UNIVERSITY ADDRESS 

L c;j

BY 
GEN. D. ·H. HILL, 
OF GEORGIA. 
DELIVERED ON COMMENCEMENT DAY, JUNE 20, 1888, BrnFORE THE RrnGrnNT8, 
FACULTY, AND STUDENTS OF THrn UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. 

AUSTIN: 
STATE PRINTING OFFICE, 
18 8 8. 
UNIVERSITY ADDRESS 

BY 
GEN. D. H. HILL, 
OF GEORGIA. 
DELIVERED ON OOMMEKOEMENT DAY, JUNE 20, 1888, BEFORE THE REGEKTS, 
FACULTY, AND STUDENTS OF Tirn UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. 

AUSTIN: 
STATE PRINTING OFFICE. 
188 8. 

UNIVERSITY ADDRESS 

BY 
GENERAL D. H. HILL, 
OF GEORGIA. 
Honorable Board of Regents, Faculty, and Students of University of Texas-Ladies and Gentlemen: The invitation of the Faculty to deliver the University Address found me in poor health and fully occupied with the duties and cares of my position. But although the long journey to this place promised discomfort to one in a low physical condition, and although my surroundings were unfavorable to the preparation of an address worthy of your great University and the mighty State to which it belongs, yet I desired from the first to accept the honorable appointment so flatteringly tendered to me. I wished to meet here, and at other places in the West, old and dear friends, whose sympathy and good will I will prize so long as life shall last. Again, I wished to see more of this great Empire State, won from despotism to freedom by a band of heroes, whose exploits have hardly a parallel, if parallel at all, in the world's history. I knew many of these illustrious men, and I regard your cities, towns, and villages, your schools of learning, your railroads, cultivated fields and graz­ing grounds, all as monuments to the valor and patriotism of these heroes, "Who builded wiser than they knew." Moreover, the Mexican war con­firmed the independence of Texas and assured its position as a State of the American U n±on. Itfell to my lot to serve in that war, from Corpus Christi to Monterey, and from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico. I feel, then, that interest in the growth, prosperity, and well-being of your mighty State which one would naturally feel who had risked for these objects life and limb, even in his humble way, and who had endured for them hunger and thirst, heat and cold, watching and weariness, and all the privations of a two years' campaign in a hostile country. I claim to be a sort of Texan by brevet, or at least a Texan by suffering, if not by sufferance. "To be sure," said the rebel Irish soldier, "I am a Southerner by birth. Didn't I starve to death ivery day for four years in the Southern Confideracy?" I remember, moreover, how true your State was in the dark days between '61 and '65 to its ideas of freedom under the Constitution. Every honorable man must honor those who held to their conscientious convictions of duty when the odds against them warned them that their conscientiousness must bring upon them loss and disadvantage, if not utter and irretrievable ruin. Bound, then, to your people by the strongest of ties, I esteem it a high 
privilege to come among you, and it is certainly a great honor that it has been considered among the possibilities that I could say anything that could be of service to this young, healthy, and vigorous University. 
