ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 151 



a novel experiment in politics on the greatest scale which the 

 world has yet seen. Forty millions at your first centenary, 

 it is reasonably to be expected that, at the second, these 

 states will be occupied by two hundred millions of English- 

 speaking people, spread over an area as large as that of 

 Europe, and with climates and interests as diverse as those 

 of Spain and Scandinavia, England and Russia. You and 

 your descendants have to ascertain whether this great mass 

 will hold together under the forms of a republic, and the 

 despotic reality of universal suffrage; whether state rights 

 will hold out against centralisation, without separation; 

 whether centralisation will get the better, without actual 

 or disguised monarchy; whether shifting corruption is better 

 than a permanent bureaucracy; and as population thickens 

 in your great cities, and the pressure of want is felt, the 

 gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk among you, and 

 communism and socialism will claim to be heard. Trulv 

 America has a great future before her; great in toil, in care, 

 and in responsibility; great in true glory if she be guided in 

 wisdom and righteousness; great in shame if she fail. I 

 cannot understand why other nations should envy you, or 

 be blind to the fact that it is for the highest interest of man- 

 kind that you should succeed; but the one condition of 

 success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth and intel- 

 lectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education cannot 

 give these, but it may cherish them and bring them to the 

 front in whatever station of society they are to be found; 

 and the universities ought to be, and may be, the fortresses 

 of the higher life of the nation. 



May the university which commences its practical activity 

 to-morrow abundantly fulfil its high purpose; may its renown 

 as a seat of true learning, a centre of free inquiry, a focus of 

 intellectual light, increase year by year, until men wander 



