POLITICAL SCIENCE IN AMERICAN STATE UNIVERSI

TIES.

BY AMOS G. WARNER.

[Read before a meeting of the Society, January 9, 1889.]

It has been said that students are apt to think too little of the amount that they do not know-to underestimate the extent of their ignorance. This is not true of students only but of mankind in general. Many have seen the ignorance of others and desired to educate them. The heads of paternal governments have desired to educate their subjects to obey. The infallible head of a world church has desired to educate all mankind to believe what he taught. The rich have desired to educate the poor to be contented and happy. The upper classes, whether political or industrial, have been anxious to educate the lower classes into the belief that "whatever is, is right." Philanthropists have sometimes been seized with an eleventh hour desire to educate posterity. And yet, however exceptional it may appear, the American people seem to have said in their "Go to, we are ignorant, let us educate ourselves."

hearts:

The conscious need of self education developed early in our history. A university was planned for Virginia before the pilgrims landed in New England, and practical steps were taken to establish one at so early a day that the tenants of its lands were swept off by an Indian massacre. Massachusetts took the practical lead, however, when her great and general court established Harvard college to fit youth "for ye university." In 1660 the colonial assembly of Virginia voted "that for the advance of learning, education of youth, supply of the ministry and promotion of piety, there be land taken upon purchases for a college and free schoole, and that there be, with as much spede as may be convenient, houseing erected thereon for the entertainment of students and schollers." It is not the purpose to follow through the development of our educational system, but merely to note the fact that wherever the American has settled new territory

he has established new colleges and universities. The ordinance of 1787 which provided for organizing the northwest territory decreed that "means of education should forever be encouraged." Another step was the act of 1863, from which a part of our own endowment comes. This act was passed while, at least for all rhetorical purposes, the guns of the confederacy were shaking the senate chamber at Washington. Andrew D. White notes this fact, and would exalt the calm and confident dignity of this act above the auctioneering by Romans of the land on which Hannibal's soldiers encamped.

So much for American confidence in higher education, and for the willingness of our national and state governments to provide it. As we turn to consider the claims of political science in the curricula of our state universities, I would speak for a moment of European experience in this matter.

In the early part of the present century Germany was recovering from a great humiliation. The armies of Napoleon had swept over her, and when she drew herself together to avenge the insult it was in a humor that must henceforth forbid a German sovereign to keep in pay, as the great Frederic had done, a French corrector of bad verses. With genuine Teutonic thoroughness the work of fortifying the national sentiment was aided by the founding and strengthening of universities. In this work of revivifying German patriotism. Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the acknowledged founder of the modern historical school, took an important part. He had been a politician before he had become an historian, and he studied the politics and even the economics of Rome that their lessons might be available in furthering German independence and German unity. Professor Maurenbrecher of Leipzig in reviewing the effects of this attempt to make the history of the past of practical service in dealing with the problems of the present says that for the most part history is not an experimental science, but in this case a chance to experiment occurred. Niebuhr, Droysen, Ranke, and others, by the study of ancient and modern history had concluded that the unity of Germany might be accomplished and most feasibly under the leadership of Prussia. Bismarck experimented and verified the conclusions of the historians.

At least four of the great modern historians, Ranke, Maurenbrecher, Freeman and Seeley, have taken for the subject of their

professional inaugurals, this relation of history to politics.

One of

the Germans mentioned satirizes those who like ancient history merely because it is ancient, and Seeley says that the only reason for studying the past is to make use of its lessons for guiding us in the present. History is, he says, the gymnasium and the arsenal of the statesman. He even goes so far as to say that the best way to understand the past is to begin by a study of the present. "No doubt," he says, "in that peaceful world of the past you escape all that is most uncomfortable in the present-the bustle, the petty detail, the slovenliness, the vulgarity, the hot discomfort, the bewildering hubbub, the humiliating spites and misconstructions, the ceaseless brawl of objurgation and recrimination, the painfulness of good men hating each other, the perplexingness of wise men flatly contradicting each other, the perpetual sight of failure or of success soon regretted, of good things turning out to have a bad side, of new sores breaking out as fast as the old ones are healed, the laboriousness and littleness of all improvement, and in general the commonness, and dullness, and uneasiness of life. We escape from all this in the past, but after all we escape from it only by an illusion." "Past history," he says, further on, "is a dogmatist, furnishing for every doubt ready made and hackneyed determinations. Present history is a Socrates, knowing nothing, but guiding others to knowledge by suggestive interrogations."

