``First: Down to a comparatively recent period every high school, college, and university in the Northern States has been a center of Republican ideas: no one will gainsay this for a moment. But recently there has come a change. During nearly twenty years it has been my duty to nominate to the trustees of Cornell University candidates for various positions in its faculty; the fundamental charter of the institution absolutely forbids any consideration, in such cases, of the party or sect to which any candidate belongs, and I have always faithfully carried out that injunction, never, in any one of the multitude of nominations that I have made, allowing the question of politics to enter in the slightest degree. But still it has happened that, almost without exception, the candidates have proved to be Republicans, and this to such an extent that at times I have regretted it; for the university has been obliged frequently to ask for legislation from a Democratic legislature, and I have always feared that this large preponderance of Republican professors would be brought up against us as an evidence that we were not true to the principles of our charter. As a matter of fact, down to two or three years since, there were, as I casually learned, out of a faculty of about fifty members, not over eight or ten Democrats. But during these recent years all this has been changed, and at the State election, when Judge Folger was defeated for the governorship, I found to my surprise that, almost without exception, my colleagues in the faculty had voted the Democratic ticket; so far as I could learn, but three besides myself had voted for the Republican candidate.'' President Harrison immediately said: ``Mr. White, was that not chiefly due to the free- trade tendencies of college-men?'' I answered: ``No, Mr. President; the great majority of these men who voted with the Democrats were protectionists, and you will yourself see that they must have been so if they had continued to vote for the Republican ticket down to that election. All that I hear leads me to the conviction that the real cause is disappointment at the delay of the Republican party in making good its promises to improve the public service. In this question the faculties of our colleges and universities, especially in the Eastern, Middle, and Northern States, take a deep interest. In fact, it is with them the question of all questions; and I think this is one of the things which, at that election in New York, caused the most overwhelming defeat that a candidate for governor had ever experienced.'' To this the President listened attentively, and I then said: ``Mr. President, my second point is this: The State of New York is, of course, of immense importance to the Republican party, and it has been carried in recent years by a majority of a few hundred votes. There are more than fourteen thousand school districts in the State, and in