great 
 many mechanics and a great many farmers in the country, and not by 
 any means as many engineers or lawyers. 
 
 If the government has a duty in the case, this duty should rest 
 on logical grounds which admit of being distinctly stated. 
 
 The objects for which governments are constituted are few and 
 simple. They are : 
 
 1. To provide for the common defense. 
 
 2. To protect the citizen in his rights of person and property. 
 
 3. To furnish him security in the peaceful prosecution of his 
 chosen pursuit. 
 
 4. To institnte tribunals for the administration of justice. 
 
 5. To treat with other governments, and to adjust questions which 
 may arise with such, amicably or by force. 
 
 Strictly speaking, only such operations or measures of government 
 are legitimate, which are promotive, more or less directly, of the ob- 
 jects here enumerated. But as governments are supreme, and as 
 rulers are usually inclined to take a liberal view of the extent of their 
 powers, it happens that many governmental acts occur which would not 
 bear the application of this severe test. Our Constitution, which 
 authorizes Congress to raise money by taxation, anthorizes also the 
 expenditure of the same, in the first place, for objects specifically 
 
10 
 
 defined ; and secondly, for sucli others undefined as may be deemed 
 promotive of the general welfare. This clause, which has been very 
 freely interpreted, can be properly construed only in reference to that 
 rule unwritten in the constitution, and which is a law of reason ante- 
 cedent to and above the constitution, which limits representative gov- 
 ernment to measures properly promotive of the objects for which 
 governments are instituted. To understand '' the general welfare " 
 in any other sense, is to open the door to possibilities of the most 
 dangerous character. It would doubtless be promotive of the general 
 welfare, if every man could be provided with constant and remunera- 
 tive employment; or, failing that, with a pension sufficient to main- 
 tain him in comfort; but it is not the business of the State to see 
 after this, because such provisions have nothing to do with the objects 
 for which governments properly exist. There are some among our 
 countrymen, and many in other countries, who believe that it would 
 be promotive of the general welfare, if all great business enterprises 
 requiring large capital and the union of resources should be under- 
 taken by the State, and all corporations rigidly prohibited. Others 
 believe this doctrine to be a great mistake ; but it is really a matter of 
 no consequence whether that is true or not, since it does not fall within 
 the legitimate province of the government to do any such thing. In 
 some parts of our country popular opinion leans strongly to the belief 
 that the general welfare would be prodigiously promoted by an un- 
 limited issue of irredeemable legal tender notes, and a disuse of all 
 money in the form, of coin. We need not discuss the reasonableness 
 of this belief in order to arrive at the conclusion, on the other hand, 
 that the government ought not to do the thing demanded ; because 
 such an act would self-evidently be in conflict with that duty of the 
 government which requires it to protect the rights of property, and to 
 maintain, or at least do nothing to impair, the steadiness of values 
 which would be greatly menaced by such a proceeding. 
 
 In order, therefore, to demonstrate the duty of the State to provide 
 for the education of the people, it is not enough to allege that such 
 provision must necessarily be promotive of the general welfare. It is 
 necessary to show, further, that such provision conduces in some 
 important degree to the accomplishment of the proper objects of 
 government. 
 
 Now, in order to the most satisfactory accomplishment of these 
 objects, it will not be questioned that the largest knowledge and the 
 highest mental cultivation are to be desired, and ought if possible to 
 be secured, in the men who stand immediately at the head of affairs. 
 But that it is equally essential to good government that the people 
 generally should possess similar intelligence and cultivation, is not 
 immediately obvious. In States whose rulers belong to, or are derived 
 from, a particular and limited class, the immediate ends of good gov- 
 
11 
 
 ernment may be sufficiently subserved by the education of tins partic- 
 ular class. But even in such a State, it does not follow that the 
 education of the people is likely to be without its use to the govern- 
 ment, or matter of indifference to it. For it is to the interest of 
 autocrats, even, that the people should be content, and therefore that 
 industry should thrive, and therefore that the industrial class should 
 be intelligent. History is full of monitions to this effect, from the 
 secessions of the plebeians at Eome down to the communistic com- 
 motions of the present day. As education is promotive of the peace 
 of society, therefore it is to be expected that it will find favor with 
 autocratic governments, through the mere instinct of self-preservation. 
 
 But despotic governments find an additional reason for promoting 
 the education of the people, in the opportunity it affords for guiding 
 and controlling the sentiments, as well as of cultivating the intelli- 
 gence. As the impressions made upon the mind in early life are the 
 most enduring, so the duty of obedience to the monarch and of rev- 
 erence for his representatives may be most effectually inculcated among 
 the lessons of the schools. And as governmental supervision may also 
 take care that no disturbing questions of public policy shall find a 
 place in the system of instruction, so it is possible, by a skillfully 
 constructed educational scheme, to provide more efficacious safeguards 
 for the stability of political institutions than can be found in any sys- 
 tem of police. Such an educational system affords a capital example 
 of the practical wisdom of the policy which prevents the occurrence of 
 evils, over that which would restrain or cure them after they have 
 occurred. 
 
 To a certain extent, under a representative government, similar 
 reasons exist why the State should charge itself with the education of 
 the young. If there is danger to the peace of society, arising from the 
 pressure of want among the industrial classes, this danger is just as 
 great under one form of government as under another. And though 
 a system in which the ruler is the elect of the people does not make 
 reverence for the person of the chief magistrate a duty to be incul- 
 cated, it does require reverence for his office, and for the law of which 
 he is the visible embodiment, with no less positiveness; and in the 
 absence of this sentiment, its stability is no less precarious. 
 
 Under a democratic form of government, however, additional rea- 
 sons present themselves why the citizen should be educated. Under 
 such a government, every great measure of State policy must be settled 
 at last by the voice of the people ; and it will be settled wisely or un- 
 wisely according to the degree of the popular intelligence. Such, at 
 any rate, would be the case if the settlement of public questions by 
 the popular vote could always be regarded as an expression /of the 
 popular judgment, and not merely, as to our misfortune it often is, of 
 
12 
 
 the popular will. The distinction is important ; for in many instances 
 there is reason to think it is not so much the merit of a proposed meas- 
 ure that governs what we are accustomed to call the vote of the enlight- 
 ened freeman, as it is the party flagon which the measure is inscribed, 
 or the bearing it may have upon his section or his neighborhood. 
 
 Many of these questions, indeed, are of a nature too intricate to be 
 correctly judged on their merits by the average voter. According to 
 the abstract theory of republican government, they are not to be so 
 judged ; nor is it presumed that they will ever be referred to the direct 
 arbitrament of the popular vote. This theory assumes that the rep- 
 resentative is not only to act but to think for his constituency. It 
 recognizes as an axiom the proposition that statecraft is a science, in 
 which no man can be an expert except by dint of much study, of thor- 
 ough knowledge of the experience of the past, and large observation 
 of the conditions and needs of the present. According to this view, 
 therefore, questions of State policy should be decided by statesmen, 
 precisely as questions of law are decided by judges. 
 
 It is accordingly, in this theory, a necessary assumption that the 
 representative will be a statesman, or will be as near an approach to 
 that character as the community he represents affords. He will be one 
 of the few whose minds have been enriched by the knowledge, and 
 whose faculties have been disciplined by the training, which the high- 
 est education furnishes. He will probably be thoroughly versed in 
 history, and familiar with the principles of public economy and of 
 governmental science. He will have been selected by his fellow-cit- 
 izens because of his possession of these qualifications, and because 
 they desire to profit by a wisdom which they feel to be superior to their 
 own. Finally, he will be maintained with some permanence in his 
 prominent position, because the reasons which originally placed him 
 there will be reinforced by the consideration that his power of useful- 
 ness is increased by every year of added experience. In a representative 
 republic theoretically perfect, therefore, the business of the State will 
 be as certainly confined to a limited number of men fitted by training 
 and by experience for the proper discharge of their duties, as under an 
 aristocratic or a monarchical government ; the difference only being 
 that, in the republic, the rulers and lawgivers hold their important 
 trust from the free choice of their fellow-citizens, and not by inherit- 
 ance or asserted divine right. 
 
 But the ideal representative republic is an idea only — a mere Uto- 
 pian dream. It never has had an existence in fact; and so long as 
 human nature continues to be what it is, it never can exist. Our own 
 Federal Constitution presents us the skeleton outline of such a 
 scheme, of which it was intended perhaps to embody the reality. But 
 so far is it from being true that our representatives are selected for 
 their breadth of culture, largeness of information, or repute for sound 
 
13 
 
 judgment or elevated principle — these characteristics often prejudice 
 rather than promote the prospects of a candidate for political success. 
 And so far is it from being true that the representative is expected to 
 be guided by his personal convictions, or permitted to exercise his 
 own best judgment in the votes he may give upon public questions — 
 his course is prescribed to him in advance by a dictatorial power which 
 he cannot resist, or resists only at the price of his position and with 
 the certain penalty before him of ignominious degradation. So far 
 therefore as the ultimate decision of questions in our legislative 
 councils by majority of voices or by show of hands is concerned, it 
 matters not whether our representatives are able or weak, well- 
 informed or ill-informed, wise or foolish, eloquent or dull ; the practi- 
 cal result is the same, because it has been foreshadowed from the 
 moment the counting of the ballot-boxes has shown who were the 
 men who were to cast the votes. 
 
 The representatives, nevertheless, are not usually of the weak or the 
 foolish or the dull, nor always (though they are too often) of the ill- 
 informed. It is not altogether matter of indifference to the con- 
 stituency what manner of man shall speak for them in the councils of 
 the State. They prefer a strong man because they mean to profit by 
 his strength ; they respect intellect, but intellectual independence not 
 at all. What they want in a representative, in short, is an advocate 
 and not a judge. 
 
 The reason of this is not far to seek. Little as the debates in our 
 legislative halls may have to do with the final disposition of the meas- 
 ures to which they relate, and of which, in ninety-nine cases out of 
 the hundred, the fate is as perfectly well known before the debate begins 
 as after it is over, yet these debates have very much to do with the 
 probable constitution of the same legislative body after another elec- 
 tion. The floods of oratory, therefore, which periodically deluge the 
 august Houses of State and Federal legislation, are not designed or in- 
 tended to impress or convince those upon whom they are directly 
 poured out; but they have their motive in the hope that, by their re- 
 freshing irrigation, diffused over the broad surface of the country, 
 they may nourish into vigor a growth of popular opinion favorable to 
 the political organization to which the orator belongs. Thus the real 
 business in which our legislative bodies are mainly engaged when they 
 seem to be legislating, is the management of a coming political cam- 
 paign ; and the noise and confusion, apparently signifying nothing, 
 that occupy so much of their time, have really an important signifi- 
 cancy, since they are the mingled sound of the trumpets and of the 
 shouting of the captains, stirring up the scattered legions to gather 
 for the fray. 
 
