civil and political relations with their former slaves.

The motives of these acts were entirely good, and their machinery well enough adapted to the purpose in view, had the evil been, as they apprehended it, a temporary one and not the result of long-established causes. It has proved a failure simply because it dealt only with the facts appearing on the surface and not with those which underlay them and were more important—because enfranchisement without specific and ample provision for the speedy enlightenment of those upon whom the ballot is conferred is so absurdly foolish as to be worthy of consideration only as a farce, were it not that the element of tragedy lies so near the surface as to forbid that we should

laugh.

"Promote, as an object of prime importance,
institutions for the general diffusion of
knowledge. "Washington's Farewell Address.

Wisdom Becometh a King.

HE importance of general intelligence in a

THE

republic has always been conceded. All the founders of our Republic, all the great minds in philosophy and religion for the past hundred years, have dwelt upon the advantages, not only to the individual but to the commonwealth, of intelligence in the citizen. All civilized nations now admit the especial value of public education as a national investment, rendering as it does, up to a certain limit at least, every individual more capable of productive effort than he otherwise.

would be. As a safeguard of free institutions, also, it has always been regarded as of the utmost importance; but in no nation was it ever so overwhelmingly important as in our own, and at no period of our history of so grave interest as at the present. Of course where suffrage is limited, whether by a proprietary or an educational qualification, or by almost any other reasonable and natural method, the greater proportion of illiteracy is shut out from any effective power or influence upon the government. With us, however, where in all except a few of the States the mere fact of mature manhood is the sole test of ballotorial right, the intelligence of the people becomes a matter of the most absorbing interest to every one. Perhaps it may be well to consider the opinions of a few of those most eminent in our history, upon this subject. We give them briefly, not because we deem them at all necessary, but because it may be well for us to remember that even in the dawning of our Nation's life. those great men to whom we are wont to ascribe almost supernal attributes looked forward to ignorance, even without the complication of race and caste, as one of the imminent dangers which might threaten the Republic:

"In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”— Washington's Farewell Address.

Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours, it is proportionably essential."—Washington's First Inaugural Message.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."-Thomas Jefferson.

Speaking of the continuance of the tariff on imports, Jefferson said: "Patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, and canals." Again, calling attention to the surplus revenue, he asked: "Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults; shall the revenue be reduced; or shall it not rather be appropriated to the improvement of roads, rivers, canals, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union?”

"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but the

prologue to a farce or a tragedy—or perhaps to both."-James Madison.

"The advancement of science and the diffusion of information is the best element of true liberty."-James Madison.

"Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties."— James Monroe.

These men were among the wisest of the founders of our Republic. Practically they knew almost nothing of what we now term "free institutions." Not one of them had ever lived in a State in which manhood constituted the sole qualification of suffrage. They had no knowledge of a popular government in which every man should exercise a co-equal power with every other. Probably not one of them even dreamed that such a state of affairs would ever exist. If, with their imperfect knowledge of what has now become an universal fact in our government, they deemed general intelligence, popular education, and the enlightenment of the masses the most essential prerequisite of free institutions, what would have been their opinion of the danger likely to accrue from universal suffrage without the concomitant of universal intelligence?