condition; (whoever saw an educated community of which anything like a large fraction were paupers and criminals?) something on which rests the claim of human freedom; for the charter of man's liberty is in his soul, not his estate. It says to the poorest child--"You are rich in this one endowment, before which all external possessions grow dim. No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity; and from that plane, mingling now in the Common School with the lowliest and the lordliest, we give you the opportunity to ascend as high as you may. We put into your hands the key of knowledge; leaving your religious convictions, with which we dare not interfere, to your chosen guides. So far as the intellectual path may lead, it is open to you.--Go free!" And when we consider the great principles which are thus practically confessed; when we consider the vast consequences which grow out of this; I think that little District School-house dilates, grows splendid, makes our hearts beat with admiration and gratitude, makes us resolve that at all events, _that_ must stand; for, indeed, it is one of the noblest symbols of the Republic--a sign and an instrument of a great people, having great power. Or, if you would behold another of these symbols, go through this city, and pause wherever you hear the rumbling of the _Printing-Press_. As I have dwelt upon the characteristics of this great power in another place, I only allude to it here as a vehicle of that _expression_ which is so essential to all genuine freedom of thought. Mere education is no evidence of this freedom. It may be made, it has been made in one of the most intelligent but despotic countries in Europe, an instrument for drilling the human mind into an absolute routine of state policy. Mere liberty of speculation is nothing, though it has the boundless firmament of abstraction for its own, so long as it is not allowed to strike the solid ground of fact or touch one organized abuse. Let us be thankful for a free-press--the electric tongue of thought, which at every stroke is felt throughout a continent, which no dictator dares to chain, and over whose issues no censor sits in judgment--or only that great censor, public opinion. Everybody is aware of its evil as well as its good--the errors, the crudities, the abominations it sends out. But we must remember that it is only the representative, the voice, of elements that actually exist in human minds and bosoms; and, surely, it is better that they should come out into the free air, and be sprinkled by the chloride of truth, than to work darkly and infectiously out of sight. It is the hidden, not the open evil that is dangerous.