 Our actual government, therefore, though republican in foxm, is in 
 
14 
 
 its substance a democracy ; differing only from a pure democracy in 
 the fact that the voice of the people is expressed not directly but min- 
 istei'ially — that is, by the intervention of authorized agents. It is 
 probably only owing to the vast magnitude of the body politic, and 
 the Avide extent of territory over which it is scattered, that the minis- 
 terial form is not abandoned, and every question of public policy sub- 
 mitted at once to popular arbitrament, and decided summarily by the 
 popular vote. This would be in strict conformity with the spirit 
 which has ruled the political world in our country ever since the cen- 
 tury began ; and which has found its expression and produced its prac- 
 tical results in such measures as the removal of all the limitations 
 which once existed in all the original States to the universality of the 
 suffrage, the curtailment of the appointing power, and the substitu- 
 tion of popular election for executive discretion in the choice of all 
 public officers, including judges of the highest grade. Perhaps no 
 more striking example of the operation of this spirit can be found 
 than is furnished by the complete frustration in practice of the seem- 
 ingly ingenious scheme of the constitution designed to remove the 
 choice of a president of the United States to the farthest possible dis- 
 tance from the people, and to intrust it to the untrammelled judgment 
 of independent electors chosen for their pre-eminent fitness to exercise 
 this high responsibility. So careful were the framers of the coustitu- 
 tion to guard against the possibility of bias in the minds of these elect- 
 ors, that they inserted into the constitution a provision disqualifying 
 from the exercise of such a function all members of the national leg- 
 islature, and every person holding an office of trust or profit under the 
 government, no matter how insignificant. Practically we know that 
 the electors appointed under this scheme are shorn of all independ- 
 ence, and debarred from the exercise of any discretion whatever in the 
 casting of their ballots. The ticket they are to vote is prescribed to 
 them even before their own election ; and their action is so purely me- 
 chanical that it might just as well be discharged by a convention of 
 ingeniously contrived automata. The careful safeguards against bias 
 have no longer any significancy ; for no matter what the personal bias of 
 the individual elector may be, it cannot in the slightest degree influence 
 his official acts. Yet we see the solemn farce still maintained of a 
 reverence for forms from which the substance has gone out; and the 
 whole country is agitated, and the peace of the union imperilled, in a 
 controversy over the question whether some particular elector, at the 
 time of his nomination, had not held the important and lucrative 
 office of village postmaster or deputy marshal to a federal court. 
 
 If therefore statecraft has not ceased to exist in the United States — 
 if we have still among us a class of men whose profounder knowledge 
 and larger wisdom fit them better for the business of legislation and 
 
15 
 
 the duties of administration than the majority of their fellow-citizens 
 — it is safe to say that snch science and such men do not control the 
 course of our public affairs. Our public policy bears the stamp of the 
 average wisdom of the people, as it is the expression of their will. 
 
 Now there are very few of the questions which arise in the political 
 arena which are not environed with difficulties. There are few of 
 which a plain man of limited information and moderate capacity would 
 be likely to arrive independently at the most judicious solution. There 
 are few which are not more or less embarrassing to the best educated 
 men, and on which there are not important differences of opinion even 
 among those who have studied them most profoundly. But the dif- 
 ferences of experts are differences for which they can assign reasons, 
 and in regard to which, by discussion, they may possibly arrive at 
 agreement; while the differences of common or ignorant minds are 
 haphazard differences, determined sometimes by prejudice, sometimes 
 by blind subservience to party, sometimes by self-conceit and the pride 
 of opinion ; for it is particularly noticeable that men are confident of 
 their own judgments in political affairs just in proportion as their 
 knowledge is less and as their means of judging are more imperfect. 
 
 Look at a few of these questions which are continually in agitation 
 in one form or another before the public, and are in one form or another 
 continually the subjects of demands for new legislation. We find 
 among them, for example, money and the currency, taxation, free trade 
 and protection, tlie public credit, tlie limits of State and national sov- 
 ereignty, infernal improvements, subsidies, mo7topolies, labor and capi- 
 tal, race prejudice, the navigation laws, free elections, honest elections, 
 and many more. Examine any one of these — taxation, for instance. 
 See how, under this general question, subordinate questions immedi- 
 ately arise: How may taxation be most equitably distributed? Should 
 personal property be taxed ? If so, what is personal property ? How 
 shall corporations be taxed ? If on their visible property, how about 
 the certificates of stock Avhich represent this visible property ? Shall 
 mortgaged property be taxed ? If so, shall the mortgage be taxed 
 also ? Shall incomes be taxed ? No proposition carries with it a 
 stronger prima facie semblance of equity. But how shall incomes be 
 ascertained ? And is the same rule to be applied to a stipend which 
 dies with the individual, and to interest on loans or rents of real estate, 
 which are practically perpetual annuities ? Also, if real estate under 
 lease is directly taxed as property, should the rent of real estate be a 
 second time taxed as income ? 
 
 The question of taxation involves the more complicated question of 
 customs-duties. This with all governments is a favorite form of tax- 
 ation, because the burden which it imposes is unconsciously borne. 
 The subordinate questions which it presents are endless. Considered 
 
16 
 
 merely as a system of taxation, without regard to its influence on 
 other interests, the aim of course should be so to adjust the tariff as 
 to raise the largest revenue with the least cost for collection, and in 
 the manner least oppressive to the people. Will this end be accom- 
 plished by a uniform rate of duty upon all imported commodities ? 
 Experience says not. What principle then should govern in the dis- 
 criminations admitted ? Should a heavier impost fall upon the luxu- 
 ries than upon the necessaries of life ? Will not the object be secured 
 just as effectually and much more simply by confining taxation to a 
 few articles of large but necessary consumption, leaving all others 
 free? Granting this, should articles capable of being so richly pro- 
 ductive of revenue as tea and coffee be excluded from the list because 
 they are in so general use, and in order, to use the language of the 
 philanthropic demagogue, to secure to the workingman the blessing 
 of "a free breakfast table"? If for this reason tea and coffee are 
 exempt, shall the same reason avail for sugar and salt, which seem to 
 be as necessary to the free breakfast table as tea and coffee ? 
 
 Here we strike the rock. 
 
 We cannot touch the subject of taxation upon importations with- 
 out bringing up another and a larger and a still more vexed one — 
 the expediency of excluding the products of foreign industry from 
 free competition in our markets with those of our own country. It is 
 pleasant to talk about a free breakfast table when the tea of China or 
 Japan is in question, or the coffee of Java or Eio ; but when we speak 
 of the sugar of Havana or the salt of the Bahamas, the freedom of the 
 breakfast table suddenly loses its interest in Louisiana and New 
 York. 
 
 What has been said on the subject of taxation is designed only as an 
 illustration of the difficulty presented by the questions of State policy 
 which are constantly in agitation before the people, and which, under 
 our system of government, must be ultimately decided, wisely or un- 
 wisely, by the majority of voices. Is it not of the highest importance 
 that they should not be 4ecided wholly by chance or caprice, or by 
 the influence of delusions artfully imposed upon ignorance by design- 
 ing demagogues ? Is it not desirable that the people shall be so 
 educated that they may, at least to some extent, understand these 
 things, and cast their votes under the dictates of a sober judgment 
 and not of a blind impulse ? Moreover, if these questions are difficult 
 — confessedly so difficult that even the men of largest knowledge are 
 not at one in regard to them — is there any degree of education which 
 it is practicable for the State to enforce upon its citizens, in providing 
 for which it would not be directly promoting the objects for which 
 governments are constituted ? All human wisdom is indeed imper- 
 fect, and if it were possible that an entire people should be subjected 
 
lY 
 
 to the highest degreee of education which it is in fact the privilege 
 only of the favored few to enjoy, it does not follow that their legisla- 
 tion might not be sometimes mistaken. Grant this, yet, in the cir- 
 cumstances supposed, such mistakes would be comparatively rare, and 
 minds trained to connect effects with causes would soon detect them 
 and apply the necessary remedies. But a chief benefit of such sup- 
 posed large and general culture would be its power to prevent the 
 suggestion, or at least the mischievous propagation, of wild and vision- 
 ary, not to say dangerous and disorganizing, political schemes and 
 theories, such as are continually disturbing the peace of our country 
 and menacing the security of its institutions — schemes and theories 
 against which we have constantly to wage an uphill fight, chiefly 
 against ignorance, but also against the malignant passions that igno- 
 rance engenders. An universal culture of this high character is of 
 course in the nature of things impossible. But when in this world, 
 as is generally the case, the summum honum in any direction is beyond 
 our reach, we are not justified in neglecting to do what we can to ap- 
 proach it. An imperfect education is better than no education at all. 
 Partial information is better than total ignorance. And any degree 
 of culture prepares the mind to receive with greater profit the further 
 instruction which may come with experience and observation, or 
 through the teachings of the press, or through the continual discus- 
 sions of public questions which are always going on before the people 
 between men who have made them a study. 
 
 What the State therefore should do for education should be limited 
 only by the possibilities which the nature of the problem presents. 
 The question should not be how little it need do, but how much it can 
 do. It need do nothing at all, if we want ',nothing more than that 
 there should be a government ; it should omit nothing that it is prac- 
 ticable to do, if we desire also that there may be a good government. 
 We come then to the question, How much can the State do for 
 education, and how can it best do it ? 
 
 Before replying, let us first observe that a great deal of the knowl- 
 edge possessed by men in adult life, no matter how limited or how 
 extended may have been theii- education in youth, is self-acquired 
 knowledge. Furthermore, much of their power of acquisition — that 
 is, of the facility with which they apply their powers to the discovery 
 of truth — comes from the discipline of experience, and not from that 
 of the schools. It is strictly true, therefore, that all men are more or 
 less self-educated ; and that it is after all more from the education 
 they owe to themselves, than from that which they derive from schools 
 that the degree to which they are able to make-themselves felt in their 
 generation is due. More than that — even of the education they receive 
 from schools, much the greater part is their own work. The schools 
 2 
 
18 
 
 furnish them the opportunities for doing this work, and the teachers 
 are their guides in doing it; but that their own agency in the result 
 is after all the essential thing, is manifest from the fact that these 
 influences operate very differently upon different individuals, profiting 
 some very greatly, and others hardly at all. 
 
