4 o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of promoting a more generous nationality. This was twenty-five 

 years before the university ideal was reached in America. His con- 

 ception of a university included all that our most venerable institu- 

 tions have yet realized. 



Lieber struggled for eight years before he found any permanent 

 employment. In 1828 he began the work of editing the Encyclo- 

 paedia Americana, and in his project he was warmly supported by 

 Edward Everett, George Bancroft, and Judge Story. He yearned 

 for the time when he might be able to write upon subjects that had 

 long occupied his mind. In 1835 his hopes were realized by his 

 appointment to the professorship of history and political economy 

 in South Carolina College. In his contact with Niebuhr at Home he 

 had acquired a taste for historical studies, and he became the first 

 great teacher in this country of history and politics as co-ordinated 

 subjects. 



It was Lieber's lot to encounter many obstacles in his career. 

 Although as a boy his soul longed for liberty, he found even in 

 America a part of the human race in bondage, and this earnest 

 advocate of freedom was compelled to make his home in the very 

 midst of the slave power. Lieber did not desire to go to the South, 

 but after a struggle of eight years in the North he felt compelled 

 to accept the position in order to provide for his family. It also 

 afforded him leisure time to write his Political Ethics, Legal and 

 Political Hermeneutics, and Civil Liberty and Self -Government, the 

 three great works upon which his fame will chiefly rest. In 1856 

 he was a candidate for the presidency of the college, and, failing to 

 secure this position, he resigned his professorship. The next year, 

 he was called to Columbia College, New York city. Dr. Herbert B. 

 Adams states that the call of Lieber to Columbia College marks the 

 first recognition by a Northern college of history and politics as prop- 

 erly co-ordinated subjects. Lieber spent nearly forty years as a 

 teacher of this most vital branch to the youth of the republic. 



Before tracing out the leading theories of Lieber's works, it may 

 be well to refer to the political thought of his day. His youth 

 was spent in a period when in his own country two opposing schools 

 of law and political science existed. The historical school based 

 its method upon the course of outward events and their evolution, 

 while the philosophical school began with the knowledge of the 

 human mind, and from this starting point considered the revelation 

 of the spirit of man in history. Dr. Bluntschli says that only a few 

 philosophers have had the genius to unite the two methods. Lieber 

 rose above the conflict of the two schools and became one of the 

 first representatives of their alliance. In writing his great works 

 he had to venture upon an untrodden path, and, in his Political 



