One
does not need to travel very far from this position to reach the
conclusion that there is probably no way in which we could strike so
deadly a blow at the happiness and progress of the United States as
by sweeping away, by some process of proscription kept up during a
few generations, the graduates of the principal colleges. In no
other way could we make so great a drain on the reserved force of
character, ambition, and mental culture which constitutes so large a
portion of the national vitality. They would not be missed at the
polls, it is true, and if they were to run a candidate for the
Presidency to-morrow their vote would excite great merriment among
the politicians; but if they were got rid of regularly for forty or
fifty years in the manner we have suggested, and nothing came in
from the outside to supply their places, the politicians would
somehow find that they themselves had less public money to vote or
steal, less national aspiration to trade upon, less national force
to direct, less national dignity to maintain or lose, and that, in
fact, by some mysterious process, they were getting to be of no more
account in the world than their fellows in Guatemala or Costa Rica.
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