University of Virginia Library

2. FIRST PERIOD
STRUGGLE FOR A UNIVERSITY

I. Jefferson's Faith in Education

We have now described those fundamental tastes and convictions of Jefferson which have left a permanent impression on the University of Virginia: his almost fanatical devotion to political freedom; his hatred of all forms of sectarian obtrusiveness; and his enthusiasm for every branch of science which he believed would liberalize and fructify the human mind. How were these great objects, upon which, in his judgment, the liberty, felicity, and comfort of mankind depended, to be solidly and lastingly preserved? By education, was his emphatic reply. "Knowledge is power," he wrote George Tickner in 1817, " knowledge is safety, knowledge is happiness." Education to him meant the diffusion of light tough all the ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest; indeed,. it was the chief, if not the only, means by which the goodness of the individual could be nourished, and his happiness secured. It was not simply education, but "well directed education" that was to improve his morals, enlarge his mind, clarify his decisions, instruct his industry, and augment his material prosperity. "Education," Jefferson remarks in the Rockfish Gap Report, " engrafts a new man on the native stock, and turns what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth." "And it cannot but be," he continued, " that each generation,

succeeding to the knowledge acquired by all those that preceded it, adding to it their own acquisitions and discoveries, and handing the mass down for successive and constant accumulation, must advance the knowledge and well-being of mankind, not infinitely, but indefinitely."

It was one of the most seductive of all Rousseau's theories that the right to a pleasant place in the sun was the natural right of every man; and that the only reason for the existence of social organization, and the only object of education, was to assure that right to every person beyond the possibility of alienation or deprivation. Jefferson's own convictions were in general harmony with this view; but in one detail he went a long stride further than the great sentimentalist of Geneva; he thought that the aim of education should be, not simply to make a contented and prosperous citizen, but also a useful and unselfish one,-one who would perform all the public duties of citizenship with as much cheerfulness and alacrity as he would perform all the tender and benevolent offices of his own domestic hearth and social circle. It was the function of democracy to secure for all men precisely equal opportunities for .advancement; no man was to be favored at the expense of any other man, while all the prizes for which men strove should be thrown open to free competition; but it was necessary that they should, in this ardent and unceasing contest, have the use of all their powers at the highest tension of their capacity. How was this to be brought about? Again, he replied, by education.

What were the benefits, which, in Jefferson's opinion, would be conferred, by primary education? The acquisition of the knowledge that every citizen needs for the transaction of his private business, such as the skill to make his own calculations in figures, and to express and

preserve his ideas, his contracts, and his accounts in writing; the improvement, by reading, of his morals and faculties; the intelligent comprehension of what was due from him to his neighbors and country, and the capacity to discharge, with usefulness, all duties imposed on him by either; the full understanding of his rights, and the ability to exercise them in his own person with justice and discretion; the ability also to select wisely the fiduciaries to whom he might delegate some of those rights, and to follow up their conduct with diligence, candor, and sound judgment; and, finally, in a general way, the capacity to show staunchness and equanimity in all the social : relations, however difficult the situation, and however searching the test.

The aims of the higher education rested upon a somewhat broader platform. What were they? To mould the characters of the statesmen, legislators, and judges on whom the prosperity of the public and the happiness of the individual, in the future, were to depend so largely; to expoundthe proper spirit and framework of government and to interpret the laws that regulate the intercourse of nations; to harmonize and nourish the growth of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; to develop the reasoning faculties of the young, to enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instil into them the principles of virtue and order; to instruct them in those mathematical "and physical sciences which foster the arts and contribute to the health, support, and comfort of human life; and finally, to mould them to habits of reflection and honorable conduct., so as to raise them up to be exemplars of the highest virtue to their neighbors, and of the most rational happiness within themselves.

As Jefferson expected primary education to reach afar larger body of citizens than advanced education, his

scheme for universal instruction required that the superior attention should be paid to the primary as thereby the greater number could be trained in the duties which all owed to the commonwealth. For he never for a moment forgot the value of education in its relation to the State at large; he looked upon it, he said in 1819, "as the means of giving a wholesome direction to public opinion; it was the safest guide and guardian of public morals and public welfare; it was the arbitress in every age of happiness or wretchedness for a community." " Is not education," he asked at another time, "the most effectual means to prevent tyranny by illuminating the minds of the people at large with knowledge, and especially knowledge of those facts which history presents? Thus possessed of the experience of other ages and other countries, they would be able to detect ambition under all its guises, and prompt to exert their national powers to defeat its purposes." " What does a tax for general education amount to?" he wrote to a friend three years after the close of the Revolution. " It is not a thousandth part of what will have to be paid to monarchs and their satellites, who will rise up amongst us if we leave the people in ignorance." " Educate the people, and never again will they submit to the prejudices and privileges that attend a government carried on by one great class greedily bent on their own advantage alone. Moreover, it would bring every section of the community in harmonious relations, which would be a lasting guarantee of its unity and vigor."

