'As to the question whether the right of maintenance does not attract into this country all the bodily and mental incapables, the cripples and the old people, of the rest of the world, I can only answer that Freeland irresistibly attracts everyone who hears of the character of its institutions; and that therefore the proportion between the immigrants who are capable of working and those who are not is dependent simply upon whether such information reaches the one class more quickly and more easily than it does the other. We reject no one, and admit the cripple to our country as freely as the able-bodied worker; but it lies in the nature of things that the ablest, the most vigorous, offer themselves in larger numbers than those who are weak in body or in mind. 'From the founding of our commonwealth we have insisted upon the ability to read and write sufficiently to be able to participate in all our rights. Freedom and equality of rights assume the possession of a certain degree of knowledge, from which we _cannot_ exempt anyone. It is true we might resort to the expedient of exercising guardianship over the untaught; but to do this would be to open up to the authorities a sphere of influence which we hold to be incompatible with real freedom, and we therefore treat illiterate immigrants as strangers, or, if you will, as guests whom it is everyone's duty to assist as much as possible, and who, so far as they show themselves capable of doing anything, suffer no material disadvantage in comparison with the natives, but are not allowed to exercise any political right.' 'But how,' asked my father--'how do you arrive at a knowledge of the mental condition of your ignorant fellow-countrymen? Have you a special board for this purpose; and do no unpleasantnesses spring from such an inquisition?' 'We make no inquiry, and no board troubles itself about the knowledge of the people. At first, in order not to be overwhelmed by foreign ignorance, we took the precaution of excluding illiterates from gratuitous admission into Freeland, but for the last nineteen years we have ceased to exclude any. Everyone, without any exception, has since been free to settle gratuitously in any part whatever of Freeland. No one asks him what he knows; he is free to make full use of all our institutions, to exercise all our rights; only he must do so in the same way as we, and that is impossible to the illiterate. Whithersoever he goes--to the central bank, to any of the associations, to the polling-places--he must read and write, and as a matter of course write with understanding--must be familiar with printed and written words; in short, he must possess a certain degree of culture, from the possession of which we cannot exempt him even if we would.' 'Then,' said my father, 'your boasted equality of rights exists only for educated persons?'