I believe in State Universities. I believe that the cause of education will be better promoted by one institution of high character and scholarship than by many, very many, institutions of lower grade. Long ago, the greatest educator the South has produced, in appealing to the legislature of South Carolina for more generous aid to its State college, used a remarkable meta. phor. "One sun is better than a thousand stars." Dr. Thornwell's illustra· tion needs only to be presented to the mind to have its truth felt and acknowledged. As one sun diffuses more light than a thousand stars, so one grand University can diffuse more knowledge than a thousand schools of in ferior grade. As the planets revolve around the sun and borrow their light and lustre from him, so these schools should derive their culture and tone from the University. The great central institution of learning should be like the well adjusted clock of some grand old cathedral, by which all the time­pieces of the city are regulated. There can be no civilization without a standard of weights and measures and money values. Barbarism has always failed right there. Under the Mosaic economy God himself regulated this standard. In some countries, the linear unit (upon which all measures are ultimately based) is taken from the length of an ideal pendulum beating seconds in vacuo. Other countries take their linear unit from a portion of an arc of the meridian. All enlightened nations feel the necessity for a standard in all material things. Much more is a standard needed in educa­tional matters. The great University should fix the standard of scholarship, should designate the studies that are important, and should reject those that are not essential and especially those that are mischievous; should point out the true methods of teaching and the royal art of calling out all that is in the pupil; should put its imprimater on the text-books to be used; should impart its tone of thought, its views of government and discipline, and its processes of mental and moral culture. All these it should impart to the lesser colleges, and they in turn should direct and control the acadamies and common schools of the State. Thus, the University would prove a blessing to the log school­house as well as to the college, to the hut of the poor as well as to the man­sion of the rich. So it has been with the great universities of England for the last eight hundred years. During that long period, the planets have not more surely reflected the light of the sun than have the subordinate colleges, academies, and schools of Great Britain reflected the scholarship and intellec­tual character of Oxford and Cambridge. No one can overestimate their influence in moulding the public thought and guiding the public sentiment of Great Britain, unifying the people and making them lovers of their country-bold, free, daring and enterprising. The soldiers who climbed the heights of Abraham, in the land of ice and snow, and gave a western king­dom to the British crown; the soldiers who conquered an eastern empire under the tropic heat of the sun of Hindostan; the soldiers who wrested the 
sceptre from the hand of the conqueror of the half of Europe-these were led, commanded, and controlled by officers or statesmen who had drawn their inspiration from the classic groves of the Cam or the Cherwell. The great Earl of Chatham, the organizer of victory out of defeat, who added Canada and India to the empire upon which the sun never sets, was an alumnus of Ox­ford. His illustrious son, the younger Pitt, was an alumnus of Cambridge. The Marquis of Wellesley, the conquerer of Tippoo Sultan and the Mahratta chiefs, was a graduate of Oxford. His more celebrated brother, the Duke of Wellington, was an alumnus of Eton College. If we leave out of the gal­axy of England's glory the stars of the universities, how dark will be that sky which is now all resplendent with brilliancy: Newton, Spenser, Milton, Bacon, Dryden, Johnson, Butler, Tillotson, Gray, Young, Hooker, Raleigh, Collins, Locke, Addison, Steele, Wordsworth, Macaulay, Gladstone, etc., etc. Moreover, the influence of these universities has been felt a.s strongly in the colonies of Great Britain as among her own people at home. The leaders in the American Revolution who prepared the public mind for separation from the mother country, were educated in England, or in the American colleges modeled after the English system. In fact, it was common in the period before our Revolution for parents in Virginia and South Carolina to send their sons back to England to finish their legal and classical studies. Thus it was with the Lees, the Randolphs, the Nelsons, the Masons, the Pendle­tons, the Rutledges, the Laurenses, Pinckneys, Heywards, Draytons, Hugers, Middletons, etc., etc. Richard Henry Lee, the first man to propose in the Continental Congress separation from Great Britain, was educated in England. So was his illustrious brother, Arthur {iee. So were Thomas Lynch and Arthur Middleton, of the South Carolina delegation in Congress, and Thomas Nelson, of the Virginia delegation. John and Edward Rutledge were edu­cated in London. Wm. Henry Drayton, the first American to declare from the hustings that the colonies must become free and independent states, was from Oxford University. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the author of the celebrated sentiment, "Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute," was from Oxford University. His illustrious cousin, Charles Pinckney, the chief framer of the Constitution of the United States, was also from Oxford. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and, next to Washington, the greatest of Americans, was from William and Mary Col­lege. So were his colleagues, George Wythe, Carter Braxton, Benjamin Harrison, and Peyton Randolph, the president of the first Continental Con­gress. Harvard College gave to that august body John Adams and Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry, Robert Treat Paine, William Wil­liams, William Hooper, and James Otis. Yale gave Lyman Hall, Philip Liv­ingston, Lewis Morris, and Oliver Wolcott. One of the very most useful and practical men in that first Continental Congress was John Witherspoon, of the University of Edinburgh. Another patriot in that body was James Wilson, of St. Andrews College. Princeton College gave Benjamin Rush, Joseph Hewes, and Richard Stockton, signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
and James Madison, who was so largely instrumental in procuring the adop­tion of the Constitution, through his letters in the Federalist, as he had led all his countrymen in being the first to move that a convention be held for the purpose of framing a constitution. Alexander Hamilton, so active and so powerful in the Constitutional Convention, was of Kings College, New York. So was Robert Livingston, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. William Paca and Francis Hopkinson, also signers of the Declaration, were from the University of Pennsylvania. 
