£5" 
 
 a National ffittubersitg. 
 
 REPORT 
 
 MADE BY 
 
 CHARLES W. ELIOT, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 (department of higher instruction,) 
 
 w>. 
 
 August 5, 1873. 
 
 { 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 i UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. J 
 I 
 
 S CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 CHARLES W. SEVER. 
 1874. 
 
ic m 
 
 1074 
 
 a Kational JEnibersitg. 
 
 REPORT 
 
 MADE BY 
 
 CHARLES W. ELIOT, 
 
 PEE SIDE NT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 (DEPARTMENT of higher instruction,) 
 
 August 5, 1873. 
 
 i CAMBRIDGE: 
 CHARLES W. SEVER. 
 
 1874. 
 

 
 \> 
 
 
 jAKrAET 20. 1874 
 
 To President Eliot. Harvard Univ-: 
 
 See.. — The attention of C — Ing been directed by the President to 
 
 :: a National Ur : Washington, the undersigned, learning 
 
 ■r report on this sribje . : :: Ike National Educational Association is ont 
 
 of print, request yon to permit its republication. They do • i g that 
 
 Ae opinions e ■ :: l = srr~e Ac careful consideration of Congress and 
 
 the comnmz 
 
 faithfully yonr; 
 
 Theoboee D. Woolset, X. HaTen, Ct- 
 
 B. R. Citexis. Boston, 
 He^et C. Lea, Philadelphia, 
 
 C. J. Stille. Philadelphia. 
 Hexrt C. Caeet. Philadelphia, 
 C. E. Adams, Quincy, Mass. 
 
 ■ 1EOE WlLLIAM ClT2TI5. New York. 
 
 E. L. Godeis, New York. 
 
 Haet a tj t i Ustvebsttt. 27 Jan.. 18741 
 Geftlejmet. — Mr report upon • A National Er 
 
 - should be reprinted ai juest I count an honor, and Is: 
 
 glad to haTe the attention af leg ton and the public thus drawn to it. 
 
 I am, with great respect, your obedient am * a nt, 
 
 Charles W. Eliot. 
 
 To Eex. Dr. Woolset, Hon. B. B. Cubtis, and others. 
 
A NATIONAL UXITEESITT 
 
 This report has three parts. — first, an account of what 
 this association has done about a national university since 
 • (PP- 3— ~) ; secondly, an examination of two bills on 
 the subject, which were brought before Congress in 1^72. 
 (pp. 8-18) : and. lastly, a discussion of the true policy of our 
 government upon this matter, (pp. 18-23.) 
 / At the conclusion of an address on "The Progress :: 
 University Education.^ delivered by Dr. John W. Hoyt, 
 of Wisconsin, before the National Teachers' Association at 
 Trenton. Xew Jersey, on the 20th of August. 1S69. the fol- 
 lowing resolution was unanimously adopted : — 
 
 "jBei I. That, in the opinion of thi .-.tion, a great 
 
 American university is a leading want of American education, 
 and that, in order to contribute to the early establishment of 
 such an institution, the president of this ss /.rion. acting in 
 concert with the president of the National Superintendents' 
 Association, is hereby requested to appoint a committee con- 
 sisting of one member from each of the States, and of which 
 Dr. J. W. Hoyt. of "Wisconsin, shall be chairman, to take the 
 whole matter into consideration, and to make such report 
 thereon, at the next annual convention of said association, as 
 shall seem to be demanded by the interests of the country." 
 
 This committee was duly appointed, but did nothing what- 
 ever during the year 1869-70. Nevertheless the chairman, 
 acting in the name of the committee, presented at the C 
 land meeting, in August. 1870, what was called ** a preliminary 
 report." and asked that the committee might have more time. 
 This preliminary report describes, in elevated h a oage, the 
 ••leading offices of a true university," compares our existing 
 
institutions with European universities, paints a glowing pict- 
 ure of the future of the United States, sets forth with enthu- 
 siasm what a great university would do for the country, 
 avoids all embarrassing details, leaves the precise character of 
 the institution, its location, its constitution and mode of gov- 
 ernment, quite undefined, and assumes only this, — that there 
 should be one great central institution, and that for the found- 
 ing and endowing thereof the private citizen, the State, and 
 the general government must unite. It passed by all matters 
 likely to suggest objections, and called for no specific action 
 whatever on the part of the association : the chairman alone 
 was responsible for it, and it bore only his signature. Of 
 course the report was accepted, and the request for more time 
 was granted. 
 
