Page:Visit of the Hon. Carl Schurz to Boston, March 1881.pdf/78

Rh dents, the classic halls of Berlin. Leipsic, or Jena, the University of Bonn on the Rhine counted Mr. Schurz among her academic citizens. There it was that his future career began to shape itself; and there he first lifted up his voice for liberty with an eloquence presaging future renown, and flashing on his fellow-citizens with a brilliancy comparable only to that of a young Phillips forty years ago in Boston. And I call upon our guest to bear me out, when I contend that these seats of learning in Germany were, and always have been at the same time also the hearths and the nurseries of liberty; for these German high schools have what no other schools in any other country ever had to that extent,—namely, that great treasure of strength, that proud distinction of German universities,—academic liberty: a liberty superior to political freedom; a higher, a philosophical, and critical liberty of the mind and conscience; a liberty in teaching and learning uncontrolled, untamed by despotism, untramelled by church interference or protection, uncontaminated by any schemes for gain. And thus only they were able to produce and educate men who again and again have saved the liberties of the German nation.

But enough of this; pardon, gentlemen, my fond attachment to German schools. In politics I am a contented American citizen. Our honored friend and guest will sympathize with me. My hope and wish would be, that in his future career his work