It is true, I think, that nearly all the framers of the Constitution were col­lege-bred men. There never was a time in the better days of the Republic when such men did not wield a tremendous influence in the councils of the nation and over the minds and hearts of their countrymen. It is true that in this age of materialism, men of more gold than brains, and more brass than gold, have pushed themselves to the front by thrusting decency to one side and scholarship to the other side. But the American people are not proud of thef;e men, and they cannot see that the elevation of conscienceless boors has added to the well being of the Republic. Still, even in this age of degeneracy, we are not left without a witness that knowledge is power. West Point has demonstrated the value of military training, the great leaders on both sides in the civil war having been educated on the banks of the Hudson. 
Prussia, with its twenty universities, its 1700 professors and tutors, and its 17,000 pupils, is the best educated country in Europe, and it is the most powerful. The well taught, well trained, well drilled, and well disciplined Prussian soldiers easily conquered the Austrians in 1866 and the French in 1870-71. The grand characteristics of the Prussian military system will bring success in peace as well as in war, viz. : thorough training, devotion to duty, patience in difficulty, and perseverance therein to the end. Exercise these qualities, my young friends, and you will achieve victories more glo· rious than those of Sadowa and Sedan. The laurels of the conqueror are foul with blood. The laurels of the victor over self and self-indulgence are clean and sweet. The triumphs of the warrior are due to the valor of his troops as well as to his own skill. The triumphs of the victor over selfish­ness are due to the grace of God and to his own personal exertions. The success of the military leader may be a curse to mankind. The success of the moral hero must always be a blessing to himself and the world. In the forefront of earth's noblest and grandest characters are to be placed those who have subdued their own evil passions and evil appetites, and have lived for God and for country. You may never be able, my young friends, to write your names on the scroll of fame alongside of Lee and Jackson, but you can make yourselves of kindred nature and character by imitating their simple trust in God, their unswerving honesty of purpose, their unwavering fidelity to duty, their lofty manliness, their modesty in time of triumph and their calmness in time of disaster, their kindness, gentleness, and courtesy. 
The most marked characteristics of these two illustrious Southerners, next 
to their quiet Christian faith, was their honesty in thought, word, and deed. With these concrete examples before me, I have selected as the subject of my address "Honesty;" honesty in private life and private business; hon­esty in Church and State; honesty in all things-in thought, feeling. and action. You hear this called pre-eminently a material age-an age of won· derful physical development. That is true; but it is also pre-eminently an age of sham and shoddy, of maudlin sentiment and nauseous gush, of pre­tentious philanthrophy and shallow sophistry, of chasing after lying vanities, and despising eternal truths. The things which this materialistic age longs for, strives for, fights for, sins for, and dies for, are money, power, and position-all real and substantial things; but the fraudulent methods to gain them are disguised as energy, thrift, and patriotism, and the winning of them is through deceit, hypocrisy, and dishonesty. Sometimes with less cant and more slang the methods of cheating are called "push and snap,'' meaning truly pushing honest people to the wall, and snapping elastic con­sciences stretched too far. As I understand it, this progress in materialism, by measuring everything by a money-standard, is largely responsible for the swindling in trade and commerce, the shams in religion, and the trickery in politics. When covetousness becomes idolatry, then money-worship, like other idolatrous worship, will have masquerading priests, lying oracles, and hypocritical devotees. " Like religion, like priests, like people." The life­blood of false religion is its falsity, -and its altars will be compassed by deceit­ful devotees. Mammon, "the least erected spirit that fell from Heaven," IDl.lSt always have the most false, degraded, and beastly followers. The eyes of their chief "even in Heaven were always downward bent, admiring more the riches of Heaven's pavement--trodden gold-than aught divine or holy, else.enjoyed in vision beatific." So the worship of the Mammonites must ever be low and groveling, while pretending to be high and lifted up. That the charge is not captious is proved, alas, not only by private but by public events, which have been a mortification to all true Americans of all parties. The government itself has been sometimes dishonored in its high places by transactions of flagrant impropriety, prompted by this greed for wealth, which never occurred, and could not have occurred, in the purer age of the Federation. 