 At the St. Louis meeting of the National Educational Asso- 
 ciation, in August, 1871, Dr. Hoyt and a minority of the com- 
 mittee appointed in 1869 presented a second report. This 
 report again avoids all details of what the proposed institution 
 should be, and where it should be, but says in general terms 
 that it should be comprehensive, high, free, rich, untrammelled 
 by considerations of section, party, or creed, and so co-ordi- 
 nated with the other institutions of the country as in no way 
 to conflict with them. Further, this second report defines in 
 some measure what the preliminary report vaguely spoke of 
 as the necessary co-operation of the citizen, the State, and the 
 general government. //It appears in the second report that 
 " the original endowment . . . will need to be furnished by 
 the government, and Congress must therefore determine the 
 general terms and conditions upon which the institution shall 
 be administered ; " that " proper authorities in the several 
 States may have a voice in its management," and " that indi- 
 vidual citizens and associations of citizens should be cordially 
 invited to endow such departments ... as shall most enlist 
 their sympathies." The report then presents some arguments 
 in favor of the right of Congress to endow a university, and 
 says that the idea of a national university " is in perfect har- 
 mony with the policy and practice of the government," and 
 that " it remains but to determine the means best calculated 
 
to secure the adoption of the most judicious plan for the in- 
 stitution, and to insure the congressional and other aid nec- 
 essary to the full success of the enterprise." Thereupon the 
 committee recommend that " there be raised a new and per- 
 manent committee of less numbers than the present — say 
 fifteen — ... to be known as the national university com- 
 mittee," " that a quite limited number of members thereof 
 should be a quorum for the transaction of business at airy 
 regularly called meeting, and that a majority shall have power 
 to supply . . . vacancies . . ." The concluding sentence of 
 the report is as follows : " A committee of this character 
 would be able, in the first place, to concentrate the best 
 thought of the country upon the various important questions 
 involved in the perfection of a plan for the institution ; and, 
 secondly, to marshal the strength of the country in syste- 
 matic and effective support of the measure, when at last for- 
 mally brought to the attention of Congress." This report 
 was signed by a little less than half of the members of the 
 original committee. The report was accepted, and the pro- 
 posed permanent committee of fifteen was appointed.^ I do 
 not find that the number of members of this committee which 
 should constitute a quorum was fixed by the association. By 
 taking this action at the St. Louis meeting, the association 
 showed that it entertained the idea of a single dominant 
 university for the country, and contemplated, without dis- 
 approbation, the establishment thereof by the general govern- 
 ment : and, through its committee, the association undertook, 
 — first, to prepare a plan for such an institution ; and, sec- 
 ondly, to urge the plan, when prepared, upon Congress. 
 
 The permanent committee appointed in August, 1871, under 
 these circumstances, had serious work to do, and grave re- 
 sponsibilities to bear. What has it done ? The members 
 were all very busy men, and they were scattered over the 
 country, from Massachusetts to Oregon, and from Minnesota 
 to Louisiana. Several of them were appointed without their 
 knowledge and consent. The natural consequence has fol- 
 lowed : there has never been a meeting of the committee 
 competent to transact business. Nine of the gentlemen whose 
 
6 
 
 names were announced at St. Louis as members of this com- 
 mittee have informed me that they never attended a meeting 
 of the committee ; two more members never attended any- 
 meeting, except a brief one in a hotel parlor at St. Louis 
 shortly after the committee was named, — a meeting which 
 could not possibly have been competent to transact business. 
 Of the other four members, one is the chairman, two have 
 been long absent from home and inaccessible to my inquiries, 
 and one has not answered my letters.!/ It is obvious that, as a 
 body authorized to speak and act in the name of the National 
 Educational Association, this committee has never had a mo- 
 ment's existence. I congratulate the association that it is 
 thus far free from all responsibility for whatever may have 
 been done since August, 1871, about a national university. 
 The permanent committee which the association then consti- 
 tuted upon this subject was never organized, and no one has 
 had any authority to speak in its name or in the name of the 
 association. 
 
 Notwithstanding this state of things, some not unimpor- 
 tant action was taken in the spring of 1 872, looking to the 
 establishment of a national university by Congress. Two 
 bills to establish a national university were brought into 
 the Senate ; one of which was drawn by Dr. J. W. Hoyt, of 
 Wisconsin, the chairman of the committee appointed at St. 
 Louis, and was presented at his request by Senator Sawyer, 
 of South Carolina. // Of this bill, so well informed a person as 
 General Eaton, Commissioner of Education, himself a member 
 of the St. Louis committee, says, in a letter to me, " It is the 
 one, as I understand the facts, which was favored by the com- 
 mittee appointed by the National Education Association, of 
 which Dr. J. W. Hoyt, of Madison, Wis., is chairman." 
 There is no doubt that this was the common impression among 
 persons who knew any thing about the presentation of the bill 
 brought in by Senator Sawyer on the 20th of May, 1872. It 
 behooves the association to understand how this impression 
 was produced, and what grounds there were for such, an opin- 
 ion. Dr. Hoyt has been for the past four years chairman of 
 a committee on a national university, appointed by the Na- 
 