He was the first statesman of our country to foresee clearly the extraordinary improvement which education would produce in the purely material condition of the nation, the sea-like multitude, as distinguished from the condition of the simple individual. In drafting the report

of the Visitors of the University of Virginia, in 1821, he used the following pregnant and prophetic words: " We fondly hope that the instruction which may flow from this institution, kindly cherished, by advancing the minds of our youth with the growing science of the time, and elevating the views of our citizens generally to the practice of the social duties and the functions of self-government, may ensure to our country the reputation, the safety, the prosperity, and all the other blessings which experience proves to result from the cultivation and improvement of the general mind."

But Jefferson was not satisfied with simply dwelling on the benefits to spring from the adoption of his principles of popular education; on the contrary, from his entrance into public life, as a delegate to the General Assembly, he was incessantly busy with plans to put these principles into continuous operation. Before we describe his long struggle to create a public school system, capped by a university, some account should be given of his attempt to increase the usefulness of the one centre of higher culture in existence in Virginia at that time, and of his share in projecting another of foreign origin, which promised, during a short interval, to secure a stable foothold. A third, as we shall discover, failed to enlist his sympathy and support, because, from the start, he considered its plan to be impracticable. Naturally, as a youthful statesman but recently graduated from the College of William and Mary, already looked upon as a venerable seat of culture, his activities were first directed towards the improvement of its curriculum rather than towards the establishment of a new institution elsewhere.

The College,-which had been created by royal warrant in the seventeenth century,-had won a high reputation in colonial history by the broadness of its scholastic

platform for those times, and by the prominence of its alumni in all the avenues of colonial life. In 1779, when Jefferson undertook to enlarge its studies and to raise its standards, its departments were divided as follows: First, the Grammar School. The pupils in this school were known as scholars, and they entered it as early as their ninth year. The Latin and Greek languages made up an important part of their tuition. Second, the School of Philosophy. The pupils of this school were known as students, and they were required to wear the collegiate cap and gown. In one section of it, rhetoric, logic, and ethics were taught, and in the other, physics, metaphysics, and mathematics. The degrees awarded were those of bachelor of arts and master of arts; and two and four years respectively were the prescribed periods within which they were to be won. Third, the School of Divinity. In this school, in which lessons were given in the Hebrew. language and in the history of dogma, the instruction was assigned to two professors; there were two professors also in the School of Philosophy; and one in the Grammar School. A weekly lecture was delivered by the President of the College. In addition to these three departments, there was, for the benefit of a fixed number of Indian boys, a course in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and also a supplementary course in the precepts of the catechism, and in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion.

At this College from the beginning, as at all the chief seats of learning in America during the same period, the first consideration was given to the subject of Divinity, but in a form that was exclusively Anglican. The teachers, as a rule, had been educated at Oxford, and through them, the traditional influences of that great university had made a deep impression on the character

of the institution. So far did the monastic conception triumph in its government, that the marriage of a professor aroused censure; and this was all the keener because the majority of the faculty were clergymen; in 1758, two of the members were removed for violating this tacit prescription of celibacy, although they protestingly pointed to the President of the corporation as the one who had first set so honorable and natural an example. It was jocularly said, at a subsequent date, that the College of William and Mary was, by an unwritten law, compelled to justify its existence by raising a furious controversy with a heretic at least once in the course of every three years.[3] It was under the direct control of the Episcopal Church, and furnished it regularly with its principal candidates for the ministry. Every one of the Visitors was expected to belong to this denomination; and every one of its professors, when appointed, had to walk up to the faculty table and sign the Thirty-nine Articles.

In 1779, as Governor of the State, Jefferson occupied a seat on the Board, and he took advantage of this fact to make definite changes in the curriculum, with the design of converting the institution into a true university. This was the first step towards establishing somewhere in America a centre of learning that was patterned on the standards of the great universities of Europe. The earliest measure called for was one that would remove all trace of theological flavour: the School of Divinity was cut out root and branch, and the ancient languages were dropped. These languages had been retained among the courses recommended by the revision of 1776, but, in 1779, it was found by Jefferson, now a Visitor, that the

new schools could not be erected without swallowing up the income that had gone to the support of the professorship of Latin and Greek. The new scientific and political studies brought in were thought by him to be of more practical service than instruction in the ancient languages, which, after all, could, in his judgment, be safely left to the secondary schools already provided for in his all-comprehensive scheme of public education.