 But to self-education, whether in or out of schools, certain element- 
 ary instrumentalities are necessary. These are written and printed 
 letters and other characters significant of ideas. The ability to read 
 opens to the seeker after knowledge the accumulated stores of all the 
 centuries ; and assuming him to have time and disposition, and in the 
 outset some judicious guidance in the choice of books, there is no 
 limit to the extent to which he may push his acquisitions. But 
 the danger is, and the probability is, that the immature learner, pur- 
 suing thus a course of independent study, will read superficially, im- 
 methodically, and without frequently and carefully recalling and 
 restating in his own mind the facts of knowledge he has acquired. 
 His knowledge is thus liable to become a confused knowledge, or a half 
 knowledge, incapable, for want of precision, of useful application ; 
 and the reflex effect of his mental labor upon the faculties it calls into 
 exercise will not be likely to promote their vigor, or increase his 
 power to concentrate and control them. It is partly to prevent these 
 consequences, but chiefly to insure that the young, after learning to 
 read, shall read at all — or at any rate shall read the books which they 
 ought to read — that schools are provided, and that schools are neces- 
 sary. The function of the teacher is to direct the reading, to enforce 
 its thoroughness, and to ascertain the resultant effects which it leaves 
 in the mind of the learner; correcting these where necessary, or put- 
 ting the pupil in the way to correct them himself For I hold that, 
 in training, the business of the preceptor is not so much to teach (in 
 the ordinary sense) as to make the child learn. I mean by this that 
 when the facts of knowledge which the child is expected to acquire 
 are capable of deduction from facts he knows already, he should be 
 led to reach them through this process of deduction, and not be 
 furnished with them ready made, as isolated facts of information. 
 Nor should the teacher unnecessarily unfold to him the successive 
 steps of this deduction. If the pupil's powers of analysis and syn- 
 thesis, of comparison and logical arrangement, are ever to be inde- 
 pendently useful, he must begin to use them independently in the 
 earliest stages of his education. Hence I am by no means disposed 
 invariably to concur in the eulogies I hear bestowed upon popular 
 teachers because of their practice of making every knotty point in 
 their lessons clear to their pupils by copious explanation. I would 
 much rather hear of their success in making their pupils find their 
 way out of their perplexities for themselves. That a good teacher will 
 
19 
 
 possess ill a high degree the power of clear exposition may be taken 
 for granted ; but that he should use this power in order to relieve the 
 learner of the wholesome task of self-instruction, is a very different 
 and is a very unadvisable thing. In virtue of this power, the good 
 teacher will be aware through what process of thought his pnpil must 
 pass in order to reach the conclusion desired ; and his skill as an 
 educator will be shown in so presenting the materials as to turn the 
 thought in the right direction. 
 
 In speaking thus, I am of course intending my observations to 
 apply to that early stage of the educational process, where the object- 
 ive facts of knowledge acquired are of less value to the learner than 
 the subjective results which attend the process of acquisition. At the 
 later stage, at which the purpose is rather to inform than to discipline 
 the mind, that teacher is undoubtedly the best who is capable of con- 
 veying the largest amount of information in the most succinct form, 
 and who therefore possesses in the highest degree the power of clear 
 exposition. 
 
 To return — since without the knowledge of letters and numbers the 
 process of self-education cannot go on, it will be questioned by no one 
 who allows the State to have any duty in the case, that every citizen 
 should be taught to read and write at the public expense. Here, in the 
 view of many, the duty of the State is ended. But this sort of instruc- 
 tion is not education ; it is providing only the implements of education. 
 The objector admits this fact, but claims, on the other hand, that when 
 the State puts the individual in condition to educate himself, he must 
 be himself responsible for the failure if he is not educated. More 
 fully stated the contention is as follows: It is impossible to compress 
 into the compass of a few brief months or years (which is all that, in 
 the case of the average citizen, can be given to education) such an 
 amount of useful information as may qualify an individual to under- 
 stand the various complicated questions which arise in political life 
 If, therefore, such knowledge is to be acquired at all, it must be 
 acquired through the processes of self-education ; and when the State 
 has furnished the citizen with the instrumentalities necessary for this, 
 she has done all that can reasonably be demanded. His failure to 
 make the acquisition, should he fail, may be a misfortune, but this 
 misfortune is not the fault of the State. 
 
 Others, looking at the subject in a slightly different light, reach the 
 same conclusion by a different process of reasoning. The State, they 
 say, imposes on its citizens certain duties, and subjects them to certain 
 restraints, all of which are expressed in its written laws. Though 
 these laws are printed and widely published, their publication is of no 
 avail to those who cannot read. It is unjust to subject men to pen- 
 alties for disobedience to laws which they know nothing about, and 
 
20 
 
 which they have no means of knowing. Therefore the State should 
 see to it that every citizen is able to read and write ; and then, if any 
 one neglects to know what the law is, and infringes its provisions 
 through ignorance, his ignorance is criminal, and if he suffers in 
 consequence, his suffering is just. 
 
 This argument is defective. If, as the argument admits, it is 
 morally wrong to make men suifer for violations of laws which they 
 have no means of knowing, it does not correct the wrong merely to 
 provide the means of knowing, so long as they are sure to continue in 
 io-norance that there are any such laws, or that it is their duty to 
 know them. In the case of the man who cannot read, ignorance of 
 the law is attributable to a material obstacle ; in that of one who can 
 read, but without any purposed neglect does not — because, for 
 instance, he never heard of the laws, doesn't know where to find 
 them, is iinaware that they concern him, or for any other twenty 
 similar reasons — like ignorance may be attributed to a moral obstacle 
 cutting him off just as effectually. If then the State has a responsi- 
 bility in the first case, why not in the second ? The argument is 
 therefore defective in assuming that by teaching men to read, the State 
 discharges herself of an obligation, when the fact is that by doing so 
 she only changes the form of the obligation. It is consequently an 
 argument which, if it proves any thing, proves that the State should 
 do a great deal more than the thing proposed — should in fact teach 
 laws rather than letters — and which, by the same rule, demonstrates 
 that to teach letters will be no longer obligatory, when the laws are 
 taught without them. 
 
 But, once more, the argument rests on a fallacy. It assumes that 
 the citizen who fails to acquaint himself with the letter of the written 
 law is always in danger of incurring through ignorance some serious 
 penalty. If this is true, who of us is safe ? Who is there in this 
 assembly who can truly say that he has read the written laws of his 
 country? If you, gentlemen. Regents of the University of the State 
 of New York, presidents and professors of colleges, principals and 
 instructors of our higher seminaries of learning — if you, gentlemen, 
 cannot claim familiarity with the two or three hundred volumes of 
 statutes at large which have gone forth from the high place where we 
 are assembled to-day ; if you are not much better acquainted with the 
 digests of these statutes which have been from time to time promul- 
 gated ; if you are not fully possessed of the contents of the new code 
 with which the Legislature and the bar and the chief executive of the 
 State have been struggling for the past two years ; and if most of you 
 are probably not quite clear even as to those particular points of 
 difference in regard to this compend which have formed the gravamen 
 of the controversy — how can it be supposed that the humble citizen. 
 
21 
 
 whose educatiott begins and ends with the knowledge of printed 
 characters, and with the ability to read with difficulty, will know these 
 things any better than you ? And if he is in peril through ignorance 
 how happens it that we are not so equally ? 
 
 The fact is that none of us are in any such danger. The general 
 laws to which serious penalties are attached are laws concerning acts 
 which we do not need to be told are wrong. They are the mala m se 
 concerning whose character conscience is a better authority than any 
 written code. Conscience may not indeed distinguish, as the statute 
 does, between their degrees of turpitude, or inform us what depth 
 of disgrace, or how many years of penal servitude each may draw 
 after it ; but conscience will tell us what is much better than that, 
 that we must not do any of them at all. 
 
 This argument therefore for limiting the education provided for the 
 people by the State to the inculcation of the merest rudiments of 
 knowledge, is wholly fallacious. If there were no reason but this why 
 the State should concern itself with popular- education, there would 
 be no reason at all. 
 
 But it is argued again that the ability to read and write contributes 
 materially to the intelligent transaction of business, and that this is 
 true in every walk of life ; therefore that the State should exact and 
 enforce education to this extent, because to this extent it is equally 
 profitable to every citizen, and the liberality of the government is justi- 
 fied by the impartiality of the distribution. It has however been 
 already pointed out that the argument which infers the duty of the 
 State from the benefit of education to individuals cannot be main- 
 tained. To care for the interests of individuals as such is no part of 
 the business of the government. Men get along through life who 
 cannot read. They .could doubtless get along better if they could 
 read ; but why on this account should the State help them ? 
 
 The proper form of this argument, however, is not to present it as 
 a question of individual interest, but of individual efficiency as a 
 factor in the strength of the commonwealth. In this sense, the 
 increase of individual efficiency is a public benefit. The joint result- 
 ant of the increased efficiency of all is to lift a people higher in the 
 scale of civilization, to stimulate among them the progress of the arts, 
 to diversify and perfect their industries, to increase their power of pro- 
 duction, and thus to secure for them larger material resources at home, 
 and to command for them greater respect abroad. Whatever thus 
 contributes to the general prosperity of a people, contributes to its 
 security against aggression, and strengthens the hands of its govern- 
 ment in the discharge of its essential functions, especially of that 
 which consists in providing for the common defense. 
 