tional Educational Association ; and the action of the associa- 
 tion in 1871 made him chairman of a permanent committee, 
 although the committee has never met. In that capacity he 
 wrote letters, in the winter of 1871-72, to a large number of 
 jiersons interested in education, asking their opinions and 
 advice about a national universit}^ and enclosing a draft of a 
 bill to establish such an institution. These letters undoubt- 
 edly got more attention from the persons addressed, because, 
 in manjr cases at least, they were written on the paper of the 
 Bureau of Education at Washington, and were sent out from 
 that office with envelopes for the free transmission of the replies 
 back to the bureau. Dr. Hoyt has also talked, in the course 
 of the last four years, with a considerable number of persons 
 professionally concerned with education upon the subject of a 
 national university, and has received from them a mass of 
 suggestions and opinions in great variety. Among the per- 
 sons so consulted by him, either orally or in writing, were 
 most of the members of the committee named at St. Louis. 
 Three or four of the committee felt a real interest in the sub- 
 ject, and devoted some attention to it ; but they never had 
 the advantage of common consultation, and all their sugges- 
 tions were filtered through the mind of the chairman. The 
 bill brought into the Senate by Senator Sawyer was therefore 
 the work of a private citizen, having a certain indorsement 
 from this association, who consulted such persons as he 
 thought best to consult, and took as much of their advice as 
 he liked. It was in no proper sense the work of this associa- 
 tion, or of any committee thereof. The impression that it was 
 favored by a committee of this association has only this war- 
 rant, that parts of it commended themselves to certain gentle- 
 men who were named in 1871 on a committee which was never 
 organized, and who therefore had only their individual opin- 
 ions to express.// I have been thus particular in describing 
 what has taken' place in regard to the project for a national 
 university which was started in this association in 1869, 
 because, as I examined the matter, I thought that, partly 
 through easy good-nature, and partly through that haste 
 in the transaction of business which is almost unavoidable in 
 
such a large assemblage as this, coming together for two or 
 three days once a year, the association had run a serious risk 
 of being placed in a false position before the public upon a 
 subject of much importance to American education. It has 
 seemed to me that the association would do well to be cautious 
 about constituting permanent committees, and about passing 
 general declaratory resolutions, particularly if the resolutions 
 convey a recommendation to some superior power, as to Con- 
 gress, a State legislature, or the public at large. 
 
 I now pass to the second part of my subject, — an examin- 
 ation of the two bills to establish a national university, which 
 were presented in the Senate in the spring of 1872. These 
 two bills are tentative plans for creating a crowning university, 
 richer, better, and more comprehensive than any existing in- 
 stitution, and under the patronage of the general government. 
 They are the work of private individuals only, and nothing 
 has thus far come of them ; but they are before the country as 
 having been read twice and referred to the Committee on 
 Education and Labor in the Senate of the United States.// In 
 the bill presented by Senator Howe, of Wisconsin, March 1 
 25, 1872, the different faculties of the proposed university 
 are all specified to the number of ten, and the professorships 
 in each faculty are designated in detail, except in the faculties 
 of military science and naval science. The same authority 
 which establishes a faculty or a professorship can, of course, 
 abolish either at any moment, and so get rid of unpopular in- 
 cumbents. The president of the university is to be appointed 
 by the President of the United States, with the consent of the 
 Senate. The heads of the ten faculties are to be appointed 
 by the president of the university, with the consent of the 
 Senate of the United States. The president and the heads 
 of faculties constitute an executive senate of the university. 
 Professors are to be appointed, and may be removed, by this 
 university senate, and private teachers are to be licensed by 
 the same body. The president is to have the same salary as 
 the Chief-Justice of the United States, and the heads of fac- 
 ulties are to have the salary of a judge of a District Court 
 
of the United States./' These places are desirable so far as pay, 
 patronage, and conspicuousness go ; they would be desired 
 by a great number of incompetent people ; the more so be- 
 cause these eleven officers would never be brought, like a 
 professor, to any public test of their capacity. There is no 
 reason whatever to suppose that the appointments would be 
 made on any better method than that which now prevails in 
 United States custom-houses and post-offices. We are dis- 
 gracefully habituated to custom-house " rings " and post-office 
 " rings ; " last winter the newspapers talked much of an agri- 
 cultural college " ring." The spectacle of a national university 
 " ring " would be even less edifying. There is, indeed, in the 
 bill a futile attempt to make the tenure of office of the presi- 
 dent of the university the same as that of the judges of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court, 
 however, was not established by Congress, but by the Con- 
 stitution, and the judges of that court are consequently out 
 of the reach of Congress : the president of a university 
 established by act of Congress would not be. The bill gives 
 no security whatever that all the appointments in the univer- 
 sity would not be of the nature of political appointments. 
 This is a fatal defect in any congressional bill to establish a 
 university, so long as the principles of appointment to United 
 States offices and the tenure of those offices remain what they 
 now are. The only tenure of office which is fit for a teacher 
 is the tenure during good behavior and competency ; and this 
 is the only tenure which will secure the services of competent 
 professors in colleges and universities. The frequency of the 
 elections of teachers is a very bad feature in our public school 
 system. Permanence of tenure is necessary to make the 
 position of a teacher one of dignity and independence. Young 
 men of vigor and capacity will not enter a profession which 
 offers no money prizes, unless they are induced by its stability 
 and peacefulness, and by the social consideration which at- 
 taches to it. The system which prevails in most of our large 
 cities and towns, of electing the teachers in the public schools 
 at least as often as once a year, is inconsistent with this 
 dignity, peacefulness and consideration, unless a firmly estab- 
 
