tion is not
so different from politics but that we can regard it as subject to
similar laws of cause and effect. Our present common-school system is
an off-spring of popular opinion, as that opinion was created and led
to action by a few men. And whether our common schools are to stand
or fall is again becoming a question of the day, and will be decided
according as popular opinion may be swayed by a few zealous friends or
enemies. Our colleges, it may be said, do not occupy the same
relation to the state that our schools do. They are nearly all private
corporations, enjoying vested rights which the state is powerless to
touch. Undoubtedly true, but it is no less true that what cannot be
done directly may be done indirectly. The state need not make so much
as the attempt to lay hands upon college property or to interfere with
college studies. It has only to say, "I, the state, exact such and
such qualifications of all who seek to practice law or medicine within
my limits or to become my officeholders. I establish my own free
colleges and schools of law and medicine, and I proceed to tax
all others at their full valuation." There is not a college in the
country, not even Harvard, that could compete upon such terms. The
state need not even express its sovereign will so precisely. It
can content itself with establishing a university of its own, and
facilitating the direct influence of this university over the public
and private schools. We see the operations of such a system very
plainly in Michigan. Not only does the university at Ann Arbor
overshadow completely the private colleges, but the "union schools,"
administered under its auspices, are--to borrow the expression of one
of its graduates--"killing" the private schools. We may rest assured
that whatever the people of a State or of the United States is
earnestly bent upon having, will come.

Whether all our States are to act as Michigan has done--whether we are
indeed ripe for thorough change--whether a change is to be effected
by direct State action or indirectly by the mere pressure of public
sentiment--whether we have real need of a body of professors and a set
of universities such as Germany possesses--whether we are to make
our higher as well as our primary education non-sectarian,--are all
questions which may rest in abeyance for a long time to come. It is
also possible that one or the other of them may, in legal phraseology,
be sprung upon us at any time. Not