[Footnote 7: Perhaps in our country we have multiplied colleges to too great an extent, and consequently have lessened their usefulness by too great a division of the funds destined for their support. The spirit of sectarianism co-operating with the system of state governments, has produced this result. The college and university ought, to some extent, to partake of the nature of a monopoly. There should be some concentration of funds, or you will fail to obtain adequate talents for your professorships. In our country particularly, professors should be paid high, or they cannot be induced to relinquish the more brilliant prospects which the learned professions hold out to them. But the evil of too great a number of colleges and universities, is one which will correct itself in the course of time, by the ultimate failure of those not properly endowed.] But it is said by some that the state system tinges all literature with a political hue--that under this system politics becomes the great, the engrossing study of the mind--that the lighter kinds of literature and the fine arts will be neglected--that the mathematical and physical sciences will be uncultivated--in fine, that the literature of such a people will be purely utilitarian. This objection is perhaps, founded principally upon too exclusive a view of the past literary history of our own country. Up to this time there has, if I may use the phraseology of political economy, been a greater demand for political knowledge in this country than for any other species of literature. The new political condition into which we entered at the revolution--the formation of our state and federal governments--the jarring and grating almost necessarily incident to new political machinery just started into action--severely tested too as ours has been, and is still, by the inharmonious and too often selfish action of heterogeneous interests on each other--the formation of new states, and the rapid development of new interests and unforeseen powers, together with the great sparseness of our population, have all contributed to turn the public mind of this country principally to the field of politics and morals--and surely we have arrived at an eminency on these subjects not surpassed in any other country.