Discipline is every thing. Without it a man is but a fair model in wood, which by it is turned to an engine of iron, and by opportunity furnished with water and fire to impel it on a resistless course through the world. And a man must be governed by others before he will govern himself. The silliness about _liberty_ which is sometimes obtruded into discussions of this subject, is fit for very young children and very old women. There is no desirable liberty but in obedience. The cant about it sometimes illustrates only a pitiable feebleness of intellect, but it more frequently discloses some kind or degree of wilful licentiousness. The "voluntary system" does very well in the churches. It will not do at all in the colleges. St. Paul is always found even with the wisdom of the age in which he is quoted, and he tells us that a youth "differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors." This is the true philosophy. The "sovereign" people who disregard law, and exult when it is outraged at the cost of an unpopular party, have not learned what is necessary to freedom; they are not fit for it; they will destroy its fairest fabrics, if the state does not prepare its children by a thorough discipline for their inheritance. The _way_ is by free schools and free colleges, supported by public taxes. Sects and parties may have as many seminaries as they choose, and with rules of study and conduct so easily to be complied with, and administrations so lax, that the most contemptible idler or the most independent and self-willed simpleton shall see in them nothing to conflict with his habit or temper; but the graduates of these seminaries will not ascend the pinnacles of fame nor direct the affairs of nations: such affairs will be left for those who have learned, with their arithmetic, the self-denial, reverence and obedience, which are the conditions of the application of addition and division in the high mathematics. In a free college (and the New-York Free Academy is, in all respects, more justly to be considered a college than are most of the schools which confer academical "honors"), in a free college, of which the professors are responsible only to a judicious board of directors, examinations for admissions and for advancements will be rigid and impartial, the administration will be vigilant and firm, the reckless who will not and the imbecile who cannot acquire a good education, will be dismissed for more congenial pursuits, the rich and the poor will be upon an equality, and only desert will be honorably distinguished.