HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, NECESSARY STUDIES IN FREE COUNTRIES. AN INAUGURAL ADDRESS, DELIVERED ON THE Seventeenth of February, 1858, BY FRANCIS LIEBER, LL. D., C. MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE, ETC.; - PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE NEW YORK. NEW YORK: MDCCCLVIII. 1859, June 28. H. W. Longfellow, of Cambridge. Gov 522,11,8 HARVARD WYNKOOP, HALLENBECK & THOMAS, PRINTERS, No. 113 Fulton street, New York. ADDRESS. The author, requested by the Board of Trustees to prepare a copy of his inaugural address for publication, has given the substance, and in many places his words, as originally delivered, so far as he remembered them; but, some of his friends in the Board, having advised him not to restrict himself in the written address, to the limits necessary for one that is spoken, he has availed himself of this liberty, in writing on topics so various and comprehensive, as those that legitimately belong to the branches assigned to him in this institution. The extent of this paper will sufficiently indicate this. GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES : We are again assembled to do honor to the cause of knowledge-to that sacred cause of learning, inquiry and rearing to learn and to inquire; of truth, culture, wisdom, of humanity. Whenever men are met together to reverence a great cause or to do homage to noble names, it is a solemn hour, and you have assigned a part in this solemnity to me. I stand here at your behest. No one of you expects that I should laud the sciences which form my particular pursuit, above all others. Every earnest scholar, every faithful student of any branch, is a catholic lover of all knowledge. I would rather endeavor, had I sufficient skill, to raise before you a triumphal arch in honor of the sciences which you have con fided to my teaching, with some bas-reliefs and some entablatures, commemorating victories achieved by them in the field of common progress; taking heed however that I do not fall into the error of attempting to prove "to the Spartans that Hercules was a strong man." Before I proceed to do the honorable duty of this evening, I ask your leave to express on this, the first opportunity which has offered itself, my acknowledgment for the suffrages which have placed me in the chair I now occupy. You have established a professorship of political science in the most populous and most active city in the widest commonwealth of an intensely political character; and this chair you have unanimously given to me. I thank you for your confidence. Sincere, however, as these acknowledgments are, warmer thanks are due to you, and not only my own, but I believe I am not trespassing when I venture to offer them in the name of this assemblage, for the enlargement of our studies. You have engrafted a higher and a wider course of studies on your ancient institution which in due time may expand into a real, a national university, a university of large foundation and of highest scope, as your means may increase and the public may support your endeavors. So be it. We stand in need of a national university, the highest apparatus of the highest modern civilization. We stand in need of it, not only that we may appear clad with equal dignity among the sister nations of our race, but on many grounds peculiar to ourselves. A national university in our land seems to have become one of those topics on which the public mind comes almost instinctively to a conclusion, and whose reality is not unfrequently preceded by prophetic rumor. They are whispered about; their want is felt by all; it is openly pronounced by many until wisdom and firmness gather the means and resolutely provide for the general necessity. There is at present an active movement of university reform prevailing in most countries of Europe; others have institutions of such completeness as was never known before, and we, one of the four leading nations, ought not to be without our own, a university, not national, because established by our national government; that could not well be, and if it were, surely would not be well; but I mean national in its spirit, in its work and effect, in its liberal appointments and its comprehensive basis. I speak fervently; I hope, I speak knowingly; I speak as a scholar, as an American citizen; as a man of the nineteenth century in which the stream of knowledge and of education courses deep and wide. I have perhaps a special |