Is the course pursued by Prussia to be regarded as a mere incident in history, or may it serve as an example and model for us? Prussia is a monarchy, clothed with some constitutional forms but at bottom a state where the personal will of the sovereign has always made, and continues to make, itself felt in the final instance. We are a republic, or rather a cluster of republics under an imperfectly centralized national government. It is evident that the agencies and mode of reform with us must differ from those that have been employed in Prussia and in the rest of Germany. But it does not follow that the reform itself is impossible. What has elsewhere sprung from the autocratic will of a single man and his cabinet may be effected here through that other force, equally great and perhaps more pervasive, to which we give the vague name of "popular opinion." We know that popular opinion in our country is irresistible. It makes everything bend to it. It broke up the Tweed Ring, seemingly impregnable, in a single campaign. But this popular opinion is not a natural product: it is the work of a few men who devote themselves to awakening the sense of right and wrong and guiding the understanding of their fellows. But for popular leaders like Mr. O'Conor and Governor Tilden, the late Tweed Ring might be in power at this day. Education is not so different from politics but that we can regard it as subject to similar laws of cause and effect. Our present common-school system is an off-spring of popular opinion, as that opinion was created and led to action by a few men. And whether our common schools are to stand or fall is again becoming a question of the day, and will be decided according as popular opinion may be swayed by a few zealous friends or enemies. Our colleges, it may be said, do not occupy the same relation to the state that our schools do. They are nearly all private corporations, enjoying vested rights which the state is powerless to touch. Undoubtedly true, but it is no less true that what cannot be done directly may be done indirectly. The state need not make so much as the attempt to lay hands upon college property or to interfere with college studies. It has only to say, "I, the state, exact such and such qualifications of all who seek to practice law or medicine within my limits or to become my officeholders. I establish my own free colleges and schools of law and medicine, and I proceed to tax all others at their full valuation." There is not a college in the country, not even Harvard, that could compete upon such terms. The state need not even express its sovereign will so precisely. It can content itself with establishing a university of its own, and facilitating the direct influence of this university over the public and private schools. We see the operations of such a system very plainly in Michigan. Not only does the university at Ann Arbor overshadow completely the private colleges, but the "union schools,"