My young countrymen, you came of a high and noble ancestry upon whom was no stain of dishonor. Do not blush for them, but take care that you do not cast reproach upon their pure names. It was a grievous sin un­der the Mosaic economy to remove the old landmarks. Take care that you do not remove the boundaries of iron and granite erected by your fathers and set up rotten posts in their stead. 
There is a maxim, hoary with time, which says "Honesty is the best policy." If by best policy is meant most gai'l/,ful policy in money matters, the Wall Street gamblers and the stock watering gentry and others of that stripe would laugh at the maxim as a capital joke. I suppose that few men in our country have amassed colossal fortunes by clean, honest methods. 
Nevertheless, the maxim has the impress of the ages upon it, and I hope to be able in. the discussion, under the the three-fold division indicated, to show in what sense it is true that "Honesty is the best policy." 
I . HONESTY IN THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF LIFE. 
I knew a young man who could have mastered his blackboard exercises by honest study in the time which he spent in writing out mathematical formuloo on slips of paper and the cuffs of his shirt sleeves to be used in a dis­honest manner at recitation. He failed at the examination at the end of the Semester, because he could not carry with him to this ordeal all those slips of paper and shirt sleeve cuffs. As he sadly went home it may have occurred to him that dishonesty was the worst policy, and he may have started out on a more honorable career. But supposse he had succeeded, as other boys have done, in smuggling a text-book into the examination hall and had used it in violation of his pledge, and had gotten through safely. Well, in that case success was won by lying and cheating. What must be the effect of this disreputable achievement at the very outset of life? Will it not encourage him to enter upon a career of fraud and falsehood? Has his successful dishonesty been the best or the worst policy for him? Let us follow him farther. Suppose he becomes after a time the head of a profita­ble business and of an interesting family. He has either to conceal or make known to his wife and children his disreputable methods of conducting his affairs. In the case of concealment his whole life must be a lie in the bosom of his family. He is a liar, cheat, and hypocrite, at home as well as abroad. All those sweet confidences that make the fireside so delightful are denied to this poor sham and sharper. That blessed, candid, open trustfulness that makes many an humble home so attractive, is unknown to the imposter in the luxurious mansion. But let us take the second view-that the swindler lets his children know of his business tricks. Then they will either despise him as a knave or they will approve and imitate his example. In the latter cBBe it is hardly probable that all his sons will be as successful as he in evading the meshes of the law, and some of them may at last put on striped clothing and wear cropped hair. But grant that down to the third and fourth gen­erations all escape detection, still heredity, training, and example have made them all dishonest in heart and practice. The cheating school boy has be­come the progenitor of a race of rogues. Has this man found dishonesty to be the best or the worst policy? What are riches and honors in comparison with a clear conscience, honest dealing with all mankind, and the rearing of an honorable and high-toned family? The wise man has said, "The glory of children are their fathers." But what glory can children have in the career of a thievish ancestor? "A good name," says the same inspired writer, "is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold." Two things seem clearly to be intimated by the greatest of philoso­phers; first, that the good name and the great riches do not often go to­gether; second, that. hatred and strife, and not loving favor, accompany the acquisition or silver and gold. The Psalmist gives us teaching on the same line of thought: "A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked." 
I have given you, my young friends, a picture drawn from life, and not a fancy sketch. Every man who has reached to middle life has noticed how rapidly a youth will go down in moral principle who has placed himself upon an inclined plane rather than upon a solid basis of rectitude. Evil habits in the moral world, like the force of gravity in the physical world, drag down to the dirt with ever increasing velocity. It is idle to tell one who has had experience in the world that the young man after sowing a few wild oats will become an honorable and useful member of society. The great Apostle to the Gentiles thought very differently: "Be not deceived," said he; «God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." Na· ture's laws are fixed and immutable. They may be suspended or set aside by a miracle, but only a miracle can do it. A sowing of wheat will produce a crop of wheat; a sowing of wild oats, without the intervention of the mir­acle, will produce a crop of wild oats. A sowing of honor will assuredly be followed by a harvest of honor; a sowing of dishonor will just as certainly be followed by a harvest of shame. 
