limate, they must always continue to be so. Moreover, across the
very center of our territory a line is drawn, on one side of which all
labor is voluntary, while on the opposite side a system of involuntary
servitude prevails.

If, then, general intelligence and popular virtue are necessary for the
successful administration of even the simplest forms of government, and
if these qualities are required in a higher and still higher degree in
proportion to the complexity of a government, then are both intelligence
and virtue necessary in this government to an extent indefinitely beyond
what has ever been required in any other. And especially is this true
when we consider that our government is representative as it regards the
people, and federative as it regards the states; and that, in this
respect, it has no precedent on the file of nations. We hence require a
double portion of general intelligence and practical wisdom. But men are
not born in the possession of these requisites to self-government,
neither are they necessarily developed in the growth from infancy to
manhood. They are the product of cultivation and training, and can be
secured only through good schools opened to and enjoyed by all our
youth. The stability of this government requires that universal
education should precede universal suffrage.

Under a free government, the intelligence of the people, coupled with
their virtue, will be found to be a sure index to a nation's prosperity,
and to the individual and social well-being of all who enjoy its
protection. God is a being of infinite wisdom and goodness, and no part
of his government can be successfully administered except upon the
principles of knowledge and virtue. The success that attends a nation of
freemen will depend upon the extent to which these are cultivated, and
the universality of their dissemination in the body politic. While the
cultivation of these will increase the safety of the government, their
neglect will hasten its downfall.

Judge Story, in a lecture upon the importance of the science of
government as a branch of popular education, has well remarked, that
"it is not to rulers and statesman alone that the science of government
is important and useful. It is equally indispensable for every American
citizen, to enable him to exercise his own rights, to protect his own
interests, and to secure the public liberties and the just operations of
public authority. A republic, by the very cons