read and
write.

Now, at the presidential election for the same year that the census was
taken, when, to use the graphic language of another, "every voter not
absolutely in his winding sheet was carried to the polls, when the
harvest field was so thoroughly swept that neither stubble nor tares
were left for the gleaner," the majority for the successful candidate
was =146,081=, more than =46,000= less than the estimated number of
legal voters at that time in the United States unable to read and write.
At this election a larger majority of the electoral votes was given for
the successful candidate than was ever given to any other President of
the United States, with the exception of Mr. Monroe in =1820=, against
whom there was but one vote. General Harrison's popular majority, also,
was undoubtedly the largest by which any President of the United States
has ever been elected, with the exception above mentioned of Mr. Monroe,
and perhaps that of General Washington at his second election. And yet
this majority, large as it was, was more than 46,000 less than the
estimated number of our legal voters who, in the educational scale, are
absolutely below zero.

And then it should be borne in mind that hundreds of thousands who are
barely able to read and write may never have acquired "a knowledge of
the true principles of government," which, in the language of Judge
Story, at the head of this chapter, "is not only important and useful
to Americans, but is absolutely indispensable to carry on the government
of their choice, and to transmit it to posterity." It should also be
borne in mind that popular virtue is not less essential to the stability
of a free government than is general intelligence. Nay, more; if the
liberties of this republic are more endangered by any one class of
people than by all others, that class consists of intelligent but
unprincipled political aspirants. The connection between ignorance and
vice has already been referred to, and is well known among intelligent
men; but by none so well, it may be, as by the unprincipled aspirant,
who, by pandering to the vicious appetites of the ignorant and the vile,
and then by base flattery pronouncing them "highly intelligent,
enlightened, and civilized," take advantage of their very want of
qualification "to manufacture political capital." These are they to whom
Lord Brougham refers when he says, "other men will form opinions for
them, not according to truth and the