10 
 
 lished custom of re-electing incumbents converts the con- 
 stantly recurring elections into mere formalities. We must 
 all bitterly deplore the mortifying fact that, for more than a 
 generation, neither dignity, peacefulness, nor social considera- 
 tion has attached to any appointment in the civil service of 
 the United States. The man appointed has sometimes adorned 
 his office, but the office has never adorned the man. Until 
 the service of the United States becomes, through a complete 
 reform, at least as respectable and secure as the service of a 
 bank, an insurance company, a manufacturing corporation, or 
 a railroad company, not to speak of college and academy cor- 
 porations, Congress cannot establish a university which will 
 command the respect of educated Americans or win the con- 
 fidence of the country, unless the appointing power for the 
 university is made absolutely independent of all political in- 
 fluence. So far from doing this, the bill before us provides no 
 effectual barrier whatever against political appointments. In 
 several sections of the bill, there is a provision that, for certain 
 appointments, certain specified classes of persons shall " re- 
 ceive the preference," — a provision of no binding or effective 
 force whatever. There is only one really efficient provision 
 of this character in the bill presented by Senator Howe, and 
 that one might reasonably give serious concern to persons 
 who live in the territories, forts, arsenals, navy yards, and 
 light-houses of the United States. It is provided in section 
 sixteen, that, after the year 1880, graduates of the national 
 university in medicine and surgery " shall alone be entitled to 
 practice medicine and surgery in any territory over which the 
 United States shall have exclusive jurisdiction." 
 ' I shall barely mention some of the minor faults of Senator 
 Howe's bill. To an experienced college official, the following 
 description of the qualifications for admission to the university 
 seems absurdly vague : " a good moral character, and such 
 intellectual attainments as are indicated by graduation at the 
 colleges, universities, and best class of high schools, as estab- 
 lished by law in the several States of the United States." 
 With the author of this bill, the four years of study which 
 generally come between graduation at a high school and grad- 
 
11 
 
 uation at a college count for nothing at all. Universities 
 and high schools are spoken of as equivalent institutions. 
 There maybe States in this Union in which this classification 
 is essentially correct ; but there certainly are not a few States 
 in which it is conspicuously iDexact. 
 
 The bill provides that professors shall receive salaries vary- 
 ing from 81,000 to 82,500 a year, and that each professor may 
 also exact a fee of ten dollars a year from each student attend- 
 ing his course. Under this system, the professors of popular 
 subjects might thrive ; but I fear that the professors of Oriental 
 philosophy, scholasticism, Sclavonic languages, the Coptic 
 language, ecclesiastical law, and similar rather remote subjects, 
 would starve. Neither students nor teachers in this country 
 like the fee system ; it has worked well in Germany, but has 
 never been domesticated here, except in medical schools, where 
 it has done a great deal of harm. It creates a disagreeable 
 money relation between teacher and student, and introduces 
 into a faculty illiberal contentions. By section eighteen of 
 this comprehensive bill, the military academy is removed from 
 West Point, and so changed as to be practically abolished. 
 This measure seems rather too grave to be brought in as an 
 incidental part of a bill to establish a national university. 
 
 The seventeenth section, relating to the faculty of agricult- 
 ure, gives countenance to delusions which have already done 
 much mischief in the United States, and still bid fair to cause 
 further waste of public and private resources. The first of 
 these delusions is the model farm. The model farm, like the 
 model machine-shop, is almost universally a model of nothing 
 but misapplied labor, misdirected experimentation, and unprof- 
 itable investment. It can be useful to the young agriculturist 
 only as a warning ; it can teach him how to spend money, 
 but not how to make money on a farm. The other mischiev- 
 ous delusion to which I wish to call attention is that the labor 
 of a young man upon a farm for four hours a day is in any 
 sense compensation for his board, lodging, clothing, and 
 tuition. All such arrangements are charities injudiciously dis- 
 guised from the recipients. It is this disguise which makes 
 the general method so well fitted to breed shirks. There 
 
12 
 
 lurks in all devices of this sort the notion that study and 
 thinking are not physical exertions ; so that, after prolonged 
 study, a man may be just as fit for physical labor as if he had 
 not worked with his brains. This is a profound mistake, 
 which has real danger for conscientious and ambitious youth ; 
 such young persons may easily be betrayed by this false 
 opinion into disastrous over-exertion. What is called mental 
 labor is really the most exhausting, continuous, physical exer- 
 tion which men can make, although the sense of fatigue from 
 an excess of what is called brain-work is generally not so irre- 
 sistible at the moment as the fatigue caused by too much 
 hammering, hoeing, or walking. Section twenty-one of this 
 bill provides " that the seat of the university shall be at the 
 capital of the United States." I reserve this point for discus- 
 sion in connection with the other bill, to which I now invite 
 your attention. 
 
