Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/709

Rh 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 government is to do every thing, and is responsible for every thing. The French have no word for "public spirit," for the reason that the sentiment is unknown to them. This abject dependence on the government 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 assigned 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 subsidize a university. The fatal objection to this subsidizing process is that it saps the foundations of public liberty. The only adequate securities of public liberty are the national habits, traditions, and character, acquired and accumulated in the practice of liberty and selfcontrol. 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 dangerously 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 intelligent 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 Massachusetts method—in the matter of public instruction. The essential features of that system are local taxes for universal elementary education