The courses of instruction which he proposed for the metamorphosed College of William and Mary were as follows: ( 1 ) law and politics; ( 2 ) anatomy and medicine; (3) physics and mathematics; (4) moral philosophy, law of nature and nations, and the history of fine arts; (5) modern languages; (6) the Indian School. He was sanguine that, with the flight of time, the endowment of the College would grow in volume as well as the income from the ever-increasing number of students in attendance, -a combination that would justify a great expansion in the work of the class-rooms. He was particularly solicitous that the literatures of the north of Europe should be taught under its roof, as they were, he said, so intimately connected with " our own language, laws, customs and history." This was one of the reasons, though not the principal one, which afterwards led him to require the admission of Anglo-Saxon among the studies of the University of Virginia. He thought that the Indian School, as then conducted, was of small utility; and he suggested as a substitute that a missionary should be appointed, who should, in the wigwams of the West, investigate the aboriginal system of laws, religious traditions, and languages, -the record of all which should be retained as a permanent possession of the library at Williamsburg. The School of Law proposed by him, was the first collegiate school of the kind to be

set on foot in the United States; so was the School of History inaugurated there in 1803; and Charles Bellini was also the earliest professor of modern languages to become a member of the faculty of an incorporated scat of learning within the same area of the Continent.

At the time that Jefferson was meditating and planning for higher education at the College of William and Mary, he had no examples in his native State to guide him. Hampden-Sidney College was then hardly superior to a grammar school, and it was altogether under the control of a sect, which he, at least, thought to be more intolerant than the Episcopalians. Washington College, too, though of great respectability, could lay no claim to exalted scholarship at that early stage of its history; and it also was under the mastery of the same vigorous denomination. Unless he could raise and broaden the standards of the College of William and Mary, by transforming it into a genuine university, Virginia, he knew, must continue to see a large stream of her most promising young men flowing annually into the scholastic reservoirs of the North. He was not far enough away from his own graduation to have lost all affection for his alma mater; and he also perceived that it possessed two conspicuous advantages for its own advancement (1) its comparatively ancient origin; and (2) its situation in the capital city. Both of these unrivaled circumstances, he thought, would have a very strong tendency to augment its prosperity when expanded into a university; but, unfortunately for the general success of his scheme, the Dissenters' prejudices had been further inflamed by the Revolution, and this relentless sentiment was not satisfied short of positively discouraging the extension of the College's patronage among the families of their own denominations. Without the friendly countenance of every

section of the community, it could not become the university he desired. Doubtless, too, the insalubrity of Williamsburg[4] had some influence in bringing about the failure of his first expectations; and this harmful influence was increased by the remoteness of the town from the centre of the State, for, in those times, the stage and carriage and the back of a horse were the only means of travelling to a distance. The removal of the Capital to Richmond at his own instance was the final blow.

But while Jefferson's hope for the establishment of a university was not realized in the reformed College of William and Mary, his effort in its behalf strongly tended to quicken his sense of the need of a higher seat of learning in Virginia, and, undoubtedly, enabled him to study with more discrimination every aspect of that subject when he came to visit and inspect the foremost scholastic institutions of Europe. That he retained a favorable opinion of the instruction in the College of William and Mary, as broadened and liberalized by himself, is clearly proven by the contents of his letter to Mr. Banister in 1785. What are the constituents of a useful American education? he asked. "Classical knowledge," he replied; modern languages -chiefly French, Spanish and Italian, -mathematics, natural philosophy, natural history, ethics, and civil history. In natural philosophy, I mean to include chemistry and agriculture, and in natural history, to include botany as well as other branches of those departments. It is true that the habit of speaking the modern languages cannot be so well acquired in America. But every other article can be as well acquired at William and Mary College as at any

place in Europe. When college education is done with, and a young man is to prepare himself for public life, he must cast his eye for America either in law or physics. In the former, where can he apply himself so advantageously as to Mr. Wythe? . . . The medical class is the only one which need come to Europe."

When it is recalled that Mr. Wythe was the preceptor in jurisprudence of both Jefferson and Marshall, -the first, among the greatest legislative reformers, the second, the greatest interpreter of the law, that have appeared in American history, -this expression of opinion seems to be devoid of the pardonable exaggeration of local partiality. The words too were penned when his ability to compare the relative merits of domestic and foreign colleges had been rendered more penetrating by careful observation of all that was to be studied in European countries. This preference, however, did not survive his return to America; or if it did do so, it did not reveal itself in a second effort to convert his alma mater into a modern university. On the contrary, we shall see that, after the incorporation of the University of Virginia, he sought to deprive that venerable college of her endowment in order to provide financial support for the system of academies which formed a section of his comprehensive scheme for public instruction.

