o 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.

Of course, in this affirmation of belief that one hundred years of
popular government in this country is a real progress for humanity, and
not merely a change from the rule of the fit to the rule of the cunning,
we cannot forget that men are