 The important feature in the bill presented in the Senate by 
 Senator Sawyer, on the 20th of May, 1872, is the mode in which 
 its author endeavored to provide a government for the uni- 
 versity which would have some chance of being free from 
 political influences ; or, in other words, to deprive the govern- 
 ment of the United States of all power over the university 
 from the moment of its establishment, — except, of course, 
 the power to abolish it. By this bill, the government of the 
 university is vested in a board of regents, numbering fifty- 
 five persons ; a council of education, numbering seventeen 
 persons ; a council of faculties, which includes all the ex- 
 ecutive officers of the university and all professors ; and a 
 general council of the university, " composed of all mem- 
 bers of the board of regents, council of education, council 
 of faculties, and all graduates of the university of five years' 
 standing." The last-named body, which, in the course 
 of years, would become very numerous, has only power to 
 make recommendations to the other boards. The duties of 
 the council of faculties are not prescribed with distinctness. 
 The real governing bodies are the board of regents and the 
 council of education. It is provided " that the board of re- 
 gents shall consist of one member from each State of the 
 
13 
 
 United States, to be appointed by the governor thereof, with 
 the advice and consent of the chief justice and the superin- 
 tendent of public instruction, or other like officer of his State ; 
 five members from the country at large, to be appointed by 
 the President of the United States, with the advice and con- 
 sent of the Chief Justice, commissioner of education, and 
 chief officer of the university, and the following membe 
 
 .' to wit, the Chief Justice of the United States, commis- 
 sioner of education, commissioner of agriculture, commissioner 
 of patents, superintendent of the coast survey, superinten- 
 dent of the naval observatory, secretary of the Smithsonian 
 Institution, president of the National Academy of Sciences, 
 president of the Xational Educational Association, presi- 
 dent of the American Association for the Advancement 
 of Science, president of the American Philological Associa- 
 tion, president of the American Social Science Association, 
 and the chief officer of the university : fifteen to be a quo- 
 rum." The members representing States are to serve six 
 years, and the members at large ten years. The specified 
 duties of the regents are •• to enact laws for the government 
 of the university, to elect the officers thereof, to determine 
 the general conditions of admission to the university, and to 
 confer appropriate degrees." Ir is expressly declared that 
 ** no faculty shall be organized, no chair created, no salary 
 determined, and no professor appointed or removed without 
 the approval of the board of regents." TVith so large an 
 organization to direct, and such important powers to exercise. 
 the board of regents would need to have several meetin_- 
 year. Two meetings a year would obviously be the least 
 possible number. The cumbrousness and the costliness of >o 
 large a board, with its members scattered all over the coun- 
 try, need not be enlarged upon. 
 
 It is obvious that the author of the bill did not expect the 
 members of the board of regents to attend its meetings with 
 much constancy, for he named a quorum which is only one 
 more than a quarter of the number of members. To name a 
 small quorum for a large body of trustees, regents, or direc- 
 tors, is to countenance that neglect of their duty on the part 
 
14 
 
 of the supposed managers of public and private institutions 
 of trust, charity, or education, which has been so frequently 
 and so grievously illustrated during the past few years. 
 
 The principle upon which the board is chiefly made up 
 is a very questionable one. Why should there be one 
 member from each State in the governing board of a uni- 
 versity about which there is to be nothing sectional, secta- 
 rian, or partisan? Such a principle of local representation 
 implies that Maine and Oregon, Minnesota and Florida, may 
 have different interests in the institution. The different 
 States of the Union may easily have different interests about 
 customs, internal taxes, banking, railroads, canals, commerce, 
 and mail routes ; so that our legislative bodies are naturally 
 formed on the principle of local representation ; but there is 
 no reason for a similar constitution of the government of a 
 university. Philology, history, philosophy, science, and mathe- 
 matics, are the same in Massachusetts and California. The 
 professorships might as well be divided among the different 
 States, as the places in the board of regents. Indeed, if this 
 vicious principle were admitted in the constitution of the 
 chief governing board, we should fully expect to see the 
 university offices parcelled out among the different States, 
 just as political appointments now are. 
 
 There are twelve ex-officio members of the board of regents, 
 none of whom, in all probability, could give the smallest atten- 
 tion to this function of governing a university. Take, for in- 
 stance, the Chief Justice of the United States, the commissioner 
 of education, the superintendent of the coast survey, and the 
 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ; each of these offi- 
 cials is fully occupied with the regular work of his own proper 
 office. It is an imposition upon these gentlemen to make 
 them devote time and thought to a matter so utterly distinct 
 from their official employment as the management of a uni- 
 versity ; and, if they are not to give time and thought to the 
 university, the public are imposed upon by the list of ex-officio 
 members of the board of regents. I know no surer way to 
 procure an inefficient body of trustees than to constitute it in 
 good part of officials, who will probably have but a slender 
 
15 
 
 interest in the matter of the trust, and whose regular duties 
 leave them little time and strength for extraneous functions 
 involving labor and responsibility. 
 
