There is yet another view of this question, that has a far higher significance. We do not understand, as it seems to me, the real greatness of our institutions when we look simply at the forms under which we hold our liberties. It consists not in these, but in the magnificent possibilities that underlie these forms as their fundamental supports and conditions. In these we have the true paternity and spring of our institutions; and these, beyond a question, are the gift of our founders. We see this, first of all, in the fixed relation between freedom and intelligence, and the remarkable care they had of popular education. It was not their plan to raise up a body of republicans. But they believed in mind as in God. Their religion was the choice of mind. The gospel they preached must have minds to hear it; and hence the solemn care they had, even from the first day of their settlement, of the education of every child. And, as God would have it, the children whom they trained up for pillars in the church turned out also to be more than tools of power. They grew up into magistrates, leaders of the people, debaters of right and of law, statesmen, generals, and signers of declarations for liberty. Such a mass of capacity had never been seen before in so small a body of men. And this is the first condition of liberty--the Condensation of Power. For liberty is not the license of an hour; it is not the butchery of a royal house, or the passion that rages behind a barricade, or the caps that are swung or the _vivas_ shouted at the installing of a liberator. But it is the compact, impenetrable matter of much manhood, the compressed energy of good sense and public reason, having power to see before and after and measure action by counsel--this it is that walls about the strength and liberty of a people. To be free is not to fly abroad as the owls of the night when they take the freedom of the air, but it is to settle and build and be strong--a commonwealth as much better compacted in the terms of reason, as it casts off more of the restraints of force.