The poet Pope has wisely said: "Just as the twig is bent the tree 's inclined." An old proverb says, "The child is father to the man." Young men, sow seeds of truth, honesty, manliness, and devotion to duty; in due time there will be an abundant harvest of honorable actions, whether these actions be distinguished or otherwise. Young ladies, let the morning of your days be marked by modesty, propriety, purity of heart, and purity of speech; then you will be recognized as true ladies and ornaments of soci­ety; the evening of your lives will be all glorious with the respect, love, and tenderness of all who know you. 
II. HONESTY IN CHURCH. 
We hold that it is the undoubted right of every man in our country to unite himself to the church or denomination of his choice, whether it be Protestant or Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or what not; and he has a right to be protected in his faith so long as he does not interfere with the civil and religious privileges of others. If there is one thing clearer than another, it is that the Great Creator delights in diversity in uniformity. Of the countless billions of leaves in the forest, all modeled after the same plan, there is not one exactly alike another one. Of the in­numerable trillions of spires of grass beneath our feet, who can find two indentical in all respects? The infinite molecules of dust are all different. Look above and behold the planets and stars that shine and sparkle in the immeasurable depths of space : the size, density, inclination of axis, extent of orbit, time of revolution, etc., etc., of not one single heavenly body corre­spond precisely with those of another body. The laws which bind together the minutest particles of matter as well as the vastest suns in the boundless universe of God, are few, simple, and uniform; but the modifications of shapes and forms under them are so immense that they can be counted only by the awful Being who made them. Above us, below us, and all around us are infinite dissimilitudes in material organizations. But we have every reason to believe that the dissimilitudes in mental operations constitute a still greater infinity, if we can conceive that one infinity is greater than another. Yet, not­withstanding the fact that the Almighty Creator has made these infinite dif­ferences in mind and matter, man in his folly and wickedness has tried to bring the whole human race to the same way of thinking, feeling, and acting. Toga.in this end the intolerant have used fire and sword, the headsman's axe and the hangman's cord, the rack, the thumb-screw, and every instrument of torture that Satan could devise. I need only refer to the ten persecutions of the early Christians by the brutal emperors of Rome, and to the atrocities of Charles V, Philip II, the Tudors and the Stuarts. After he had resigned his crown and retired to the convent of St. Yuste, Charles V employed him­self in watch-making; and failing to make two watches keep exactly the same time, he exclaimed : "Behold, not two watches can I make to agree with each other; and yet, fool that I was, I thought to govern, in the same way, so many nations, living under different skies, in different climes, and speak­ing different languages." Yes, he was a fool to attempt to make the running of that machinery uniform which God himself bad made multifarious. It is a perfect proof of the trickery of conscience and of the Bible truth, "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light," when we see nominal Christians so horribly cruel to their fellow-creatures, although the Founder of our blessed religion emphatically rebuked persecution in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, and in the whole scope and spirit of His teaching. The persecutor assumes that he is right and that his victim is wrong, and thus self-conceit and self-righteousness make hirn intolerant. Again, the per­secutor assumes that he is zealous for the glory of God, and, Jehu like, he calls upon us to see his "zeal for the Lord," when he is simply gratifying his hatred, malice, and uncharitableness. "Great censoriousness is great hypoc­risy," was the wise saying of a great and good man. The censorious reaches the worst and most incurable stage of hypocrisy, namely, self-deception. Alva and Laud believed that they were doing God-service when they were persecuting the saints of the Most High, and they died in the odor of sanctity. The modern persecutor, whether Catholic or Potestant, church­man or dissenter, cannot use instruments of torture to coerce to his way of thinking all who differ from him in opinion. He employs instead an envenomed tongue and a poisoned pen to revile all who do not accept his dicta and his dogmas. The latest phase of intolerance appears under the disguise of Liberalism and Broad-churchism. It is liberal to all who hold to falsehood in unrighteousness. It is illiberal to all who hold to those precious 
