Ten thousand dollars to any one of these colleges or universities would endow a scholarship or fellowship which would enable some talented graduate to pursue advanced studies in this direction.  Ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars would endow a lectureship which would enable such a college or university to call some acknowledged authority on political subjects to deliver a valuable course of lectures.  Thirty to fifty thousand dollars would endow a full professorship—­though I must confess that in subjects like this, I prefer lectureships for brief terms to life-long professorships—­and at any of these institutions the sum of two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand dollars, under the management of such men as may be found in any one of them, would equip nobly a department in which all these subjects may be fully treated and fitly presented to young men.  Such a department would send out into our journalism, into our various professions, and into our public affairs, a large number of young men who could not fail to improve the political condition of the country, and would do much to ward off such dealings with commerce, with currency, with taxation, and with the diplomatic and consular service as have cost the world and our own nation so dear hitherto. [Applause.]

I can think of no more noble monument which any man of wealth could rear to himself than a lectureship or professorship or a department of this kind, at one of our greater institutions of learning, where large numbers of vigorous and ambitious youths are collected from all parts of the country; I do not, of course, say that all of these men would be elected to public office; in the larger cities, they perhaps would not, at least, at first; in the country, they would be very frequently chosen, and they could hardly fail to render excellent service. [Applause.]

Any man worthy of the name, leaving his country for a long residence outside its borders, feels more and more impressed with what is needed to improve it.  If I were called upon solemnly at this hour to declare my conviction as to what can best be done by men blessed with wealth in this Republic of ours, I would name this very thing to which I have now called your attention. [Applause.] It has been too long deferred; our colleges and universities have as a rule only had the means to give a general literary and scientific education, with very little instruction fitting men directly for public affairs.  But the events of the last few years show conclusively that we must now begin to prepare the natural leaders of the people for the work before them, and by something more than a little primary instruction in political economy and the elements of history in the last terms of a four years’ course. [Applause.]

The complexity of public affairs is daily becoming greater; more and more it is necessary that men be trained for them.  Not that practical men, trained practically in public affairs will not always be wanted—­practical men will always be in demand—­but we want more and more a judicious admixture of men trained in the best thought which has been developed through the ages on all the great questions of government and of society. [Applause.]