 The author of the bill doubtless perceived that the board 
 of regents would be an unwieldy and incompetent body ; 
 he therefore contrived a sort of executive committee, called 
 the council of education. This council consists of six 
 regents, six members of the council of faculties, and five 
 ex-officio members ; to wit, the chief officer of the univer- 
 sity, commissioner of education, superintendent of the coast 
 survey, superintendent of the naval observatory, and sec- 
 retary of the Smithsonian Institution. Of this body of sev- 
 enteen members, ten is a quorum. This is the working 
 body. It is charged, in the language of the bill, " with 
 the organization of faculties, the appointment and re- 
 moval of professors and teachers, and, in general, with 
 the educational management of the university ; " but it sub- 
 sequently appears that in all these things the approval of the 
 board of regents is essential. The council of education is the 
 board which would attend to details and prepare the business 
 of the board of regents. It would have to meet very fre- 
 quently, and, as the presence of its ex-officio members would 
 ordinarily be out of the question, three out of the six regents 
 from as many different States would have to be called in to 
 make a quorum. The resident officers and professors of the 
 university would supply the other seven members. A board 
 thus constituted is an untried experiment ; its working would 
 be a curious problem. The majority of its active members 
 would be professors, who would be called upon to advise the 
 regents about all questions of appointment, pay, rank, and 
 promotion, concerning their colleagues and themselves. The 
 object which the author of this bill had in view in devising 
 this elaborate arrangement of governing boards for his uni- 
 versity, was a laudable one, — namely, to detach the national 
 university from the national government ; but his scheme is 
 too novel, complicated, and unpromising to command the 
 confidence of persons experienced in conducting educational 
 institutions. 
 
16 
 
 In singular contrast with the general tenor of this bill, the 
 fifteenth section gives Senators and Representatives a right 
 to nominate candidates from their respective States or dis- 
 tricts for scholarships which secure free tuition for five years, 
 thereby copying the worst feature in the organization of the 
 military academy at West Point and the naval academy at 
 Annapolis, and giving members of Congress another excuse for 
 neglecting their proper legislative functions to busy themselves 
 with patronage. This very objectionable section of the bill 
 was probably intended as a bid for the votes of the members 
 of Congress ; but it is a very small bid, for the thirteenth section 
 provides " that instruction shall at all times be as nearly free 
 for students as is consistent with the income of the univer- 
 sity and the best interests of learning." This is a sounding 
 phrase, capable, like not a few other phrases in this bill, of 
 widely differing constructions ; but it strongly suggests free 
 tuition. Free tuition, in a place of professional or other high 
 education, is always objectionable, because it is a perfectly 
 indiscriminate charity ; when this indiscriminate charity is to 
 be supported by national taxation, it is doubly objectionable. 
 
 The fourteenth section of the bill contains the singular pro- 
 vision that " no person shall be admitted for purposes of regu- 
 lar study and graduation who has not previously received the 
 degree of bachelor of arts, or a degree of equal value, from 
 some institution recognized by the university authorities." 
 Young Americans do not get the degree of bachelor of arts, 
 on the average, before their twenty-second year. On these 
 terms, the regular students of the new university would, in 
 my judgment, be few, except in the professional departments. 
 This provision cannot be a serious one ; it was probably 
 intended to quiet the apprehensions of the three hundred 
 institutions which now give the degree of bachelor of arts ; 
 and, of course, it can be repealed at any time. 
 
 Both the bills under discussion rely upon congressional 
 grants or appropriations for the maintenance of the univer- 
 sity. Senator Howe's bill does not undertake to define the 
 amount of the appropriations required. Senator Sawyer's 
 bill grants twenty millions of dollars, in the singular form of 
 
IT 
 
 an unnegotiable certificate of indebtedness of the United 
 States, bearing interest at five per cent a year. One million 
 of dollars a year is not a large estimate of the annual cost of 
 the proposed university, considering the extreme wasteful- 
 ness which characterizes most government expenditures. The 
 private incorporated colleges and universities use their scanty 
 resources with the greatest possible thrift. Their example is 
 a wholesome one. I fear that the example of a university 
 which had one hand in the national treasury would not be as 
 salutary. 
 
 Both the bills plant the proposed university at Washing- 
 ton, a city which is the capital of the United States only in 
 the governmental or political sense. This country has no 
 London, no Paris, no Berlin, no Vienna, no Rome. We are 
 fortunate that there is no single city in which all the activi- 
 ties of the nation, commercial, industrial, intellectual, and 
 governmental, centre. On the Atlantic, coast are four large 
 cities, each with a character and influence of its own ; in the 
 northwest is Chicago ; on the Ohio is Cincinnati ; on the Mis- 
 sissippi is St. Louis ; on the Pacific, San Francisco. Every 
 one of these local centres is vastly more important to the 
 country than Washington ; for Washington is a focus of 
 neither foreign commerce nor domestic trade, neither manu- 
 factures, agriculture, nor mining, neither literature nor art. 
 The climate of the city is not very healthy, and the presence 
 of Congress, and of the hangers-on of Congress, does not 
 make the city a better place of residence for young men at 
 the forming period of life. There is no precedent in Europe 
 for a single, dominant, national university endowed by gov- 
 ernment, and the only one so endowed, and situated at a 
 national capital. London is, in every possible sense, the 
 capital of Great Britain ; but the chief universities of Great 
 Britain are not in London. Berlin is the seat of a Prussian 
 university, subsidized by the state ; but Prussia subsidizes 
 several other universities as well. The university of Paris 
 is only the largest branch of that single organization of public 
 instruction which spreads all over France, is maintained by 
 the government, and presided over, like the army and the 
 
18 
 
 navy, by a minister. In continental Europe all universities 
 are subsidized by government. Such is the custom of those 
 countries, — a custom which is certainly not the outgrowth 
 of free institutions. The leading university is now at Ley- 
 den, now at Paris, now at Bologna, now at Vienna, now at 
 Heidelberg, now at Berlin, and now at Leipzig ; the stream of 
 students flowing fitfully from one place to another. The pro- 
 posed university at Washington would bear no resemblance 
 whatever to any of these famous seats of learning, either in 
 its constitution or its surroundings. 
 
