CAMBRIDGE, MASS., March 28, 1896. * * * MY DEAR GOVERNOR: Your kind letter received this morning. Many have striven earnestly to this end, and I wish all possible attainment in its success. Very sincerely yours, BENJ. APTHORP GOULD. NEW YORK CITY, November 25, 1895. MY DEAR SIR: I shall be glad to cooperate with you in any way so as to realize the aim you have in view. Believe me, very cordially yours, CHARLES SPRAGUE SMITH. WOODMONT, Washington, D. C., August 13, 1895. MY DEAR GOVERNOR: Allow me to express my approbation of the great scheme with which you are connected, and which I trust may be crowned with success. Truly yours, JAMES B. SENER (Ex-Member Congress, Chief Justice of Wyoming, etc.). STATE OF NEVADA, EXECUTIVE OFFICE, Carson City, September 19, 1895. DEAR SIR: Your communication of 31st ultimo duly received in relation "to securing the establishment of a national post graduate at Washington, D. C., and documents relative to the subject, and the objects to be attained by the establishment of such an institution." The object sought is a most worthy one, and meets with my cordial approval. JOHN E. JONES, Governor of Nevada. STATE OF MONTANA, EXECUTIVE OFFICE, Helena, September 21, 1895. DEAR SIR: Relative to the national post-graduate university at Washington, I will say that such an enterprise meets my warmest approval. I can conceive of no movement in an educational way better calculated to keep up the high standard of American school life, or that will do more to promote the interests of the student. There can be no question as to the superior facilities afforded the student in Washington City in so far as various fields of investigation are concerned. I trust your efforts may prove successful. With great respect, I am, very truly yours, J. E. RICKARDS, EARNEST WORDS OF AN EARLIER DATE. Alexander Dallas Bache, LL. D., former Superintendent of the Coast Survey: "A great university, the want of our country in this our time, and the common school and college, fragments of a system requiring to be united into one." Dr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, LL. D., astronomer, Cambridge: "We want a university which, instead of complying with the demands of the age, shall create, develop, and satisfy new and unheard-of requisitions and aspirations, which, so far from adapting itself to the community, shall mold that community unto itself, and which through every change and every progress shall still be far in advance of the body social, guiding it, leading it, drawing it, pulling it, hauling it onward." The late President James McCosh, LL. D., of Princeton: "I like the idea of a national university of a character so high that it would not be a competitor of any existing institution." Dr. Daniel Read, LL. D., while president of the Missouri State University: "I can not treat as visionary that which Washington recommended and James Madison and John Quincy Adams advocated, and which other great and patriotic men have zealously urged as a means of elevating all our higher institutions of learning, and of giving unity and concentration of effort to literary and scientific men-constituting, indeed, a bond of unity to the nation itself." Joseph Henry, LL. D., while Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution: "Yes, the Smithsonian Institution will do a noble work in the interest of science; but the Government of the United States should not content itself with even the wisest use of a foreign benefaction. It must and will devise such measures of its own for the advancement of knowledge as in course of time will become foundation stones for the upbuilding of a great university that will do honor to American intelligence and help to make of this national capital one of the chief intellectual centers of the world." Hon. Timothy O. Howe, LL. D., of Wisconsin, United States Senator, PostmasterGeneral, etc.: "In the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States the subject of a national university was somewhat considered. The proposition had won friends and no enemies there. It was in 1787 that James Madison, not of Massachusetts but of Virginia, not a professional teacher but a practical statesman, moved in convention at Philadelphia to clothe Congress with express powers to establish such a university. Doubtless the bills are imperfect. It is the business of legislation and the work of time to perfect them. If it be conceded that partial education is of some value, it will hardly be denied that thorough education is of more value. It was in this precise way that Washington and Madison (and Jefferson) so incessantly urged the Government to act." * * * * * * ** * Hon. Charles Sumner, LL. D., of Massachusetts, while United States Senator: "If we had in this National Capital such a university as that of Berlin, what an influence for the transformation of Washington, for an increase of the interest of the people of our country in the higher learning, for the advancement of knowledge among men, and for giving to this great and growing Republic the rank it should have among the nations of the earth." Louis Agassiz, LL. D., late of Washington and Cambridge, in 1872: "Is it not possible to get the Congress of the United States so far interested in this great cause of the national university that it will find pleasure not only in establishing it, but in providing for it an endowment commensurate with the greatness of the country and with the pressing demands of the higher learning?" Hon. Salmon P. Chase, LL. D., while Chief Justice of the United States: "The higher education seems to be progressing in a general way, but the many institutions which represent it are without concurrence. If there were a really great university at this national center, with opportunities that would attract graduate students from all sections, and with standards and conditions that would in effect bring all collegiate institutions into relations with itself, this one great deficiency would be met; besides which, the association of its multitude of students would tend to a community of feeling and so increase the security of the Republic. President Washington thought much of this, and made efforts and sacrifices for the founding of a national university, and the wonder is that Congress has not even yet taken a step in that direction." OBJECTIONS AND ANSWERS. OBJECTIONS RAISED BY CITIZENS, FEW IN NUMBER, WHO, IN THEIR CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED, HAVE MANIFESTED MORE OR LESS OF OPPOSITION TO THE PRESENT EFFORT TO ESTABLISH THE UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH ANSWERS BY THE CHAIRMAN OF SAID COMMITTEE. The objections lately offered to the national university proposition are substantially those heretofore offered, and so thoroughly answered by eminent educators and statesmen as often as presented. They are not really entitled, therefore, to the space and time requisite to yet another refutation, especially since for the most part they are from sources which have shown little disposition to deal with the subject upon that high plane to which it belongs. Nevertheless, in justice to such rightminded objectors as may not yet have considered the question upon all sides, and for the satisfaction of those who, having heard the objections in times past, may wish to carefully consider the question anew under conditions somewhat changed, they are here restated and again answered. 