truths taught by Moses and the prophets, Jesus and his disciples. It is lib­eral to maudlin sentiment and illiberal to real philanthrophy. It is liberal to the sickly humanitarianism, which gushes lovingly over the criminal and condones his crime. It is illiberal to all the friends of justice, law, and order. It is liberal to every pestilent theory that would disrupt society. It is illib­eral to all the conservative forces that hold communities together. It is broad-church enough to give the right hand of fellowship to the notorious infidel lecturer and to hail him as an apostle of truth! It is narrow-church enough to put out of the synagogue all who cling to the precious truths which their mothers and fathers loved so well. It is broad-church enough to embrace all the sensuous idolatries, all the gross superstitions, and all the coarse bestialities of the globe. It is narrow-church enough to put the ban upon the most cherished doctrines of the purest disciples of the Savior of mankind. It has kind and loving words for Brahmins, Buddhists, Sintoists, and Mohammedans. It has sneers and contempt for the martyrs of ortho­doxy and the martyrs of liberty. These illiberal liberals, these broad-church narrow-church sectaries, demand that all denominations shall give up their distinctive creeds and subscribe to the act of uniformity established by the sectaries with all its heterogenous elements of confusion. These fanatical zealots of liberalism are trying to bring about that unity of faith which per­secuting emperors, kings, and prelates have failed to effect with all their power and cruelty. Every instinct of nature and liberty rises up against a coercion to oneness of belief. But these persecuting liberals talk lovingly of the great heart of humanity and the brotherhood of man, and they hope that through their whimsical vagaries and heterogeneous uniformities to make all denominations give up their peculiar tenets and enter into the broad-church of heathenism, infidelity, and conglomeration. This hybrid religion of the pre­tended philanthropists is very pious withal, and condescendingly accepts the cardinal truths of Christianity as embryo truths not yet fully developed-pro­toplasm, to be moulded into beautiful form under their plastic fingers! But this ring-streaked and striped monstrosity is like that other hybrid mon­strosity which the eloquent Macaulay has described. These illiberal liberals "bow the knee to Christianity and spit upon it; they cry 'Hail,' and smite her on the cheek. They put a sceptre in her hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns; they cover with royal purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted upon her. They inscribe mag­nificent titles over the cross on which they have left her to perish in igno­miny and shame." 
I will drop the Broad-church mongrel with two simple remarks: 1st. He is no man at all who, other things being equal, does not ally him­self with that denomination which is nearest to his belief and his tastes. 
2nd. He is no man at all who, when he has formed an alliance with the church of his choice, does not give it all honor and allegiance. If he should ever become convinced that it is a church of error, then he is bound to leave it before assailing its people and its doctrines. Now you all know that these Broad-church men claim that they have a right to be not merely private mem­bers but salaried officers of a church whose faith they repudiate and whose foundations they seek to undermine. The priests, prophets, and would be kings of the new dispensation, are shams and humbugs, and their followers are shams and humbugs, unless indeed their mental condition makes them irresponsible agents. The whole movement is dishonest, and dishonesty is the worst policy. I can conceive of no more deplorable a condition than that of living a lie and teaching a lie. 
III. DISHONESTY IN ST.ATE. 
Between the organization of the government in 1789 and the civil war in 1861 no Southern Senator or Representative in Congress, no Southern Presi­dent or Vice President, no Southern Cabinet Officer or Foreign Minister, no Southern whatever holding an official position under the United States Gov­ernment, was ever accused of peculation or putting himself or his vote for sale. With shame-facedness we must admit that we can not thus speak of all South­ern officials of the "New South," who have been apt to learn. During this same long period of seventy-two years no State officer at the South was ever accused of official dishonesty. Since then how many State treasurers, bank officers, and holders of trust funds have been faithless to their obligations of honor ? The greed for quick gains has polluted our once pure people. The Hebrew Philosopher said, "He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye." His eye is evil toward the property of others, and the covetous desire follows the evil look. The schemes of the covetous are known as monopolies, combina­tions, corners, rings, syndicates, trusts, pools, etc. Queen Elizabeth said, "Monopoly is the fairest flower in my garden." By monopoly she meant the privilege given to some flatterer to have the sole right to deal in a particular article. The monopolist, having no competition, puts the highest price upon that thing to the distress and injury of the people. But the stout country squires forced even her imperious majesty to give up granting monopolies, and to cast away her "fairest flower," and to become as faded and withered as she was herself when her courtiers pronounced her the most beautiful and lovely woman in Christendom. 
