ing stands by virtue of his humanity; and
from that plane, mingling now in the Common School with the lowliest and
the lordliest, we give you the opportunity to ascend as high as you may.
We put into your hands the key of knowledge; leaving your religious
convictions, with which we dare not interfere, to your chosen guides. So
far as the intellectual path may lead, it is open to you.--Go free!" And
when we consider the great principles which are thus practically
confessed; when we consider the vast consequences which grow out of
this; I think that little District School-house dilates, grows
splendid, makes our hearts beat with admiration and gratitude, makes us
resolve that at all events, _that_ must stand; for, indeed, it is one of
the noblest symbols of the Republic--a sign and an instrument of a great
people, having great power.

Or, if you would behold another of these symbols, go through this city,
and pause wherever you hear the rumbling of the _Printing-Press_. As I
have dwelt upon the characteristics of this great power in another
place, I only allude to it here as a vehicle of that _expression_ which
is so essential to all genuine freedom of thought. Mere education is no
evidence of this freedom. It may be made, it has been made in one of the
most intelligent but despotic countries in Europe, an instrument for
drilling the human mind into an absolute routine of state policy. Mere
liberty of speculation is nothing, though it has the boundless firmament
of abstraction for its own, so long as it is not allowed to strike the
solid ground of fact or touch one organized abuse. Let us be thankful
for a free-press--the electric tongue of thought, which at every stroke
is felt throughout a continent, which no dictator dares to chain, and
over whose issues no censor sits in judgment--or only that great censor,
public opinion. Everybody is aware of its evil as well as its good--the
errors, the crudities, the abominations it sends out. But we must
remember that it is only the representative, the voice, of elements that
actually exist in human minds and bosoms; and, surely, it is better that
they should come out into the free air, and be sprinkled by the chloride
of truth, than to work darkly and infectiously out of sight. It is the
hidden, not the open evil that is dangerous.

Or, still again, you might have seen a true symbol of the Republic in
the spectacle which has been presented this very day--the spectacle of a
_Fre