 And now let me recall to your minds for a moment the 
 second duty which was assigned to the committee appointed 
 in St. Louis in 1871. They were in the first place to prepare 
 a plan for a national university, and in the second place they 
 were " to marshal the strength of the country in systematic 
 and effective support of the measure." What has really 
 taken place ? In introducing the first bill we have discussed, 
 Senator Howe said, apologetically, " I ought to say by way of 
 explanation that this bill was not sent to me. It was drawn 
 by some one, I do not know who, and sent to my colleague, 
 and it is at his request that I present it." In presenting the 
 bill which was supposed to have the sanction of this associa- 
 tion, Senator Sawyer said, " I wish to say in reference to this 
 bill that I introduced it by request. ... I do not wish to be un- 
 derstood as recommending it." Neither bill was supported by 
 anybody in any way, and neither bill has been heard of since 
 it was brought into Congress until this day. The Senators 
 who introduced them did not imagine for a moment that any 
 legislation would grow out of them. As to the strength of 
 the country being marshalled in effective support of either of 
 these measures, the idea is comical. The whole proceeding 
 is loose, crude, hasty, undignified, and unworthy of the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 I turn next to my third topic, — the true policy of our gov- 
 ernment as regards university instruction. In almost all the 
 writings about a national university, and of course in the two 
 Senate bills now under discussion, there will be found the im- 
 
19 
 
 plication, if not the express assertion, that it is somehow the 
 duty of our government to maintain a magnificent university. 
 This assumption is the foundation upon which rest the ambi- 
 tious projects before us. and many similar schemes. Let me 
 try to demonstrate that the foundation is itself unsound. 
 
 The general notion that a beneficent government should pro- 
 vide and control an elaborate organization for teaching. ; 
 it maintain^ an army, a navy, or a post-office, is of European 
 origin, being a legitimate corollary to the theory of government 
 by Divine right. It is said that the state is a person having a 
 conscience and a moral responsibility- ; that the government 
 is the visible representative of a people's civilization, and the 
 guardian of its honor and its morals, and should be the em- 
 bodiment of all that is high and good in the people's character 
 and aspirations. This moral person, this corporate represent- 
 ative of a Christian nation, has high duties and functions 
 commensurate with its great powers, and none more impera- 
 tive than that of diffusing knowledge and advancing science. 
 
 I desire to state this argument for the conduct of hio-h 
 educational institutions by government, as a matter of ab- 
 stract duty, with all the force which belongs to it : for under 
 an endless variety of thin disguises, and with all sorts of am- 
 plifications and dilutions, it is a staple commodity with writers 
 upon the relation of government to education. The concep- 
 tion of government upon which this argument is based is ob- 
 solescent everywhere. In a free community the government 
 does not hold this parental, or patriarchal, — I should better 
 say Godlike. — position. Our government is a group of ser- 
 vants appointed to do certain difficult and important work. 
 It is not the guardian of the nation's morals : it does not 
 necessarily represent the best virtue of the republic, and is 
 not responsible for the national character, being itself one of 
 the products of that character. The doctrine of state person- 
 ality and conscience, and the whole argument to the dignity 
 and moral elevation of a Christian nation's government as the 
 basis of government duties, are natural enough under Grace- 
 of-God governments, but they find no ground of practical 
 application to modern republican confederations ; they have no 
 
20 
 
 bearing on governments considered as purely human agencies, 
 with defined powers and limited responsibilities. Moreover, 
 for most Americans, these arguments prove a great deal too 
 much ; for if they have the least tendency to persuade us that 
 government should direct any part of secular education, with 
 how much greater force do they apply to the conduct by gov- 
 ernment of the religious education of the people ! These 
 propositions are indeed the main arguments for an established 
 church. Religion is the supreme human interest, govern- 
 ment is the supreme human organization ; therefore govern- 
 ment ought to take care for religion, and a Christian 
 government should maintain distinctively Christian religions 
 institutions. This is not theory alone ; it is the practice of all 
 Christendom, except in America and Switzerland. Now we 
 do not admit it to be our duty to establish a national church. 
 We believe not only that our people are more religious than 
 many nations which have established churches, but also that 
 they are far more religious under their own voluntary system 
 than they would be under any government establishment of 
 religion. We do not admit for a moment that establishment 
 or no establishment is synonymous with national piety or im- 
 piety. Now, if a beneficent Christian government may rightly 
 leave the people to provide themselves with religious institu- 
 tions, surely it may leave them to provide suitable universi-_ 
 ties for the education of their youth. And here again the 
 question of national university or no national university is by 
 no means synonymous with the question, Shall the country 
 have good university education or not? The only question 
 is, Shall we have a university supported and controlled by 
 government, or shall we continue to rely upon universities 
 l^supported and controlled by other agencies ? 1 
 
