the diffusion of political knowledge fit men
for free institutions?

No. It is essentially a question of character, and only in a secondary
degree a question of knowledge. But for the universal delusion about
education as a panacea for political evils, this would have been made
sufficiently clear by the evidence daily disclosed in your papers. Are
not the men who officer and control your Federal, your State, and your
Municipal organizations--who manipulate your caucuses and conventions,
and run your partisan campaigns--all educated men? And has their
education prevented them from engaging in, or permitting, or condoning,
the briberies, lobbyings, and other corrupt methods which vitiate the
actions of your administrations? Perhaps party newspapers exaggerate
these things; but what am I to make of the testimony of your civil
service reformers--men of all parties? If I understand the matter
aright, they are attacking, as vicious and dangerous, a system which has
grown up under the natural spontaneous working of your free
institutions--are exposing vices which education has proved powerless to
prevent?

Of course, ambitious and unscrupulous men will secure the offices, and
education will aid them in their selfish purposes. But would not those
purposes be thwarted, and better Government secured, by raising the
standard of knowledge among the people at large?

Very little. The current theory is that if the young are taught what is
right, and the reasons why it is right, they will do what is right when
they grow up. But considering what religious teachers have been doing
these two thousand years, it seems to me that all history is against the
conclusion, as much as is the conduct of these well-educated citizens I
have referred to; and I do not see why you expect better results among
the masses. Personal interests will sway the men in the ranks, as they
sway the men above them; and the education which fails to make the last
consult public good rather than private good, will fail to make the
first do it. The benefits of political purity are so general and remote,
and the profit to each individual is so inconspicuous, that the common
citizen, educate him as you like, will habitually occupy himself with
his personal affairs, and hold it not worth his while to fight against
each abuse as soon as it appears. Not lack of information, but lack of
certain moral sentiment, is the root of the evil.

You mean that people have not a s