 But if upon this ground we can argue in favor of elementary edu- 
 
22 
 
 cation, the same reasoning will justify us in going much further. If 
 merely to possess the rudiments of knowledge, or if only to have com- 
 mand of the implements by which knowledge is acquired, is so to 
 increase the efficiency of individual industry as sensibly, where such 
 knowledge is general, to advance the general prosperity, there can be 
 no doubt that every larger acquisition similarly diflfused must be 
 attended with analogous results to a more marked degree. The ability 
 to read is undoubtedly a valuable accomplishment ; but to read with 
 profit one should have some such antecedent knowledge as to enable him 
 to read ^^nderstandingly. What ideas, for example, are likely to be 
 gathered from the columns of a daily journal by one who is ignorant 
 of the geographical divisions of the earth ; of the varieties of climate 
 and production of different regions; of the population, degree of civ- 
 ilization, political importance, and military strength of different 
 nations ; of the forms of government, peculiarities of religion, and 
 social institutions prevailing in other lands ; of the state of the arts, 
 manufactures and commercial relations, and the nature of the ruling 
 industries among different peoples ; or to what extent is such reading 
 likely to profit one to whom Eome is a town in the interior of the 
 State of New York, aud Waterloo a station on the New York Central 
 Eailway ; or to whom, finally, the names of Shakespeare and Milton, 
 Napoleon and Wellington, and Gladstone and Disraeli, and even per- 
 haps Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Jackson, are so 
 many unmeaning sounds ? If individual effectiveness depends on 
 individual intelligence, if the products of industry are better and more 
 abundant in proportion as the judgment which guides its operations is 
 more and more enlightened by cultivation, then it is plain that no limit 
 ought to be placed to the extent to which the State should provide for the 
 education of every citizen, but that which the nature of the problem 
 itself imposes. By this I mean. to say that we are not to discriminate 
 between studies as in their own nature suitable or unsuitable to be 
 taught in our schools. No kind of useful knowledge is unsuitable, if 
 we have room for it. In fact, if the potentiality of benefit to the body 
 politic is to be our only criterion in judging of the extent proper to be 
 given to our teaching, leaving out of view possible differences of intrin- 
 sic value between different descriptions of knowledge, then, whether 
 by the term benefit we understand a moral or a material benefit, there 
 can be no doubt that the advantage relinquished for every subject of 
 study rejected is greater than that secured by any one of those retained. 
 This is true, because the benefits of mental culture increase in geomet- 
 rical ratio, while the instrumentalities of such culture are increased 
 only arithmetically; so that, as I have said before, if it were possible 
 that a whole people could, one aud all, receive the same high mental 
 training which in the actual state of things falls to the lot of only the 
 
23 
 
 few, the advantage to the State would be beyond computation. We are 
 not, then, to draw a line among the various possible subjects of study, 
 and say that these are fit and proper by reason of any thing in their 
 own nature to be taught in our public schools, and these are not. If 
 there is to be a selection (and inexorable conditions, such as limitation 
 of the time at command, may require this), we may- properly indicate 
 an order of choice, because some subjects are more directly practical 
 than others, and some are auxiliary to all others; but when finally our 
 line is drawn, we must say — these on this side we include, because we 
 can make room for them ; the rest we exclude because unfortunately 
 we cannot. 
 
 If I am asked where such a line should be drawn, I reply that that 
 is a practical question, which could not be answered here without 
 going into a detail inappropriate to this place. I may suggest, how- 
 ever, one or two governing principles which must be borne in mind 
 in drawing it. First, the comprehensiveness of the course of instruc- 
 tion must bear some due proportion to the time it is to occupy. That 
 time should be as great as possible, but experience has perhaps settled 
 what is possible in the case. The law should fix a minimum time, 
 and up to that minimum should make attendance compulsory, speci- 
 fying for this purpose the limiting ages. Secondly, it must be borne 
 in mind that, while many things may be taught if circumstances 
 allow, some things must be taught. Practical utility must here take 
 precedence even of intrinsic value. Reading, spelling, writing aiiU 
 arithmetic will of course lead all the rest. After these will follow 
 geography, physical, political and statistical; then the outlines of his- 
 tory, particularly the history of our own country. To these I would 
 add a succinct summary of the principles of civil government in its 
 various forms, but chiefly those of our own Constitution, with the 
 duties of the citizen under it; but, above all, the supreme duty, in 
 every vote he gives, of voting for principles and not men. The bene- 
 ficial effect of the inculcation of this idea in the morning of life, and 
 before the blood has become heated in the excitements of political con- 
 flicts, would be incalculable. There, if I were compelled to believe 
 that nothing else could be admitted unless to the prejudice of these, I 
 should say we must stop. But I believe there is room for much more • 
 and in this belief I would propose to give the child some systematic 
 knowledge of the objects by which he is surrounded in the natural 
 world — of the elements, in short, of natural history; of the structure 
 of his own body, and the functions of its organs ; — that is, of anatomy 
 and physiology ; of the properties of matter, and of the laws of force — 
 that is, of physics, mechanics and chemistry. In saying this, I wish 
 not to be misunderstood. I would not, of course, attempt the absur- 
 dity of teaching these vast subjects exhaustively. I would confine the 
 
24 
 
 instruction to elementary facts which can be definitely stated ; and 
 which, besides being practically useful, might serve as a foundation 
 on which the learner might build, as opportunity should favor, in the 
 future. 
 
 In addition to these subjects, room should also, in my view, by all 
 means be made for vocal music, an exercise suited to serve rather as a 
 recreation than as a task, and by periodically relieving the strain upon 
 the mental powers, to quicken their activity while at work. For rea- 
 sons very similar, I would add the art of drawing ; which is further 
 recommended by the fact that there is hardly a walk of life in which 
 the possession of such an accomplishment is not capable of many 
 useful and valuable applications. 
 
 I am not, however, proposing a course of common school study. I 
 am only specifying subjects which it seems to be not impracticable to 
 teach in common schools. Of grammar I have said nothing, because 
 I doubt the usefulness of synthetic methods in presenting difficult 
 abstractions to the minds of the young ; but instead of this I would 
 teach the English language, by methods of a practical character ; 
 such, for instance, as the construction of sentences, the comparison of 
 correct and faulty forms of expression, practice in epistolary writing, 
 and in simple narrative and descriptive composition, and the reading 
 of selections from good authors on topics of familiar knowledge. 
 
 But in any system of instruction, primary or superior, it is not 
 enough to prescribe what shall be taught or how much shall be 
 taught — the question Jioio these things shall be taught is one of even 
 higher importance. By this I mean that the benefit derived from 
 schools depends perhaps even more upon the teacher than upon the 
 substance of the teaching. It is an unfortunate fact that, in the busi- 
 ness of instruction, incompetency may conceal itself and inefficiency 
 escape detection more easily than in most other employments. It 
 requires no extraordinary ability nor [any great mental effort on the 
 part of the tutor to assign tasks in text-books, and to go through, with 
 becoming dignity, the process which is called " hearing recitation." 
 Moreover, in these exercises time may be so well filled up as to make 
 it seem that the teacher has really contributed something to the pro- 
 gress of his pupil, although all that he has done has been to listen to 
 a form of words repeated by rote. Now a teacher who is I'eally a 
 teacher must be a positive force in the educational process. He must 
 have that peculiar skill which shows itself in the power to make the 
 pupil think. This with many is a gift of nature, others acquire it 
 by experience, but all find that it is perfected with time. 
 
 One important condition, therefore, of the usefulness of the teacher 
 is that he shall be permanent. If I am rightly informed, this 
 remark suggests the weak point in our system of common school 
 
25 
 
 education at this time. The position of teacher in the elementary 
 schools is, I am told, very generally sought by young persons who are 
 conscious of no special aptness for it or predilection towards it ; who 
 have neither desire nor design to become, teachers by profession ; who 
 seek this employment, in fact, only as a temporary means of subsist- 
 ence on which to rely while they are looking round for something bet- 
 ter—fitting themselves perhaps for professional life, or waiting to 
 make up their minds; without motive therefore to improve themselves 
 in an art which they are not likely to practice long enough to make 
 improvement an object ; and with every temptation to lapse into a 
 dull routine and rest contented in a perfunctory discharge of duty. 
 This is a serious evil. It ought to be prevented if possible. There 
 might perhaps be a rule to prohibit the engagement of persons as 
 teachers, who make no secret of their intention not in any proper 
 sense to be teachers. I fear, however, that the evil lies too deep to be 
 reached by any mere rule of administration. I fear that the real dif- 
 ficulty in the case, when looked into, will be found in the inadequacy 
 of the compensation which the teachers in general in our common 
 schools receive. No man of ability can be expected to give up the 
 best years of his life to aa occupation by which he barely lives, and 
 which, however long and faithfully he may serve in it, holds out no 
 promise that he shall ever live any bettei*. If we would have perma- 
 nent teachers we must pay for permanence, just as, if we would have 
 good teachers, we must pay for excellence. In the educational no less 
 than in the commercial world, equivalency of values must be the rule 
 of all exchanges. The fact that in our common schools — I do not say 
 invariably and everywhere, but in many places and often — the teacher 
 is less liberally remunerated (and this not relatively, regard being had 
 to the quality and dignity of the labor, and the time and cost of edu- 
 cating the laborer to his work, but positively in the actual amount of 
 dollars and cents paid over and received) than journeyman carpenters, 
 bricklayers, paviors, and stone masons in the city of New York, is a 
 fact which draws after it its inevitable consequences, inferiority of qual- 
 ification, lack of zeal, perpetual change. 
 
 I think it quite certain that no class of public servants — taken, I 
 mean as a class ; there are no doubt exceptional cases — are so ill-com- 
 pensated as teachers. No class, on the other hand, render services of 
 higher value to the public ; nor is there any class whose competency, 
 whose efficiency, whose fidelity, and whose devotion to their work more 
 deeply concern the public. If liberal compensation is necessary to se- 
 cure the services of good and capable men as educators of the children 
 of the people, then such liberality is an infinitely higher benefit to the 
 public that pays than to the individuals who receive the pay. For it 
 is not only a dictate of common sense, but a truth deduced from the 
 
26 
 
 experience of all time, that uo investment pays more richly than that 
 which makes its return in the treasures of cultivated intellect. Were 
 I then asked to say in what manner, in my opinion, a people could 
 most strikingly illustrate the economical policy which consists in sav- 
 ing the pence at the expense of the pounds, I should answer — by 
 starving the teachers of their children. 
 
 But supposing that the State leaves us nothing to complain of on 
 the score of liberality, what shall be our security that its munificence 
 may not be misapplied — that is to say, assuming the provisions to be 
 quite adequate to command the best talents and the highest attain- 
 ments, how shall we guard against the danger that inferior men may 
 after all secure the benefit of these provisions ? No teacher in any 
 educational institution, from the highest to the lowest, ought to be 
 engaged, unless upon satisfactory testimonials from competent author- 
 ities ; or, unless, in rare instances, upon the still more satisfactory 
 evidence of established celebrity. For our common schools this point 
 has been carefully guarded by the provisions of our existing laws. 
 Local officers, styled commissioners, elected by the people, are charged 
 with the duty of testing the qualifications of candidates for appoint- 
 ment. The certificate of the commissioner is' evidence of the eligi- 
 bility of the candidate. The system is simple ; it ought to be suffi- 
 cient; but if I am correctly informed, it has one point of weakness. 
 The tenure by which the commissioner holds his office is a source of 
 embarrassment, and makes him liable to a kind of pressure which 
 interferes with his independence, If he is rigorously conscientious, 
 he is liable to ,be undermined and displaced to make room for some 
 one less scrupulous. The result is that his certificates are sometimes 
 wrung from him in cases where his judgment tells him they are unde- 
 served ; and the security intended by the law breaks down. It is true 
 we have a chief of the department, or State superintendent of public 
 instruction, who might, if he pleased, enforce upon his subordinates 
 the exercise of a rigor which, in the absence of such support, they 
 hesitate to employ ; but unfortunately the State superintendent is 
 hampered by similar influences, and subject to the same dangers. 
 
