acked in 1861. I think there is no
such mystery about it. The secret--if secret it is to be called--of his
politics was blazoned in almost every speech he ever made, if people
could only train themselves to think that a public man really believes
what he says. It was this, that at heart he believed in the people. He
believed they had virtue enough and good sense enough to carry them
through any difficulty they would ever get into. He did not believe in
total depravity. He did not, therefore, believe in theirs. And when he
had any appeal to make to the people, he appealed to their supposed
virtue, and not to their supposed vices,--he spoke to their good sense,
and not to their folly. Mr. Emerson says somewhere, that he gave people
no new thoughts. I do not think this is true. It is, however, very
certain that he gave them no _buncombe_. He believed in them, in their
good sense, and in their average virtue. He knew that everything
depended on them. He was eager to educate the people, therefore, and all
the people. He did not believe it possible to educate any of them too
well. And if you had asked him, the day he died, what had been the
central idea of his life, he would have said it was the education of the
people. His life was full of it. His speeches were full of it. Nothing
so provoked him as any snobbism which wanted to hinder it. When he was
President of the College,--I think in 1848,--there was a black boy in
the High School at Cambridge, fitting for college. Some gentlemen in
Alabama, who had sons there, or on their way there, wrote to Mr. Everett
to remonstrate against the boy's entering. He replied, that the College
was endowed to educate all comers; that, if the black boy could pass his
examination, as he hoped he could, he would be admitted; and that, if,
as they seemed to suppose, all the white students withdrew, the College
would then be conducted on its endowments for the black boy alone. And
that was no exceptional reply. It was his way of looking at such things.

Now it is very true that a man like that makes no demagogue appeals to
the people. He will not be apt to ally himself with any specially
radical party. He will never say that an unwashed man has as good chance
for godliness as a washed man, because he will not believe it. He will
never say that an ignorant man's vote is as good as a sensible man's,
because he will not believe that. But in any question where the rights
of men are on one side and th