ILLUSTRIOUS COUNSELLORS and SENATORS of Pennsylvania[16]! I anticipate your candid reception of this feeble effort to increase the quantity of virtue in our republic. It is not my business to remind you of the immense resources for greatness, which nature and Providence have bestowed upon our state. Every advantage which France has derived from being placed in the centre of Europe, and which Britain has derived from her mixture of nations, Pennsylvania has opened to her. But my business, at present, is to suggest the means of promoting the happiness, not the greatness, of the state. For this purpose, it is absolutely necessary that our government, which unites into one, all the minds of the state, should possess, in an eminent degree, not only the understanding, the passions, and the will, but, above all, the moral faculty and the conscience of an individual. Nothing can be politically right, that is morally wrong; and no necessity can ever sanctify a law, that is contrary to equity. VIRTUE is the soul of a republic. To promote this, laws for the suppression of vice and immorality will be as ineffectual, as the increase and enlargement of jails. There is but one method of preventing crimes, and of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is, by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state, by means of proper modes and places of education, and this can be done effectually only by the interference and aid of the legislature. I am so deeply impressed with the truth of this opinion, that were this evening to be the last of my life, I would not only say to the asylum of my ancestors, and my beloved native country, with the patriot of Venice, "Esto perpetua," but I would add, as the last proof of my affection for her, my parting advice to the guardians of her liberties, "To establish and support PUBLIC SCHOOLS, in every part of the state." [16] The president, and supreme executive council, and the members of the general assembly of Pennsylvania, attended the delivery of the oration, in the hall of the university, by invitation from the Philosophical Society. AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES AND CURE OF THE _PULMONARY CONSUMPTION_. In an essay, entitled "Thoughts on the Pulmonary Consumption[17]," I attempted to show that this disease was the effect of causes which induced general debility, and that the only hope of discovering a cure for it should be directed to such remedies as act upon the whole system. In the following inquiry, I shall endeavour to establish the truth of each of those opinions, by a detail of facts and reasonings, at which I only hinted in my former essay. [17] Vol. I. p. 199. The method I have chosen for this purpose, is to deliver, and afterwards to support, a few general propositions.