Combinations are the same as monopolies, differing only in this, that com· binations are made by capitalists and are not the gift of the government. The object is the same in both-to force certain lines of business or certain pro­ducts to the highest point for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Corner is a term invented by Honorable James Fisk, of New York, by which Honorable James meant that he had bought up all of a certain article for sale and put it in his own corner, where he would deal it out at his own prices. After Honorable James had been murdered by Stokes (who made a corner on him), a gentleman of Charlotte, N. C., called up the alleged ghost of Honorable James before the spiritualist Foster. 
I have heard the Charlotte gentleman tell of his interview with the ghost. 
Charlotte gentleman-Are you happy? 
Ghost--Not very. 
Charlotte gentleman--What is your present employment ? 
Ghost-I am making a corner on sulphur! 
In this case the ruling passion is not merely strong in death, but seems to be equally strong after death. Honorable James once made a corner upon all the coal that came into New York. The suffering among the poor that winter was dreadful in the extreme, but what cared the owner of the corner? A ring is a close corporation in which a definite number of individuals enter for the purpose of giving fictitious values to the business or the products con­trolled by the ring. The monopoly and the corner may be confined to one person. The combination usually takes in all who choose to enter it. The ring is prearranged. It has its symbolic meaning as well as the marriage ring, and signifies the union of craft and roguery. 
Recently a classic name-Syndicate-has been adopted from the Greek. We all know that these syndicate gentry are fine Greek scholars. The least educated of them can tell you that the Spartan boys of Greece were trained to steal on the sly, were patted on the back when the theft was not detected, and were flogged severely when it was detected. The classic word means to declare or judge with justice, and the honest gentlemen of the syndicate will tell you that justice, like charity, must begin at home, and it is certain that they are never unjust to their own interest. The Trust is a good, honest Saxon word. By it we understand that certain capitalists engaged in a cer­tain industry force their less wealthy rivals in business to sell out to them at the lowest figures. If they fail to buy out their poorer competitors they ruin them, and then having no opposition they demand of the public the highest price that the market will bear. These gentlemen of the trust can always be trusted to put in the neatest possible job for swindling their competitors and for benefiting themselves. 
The Pool is a name given to another association of plundering capital. As a fountain is pure and clean, so the name implies pure and clean methods of-roguery. In a moment of pious gush, the monopolists may have thought of the Pool of Bethesda, Pool of Mercy, and Pool of Siloam, Pool of Rest. The monopolists will show to their victims the mercy that the wolf shows to the lamb, and by stripping these victims of all their resources will give them all needed rest from anxiety about the disposal of their surplus funds. It is possible, however, that the word Pool was suggested to the Poolites by the necessity for having a big fountain at hand for the purpose of watering stock. It is notorious that some of the largest fortunes in America have been made by the watering process. 
It is needless to say that the golden rule of our Saviour condemns all and singular every one and each one of these wicked devices for growing s,ud­denly rich at the expense of honor, honesty, truth, and right. All these un­holy contrivances feed the flames of .strikes, labor organizations, socialism, communism, and anarchy. In due course of time the· seeeds of greed and selfishness sown by the rich will bring forth an abundant harvest of ruin, misery, bloodshed, and death. It is the combinations of capital against labor that make the combinations of labor against capital. As in the days of the Prophet Amos, more than 2600 years ago, so now. The covetous "sell the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes. They pant after the dust an the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek" Was there ever such a terrible arraignment of the covetous? They not only covet the land upon which the hut of the poor is placed, but also the very dust of the earth which the sweat of labor has gathered upon his brow. But retribution will surely come in some shape, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. "Forasmuch, therefore, as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat, ye have builded houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them." 
Rev. Mr. Beecher once said that in twenty-five years he had seen three generations of Wall Street buried. Rev. Mr. Talmage tells us that ninety per cent of the speculators there fail eventually in their business. If the other ten per cent do not have broken health and shattered nerves, they have what is infinitely worse, seared consciences and hardened hearts. 
Surely, dishonesty is the worst policy for the individual and for the Re­public. 