 What is wanted is that this matter should be placed in the control 
 of some intelligent and permanent body of men, having the inde- 
 pendence that permanence in office only can insure ; a body serving 
 without emolument, and therefore disinterested ; a body well educated 
 and conversant with the business of education, and therefore entirely 
 competent; a body composed of men of high character and distin- 
 guished eminence, and therefore possessing something of the dignity 
 and commanding something like the respect which is accorded to 
 judges on the bench. Certainly if, in the administration of justice, it 
 is desirable that there shall be some assurance of permanence, some 
 
27 
 
 security for independence, some immunity from the disturbances of 
 factious agitation, some distance of removal from the arena of popu- 
 lar excitements, some exemption from the hazards that wait on pop- 
 ular caprice, all these things are quite as desirable in the manage- 
 ment and direction of a process so momentous in its objects, so compli- 
 cated in its machinery, so widely extended in its operations, aud so 
 universal in the interests it involves, as the education of a people. In 
 the organization of such a directing body, permanence next to respect- 
 ability is the characteristic which takes precedence in importance of 
 every other ; for in educational matters a policy which may not be abso- 
 lutely the best, if steadily and consistently pursued, is better than one 
 which is always changing, whatever may be the merit of its successive 
 phases. To change a policy from year to year is as bad as to change 
 text-books from year to year ; a practice undeniably bad, though each 
 new book may be better than the one discarded; and bad for the rea- 
 son that we do not after all want to teach books but subjects, and it is 
 quite possible to teach subjects, and teach them well, without any 
 books at all. That the doctrine here affirmed is in accordance with 
 the common sense of mankind, is manifest from the example of the 
 higher institutions of learning; of which all without any exception 
 are placed under the administration of supervisory boards whose mem- 
 bers hold their places in permanence, or of which the changes are so 
 gradual as to be practically insensible. 
 
 The Board of Regents of this University is precisely such a body 
 as I have had in mind in these remarks. It is a body already in exist- 
 ence ; its organic law insures its permanence ; it is composed of ])re- 
 cisely the right kind of men, thoroughly educated, conversant with 
 educational aff;iirs, personally and justly eminent, and by long experi- 
 ence in the supervision of the superior education of the State familiar 
 with all the practical details of administrative duty. To extend its 
 care to the primary education also would be to introduce unity in place 
 of diversity, and to consolidate the entire educational system of the 
 State into one complete and perfect whole. 
 
 Nor in making this change would it be necessary that the present 
 organization of tlie common school system should be in any essentia^ 
 particular changed. Let the organization stand, but transfer simply 
 to the Regents the authority to appoint the functionaries who now 
 receive office from the Legislature or from local constituencies. Let 
 the Regents prescribe the tests to which aspirant teachers shall be sub- 
 jected. Let the officers appointed by them apply these tests, as they 
 will then be able to do, feaidessly and independently, and the evils 
 which have been signalized as inseparable from the system in its pres- 
 ent form, will at once disappear. 
 
28 
 
 How far the proposition here made may be acceptable to this Board 
 of Eegents, I have not inquired, and am unadvised. Should it 
 be thought to increase too largely the burden of their responsibility, 
 there remains the alternative expedient of creating another and par- 
 allel body, a State Board of Education, for example, having the same 
 relation to the system of primary education which the Board of 
 Eegents sustains to the secondary and superior. To either of these pro- 
 posals I can see no objection; to the continuance of the present system 
 unmodified I can see many. 
 
 I have thus endeavored to present my views as to the duty of the 
 State in regard to popular education, resting them on what seem to 
 me to be rational and logical grounds. Without venturing to antici- 
 pate for them universal concurrence, I still think that they will find 
 approval in the educational, if not in the political world. 
 
 The subject of the higher education comes next in order. Recur- 
 ring to what has been said of the importance to the efficiency of 
 schools of well qualified teachers, it is hardly necessary to say that to 
 insure the supply of such teachers is a matter of precisely equal 
 importance ; nor to add that such supply cannot be looked for from 
 the elementary schools themselves. If it is true that the art of the 
 teacher consists not so much in imparting information as in stimulat- 
 ing thought and guiding the process of thinking, then it is true that 
 the accomplished teacher must possess a culture much higher than the 
 highest level to which he can hope to lift his pupil. In this consider- 
 ation we find a suggestion of the necessity, and a justification of the 
 policy, of creating institutions for the express purpose of forming 
 teachers. This is only to adopt in our warfare against ignorance, the 
 most dangerous of foes to the progress or even the maintenance of 
 civilization, the same policy which our national government pursues 
 in training up men competent to direct its operations of ofi'ense or 
 defence against its foreign enemies. Our State has not been regard- 
 less of its duty in this respect. We have numerous admirable exam- 
 ples of the class of institutions here indicated. The State has also 
 acted wisely in enlisting in the same work the numerous well- 
 appointed and ably conducted academies under the supervision of this 
 Board of Eegents, by providing for the formation in these, of classes 
 expressly for the training of teachers. These numerous schools of sec- 
 ondary instruction, which dot at nearly equal intervals the surface of 
 our wide territory, though chiefly the creation of private effort, con- 
 stitute an element in our educational system of inappreciable value. 
 Besides contributing in the manner just described to maintain the 
 character of the schools below, they afford to many thousands of the 
 youth of our State, prevented by circumstances from resorting to the 
 higher institutions, educational advantages in many cases almost 
 
29 
 
 equal to those of the colleges themselves; and their influence in ele- 
 vating the standard of general intelligence in the State is far-reaching 
 and powerful. They fill up all the wide interval between the element- 
 ary education which is universal, and the so-called liberal education to 
 which hardly one in two or three thousand aspires. In regard to them 
 the State has therefore an important duty to fulfill. It should see 
 that they are sufficiently numerous to be everywhere within reach of 
 the people, sliould contribute to their support so far as is necessary to 
 guaranty their educational respectability, and should so far control 
 their operations and supervise their methods as to insure their effi- 
 cient management. 
 
 In addition to this, though these schools will necessarily be for the 
 comparatively few, who should therefore pay for the advantages they 
 derive from them, it would seem to me a just and judicious policy for 
 the State to provide that the deserving whom indigence might other- 
 wise debar from their privileges, and who aspire to a higher culture 
 than they can obtain in the elementary schools, should have access to 
 them free of charge — a policy which might easily be extended to the 
 colleges also. The colleges are necessary to complete and crown the 
 edifice of the educational system. They furnish the teachers to the 
 schools of secondary grade, as these last in turn furnish teachers to 
 the primary. If therefore no colleges were spontaneously to arise, it 
 would be incumbent on the State to create them. In general, how- 
 ever, the creation of colleges at the State charge, and for distinctly 
 State purposes, is unnecessary. But one example, so far as my infor- 
 mation extends, exists in our country, in which a college established 
 by the State is also maintained by the State as a recognized organ of 
 the government, by annual appropriations in the civil list; and that is 
 the University of South Carolina. In most of the States, however, 
 which have been formed out of territory once belonging to the 
 United States, State universities exist, liberally endowed by the 
 Federal Government, and directly subject to legislative control. Yale 
 college and Harvard university were both created and endowed by the 
 colonial legislatures of the States to which they respectively belong ; 
 and till quite recently, in each case, the State retained a representation 
 in the supervisory board. 
 
 But however it may have been expedient or necessary in earlier 
 times to create colleges by State authority, as an indispensable part of 
 the educational machinery of the State itself, the present need seems 
 to be rather to restrain than to foster the multiplication of such insti- 
 tutions. We have too many colleges, and not too few. The excessive 
 multiplication of these institutions is not only not a good, but is a 
 very positive evil ; because, as the number increases, the average 
 
30 
 
 strength diminishes, with an effect upon the average quality of colle- 
 giate instruction as unfortunate as it is unavoidable. 
 
 There are some well ascertained and interesting facts bearing on 
 this question which are believed not to be generally known. The 
 common impression probably is that to multiply the number of col- 
 leges in the country increases correspondingly the number of college 
 students in the country. But this is a mistake. Statistics prove it to 
 be a total mistake. The aggregate number of students attending all 
 the colleges in the country put together bears a pretty steady ratio to 
 the total population of the country, a ratio which remains practically 
 unaltered, however the number of colleges may vary. Practically un- 
 altered, I say, but I am sorry to be obliged to add that, when distant 
 periods are compared, the proportion of students to population, in 
 spite of the multiplication of colleges in the meantime, appears grad- 
 ually to diminish. 
 
 Taking the country through, the aggregate number of students, 
 candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, in our colleges, is to the 
 total population of the countr}', nearly in the ratio of one to twenty- 
 five hundred. Less than half a century ago it was not far from one to 
 two thousand. In half a century the population has increased nearly 
 fourfold, the number of colleges threefold, and the aggregate number 
 of the students in arts in all the colleges put together, but little more 
 than twofold. These figures speak for themselves. 
 
 Now colleges are costly establishments, endowed chiefly by private 
 munificence ; and liberality in this direction, as in every other, has its 
 limit, which cannot be overdrawn. Many colleges, therefore, being 
 interpreted, means feeble colleges; feeble whether as it respects the at 
 tendance they can attract, or the material resources they can com- 
 mand. 
 
 On the other hand, when the large expenditure has been incurred 
 which is necessary to equip properly a college for one hundred stu- 
 dents, this college may just as well receive two hundred; and but a 
 very moderate addition to the outlay will suffice to fit it for a thousand. 
 
 Now the present aggregate population of the country, irrespective 
 of color, is probably not below forty-five millions. At the ratio of 
 one to twenty-five hundred, the whole country furnishes at this mo- 
 ment but eighteen thousand undergraduate students in arts. How 
 many colleges are needed for these ? At two hundred students in a 
 college, ninety. At five hundred, which would be much better, thirty- 
 six — hardly one to a State. But we have actually more than four 
 hundred. 
 
 The educational statistics from which these inferences are drawn are 
 the results of a long-continued and laborious inquiry conducted by 
 
31 
 
 myself personally. If a test of their trustworthiness is demanded, it 
 may be found in the returns made to the Regents of the University 
 from the colleges of our own State. It matters not what year we 
 select. One will answer as well as another. I choose the latest pub- 
 lished, the returns for the year 1877. In that year the number of 
 male students in arts present in all the colleges of the State — sixteen 
 in number — amounted in the aggregate to eighteen hundred and fifty- 
 five. But assuming the population of the State to be five millions, 
 which does not overstate it, the ratio of one to twenty-five hundred 
 should give her two thousand. The returns, I admit, do not take ac- 
 count of the young men belonging to our State who may be in attend- 
 ance in the colleges of other States, nor of the probably smaller num- 
 ber from other States who are present in ours; but on the other hand 
 they fail likewise to take account of the very large proportion of the 
 students enrolled as collegiate students in the College of the City of 
 New York who do not proceed nor intend to proceed to degrees in 
 arts, and whose number is much more than sufficient to counterbal- 
 ance any difference against us in the comparison of inter-State ex- 
 changes. 
 