You will doubtless agree with me that Prof. Seeley, for the sake of a sharp antithesis, has somewhat overstated the case against past history; but it would have been hardly possible for him or any man to overstate the importance of the study of present history, the study of present politics and economics. A knowledge of Adam Smith or Mill is now required of all students of modern history at Oxford, and they are asked to trace the economic history of the periods that they especially investigate. At this university is Prof. Freeman, author of the much quoted saying that "history is past politics, and politics present history."

I dwell thus on the connection between history and politics because I speak primarily to an historical association, because "the studies of history and politics mutually aid and vitalize each other," because I feel that in this university the study of history needs to urge no further apology for its existence, and because a very large

share of all that is helpful and progressive in modern political economy has been secured to it by the use of historical method. We are prone to trace great influences to great men, and this, perhaps justifies Maurenbrecher in ascribing to the influence of Niebuhr and his followers not only the modern historical school, but the incentive for the development of comparative jurisprudence and historical economics.

But new and now united Germany is not the only modern nation, as we have seen, whose leaders wished that its people might be strengthened by the influences of colleges and universities. At the beginning of our own national history there stand two party chiefs, one a representative of the south, the other of the north; one a republican, the other a federalist; one the formulator of principles to which a great party still gives allegiance, the other the author of measures and policies whose influence is still powerful; one the author of the declaration of independence, the other the defender and establisher of our constitution. If Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton agreed in nothing else they at least agreed in thinking that education, and education in politics, is essential to intelligent citizenship. Hamilton was a graduate of King's (now Columbia) college, and was a prime mover in establishing the university of New York; Jefferson was from William and Mary's college and was the prime mover in establishing the university of Virginia. Many of the promoters of this institution were themselves graduates of William and Mary, which was the oldest college in the south, and the oldest, except Harvard, in the country. Besides Jefferson, it had graduated Peyton and Beverly Randolph, John Marshall, and given his commission as county surveyor to Washington.

Jefferson was especially anxious that political science should be taught in the university of Virginia, which he was instrumental in founding, and of which he was the first rector. He himself translated a text book from the French to be used for that purpose. I will not give the details of the management and curriculum of this somewhat exceptional foundation, which has been to the south "The University." A study by Wm. P. Trent of the subsequent careers of about 9,000 students who attended it up to the year 1874, the semi-cen

tennial of its founding, gives the following rather remarkable results:

These figures show what powerful influences flow from our universities, and perhaps the strong tendency to politics is the outcome of the teaching of political science.

Many seem to think that our constitution was given to this country by special inspiration. As a matter of fact it was evolved not only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity," but by careful and scholarly study of the old Greek confederacies, such as the Aetolian and Achaian leagues. Careful notes regarding the constitutions of these old confederacies were found among Washington's papers, he having obtained them from James Madison.

Washington himself supposed that in his will he had made adequate provision for the founding of a national university, and he declared that the primary object of such an institution should be the education of our youth in the science of government."

omy.

The first notably successful teacher of political science in this country was probably Francis Lieber. He went to college at Columbia, South Carolina, as professor of history, philosophy and political econThe influence the university obtained in the practical politics of the state was remarkable. In the legislature there was a distinct university party made up of young, energetic and aggressive men, who usually managed to have everything their own way. Lieber's friends took part in practical politics with a view to securing the chancellorship of the university for him. He was defeated and resigned his place, going to Columbia college, New York, to teach modern history, political science, international law, civil law and common law. That is what Oliver Wendell Holmes would call a settee of professorships.

I might go on to trace the development of this study in various institutions, to show it has gradually been separated from the chair of philosophy and joined to that of history; how Ann Arbor and other western institutions have encouraged it from the beginning; how in some