ublic has too often and too far been
supplanted in the control of its affairs by a spirit utterly hostile
to that which it was intended to be, and which, if the partial or
complete failure of the system is to be averted, must, everywhere and
always, be dominant. It is undoubtedly true that citizens whose
character and ability fit them for the service necessary for the
proper control of political affairs, constitute a sufficient number in
the voting population to assure the ascendency of right ideas if
their efforts can be united for the purpose. The fact that intelligent
and controlling convictions of duty are absent, and that they do not
thus unite, however explained, clearly accounts for the subversion of
the spirit which founded our institutions, and the ascendency of a
spirit of chicanery, greed, and corruption.

It is also evident that the political evils which challenge our
attention are primarily due, not to faults in our institutions
themselves, but to failures in the assertion of the spirit of true
Americanism by which they are intended to be controlled. How to secure
ascendency for this spirit and thus to restore, in every part of the
republic, the sovereignty of highest manhood, is the most pressing
problem which can engage the attention of patriotic and intelligent
American citizens.

For more than fifteen years this question has been a matter of
profound interest to the writer. The fact that ordinary uprisings
against political evils fail to accomplish permanent results, seemed
to him to afford convincing evidence that attention must be given to
the roots and not confined to the branches; and that this foundation
work must represent patient, persistent, and unselfish efforts for the
promotion everywhere of the basic virtues of true patriotism,
intelligence, integrity, and fidelity in citizenship relations.
Believing that this work could be best accomplished through a
permanent national institution which should invite and command the
cooperation of good citizens everywhere, regardless of party, creed,
sex, or class, he sought the advice and cooperation of a few
distinguished men in the preparation of plans for such an institution.
The assistance sought was willingly extended by such citizens as
Morrison R. Waite, William Strong, and S. F. Miller, then respectively
Chief Justice and Justices of the United States Supreme Court; by
Theodore Woolsey, Noah Porter, F. A. P. Barnard, Mark Hopkins, Julius
H. Seel