The inference is that education—­book fashion—­will unfit the man for useful work.  Mr. Froude here again stops at a half-truth.  As a general thing, intelligence is useful in any position a man occupies.  But it is true that there is a superficial and misdirected sort of education, so called, which makes the man who receives it despise labor; and it is also true that in the present educational revival there has been a neglect of training in the direction of skilled labor, and we all suffer more or less from cheap and dishonest work.  But the way out of this, again, is forward, and not backward.  It is a good sign, and not a stigma upon this era of progress, that people desire education.  But this education must be of the whole man; he must be taught to work as well as to read, and he is, indeed, poorly educated if he is not fitted to do his work in the world.  We certainly shall not have better workmen by having ignorant workmen.  I need not say that the real education is that which will best fit a man for performing well his duties in life.  If Mr. Froude, instead of his plaint over the scarcity of good mechanics, and of the Ten Commandments in England, had recommended the establishment of industrial schools, he would have spoken more to the purpose.

I should say that the fashionable skepticism of today, here and in England, is in regard to universal suffrage and the capacity of the people to govern themselves.  The whole system is the sharp invention of Thomas Jefferson and others, by which crafty demagogues can rule.  Instead of being, as we have patriotically supposed, a real progress in human development, it is only a fetich, which is becoming rapidly a failure.  Now, there is a great deal of truth in the assertion that, whatever the form of government, the ablest men, or the strongest, or the most cunning in the nation, will rule.  And yet it is true that in a popular government, like this, the humblest citizen, if he is wronged or oppressed, has in his hands a readier instrument of redress than he has ever had in any form of government.  And it must not be forgotten that the ballot in the hands of all is perhaps the only safeguard against the tyranny of wealth in the hands of the few.  It is true that bad men can band together and be destructive; but so they can in any government.  Revolution by ballot is much safer than revolution by violence; and, granting that human nature is selfish, when the whole people are the government selfishness is on the side of the government.  Can you mention any class in this country whose interest it is to overturn the government?  And, then, as to the wisdom of the popular decisions by the ballot in this country.  Look carefully at all the Presidential elections from Washington’s down, and say, in the light of history, if the popular decision has not, every time, been the best for the country.  It may not have seemed so to some of us at the time, but I think it is true, and a very significant fact.