A PLEA FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.

IT is quite fashionable for Harvard men to be somewhat boastful of the various advantages and superiorities of their Alma Mater. This boasting is harmless enough, but it would be well for the men who indulge in it to devote themselves to the present; for, should they look into the past records of the College, they will find many things which they would prefer to have blotted out. They would find, for instance, among the recipients of the highest degrees which the College confers, after such names as Archbishop Whately and J. S. Mill, the name of U. S. Grant, - a record which few men certainly would not desire to have expunged from the Triennial Catalogue. It is a never-ceasing source of wonder what could have actuated the Faculty to disgrace the fair name of the College by giving President Grant a degree. Perhaps they expected that the Administration would return the compliment, and make one of our Professors a Brevet Brigadier-General. If they had any such hopes, they were sadly disappointed; the Administration did not live up to the bargain; the President, if he had chosen to, might have signed himself, to his last message, U. S. Grant, LL. D. (Harv.), but we, alas! have not been able to state in our Catalogue that the chair of Belles-Lettres is filled by Brigadier-General James Russell Lowell, D. C. L., etc.

The system of the governing boards of the College is so admirable that we cannot fail to be a little proud of it. The chief power is vested in the hands of those who are most likely to take the deepest interest in the College, and who are best fitted to judge what is for its welfare, - the graduates; we are free from all political influences which stand in the way of advancement in many institutions, and the evils which President Eliot set forth so well in his argument against a National University; we are not governed by a close Corporation which may be tainted with the bigotry of the past ages. All this is very pleasing; but, before we become too boastful, let us remember that it is only ten years that we have enjoyed this system, and that before that time the College was as much under political control as it well could be. Then the Governor was, ex officio, an Overseer, (and this in a State where Ben Butler has several times come so near gracing the gubernatorial chair!) The other Overseers were elected by the Legislature. Any one who will look over the list of Overseers previous to 1866 will find some names which he would never associate with an institution of learning, - names of men whose opinions as to whether Logic should be substituted in the place of some of the Freshman Mathematics would be of far less value than their surmises as to how this or that caucus would probably vote. We may be thankful that a more rational plan has been adopted, and that the governors of the College are chosen by better qualified electors than the delegates to the General Court of Massachusetts.

There are, however, two slight features in the present system of government which are still in need of improvement. It seems to be an unwritten law that no one outside of the State or almost outside the immediate vicinity of Cambridge can be on the Board of Overseers. The College has a large number of prominent graduates who live outside this State, and there is no reason, now that communication is so easy, why a graduate living in New York or even farther off than New York should not serve on the board. In the President's Report for 1874-75 two pages are devoted to the policy of widening the geographical influence of the College; and the Cincinnati examinations show this policy to be accepted by the Faculty. If there were one or more Overseers living beyond the radius of a few miles from Boston, the tendency would be to make the character of the College less local and more national.

The second point is of rather more importance. By law, voting for Overseers is allowed only in person in Cambridge. Of course only a small portion can be here on Commencement Day, and by this provision the majority are deprived of their suffrage. And there is no need of this, for votes could be received by proxy, and thus all who cared to have a voice in the management of the College could do so. Usually there is very little rivalry for the office of Overseers, and the result of the election is satisfactory to everybody. Still there may come a time when at some election every graduate will desire to cast his vote. Suppose, for example, that James Freeman Clarke and Colonel Higginson, who are so anxious to introduce co-education into the College, should make this question an issue. In this case most of us, whether we lived near or far, would desire to avail ourselves of our privilege of voting, and some, in all likelihood, who could not make it possible to be in Cambridge.