II. Three Foreign Schemes

Before the end of the eighteenth century, there were three foreign schemes to usher higher education into Virginia; but only two of them aroused Jefferson's interest; and only one obtained his practical assistance. The earliest, the project of Quesnay de Beaurepaire, which was of a very ambitious and grandiose character, received a

douche of cold water from his pen. Jefferson, at this time, was residing in Paris as Minister to the Court of Versailles. Quesnay, before setting up a school in Richmond, with rather mixed departments of study, had been an officer in the American army under Lafayette's command. He was the grandson of a man who had acquired such fame in the medical profession as to be appointed physician to Louis XV; and had also won a high repute as a philosopher and an economist. Quesnay had inherited a taste for science, but like so many young Frenchmen of his own age of good social standing, and graceful if not solid accomplishments, had been prompted by the spirit of adventure to accompany the French contingent to the United States, where, during several campaigns, he seems to have served in the capacity of an engineer. His health broke down before the close of the war; but he recovered sufficiently to travel widely through the different States. He was so much impressed by all that he saw, that he determined later to found, on the cornerstone of his Richmond school, a grand Academy of Arts and Sciences; and he is reported to have spoken of the project for the first time while visiting John Page at Rosewell, on the York. Page was so much delighted with the plan that he encouraged him to expect financial aid, should he be able to engage the faculty indispensable for carrying on the work of the Academy. Subscriptions amounting to sixty thousand francs were soon received; a site for the building was chosen in Richmond, which had been selected as the place for the new seat of learning; and the edifice was actually erected in the most fashionable quarter of the town. The foundation stone was laid in June, 1786, in the midst of a great multitude of interested spectators. Six councillors were nominated by the contributors to the building fund, and as they were the most influential citizens of the community, -one of them being John Harvie, the mayor, -the author of the project had a right to look forward to local encouragement and assistance in the future.

Quesnay, justly elated with the progress already made, sailed for France to secure the patronage of influential persons in Paris, and the countenance of the Royal Government. He pushed his scheme in the most illustrious circles of the French capital with energy and address; visited the studios of artists, the closets of scientists, the salons of leaders of fashion, and the reception-rooms of public officials; and everywhere, his plans were received with expressions of sympathy and promises of financial support. Men standing at the summit in all the great departments of contemporary life, -literature, science, politics and society,-graciously permitted their names to be entered in the already voluminous list of associates. Lafayette, Beaumarchais, Montalembert, Houdon, Condorcet, Lavoisier, Malesherbes, Vernet, La Rochefoucauld, -statesmen, playwrights, warriors, sculptors, chemists, painters, wits, the most brilliant names in France, -were enrolled among the number.

But there was one person in that splendid city who held back from the scheme with a discouraging lack of enthusiasm, and that man was the very one, perhaps, whose favorable influence, and whose active co-operation, were the most important for its practical success. On January 6, 1788, Jefferson wrote to Quesnay in the following language: "I feared it (the plan) was too extensive for the poverty of the country. You remove the objection by observing it is to extend to several States. Whether professors itinerant from one State to another may succeed I am unable to say, having never known an experiment of it. The fear that those professors might

be disappointed in their expectation, has determined me not to intermeddle in the business at all. Knowing how much people going to America overrate the resources of living there, I have made a point never to encourage any person to go there, that I may not partake of the censure which may follow this disappointment. I beg you, therefore, not to alter your plan in any part of it on my account, but permit me to pursue mine of being absolutely neutral."

What were the details of the plan on which Jefferson commented so coldly and so distantly in these remarkable words? The Richmond Academy of Sciences was intended to be, in spirit at least, a trans-Atlantic rival of the great French Academy. The central organization was to be placed in the capital of Virginia, while there were to be co-ordinate branches in the cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. The list of studies was to embrace foreign languages, mathematics, physics, design, architecture, painting, sculpture, astronomy, geography, chemistry, botany, anatomy, and natural history. There was to be a large faculty on the ground; and in addition to the instruction to he given by them, the pupils were to have the benefit of the learning of one hundred and seventy-five non-resident associates, eminent in both America and Europe for their acquirements in the provinces of their respective pursuits. Experts in every branch of natural science especially were to be dispatched to Richmond from Paris, not only to teach these pupils, but also to advise the corporations and stock companies that were about to invest in the hitherto unexploited resources of the country. In the extensive researches which this would call for, the young men would assist, and thus not only garner up valuable knowledge, but, by turning in their wages, increase the sum already lying in

the treasury of the Academy. The scientific and literary societies of both hemispheres were to be kept informed of the work of the institution by correspondence, and also through an annual publication. Specimens of the flora and fauna of the North American continent were to be collected and sent to Europe to adorn its different museums and cabinets.