 If this test proves any thing, it proves that the ratio of one to 
 twenty-five hundred is too high and not too low. This is only to say 
 that it more than confirms the previously stated deductions drawn 
 from a more general inquiry. 
 
 Some advantages are claimed to result from the multiplication of 
 colleges. It is fair to consider these. The first is that, by such mul- 
 tiplication, colleges are brought nearer to those who need them, and 
 are reached with less expenditure of money and of time. This argu- 
 ment might have had weight fifty years ago ; it has very little now. 
 If there were but one college in a State, and if every student should 
 attend the college of his own State, hardly one anywhere need be sep- 
 arated from his home by twenty-four hours. If, on the other hand, a 
 college were provided for every two or three hundred students, and if 
 these were equidistantly distributed through the country, the question 
 of time would cease to have any significance. Large as is the present 
 number of our colleges, nine students out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine 
 in a hundred, have to travel to reach them. If we had but one-quar- 
 ter as many, the average time of travel would hardly be increased an 
 hour. 
 
 Another reason of greater weight than the foregoing in favor of the 
 multiplication of colleges is found in the fact that every religious 
 denomination regards it as a duty to provide for the youth of its own 
 persuasion all the machinery of the superior education. This sense 
 of obligation seems to be not in the least diminished by a considera- 
 tion of the fact that the class-room instruction in all colleges, whether 
 
32 
 
 State or denominational, is strictly secular. The direct religious in- 
 fluences exerted by such colleges result mainly from the observance of 
 peculiar forms in the daily devotional exercises of the academic com- 
 munity, or from the direct inculcation of characteristic doctrines dur- 
 ing public worship, as conducted in the college chapel on the Sabbath ; 
 that is, from tlie maintenance at college of the same influences to 
 which the youth is subject at home. There is, however, something 
 more than this, though it is something not so distinctly definable. 
 The mysterious force of sympathy, whereby men, whether young or 
 old, enlisted under a common banner, and associated together in num- 
 bers, react upon each other, encourage each other, confirm and 
 strengthen each other in their views, their convictions, their aspira- 
 tions, their zeal, exerts an influence of incalculable power in intensify- 
 ing the spirit of religious fellowship. Thus the denominational col- 
 lege benefits the denomination which maintains it, not so much by 
 teachings directed to the understanding, as by more subtile influences 
 appealing to the heart. With some of these, however, are associated 
 proper theological schools, and these are instrumentalities of a more 
 positive character. 
 
 Another cause determining the multiplication of colleges, which is 
 without the same Justification, is found in the ambition — a very laud- 
 able one — of thriving towns to build up within themselves all the ap- 
 pliances of the most advanced civilization. Public spirit, always a 
 praiseworthy sentiment, is sometimes eager to create instrumentalities 
 for good in advance of the necessity ; and when once a splendid enter- 
 prise has been projected, promising honor, eclat, and perhaps more 
 material benefit, to the residents of the locality which its accomplish- 
 ment is to illustrate, the imaginations of a whole community become 
 excited, and local pride is stimulated to a degree which generally 
 makes the first success comparatively easy. The misfortune is that 
 the enthusiasm which is equal to the effort of initiating an undertak- 
 ing of this character, seldom suffices to sustain it through the unavoid- 
 able difficulties of succeeding years; so that a college which owes its 
 birth to a generous impulse full of promise and cheer, may be destined 
 only to add another to the many already existing examples of mis- 
 placed generosity and mistaken endeavor. 
 
 Now, in what I have said of the multiplication of colleges I wish 
 not to be misunderstood. I do not object to many colleges because 
 they are many, nor to small colleges because they are small. If they 
 are all equally good, and all really good, it matters not, educationally 
 speaking, how many there are. We cannot have too much of a good 
 thing. But that a college may be a good college, it must be well en- 
 dowed; for without ample resources it can neither possess the instru- 
 mentalities which are indispensable to thorough instruction, nor 
 
33 
 
 command the men most competent to use the instrumentalities. As 
 I have said before, in education, as certainly as in commerce, quality 
 will command its price. 
 
 My objection to the multiplication of colleges, therefore, rests upon 
 the economical ground that, since the work these institutions have to 
 do is the same, whether there be many or few, the increase of the 
 number, quality remaining the same, involves to the public a very 
 large and quite unnecessary increase in the cost of doing it. But my 
 objection goes further: with an undue multiplication of collegiate 
 institutions, the human probability is that quality will not remain 
 the same. And if it does not, then the public suffers not only in an 
 economical, but also in an educational sense. 
 
 The evil resulting from this cause would not be so serious if all our 
 colleges were not clothed with university powers. The distinction is 
 one so wholly disregarded in this country, that it would seem to be 
 almost unknown. Colleges originally grew up as the organs of uni- 
 versities; first to lodge, afterward to lodge and aid in teaching univer- 
 sity students. They had nothing to do with degrees. The early 
 continental colleges have chiefly perished ; the British survive. They 
 are learned, wealthy and powerful, but they cannot confer degrees. 
 Some French collegiate schools of more recent erection confer the 
 degree of bachelor — no other. 
 
 Now all our colleges are universities. How stands their number to 
 the population ? In the east it is bad enough. New York, with her 
 sixteen colleges, has one to three hundred and twenty thousand in- 
 habitants ; Massachusetts, with her seven, one to two hundred and 
 thirty thousand; Connecticut, with her three, one to two hundred 
 thousand ; and Ehode Island, with a total population of two hundred 
 and sixty thousand, has one only. Further west it is much worse 
 Pennsylvania has twenty-nine colleges, or one to about one hundred 
 and thirty-five thousand inhabitants ; Illinois has thirty, or one to 
 one hundred thousand ; Tennessee, twenty-seven, or one to ninety-five 
 thousand ; Indiana and Missouri, each twenty-three, or one to ninety 
 thousand ; Ohio, thirty-seven, or one to eighty thousand ; and Iowa, 
 twenty-one, or one to seventy thousand. 
 
 The total number of colleges in all the states together is about four 
 hundred and twenty-five, or one to a little more than one hundred 
 thousand. When I say about, I mean as nearly as it is possible to 
 find out. One would suppose, considering the high grade of these 
 institutions — high at least in assumption — that no fact in all statisics 
 ought to be more easily ascertainable than the number of colleges in 
 the United States ; yet so far is this from being the case, that the 
 effort to arrive at the exact truth on the subject has baffled the most 
 patient and most persevering industry of every investigator who has 
 3 
 
34 
 
 ever attempted it. What with the uprising of new and hopeful en- 
 terprises on the one hand, and the down-tumbling of older (not 
 always old) and rickety concerns on the other, the absolute total for 
 any given year is never certain, and for any two succeeding years is 
 never the same. If the estimated number I have given is too large 
 to-day (and I do not think it is), it will probably be too small before 
 another year rolls round. 
 
 It is inconceivable that this great multitude of educational institu- 
 tions, all calling themselves by a common name, can be all of uniform 
 merit, and all equally deserving of the confidence of the public. In 
 fact, if we examine the roll of those who attend upon their teaching, 
 we shall see that they cannot be ; for in very many instances the great 
 mass of the students are, in age and in advancement, children, attend- 
 ng what is styled a preparatory course; while a handful, numbering, 
 from half a dozen to twenty, are separately classified and grouped 
 under what is pretentiously entitled the Deimrtment of Arts. These 
 institutions are in fact merely secondary schools, which have been 
 become seized with the ambition to add to their dignity by calling 
 themselves colleges. There are, under the care of this Board of 
 Regents, some three hundred academies, whose work is intrinsically 
 better and of higher grade than that of half the institutions included 
 in the list of American colleges published by the Bureau of Education 
 at Washington. 
 
 In one of our largest western States, I am informed that under a 
 general law any seven men who may associate themselves together 
 and raise the pitiful sum of five thousand dollars, are authorized to 
 constitute themselves a Board of Trustees, organize a college, and 
 proceed to confer degrees in arts. The value of a degree conferred by 
 such a body may be easily understood. 
 
 Now why should I concern myself, why should you concern your- 
 selves, why should any of us concern ourselves about this eruption of 
 feeble colleges, sham colleges, often mushroom colleges, breaking out 
 in epidemic form all over the surface of the land ? Why not allow 
 their founders, if it amuses them, to mimic academic ceremonial, and 
 play at the annual manufacture of laureates, regular and honorary, 
 without comment and without interference ? Simply because these 
 laurels, which are thus lavishly scattered abroad, are the insignia, of 
 at least have hitherto been the insignia, guaranty, stamp and attesta- 
 tion of genuine scholarship, awarded by the recognized representatives 
 of the highest learning. To bestow them on so slight an assurance 
 of deserving, to allow them to be bestowed by self constituted authori- 
 ties of no recognized standing or weight of personal character, is to 
 pervert their intent, debase their value, and utterly destroy their sig- 
 nificancy. To an American who has been accustomed to see these 
 
35 
 
 distinctions dispensed so lightly, and who is not in the least surprised 
 to find, in every twentieth village he visits, a tribunal, neither august 
 nor awe-inspiring, fully empowered to dispense them, it would be 
 difficult to conceive or appreciate the value which was once attached 
 to an academic degree in the Old World, and which clings to it 
 there even yet. During the medieval period an academic degree was 
 almost equivalent to an order of nobility, or to a decoration bestowed 
 by a monarch. We may perhaps be able to conceive the honor and 
 deference which the stamp and seal of high erudition carried with it 
 by calling to mind the fact that a very little learning, even the mere 
 ability to read and write, was sufficient to secure to its possessor ex- 
 emption from the ordinary penalties of the criminal law. 
 
