Requisites to a Reform of the Civil Service. 103 



our black population who were, but recently, in the chains of 

 slavery, and are of necessity still in the fetters and clogs of the 

 grossest ignorance. And soon, as a logical necessity, the same 

 privileges and immunities that we enjoy will be accorded to 

 the whole body of women. Bat with all this recent and pros- 

 pective multiplication of voters unaccustomed to the responsi- 

 bilities of freemen, it is only with the utmost difficulty, and 

 after a struggle of many years, that the American congress 

 has been induced to concede that the government owes any- 

 thing further to the cause of popular education, after having 

 granted for its encouragement a small portion of the unsold 

 public lands. Even at this hour we present the spectacle of 

 a mighty nation of forty millions resting our only rational 

 hope of a great and glorious future on the intelligence of the 

 masses, and yet showing a most alarming proportion of illiter- 

 acy, hesitating over the proposition to consecrate the net pro- 

 ceeds of the public lands, hereafter sold, to the education of 

 the people, and denying to the cramped and crippled, 

 though nobly officered. Educational Bureau of the Interior 

 Department the few thousand dollars essential to its greater 

 efficiency. In such schools as we have, but little instruction 

 is given ia the elementary principles of our government, and 

 •in too many of even the best of them there is recognized a 

 mucb more important defect bearing upon the question of good 

 government, namely, the want of a judicious and systematic 

 culture of the moral nature, such as is calculated to insure to 

 the country virtuous and noble men, in all respects fitted to 

 meet the responibilities of citizenship, and to save the re- 

 public from the increasing dangers which already threaten its 

 destruction. 



To my mind, nothing is more manifest than that this requi- 

 site, although mentioned last, lies at the foundation of all. 

 In a country governed by an autocracy or a monarchy, it is 

 possible to have an efficient and economical civil service with- 

 out universal intelligence, with intelligence of the governing 



