suffrage, which, giving the power to the whole people, protects them against the passions, interests, and prejudices of any local faction. But, in order to accomplish this, the whole people must be intellectually educated, so as to be able to understand what is right; and must be morally trained, so as to feel it their duty to support what is right. This is the basis for a universal State education, mental and moral. And, beside this, the people must have access to sources of information in regard to men and measures; and hence the necessity of free speech and a free press. And, beside all this, there must be religion to counteract the tendency to materialization which comes from prosperity; to vitalize the higher nature, and to lift man from the sphere of sense into that of soul. Without this influence, progress in art, science, literature, and social life would lose its inspiration. Yet religion must be taught independently, - in the church, not in the school. If religion is taught in the schools, religion, being so much more important than knowledge, will be sure to make the education of the mind subordinate to the education of the religious nature. This would be the case, not only with the earnest Catholic teacher, but also with every earnest Protestant teacher. The colleges and academies in this country, which are in the hands of Protestant sects, have often had for their primary purpose to build up their sects; and for their secondary object

to give intellectual instruction. This will always be the result; and the more sincerely religious the teacher is, the worse will the school be, as a school. Thus, in Spain, Austria and Italy, where the education of the people has been confided for centuries to the Roman Catholic Church, almost one half of the people have never learned to read or write. This was not because the church was not faithful and laborious, but because it necessarily subordinated intellectual instruction to religious culture. It believed, and still believes, that it is right to do so. The principle is distinctly asserted in such statements as this, which I take from the "Catholic World" for April, 1871: "We do not prize as highly as some of our countrymen appear to do, the simple ability to read, write, and cipher. In extending education, and endeavoring to train all to be leaders, we have only extended presumption, pretension, conceit, indocility, and brought incapacity to the surface. We believe the peasantry, in the old Catholic countries, two centuries ago, were better educated, though for the most part unable to read or write, than are the great body of the American people. They had faith, they had morality, they had a sense of religion." This is manly and plain, and we respect the honest conviction from which it proceeds, though we dissent absolutely from the principle. We do not believe that ignorance is ever the mother either of morality or of true devotion.

It substitutes superstition for devotion, and ceremonies for virtue.

It is much to the credit of the Puritans, wherever they were, that they believed in knowledge, and established schools. But they are almost the only exception to the law by which religious sects are led to make religion the primary thing in their schools, and intellectual development the secondary thing.

By means of universal suffrage we no doubt introduce a great deal of ignorance into the government. But at the same time we cause all to feel a personal interest in the government, and we accomplish the great object of widening the basis of representation, so as to neutralize the influence of local interests, caste prejudices, and private aims. In the same fact, we find a basis for woman suffrage. Not because woman is the same in character, ability, and quality as man, — but because she is different, we need her influence in public life. She will bring in new elements, and help still further in keeping legislation free from special tendencies. She will see many things which man does not, as he sees many things which she does not. She will make many mistakes, as he makes many mistakes, but hers will be different from his, and his from hers, and so they will neutralize each other. Providentially, we have prepared for this coming change, by freely admitting girls with boys to all our schools, and we are now admitting the principle

of coeducation in many of our colleges. Life attains its true and best equilibrium not by monotony, but by the union of antagonist elements, by differentiation and co-operation. For a perfect civilization men and women must be companions in everything, — in work and play, in study, in all occupations, in art and literature, in science and discovery. I do not think our politics will be what they ought, till women are legislators and voters. I do not think our schools and colleges will be what they ought, till girls are educated with boys, and women are on the boards of government and instruction with men. I do not think that our prisons, hospitals, charitable institutions will be really good, till women are in the direction together with men. When all careers are open to all talents, society will be properly balanced by the equipoise of man's force and woman's sympathy, man's logic and woman's intuition.

Mr. James Parton, in his "Life of Jefferson," tells us that in 1785 America had contributed nothing to the intellectual resources of man, except Franklin. "We had," says he, "no art, little science, no literature; not a poem, not a book, not a picture, not a statue, not an edifice." The books of Jonathan Edwards and the pictures of Copley may, perhaps, be regarded as exceptions; but, in the main, this statement is correct. We have done a little better since. We

have produced no Goethe, no Byron, no Rafaelle; but

it takes more than a hundred years to produce such flowers as these. Everything with us has taken a practical direction. Our best works of art have been our vessels. Our great poem has been the country itself. Our great edifice has been the national character. We still find our best books in the running brooks, the rolling rivers, the majestic mountains, the roaring cataracts, the mysterious caverns, the boundless prairies; the lakes, rolling like the ocean; the forests, sweeping thousands of miles toward the setting sun. It is true that the two writers whose works have had the widest circulation in modern times are American; namely, Noah Webster and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Twenty years ago fifty millions copies of the books of Noah Webster had been sold, to all parts of the world. Of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," so many millions of copies had been sold, in 1870, that Allibone found it impossible to estimate their number. But, after all, our chief contribution to the history of the world has been the successful result of these free institutions. We have shown that order and freedom may be united, that equal rights and universal respect for law can be associated. Next to this is our contribution of MEN. What great edifice, though it were a basilica of St. Peter, or a Strasburgh minster, is such an addition to the wealth of mankind as the character of George Washington, or of Abraham Lincoln? We may not have produced many original