 Degrees were not originally instituted as titular distinctions — the 
 purpose which they principally subserve at present — they were certifi- 
 cates of proficiency conveying the right, and imposing the duty, to 
 teach in the institution conferring them. Hence, as the substance 
 was more important than the name, the holder of the certificate was, 
 in the earlier period of the history, invested with no title fixed by law, 
 but was called indifferently a licentiate, a master (viz., of a school), or 
 a doctor — that is to say, a teacher. The term Arts is simply the 
 name given to the seven subjects of study taught in the schools of 
 Charlemagne, and i^resunied in that day to embrace pretty much the 
 whole circle of human knowledge — viz., the /riwrnw, consisting of 
 grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium, of arithmetic, 
 geometry, astronomy, and music. The origin of the term bachelor is 
 uncertain. By some it is supposed to be a corruption of the words has 
 chevalier, the lowest order of knighthood, as distinguished from the 
 knight banneret ; by others, it is derived from the ceremonial of insti- 
 tution, in which a staff {hacilla) was placed in the hands of the profi- 
 cient. As the laurel is the traditional emblem of triumph achieved, 
 the recipient of the honor was styled haccalaureatus, or bachelor. So 
 far as can be discovered, these names were, for a century or more, used 
 interchangeably; nor is it clearly settled precisely when and how they 
 began to be distinctive of different orders of privilege; but after the 
 middle of the thirteenth century it is certain that the term bachelor 
 was used to distinguish the iriiperfect graduate, whose authority to 
 teach could only be exercised under the direction of a licentiate or 
 master ; while the licentiate was invested with authority to teach inde- 
 pendently. The distinction was somewhat similar to that which ex- 
 ists in American colleges between professor and tutor. The master 
 was simply a licentiate of higher dignity but not of higher powers. 
 The licentiate could be promoted to the master's degree on demand ; 
 but the promotion was attended with expense. There being really no 
 substantial difference between these two grades, the universities of the 
 
36 
 
 more recent centuries have generally disused one or the other. In 
 Great Britain the degree of master continues to be conferred, but not 
 that of licentiate ; France retains licentiate, but has dropped the de- 
 gree of master. The term doctor, originally the synonym of master, 
 was in progress of time confined to the faculties of theology, of canon 
 and civil law, and of medicine. It is chiefly from its later use as an 
 honorary distinction that it has come, in our time, to be reckoned as 
 the highest of the degrees in point of dignity. The doctorate in med- 
 icine is an exception to this, for the reason that it has not been so 
 used. 
 
 From this account of the origin of degrees it will naturally be in- 
 ferred that they were not bestowed indiscriminately even upon profi- 
 cients. They were conferred only on those who desired and designed 
 to teach. Such was not the desire or design of the students generally. 
 They did not go to the university to get degrees. They went to learn. 
 The aggregate number of students in the mediaeval universities was 
 prodigious. At Paris, in the thirteenth century, it was no less than 
 thirty thousand; at Oxford at the same time it was equally great; at 
 Cambridge, hardly less. These British universities continued, down 
 to the end of the sixteenth century, to maintain an attendance of fully 
 five thousand each. As to the number of graduates, no published sta- 
 tistics are known to me except those given by Huber in his history of 
 the British universities; but these throw a great deal of light upeu 
 the question. He gives the number of bachelors and masters of arts 
 annually made at Cambridge for one hundred and sixty years, begin- 
 ning at A. D. 1500 ; and the number of bachelors made annually at 
 Oxford for nearly the same period. From these tables I find the aver- 
 age for Cambridge of the first sixty years, when the average attend- 
 ance was about five thousand, to have been thirty-five bachelors and 
 twenty-two masters made annually. 
 
 Since then a university of five thousand students produced only 
 twenty-two masters of arts per annum, we see how it happened that 
 the duty to teach in the same university, which accompanied the 
 right to teach conferred by the degree, admitted of easy fulfillment. 
 The multitude of students demanded a multitude of teachers, and the 
 annual supply was not in excess of the annual demand. But as, in 
 the exercise of this right, the graduate became ij) so facto a member of 
 the governing body, and was distinguished by the title Magistei 
 Regent, it was a natural consequence that the decree should become 
 an object of desire, as well for the honor as for the privileges it con- 
 veyed ; and hence that the number of graduates should increase. 
 The tables of Huber show that it did so ; the average number of mas- 
 ters annually graduated at Cambridge about the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century, having been not far from tenfold greater than the corre- 
 
37 
 
 sponding number for the century before — and this although the 
 aggregate undergraduate attendance had largely diminished. Hence, 
 in time, the supply of teachers began to exceed the demand, and num- 
 bers were graciously absolved from their obligation. The masters 
 thus relieved from duty, and also the regent masters when they ceased 
 to teach, were styled Magistri non Regentes. Thus it happened that 
 a degree came to be, what it is with us now, simply a title of honor, 
 and an attestation of ascertained proficiency in learning and of superior 
 intellectual culture. 
 
 In the earlier universities the power to grant degrees was a conces- 
 sion from the supreme head of the Church. Princes, who desired to 
 found universities, made application for the privilege to the Pope. At 
 a later period secular rulers claimed and exercised this power inde- 
 pendently. The power of conferring degrees, however, could not be 
 self -assumed ; it could only be exercised as a grant from the highest 
 authorities of the church or State. But neither church nor State were 
 by any means lavish in the concession of this important power. Be- 
 fore the fifteenth century there were but five universities in all Ger- 
 many, including Austria and Bohemia ; two in England ; and two or 
 three in France. With the progress of time the number has increased ; 
 but even at present there are but twenty-two German universities, in 
 a population of forty-two millions, or about one to two millions; fif- 
 teen in France, with a population of thirty-seven millions, or one to 
 two and a half millions ; and four in England, with a population of 
 twenty-three millions, or one to five and three-quarters millions. Le- 
 gally there is but one university in France, of which the fifteen above 
 named are branches, locally styled academies. From an enumeration 
 made in 1860, it appears, that, in all Europe, the number of universi- 
 ties is one hundred and eleven, in an aggregate population of three 
 hundred millions ; giving one university to about two and, three-quar- 
 ters millions of inhabitants. 
 
 These simple statistical facts, without a superadded word of com- 
 ment, abundantly explain how it happens that an academic degree pos- 
 sesses a value in the British Islands and on the continent of Europe 
 which it has not in America. The sources of honor are so few, their 
 characters are so high, they embody a learning so profound, their 
 teachers are in general so celebrated and of so universally recognized 
 authority, and finally the tests to which they subject aspirants are so 
 rigorous, that a certificate of proficiency received from them has a 
 meaning that all the world can understand. 
 
 All these advantages we have thrown away. We have not only mul- 
 tiplied almost indefinitely these fountains of honor, but we have taken 
 no care that, in their composition, they shall either represent learning 
 or command reverence. A village parson, a village doctor, and a vil- 
 
38 
 
 lage lawyer, supported by a banker, a shop-keeper or two, a manufac- 
 turer, and perhaps a gentleman farmer, constitute very commonly the 
 tribunal who are to dispense the precious distinctions which the con- 
 servative wisdom of other times entrusted only to the honored hands 
 of those whom universal consent pronounced to be the wisest and best. 
 This tribunal, moreover, not merely bestows upon the juvenile aspir- 
 ant to academic honors the customary certificate of his proficiency ; 
 but, passing in review before its critical eye the theologians and the 
 jurists and the statesmen, and the men of letters, and even the pro- 
 fessors of the highest learning themselves, strews over the whole sur- 
 face of the land, with a generosity as profuse as its discriminations are 
 inscrutable, a periodical shower of honorary degrees. 
 
 Can we not do something to remedy this miserable business ? Tak- 
 ing up the other morning one of our leading daily journals, my eye 
 fell upon an article entitled " The Commencement Season." The 
 editor lamented, as I have been lamenting, the degradation which has 
 befallen the degrees in arts in our country. He ascribed this deplora- 
 ble fact, as I have ascribed it, to the indefinite multiplication of 
 degree-giving institutions, the absence in many instances of any kind 
 of guaranty in respect either to the thoroughness of their teaching or 
 the learning of their ieachers, and the absolute certainty that they are 
 too often sadly deficient in both these particulars; and he concluded 
 with the observation that, if academic degrees are hereafter to com- 
 mand any respect, it can only be secured by writing after the letters 
 which denote the distinction the name of the college conferring it. 
 Even that perhaps cannot save them ; for when any significant symbol, 
 badge, or token, especially if it have been originally of a decorative 
 character, becomes an object of public ridicule and contempt, it cannot 
 be restored to the favor it has lost, even though covered with the man- 
 tle of the highest respectability. 
 
 Can we not, then, do something to remedy this lamentable state of 
 things? There is a remedy — not easy of application, perhaps, 
 because, to be effectual, it requires the concurrence of many inde- 
 pendent wills — but a remedy nevertheless if we will adopt it. It is this; 
 Let the State reserve to itself the exclusive right of granting academic 
 degrees. So far as this right is concerned, I would, if it were pos- 
 sible, make tabula rasa of the entire existing system ; that is to say, 
 without interfering in the least with the scholastic operations of exist- 
 ing colleges, I would withdraw from all of them the degree-giving 
 power, and place them all upon the same footing as the colleges of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. But, inasmuch as that would be an infringe- 
 ment of vested rights, it would be impracticable to do it unless the 
 power were voluntarily relinquished. Leave, then, the existing col- 
 leges alone, but allow no more to be created with this power. 
 
39 
 
 Let each State, then, establish for itself a State university, charged 
 with no duty of teaching, but empowered to charter teaching colleges, 
 at its discretion, in all the faculties; to prescribe general rules for 
 their conduct, to exercise supervision over them, to examine all candi- 
 dates for admission to them, and all proficients who may he presented 
 by them for degrees ; and, finally, to confer those degrees by diploma 
 under the seal of the university, setting forth in such diploma the 
 name of the college presenting the candidate. As it respects existing 
 colleges, though they would retain the right to issue diplomas jn their 
 own names and under their own seals, I would still extend t,o them 
 the same system of examinations, relieving them from the task of 
 testing the qualifications of candidates either for admission or for 
 graduation. 
 
 The State University, therefore, as I conceive it, would be a body 
 possessing powers considerably resembling those of the University of 
 London ; yet not altogether, for though, like that university, it would 
 examine for degrees, it would not examine all comers indiscriminately, 
 but only those presented by the colleges. It would also be competent 
 to exercise a jurisdiction and would be charged with responsibilities 
 which do not belong to that at all. 
 
 Were this scheme to be adopted in every State, although it might 
 not, except by voluntary surrender, diminish the number of our 
 degree-conferring institutions, it would nevertheless, for all practical 
 purposes, reduce this number to thirty-eight. Furthermore, as each 
 State University would necessarily be compelled to employ a per- 
 manent board of professional examiners, who, from the dignity and 
 responsibility of their office, would naturally be, like those of the 
 University of London, men of profound learning and usually men of 
 celebrity, its diplomas would all carry with them a stamp of authority, 
 which is sadly wanting to many of those now issued. Under this sys- 
 tem, the sound colleges would be distinguished by the uniformity with 
 which their candidates would secure approval; the feeble, unsound, or 
 specious would be compelled to strengthen and reform themselves, or 
 would be crowded out of the competition. 
 
 Now in this State of New York the actual condition of things in 
 our educational system is such as to make very easy, and almost to 
 invite, the trial of this experiment. We have a State University 
 actually in existence. It possesses in a measure the very powers 
 which the scheme contemplates. 
 