1. First of all, it is said, there is really no need of better facilities for university education than the country now has-no need of the proposed post-graduate university. And this notwithstanding the emphatic utterances by a long line of our foremost educators, beginning with President Hill, of Harvard, who again and again, and more earnestly than ever of late, have declared "a true university” to be "the leading want of American education;" this notwithstanding the annual exodus of between 2,000 and 3,000 of our college graduates for study and research in the greater and better-equipped universities of the Old World; this notwithstanding our recent appeal to the universities of France; this notwithstanding the present desperate struggle of every one of even our foremost institutions to meet the demand for better opportunities for post-graduate work at home; this notwithstanding the earnest desire of those heads of considerably more than 100 colleges and universities (including such as are foremost in the entire country) which lead in this work that the Government of the United States should come to the rescue by the establishment of a university which in the early future shall be more amply endowed and better circumstanced than any we now have can reasonably hope to become. "No need of such an institution?" How narrow must be the range of such an objector. Because his own or a neighboring institution seems to him large and prosperous, though meeting simply the collegiate demands of those who are its students, and looking hopefully to the time when it may become in the true sense a university, he excludes that whole series of important functions and relationships that would attach to and characterize the proposed national university at the seat of Government as they could not possibly attach to any other in the United States. I mean not alone those supplementary, coordinating, and stimulating influences upon all the other educational agencies, to which reference has already been made, but rather those offices which it alone could fulfill in its relation to the people and to the Government itself. Established by the people and for the people, managed by men of first eminence and chosen from all divisions of the country without distinction of party or creed, conducted interiorly by men illustrious for their attainments and achievements in 149 their several departments of learning, and attended by college graduates of superior gifts and aspirations from every portion of the country, the National University would command the attention of the whole people as no other institution could, giving to them new conceptions of the extent of human knowledge, actual and possible, with a consequent increase in their appreciation of the whole series of schools, which, as so many steps, lead up to the highest, and thus arousing in them a new and increasing interest in the great cause of American education. Again, furnishing to the Government in every department tne highest sources of information of every sort for the solution of the many problems which so constantly arise in the course of administration, it would incidentally render an incalculable service, and secure to the country that priceless advantage which in time would the more surely come of an uncompromising demand for the best-qualified statesmanship on the part of those to be entrusted with the management of our national affairs. The National University would do yet more-vastly more. By this sense of ownership in common thus awakened in the minds of the people, and through this gathering into its halls and laboratories the many representatives of every State in the Union, and sending them forth again not only with increased knowledge and power, but also with broader views, new friendships, and greater community of feeling, it would deepen and strengthen that fraternal regard between the people of all sections so indispensable to the peace and prosperity of the nation, and thus furnish new guaranties for the greatness and perpetuity of the Republic. 2. It is also said that, if better opportunities for the higher culture are indeed necessary they should not be furnished by one institution, but by many-that "not centralization but decentralization is the order of the day;" that the trend of educational thought is against such a proposition as ours; that the French, German, and Austrian governments are multiplying their universities instead of spending their strength upon one. So much for the want of a little thoughtful discrimination. Such as entertain this opinion may well be referred to the following from an oration once delivered by the distinguished Dr. Benj. Apthorp Gould, astronomer. * * * "Centralization' is a word and an idea now far from popular. But this, like most other principles, has its good as well as evil consequences. And while we, under democratic and republican institutions, feel the full force of the objections to that political centralization under which we see so many nations of the Old World tottering and sinking, we are too apt to overlook the incalculable, the unspeakable advantages which flow from the concentrated accumulation of a whole nation's genius and talent. There is no substitute for the 'encounter of the wise.' Like that of flint and steel it strikes out without cessation the glowing sparks of truth; like that of acid and alkali it forms new, unexpected, and priceless combinations; like the multiplication of rods in the fagot, it gives new strength to all while taking it from none. A spiritual stimulus pervades the very atmosphere electrified by the proximity of congregated genius, its unseen but ever active energy-floating in the air, whispering in the breeze, vibrating in the nerves, thrilling in the heart-prompts to new effort and loftier aspiration through every avenue which can give access to the soul of man. "Such centralization is eminently distinguished from political centralization, and by this peculiarity, among others, that far from being a combination for the sake of arguing and exercising a greater collective power, it acts, on the contrary to aug ment individual influence. While forming a nucleus for scientific, literary, artistic energy, it is not a gravitation center toward which everything must converge and accumulate, but is an organic center whose highest function is to arouse and animate the circulation of thought and mental effort and profound knowledge. It is a nucleus of vitality rather than a nucleus of aggregation. An intellectual center for * * * a land is a heart, but subject to no induration; it is a brain, but liable to no paralysis; an electric battery which can not be consumed; it is a sun without eclipse, a |