A despotism must stand impregnable, if at all, in the strength of its armament. But not so with a republic. It must stand in the intelligence and virtue of its citizens. It were a solecism in logic and common sense to admit the nation’s right to manumit the slave as a war measure, and equip him with the ballot as a reconstructive measure necessary to the safety of the republic, but deny at once the right and the duty of qualifying him for the duties of citizenship when an understanding of these duties is also essential to that safety. The constitutional right to use the same power, which is now invoked to qualify the voter for the duty with which the general government has charged him, has been exercised so many times in regard to less important matters that precedents are not wanting to justify this application of it, even to one who wishes to know that a thing has been done before he will believe it can be done. Whatever criticism may be made upon the use which some of the States made of their share of the $28,000,000 of money distributed from the surplus funds of the Treasury by the Act of June 23, 1836, no one can doubt that it was constitutionally done, and done by the same discretion and power which would be used in giving aid now to the States. And it may be said that the use of this fund so largely by the States at their discretion for school purposes legitimates the confident assurance that a fund now given specifically for schools would be wisely and conscientiously devoted to that object. As to the present needs look at the facts: There are in the United States 6,239,958 persons, ten years of age or over, who cannot write their names. More than three-fourths of these are found in the old slave States. More than one-half of the whole number are colored. If the general government should provide means to sustain a school for this class alone for three months in the year, at a salary for the teachers of $30 per month for a school of 30 pupils, it would require the sum of $18,719,958. Of this $14,449,579 would go into the old slave States, $9,187,922 because of colored illiterates, leaving $4,961,657 for the whites, and $4,579,439 would go to the other States for both black and white illiterates. In 1879 North Carolina raised for common schools a sum which would give $20 per annum to each school of 30 illiterates (not school children). How long it would take that State to make intelligent and safe voters of her citizens at that rate is matter for sober reflection, not alone to the politician, who remembers what the electoral vote of that State is for President, but to every citizen.