 It is competent to charter colleges with faculties of arts and facul- 
 ties of medicine, but not with faculties of law or faculties of theology. 
 It possesses the right of supervision and of visitation, not only over 
 the colleges created by itself, but over those previously in existence. 
 It has the power to grant, by diploma issued under its seal, all such 
 
40 
 
 academic degrees as are known to or are usually conferred by any 
 incorporated college or university in Europe, except degrees in arts. 
 
 The powers of this institution, therefore, need only to be somewhat 
 enlarged, and its duties and responsibilities to be somewhat increased, 
 to enable it to fullfil all the functions proposed in the scheme I have 
 submitted. As to its form, it needs no change. 
 
 Could this plan be adopted in this State only, it is hardly too much 
 to hope that the salutary results of the example would, in jjrogress of 
 time, lead to the adoption of the same plan by sister States ; so that, 
 at a period not quite hopelessly distant in the fnture, the chaos that 
 involves the superior edncation of the country might be reduced to 
 some order ; and all its organs and representatives might command 
 and deserve the same degree of public confidence which is now 
 awarded only to the few. 
 
 The views I have thus presented are not by any means new with me. 
 I have entertained them many years. When the plan first presented 
 itself to my mind it seemed so feasible that I was sanguine enough to 
 believe, it need only be presented to be accepted. I ventured there- 
 fore with deference to lay it, first of all, as seemed to be most fitting, 
 before the zealous friend of education then at the head of the Univer- 
 sity, the late Chancellor Pruyn. 
 
 And here let me pause for a moment to pay, in passing, my feeble 
 but sincere tribute of honor, reverence, and affection to the memory 
 of the distinguished public servant and estimable man whose name I 
 have just spoken, 
 
 John Van Schaiek Lansing Pruyn was one of those rare and noble 
 specimens of humanity whom Providence sends occasionally into the 
 world to serve as type and model of the good citizen. Endowed by 
 nature with a generous heart, a clear intellect, a sound understanding, 
 a well-balanced judgment, and an instinctively refined taste — natural 
 gifts to which a superior education had superadded all the advantages 
 which a liberal and scholarly culture could bestow — he was admira- 
 bly fitted to fill any position of trust or responsibility in social or civic 
 life ; and there was none to which he was called which he did not 
 adorn. 
 
 The representative of this city and district in the councils of the 
 State and of the nation ; a leading member of numerous organiza- 
 tions established under State authority or by private associations for 
 the promotion of useful or benevolent objects; an energetic man of 
 business, intimately associated in the direction of financial institu- 
 tions or business corporations wielding vast capital and involving in 
 the wisdom of their administration the interests of the entire commu- 
 nity ; learned and able in his chosen profession of the law; an active, 
 earnest, and most influential promoter of education, as well in the 
 
41 
 
 local institutions which received his personal care, as in this Board of 
 Kegents, of which he was for thirty-three years a member and for 
 nearly sixteen years its Chancellor and presiding officer, in every 
 capacity he left behind him an honorable record of duty conscien- 
 tiously fulfilled, and of substantial practical results successfully 
 accomplished. 
 
 In his personal character he was all that is admirable. Severe in 
 integrity and unbending in principle, he was also honorable in his 
 impulses, kindly in his disposition, gracious in his manner, affable in 
 his address, interesting and instructive in his conversation — produc- 
 ing thus upon those who met him even only once an impression that 
 was never effaced. 
 
 His religious convictions were earnest and sincere ; yet, while he 
 bore constant witness to the faith that was in him by his scrupulous 
 observance of all the ordinances of the church of which he was a mem- 
 ber, there was nothing exaggerated in his display of piety. His Chris- 
 tian character was indeed in beautiful harmony with the definition of 
 the apostle: Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is 
 this: to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and to 
 keep himself unspotted from the world. 
 
 He has passed away from us forever, but his memory lives. In this 
 convocation over which he for so many years presided, it will be kept 
 forever green. When in succeeding years we come together in our 
 annual reunions at this capital, we shall still seem to catch the bright 
 smile with which he used to greet us, we shall still seem to hear the 
 cordial welcome which used to fall so genially from his lips. And 
 when again we return to our separate fields of labor, his remembrance 
 will accompany us as an animating and inspiring influence ; and if 
 ever in our lessons to the young we would impress their tender mind 
 wich a sense of the beauty of virtue or the grandeur of moral recti- 
 tude, we shall recount to them the life history and jwint to the noble 
 example of John V. L. Pruyn, the honest man, the generous friend, 
 the untiring philanthropist, the devout Christian,the faithful public ser- 
 vant, the pure patriot, the accomplished scholar, the energetic man of 
 business — the good citizen. 
 
 Eight years have passed — perhaps ten — since I presented my 
 scheme to the late Chancellor, and was so happy as to secure from him 
 an expression of his approbation. He advised me to lay it before other 
 members of the Board of Eegents. None seemed to me more likely 
 justly to appreciate its merits than the able and influential member 
 who has since been so worthily called to fill his place, and who then 
 represented in part the city of New York in the Senate of the State. 
 Senator Benedict was also pleased to express his approval of the plan, 
 considered abstractly upon its own merits. But his sagacity detected 
 
42 
 
 an obstacle in the way of its practical success Avhich, I confess, had 
 not occurred to me, or which, at any rate, had not occurred to me as 
 serious ; it was this : If tlie Eegents assume the duty of conducting 
 examinations, they must have permanent and able examiners; if they 
 have examiners they must pay them ; in order to pay them they must 
 have money; they cannot find money unless the legislature gives it; 
 and to ask money for the purpose from the Legislature would be 
 hardly more effectual than to call spirits from the vasty deep. This 
 was a point on which the position of the Senator enabled him to speak 
 from conviction — it was, I am sure, an unwilling conviction, and my 
 courage fell. Till now, since that time, I have never dared to revive 
 the subject; but the plan has still continued to linger in my mind as 
 the heau 'ideal of an educational system for our State and country 
 which ought to be realized, and which, at some period in the future, I 
 would fain hope may be so still. 
 
 And why should it not ? Could the insignificant sum necessary to 
 carry this grand scheme into effect in our State be better appropriated ? 
 Can a State whose material wealth is so vast as to be expressible only 
 in thousands of millions, hesitate over the exercise of a modest liber- 
 ality which is sure to build up for her a fund of intellectual wealth of 
 a value inestimably greater. 
 
 What, moreover, after all, would be the cost? Ten, twenty, possibly 
 twenty-five thousand dollars annually — a poll-tax, say, of from two to 
 five mills per head upon her five millions of inhabitants. This, too, to 
 maintain a system of education of which the successful result in a sin- 
 gle instance may pay her back a hundredfold the expenditure of a cen- 
 tury ! 
 
 But why should we be always asking for a mercenary return ? and 
 for every miserable coin which we release from our reluctant grasp 
 demand a guaranty in advance that it shall come back to us again, 
 identically in kind ? Is the dignity of the State worth nothing? Is 
 nothing due to the rank she holds among enlightened peoples ? 
 Should not her institutions be in harmony with the advanced civiliza- 
 tion of which she justly makes her boast ? I think our people, I 
 think our Legislature even, when questions are concerned which 
 involve the chiiracter of the State, do not always dole out theii" boun- 
 ties with ^so parsimonious a hand ; and if I did, I could not look 
 around me from the position in which I stand, and mark these sump- 
 tuous columns, these glowing frescoes, these gilded mouldings, and 
 these sculptured capitals, and not feel that I had done them injustice. 
 It is impossible, I say to myself, that a legislature and a people can 
 rear a monument of architectural splendor so magnificent as this, and 
 do it in order, by this sign, to typify their greatness, their wealth, their 
 cultivated taste, and their spirit of enlightened liberality; and can 
 
^ 
 
 43 
 
 yet be uucouscious how far tliis gorgeous show falls short, after all, of 
 accomplishing its object in the noblest sense ; or insensible to the am- 
 bition to illustrate their truest dignity and greatness by raising side 
 by side with this grand achievement of material art, a monument so 
 far superior to it in grandeur, that it shall endure and go on growing 
 in beauty and splendor long after these polished stones we see around 
 us shall have crumbled into ruin. 
 
 But important changes which require the concurrence of many 
 minds, simple though they may be, and desirable as they may appear, 
 are rarely accomplished speedily. The spirit of conservatism yields 
 slowly even to conviction ; and conviction, however intense in the indi- 
 vidual, permeates the social mass as gradually as elevation of tempera- 
 ture makes its silent way through a solid which has been heated at a 
 single point. 
 
 I look for no sudden success of the scheme I have outlined— hardly 
 for any thing like a general though cautious approval. But if, as I 
 beheve, it has a substantial basis of common sense, it will not fail to 
 find silent favor with the thinking few, and through them it will yet 
 recommend itself to others beyond ; till, by the slow process of diffu- 
 sion, it shall at length leaven the whole lump of popular opinion. 
 After that there will be no further trouble with legislatures, for legis- 
 latures are never sparing of money, except when they fear the people. 
 
 It is now ninety-two years since the passage of the act '' to institute 
 an University within this state," under which the present organization 
 has been since continuously operating. When the full century since it 
 entered upon its beneficent work shall have been completed, the event 
 will presumably be commemorated by some fitting ceremonial. It 
 seems to me that I cannot more appropriately conclude this address, to 
 which you have done me the honor to listen with a courteous attention 
 which I fear I have somewhat abused, than by expressing the fervent 
 hope — almost the belief — that on that interesting occasion, if not 
 earlier, it may be possible to announce that the limitations upon the 
 powers of the University of the State of New York, which, during 
 the first century of its existence have so sensibly restricted its useful- 
 ness, have been at length removed; and that henceforth, under its fos- 
 tering care and wise supervision, the educational system of the State 
 moulded into a form in which unity of design and uniformity of prac- 
 tice shall pervade it throughout all its complicated ramifications, may 
 be inspired with new life and new vigor, and become, in the succeed- 
 ing centuries, the index, as it is to be the instrumentality, of an ever- 
 rising mental culture and an ever-advancing civilization. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 021 481 946 6 
 
 DEGREES CONFERRED. 
 
 THURLOW WEED, of New Yoke City. 
 
 JOHN EDWIN BRADLEY, of Albany. 
 STEPHEN GALE TAYLOR, of Brooklyn. 
 
 ^otUx of Pcrtiftnic, 
 
 {071 the nomination of the HomceoiMthic Medical Society of the State 
 
 of New York.) 
 
 EDWARD PAYSON FOWLER, of New York City. 
 CORNELIUS ORMES, of Jamestown. 
 CHARLES SUMNER, of Rochester. 
 
H 
 
Ik