 There is then no foundation whatever for the assumption 
 that it is the duty of our government to establish a national 
 university. I venture to state one broad reason why our gov^.. 
 ernment should not establish and maintain a university.? If 
 the people of the United States have any special destiny, any 
 peculiar function in the world, it is to try to work out, under 
 extraordinarily favorable circumstances,- the problem of free 
 
21 
 
 institutions for a heterogeneous, rich, multitudinous popula- 
 tion, spread over a vast territory. We indeed want to breed 
 scholars, artists, poets, historians, novelists, engineers, physi- 
 cians, jurists, theologians, and orators ; but, first of all, we 
 want to breed a race of independent, self-reliant freemen, 
 capable of helping, guiding, and governing themselves. Now 
 the habit of being helped by the government, even if it be to 
 things good in themselves, — to churches, universities, and 
 railroads, — is a most insidious and irresistible enemy of re- 
 publicanism ; for the very essence of republicanism is selfy 
 reliance.,'/ With the continental nations of Europe, it is an 
 axiom that the government is to do every thing, and is respon- 
 sible for every thing. The French have no word for " public 
 spirit," for the reason that the sentiment is unknown to them. 
 This abject dependence on the government is an accursed in- 
 heritance from the days of the divine right of kings. Amer- 
 icans, on the contrary, maintain precisely the opposite theory, 
 namely, that government is to do nothing not expressly 
 assigned it to do, that it is to perforin no function which any 
 private agency can perform as well, and that it is not to do a 
 public good even, unless that good be otherwise unattainable. 
 It is hardly too much to say that this doctrine is the founda- 
 tion of our public liberty. So long as the people are really 
 free, they will maintain it in theory and in practice. During 
 the war of the Rebellion we got accustomed to seeing the gov- 
 ernment spend vast sums of money and put forth vast efforts ; 
 pnd we asked ourselves — why should not some of these great 
 resources and powers be applied to works of peace, to crea- 
 tion as well as to destruction ? So we subsidized railroads, 
 and steamship companies, and agricultural colleges, and now 
 it is proposed to subsidize a university. The fatal objection 
 to this subsidizing process is that it saps the foundations of 
 public liberty. The only adequate securities of public liberty 
 are the national habits, traditions, and character acquired and 
 accumulated in the practice of liberty and ,self-control. In- 
 terrupt these traditions, break up these habits, or cultivate the 
 opposite ones, or poison that national character, and public 
 liberty will suddenly be found defenceless. We deceive our- 
 
 / 
 
22 
 
 selves dangerously when we think or say that education, 
 whether primary or university, can guarantee republican 
 institutions. Education can do no such thing. A republican 
 people should indeed be educated and intelligent ; but it by 
 no means follows that an educated and intelligent people will 
 be republican. Do I seem to conjure up imaginary evils to 
 follow from this beneficent establishment of a superb national 
 university ? We teachers should be the last people to forget 
 the sound advice, — obsta principiis. A drop of water will 
 put out a spark which otherwise would have kindled a confla- 
 gration that rivers could not quench. 
 
 Let us cling fast to the genuine American method — the 
 old Massachusetts method — in the matter of public instruc- 
 tion. The essential features of that system are local taxes 
 for universal elementary education, voted by the citizens them- 
 selves ; local elective boards to spend the money raised by tax- 
 ation and control the schools ; and, for the higher grades of 
 instruction, permanent endowments administered by incorpo- 
 rated bodies of trustees. This is the American voluntary sys- 
 tem, in sharp contrast with the military, despotic organization 
 of public instruction which prevails in Prussia and most other 
 states of continental Europe. Both systems have peculiar 
 advantages, the crowning advantage of the American method 
 being that it breeds freemen. Our ancestors well understood 
 the principle that to make a people free and self-reliant, it is 
 necessary to let them take care of themselves, even if they do 
 not take quite as good care of themselves as some superior 
 power might. 
 
 <=-• And now, finally, let us ask what should make a university 
 at the capital of the United States, established and supported 
 by the general government, more national than any other 
 American university. It might be larger and richer than any 
 other, and it might not be ; but certainly it could not have a 
 monopoly of patriotism, or of catholicity, or of literary or sci- 
 entific enthusiasm. There is an attractive comprehensiveness, 
 and a suggestion of public spirit and love of country, in the 
 term " national ; " but, after all, the adjective only narrows 
 and belittles the noble conception contained in the word 
 
"university." Letters, science, art, philosophy, medicine, 
 law, and theology are larger and more enduring than nations. 
 There is something childish in this uneasy hankering for a 
 big university in America, as there is also in that impatient 
 longing for a distinctive American literature which we so often 
 hear expressed. As American life grows more various and 
 richer in sentiment, passion, thought, and accumulated experi- 
 ence, American literature will become richer and more abound- 
 ing ; and, in that better day, let us hope that there will be found 
 several universities in America, though hj no means one in 
 each State, as free, liberal, rich, national, and glorious as the 
 warmest advocate of a single, crowning university at the 
 national capital could imagine his desired institution to 
 become. 
 
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