and continues to make, itself felt in the final instance. We are
a republic, or rather a cluster of republics under an imperfectly
centralized national government. It is evident that the agencies and
mode of reform with us must differ from those that have been employed
in Prussia and in the rest of Germany. But it does not follow that
the reform itself is impossible. What has elsewhere sprung from the
autocratic will of a single man and his cabinet may be effected here
through that other force, equally great and perhaps more pervasive,
to which we give the vague name of "popular opinion." We know that
popular opinion in our country is irresistible. It makes everything
bend to it. It broke up the Tweed Ring, seemingly impregnable, in a
single campaign. But this popular opinion is not a natural product: it
is the work of a few men who devote themselves to awakening the sense
of right and wrong and guiding the understanding of their fellows.
But for popular leaders like Mr. O'Conor and Governor Tilden, the
late Tweed Ring might be in power at this day. Education 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