University of Virginia Library

2426. EDUCATION, The Wealthy and.—

What will be the retribution of the wealthy
individual [for his support of general education]?

1. The peopling of his neighborhood
with honest, useful and enlightened citizens,
understanding their own rights and firm in
their perpetuation. 2. When his own descendants
become poor, which they generally
do within three generations (no law of
primogeniture now perpetuating wealth in
the same families), their children will be educated
by the then rich, and the little advance
he now makes to poverty, while rich himself,
will be repaid by the then rich, to his descendants
when become poor, and thus give
them a chance of rising again. This is a
solid consideration, and should go home to
the bosom of every parent. This will be
seed sowed in fertile ground. It is a provision
for his family looking to distant times,
and far in duration beyond what he has now
in hand for them. Let every man count backward
in his own family, and see how many
generations he can go, before he comes to the
ancestor who made the fortune he now holds.
Most will be stopped at the first generation,
many at the second, few will reach the third,
and not one in the State [of Virginia] go beyond
the fifth.—
To Joseph C. Cabell. Ford ed., x, 100.
(M. 1818)