University of Virginia Library

PURELY ECONOMICAL CONSIDERATIONS.

Viewed in a purely economical aspect, the consequences of withholding
the annuity must suggest considerations strongly adverse

to the measure. For, supposing the University still to linger on, it
is certain, as before remarked, that it would cease to draw students
from abroad, while it would drive to the seminaries of other states
a large number of those who now seek their education at home.
Estimating these effects, on the smallest scale consistent with probability,
we should thus lose the pecuniary benefit of some fifty students
from other states, and seventy-five of our own, who would be
sent abroad, making an aggregate of money withdrawn from the
circulation of the state of about 50 or 60,000 dollars; while assuming
the entire prostration of the university, a result not unlikely
to follow, the sum thus virtually withdrawn could not fall short of
100,000 dollars.

Another and weighty consideration of the same class must at
once suggest itself, on reverting to the large amount of capital
which in the form of buildings and other necessary means has been
provided by the state and by the institution itself, and which would
be rendered in great part if not entirely useless. This sum enbracing
the successive additions and improvements made to the buildings
and grounds of the university, since the first year of its operation,
as well as the original outlay of the state, may be estimated at
upwards of 300,000 dollars.

But important as these economical effects would unquestionably
be, they are of a nature to awaken in the minds of those who duly
appreciate the value of the University as a public institution, but
little interest compared with the momentous evils, moral as well as
intellectual, of such a measure. Among the high incentives which
animated the zeal of its founders in laying their plan of the institution,
there was none more marked by genuine wisdom, than the
desire of cherishing in our youth, a lofty patriotism and state pride,
by providing a means for their highest intellectual training within
the commonwealth itself. The daily associations of home and country
blending happily with the lessons of literature and science, and
kindling in the student's mind, a warm, but enlightened devotion to
his state, were in the view of these great public benefactors, an object
worthy of being fostered even with expensive care. We need
not trace the reverse of the pleasing picture, since all can feel how
patriotism must dwindle beneath the uncongenial influences of an
education obtained abroad, and few we think would be inclined
lightly to regard results fraught with so grave an injury to the
political and intellectual character of the commonwealth.