been enriched in
commerce and trade may well be devoted, it is to making provision in our
institutions of learning for meeting this lack of young men trained in
history, political and social science, and general jurisprudence--in
those studies which fit men to discuss properly and to lead their
fellow-citizens rightly in the discussion of the main questions relating
to commerce, to diplomacy, and to various political and social subjects.
[Applause.]

I fully believe that one million dollars distributed between four or
five of our great institutions of learning for this purpose would
eventually produce almost a revolution for good in this country, and
that in a very few years the effect of such endowments would be seen to
be most powerful and most salutary. Provision on the largest scale
should be made for the training of young men in political and social
science, in such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Columbia,
Princeton, Union, Johns Hopkins University, the State Universities of
Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Minnesota, and California, and I trust
that you will permit me to add, Cornell. [Applause.]

I do not pretend, of course, that this would supersede practical
training--no theoretical training can do this--but it would give young
men, at any rate, a knowledge of the best thoughts of the best thinkers,
on such subjects as taxation, representation, pauperism, crime,
insanity, and a multitude of similar questions; it would remove the
spectacle which so often afflicts us in our National and State
legislatures, of really strong men stumbling under loads of absurdity
and fallacy, long ago exploded by the best and most earnest thought of
the world, and it would teach young men to reason wisely and well on
such subjects, and then, with some practical experience, we should have
in every State a large number of well-trained men ready to reason
powerfully and justly, ready to meet at a moment's warning pernicious
heresies threatening commerce and trade and our best political and
social interests. Had there been scattered through California during the
recent canvass for their new constitution, twenty men really fitted to
show in the press and in the forum the absurdities of that Constitution,
it would never have been established. [Loud applause.]

Ten thousand dollars to any one of these colleges or universities would
endow a scholarship or fellowship which would enable some talented
graduate to pursue advanced st