Time does not permit me to speak of that special form of dishonesty which may be called the dishonesty of demagoguery, and which De Tocqueville a.nd Macaulay thought would eventually subvert the liberties of the American people. Demagoguery is the effort to conciliate power, and to be on the strong side. The demagogue in a republic would be a sycophant under a despotism. In the one case he flatters the people, because the people are the source of all power. In the other case he flatters the tyrant, because the tyrant reigns as an absolute sovereign, and the issues of life and death are with him. The man who, in the United States, is always talking of his love for the dear people, would in Russia praise the Czar for his mercifulness, and would in Constantinople extol the purity and enlightenment of the sensual and ignorant Sultan. 
I have alluded incidentally to the opposition to State Universities. Some of this comes under the plea of zeal for the public schools. Doubtless many are honest in their clamors ag11>inst State Universities, but I know certainly that many are demagogues pure and simple. They are dishonest, and dis­honesty is the worst possible policy. The best friends of the common schools are those who want to see a high standard of excellence in the Univer­sity, in order that there may be a high standard of excellence in the common schools. The true friends of the latter know that they must have something above and beyond them to which they can look, else they will go downwards and not upwards, backward and not forward. To him who is born and reared in a low, flat country, every hillock is a mountain. But the practiced eye of the native mountaineer is satisfied with nothing less than Alpine heights. Let the University of each State have an exalted standard of scholarship. Then every college, academy, and school in the State will have an exalted standard. But if you degrade your chief school of learning you will drag down with it all the subordinate schools in the State. Therefore, the best friend of these schools is the best friend of the University. He who wants the planets to shine with the most lustre, wants the sun to be freest of spots. If the central luminary of learning is all glorious with the splendor of science and literature, every planet that revolves around it will shine with some of its borrowed brilliancy. Make the central orb rayless and dark, the satellites will share in its gloom and darkness. 
There is one other point worthy of the serious consideration of your legis­lators. There can be no State greatness, as such, without State pride, and there can be no State pride without unity of thought and sentiment, and such unity is impossible without some grand intellectual centre to which the youths of the State can go, as the Hebrew tribes went up to Jerusalem. To old William and Mary, and to the University of Virginia, that wonderful holding together is due which has contributed so largely to make the "Mother of States and Statesmen" what she has been and is to-day. With­out that State pride Virginia never could have produced that grand line of heroes, statesmen, theologians, scholars and gentlemen, and that still grander line of noble women. I noticed while in the University of Arkansas, that while four-fifths of our students lived in that State, the register showed that birthplaces of the whole number were in twenty States. At the same time more than three-fourths of the members of the legislature were not native­born citizens. I suppose that you have a still more mixed population in Texas. Surely there ought to be some process for welding these heteroge­neous elements into one compact and united whole. 
Yours is the great Empire State of the Union, with an area of 265, 780 square miles-an area equal to that of the original thirteen States, exclusive of Georgia, and almost six times as large as the powerful State of New York. Texas is the fifth of all the States in the production of corn, the third in the production of cotton, and by all odds the first in the production of the big­gest Democratic majority, amounting to 131,978, which seems to me to be a pretty big slice of the solid South. Yours is the richest of all the cotton States, with a vastly larger school fund than any of them. You might, could, would, and should have a bigger, richer, and more scholarly University than your sister States of the South can afford to establish. Your State is rich in agricultural resources, rich in its wonderful variety of climate, rich in its forests and boundless prairies, rich in brave men and fair women, rich in every blessing that God gives to the most favored of the human race. The increase of population in your State is just marvelous. Under the new ap­portionment of Representatives after the census of 1880, three States, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, lost each one electoral vote in the presidential election of 1884. Thirteen States stood still and neither gained nor lost in 
electoral power. Fourteen gained each one vote, viz., Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginie., Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Six States gained each two electoral votes, viz., South Carolina, California, Iowa, Nebraska, Michigan, and Minnesota. One State, Kansas, gained four elec­toral votes. One, Texas, gained five votes, and went to the head of the class. My countrymen, may your effort be to make your State first also in every genuine Christian work, first in every real intellectual movement, first in every legitimate industrial pursuit, first in every grand and noble enterprise. Strive to make your University the intellectual centre of the State, exerting a central force in binding a diverse population into oneness of thought and feeling. Strive to make your subordinate colleges and schools auxiliary forces, compacting and uniting the whole people in like culture and refinement, with the same assured faith and hope in your high and glorious destiny.