881

piece, or exponent, are disseminated and discussed among
you with the view to their subsequent demonstration and
final acceptance. You may ask why attempt to dissemi-
nate or discuss principles which, whatever their merits, are
not agreeable to the majority of the district. I answer
that only by this discussion and this dissemination can
those merits be properly weighed, understood, and appreci-
ated. The process is a part of education, and the further
it goes the more will the people become educated. Some
of you doubt this. You do not credit that the mere adver-
tising of certain political principles constitutes. any definite
portion of enlightenment. Think a little. Is it not noto-
rious that the hold of the leaders of the opposite party is
strong in exact proportion to the ignorance or the immoral-
ity of their supporters ? When immigrants come here from
fbreign parts, where there are no free schools — ^no means
for popular education — are not those leaders justly confi-
dent that in those new-comers they will secure exactly so
many fresh voters ? When immigrants haU from those
parts of Europe which are blessed with some approxima-
tion to our own educational system, are not those leaders
equally certain that, in a parallel ratio, they are to meet
just so many fresh opponents ? In those parts of our great
metropolis where dissoluteness, ignorance, crime, most
abound, do not those leaders find their greatest power,
achieve their heaviest majorities ? In those parts of our
State where morality, culture, order, most prevail, do not
those leaders find their greatest weakness, suffer their most
disastrous defeats? Tell me what this means if it does not
mean — with those notable and reasonable exceptions from
which no great issue is free — ^that one party is identified
with education and enlightenment, and the other with igno-
rance and darkness ?

" My friends, every man of you has high responsibilities
as husband, or son, or father; but a nation has. higher
duties than even the collective domestic ones of its chil-
dren ; and this nation has, before Heaven, loftier obligations
than any on which the sun has ever shone. Why ? Be-



332 dangerpibld's rest; or

cause those obligations are comprehensive and cosmopolitan
to an extent which has hitherto been unprecedented in
history. 