7716. SCHOOLS, Abortive.—
The annual
reports show that our plan of primary schools
[in Virginia] is becoming completely abortive,
and must be abandoned very shortly, after costing
us to this day one hundred and eighty thousand
dollars, and yet to cost us forty-five thousand
dollars a year more until it shall be discontinued;
and if a single boy has received the
elements of common education, it must be in
some part of the country not known to me. Experience
has but too fully confirmed the early
predictions of its fate.—
To William T. Barry. Washington ed. vii, 256.
(M.
1822)
