A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 691 



population, spread over a vast territory. We, indeed, want to breed 

 scholars, artists, poets, historians, novelists, engineers, physicians, 

 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 republicanism ; for the very essence of republicanism is self-reliance. 

 With the Continental nations of Europe it is an axiom that the gov- 

 ernment is to do every thing, and is responsible for every thing. The 

 French have no word for " public spirit," for the reason that the sen- 

 timent is unknown to them. This abject dependence on the govern- 

 ment is an accursed inheritance from the days of the divine right of 

 kings. Americans, on the contrary, maintain precisely the opposite 

 theory namely, that government is to do nothing not expressly as- 

 signed it to do, that it is to perform 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 foundation 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 government spend vast sums of money and put forth 

 vast efforts, and we asked ourselves, Why should not some of these 

 great resources and powers be applied to works of peace, to creation 

 as well as to destruction ? So we subsidized railroads and steamship 

 companies, and agricultural colleges, and now it is proposed to sub- 

 sidize a university. The fatal objection to this subsidizing process is 

 that it saps the foundations of public liberty. The only adequate se- 

 curities of public liberty are the national habits, traditions, and char- 

 acter, acquired and accumulated in the practice of liberty and self- 

 control. Interrupt 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 ourselves danger- 

 ously when we think or speak as if education, whether primary or 

 university, could 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 in- 

 telligent 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 conflagration that rivers could 

 not quench. 



Let us cling fast to the genuine American method the old Massachu- 

 setts method in the matter of public instruction. The essential feat- 

 ures of that system are local taxes for universal elementary education 



