Pursue the comparison still further. The expenditures of the University during the last year, for the general purposes of the College, the instruction of the Undergraduates, and for the Schools of Law and Divinity, amounted to $47,935. The cost of the Ohio for one year of service, in salaries, wages, and provisions, is $220,000,—being $172,000 above the annual expenditures of the University, and more than four times as much as those expenditures. In other words, for the annual sum lavished on a single ship of the line, four institutions like Harvard University might be supported.
Furthermore, the pay of the Captain of a ship like the Ohio is $4,500, when in service,—$3,500, when on leave of absence, or off duty. The salary of the President of Harvard University is $2,235, without leave of absence, and never off duty.
If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed by comparison with a single ship of the line, how must it be with other institutions of learning and beneficence, less favored by the bounty of many generations? The average cost of a sloop of war is $315,000,—more, probably, than all the endowments of those twin stars of learning in the Western part of Massachusetts, the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst, and of that single star in the East, the guide to many ingenuous youth, the Seminary at Andover. The yearly expense of a sloop of war in service is about $50,000,—more than the annual expenditures of these three institutions combined.
I might press the comparison with other institutions of beneficence,—with our annual appropriations for the Blind, that noble and successful charity which sheds true lustre upon the Commonwealth, amounting to $12,000, and for the Insane, another charity dear to humanity, amounting to $27,844.
Take all the institutions of Learning and Beneficence, the crown jewels of the Commonwealth, schools, colleges, hospitals, asylums, and the sums by which they have been purchased and preserved are trivial and beggarly, compared with the treasures squandered within the borders of Massachusetts in vain Preparations for War,—upon the Navy Yard at Charlestown, with its stores on hand, costing $4,741,000,—the fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, where untold sums are already sunk, and it is now proposed to sink $3,875,000 more,[84]—and the Arsenal at Springfield, containing, in 1842, 175,118 muskets, valued at $2,099,998,[85] and maintained by an annual appropriation of $200,000, whose highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of truth, that it inspired a poem which in influence will be mightier than a battle, and will endure when arsenals and fortifications have crumbled to earth. Some of the verses of this Psalm of Peace may relieve the detail of statistics, while they happily blend with my argument.
"Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts:
"The warrior's name would be a name abhorred,