There was at least one feature of this scheme that justified Jefferson in declining to enter without reserve into the efforts to carry it out; it was probably rendered impracticable, as he said, by the scale on which it was projected. But why was it that he failed to offer a single suggestion towards lopping off the worst of its faults in order to reduce it to a shape that might make it workable? It was very unlike him to look at such a scheme with coldness, if there was any room whatever for hope of success. Did he jump beyond its apparently bald infeasibility and disapprove of it because it locked horns with the plan of a university which he was undoubtedly pondering over at this time, and which he had already perhaps decided to build, if possible, in the shadow of Monticello? Was the choice of Richmond, an hundred miles away, as the site of the new Academy, the true reason for an indifference, which he had never before shown, and was never again to show, about any university scheme brought to his attention? The plan of transporting the College of Geneva to Virginia, which arose a few years later, was seemingly as impracticable in its character as Quesnay's plan, and yet it secured Jefferson's earnest and energetic support. There is no reason to doubt that he expected this college to be re-established in visiting distance of his own home at least. If he was really influenced by personal reasons in both cases, it was due to his perfectly correct impression that, if a university was

to be founded in Virginia, it would have more chance of succeeding under his own direct patronage and supervision than if left to the inadvertence and inexperience of foreigners, settled an hundred miles from Monticello.

The scheme of a transplanted French Academy fell through, not because it was impracticable, as it possibly was, but because the hour was unfavorable for its success. It did not pass beyond the selection of a course of studies, and the nomination of Dr. Jean Rouvelle as the instructor in natural history and chemistry; but there is no reason to presume that it would not have been at least organized had not the French Revolution, like a cyclone, been coming up, with all the distracting influences that went before its actual outburst. Socially and financially, France was in no state to give such a scheme the continuous support which it required, and naturally the scheme itself, as well as its author, finally sank into oblivion. But although it had never been put to the test of actual working, it yet left a perceptible impression on Jefferson's views in spite of his refusal to encourage it. Of all the plans for higher education canvassed in Virginia before the incorporation of the State University, this had the most affinity with the noble plan which he set in operation in 1825. The scientific bias that so conspicuously distinguished it was the one with which he was most enthusiastically in sympathy; and it was also the one that he was most anxious to give to his own seat of learning. And in addition, he adopted for that institution the system of separate schools which Quesnay had expected to introduce at Richmond.

We have seen that Jefferson refused to countenance Quesnay's projected academy because he was afraid lest the foreign professors, disappointed in their venture, should turn on him in censure, and yet, in 1794, eight

years later, he warmly encouraged the faculty of the College of Geneva to remove that seat of learning to Virginia. He did not seem to worry about the risk of their criticism should the purposes for which alone they wished to emigrate, fail. There was no difference in spirit at least between the scheme of Quesnay and the scheme of D'Ivernois. It is true that there was a turgidity about Quesnay's that was absent from D'Ivernois's; but this inflation would certainly have passed away under the influence of the practical Americans who would have co-operated with the Frenchman. The Genevans, on the other hand, were handicapped by that form of sectarianism which was most irksome to Jefferson's latitudinarian sympathies: Calvinism; but he seems to have been willing to wink at this drawback, as well as at the professors' inability to lecture in any language but that of their own country. It must, however, be borne in mind that these men were an organized body of high reputation in all scientific and literary spheres; and several of them had been thrown with him personally during his sojourn in Paris. It was this fact that led D'Ivernois, when his faculty had become dissatisfied with their environment in Switzerland, to consult him by letter as to the wisdom of uprooting their famous college and replanting it in the United States. Jefferson promptly submitted this proposal to certain influential members of the General Assembly, at the same time expressing the hope that provision would be made out of the public treasury to meet the expense of the transfer; but he was quickly condemned to disappointment, for the reply was returned that the State was not in the financial shape to take on so burdensome a charge. It was asserted too that no pupils would be found who could understand lectures in the French tongue; and furthermore, that this scheme, like Quesnay's, was out of all just proportion to the population of the community to be served.

All these objections had very properly been considered by Jefferson to be of great weight when he was discountenancing the Richmond Academy, but he was now so much in earnest that, when the Legislature failed to respond to his wishes, he turned for aid to General Washington, who, having been presented by that body with stock in the Potomac and James River Companies, had announced his intention of giving it all away for the promotion of higher education. Jefferson pressed upon him the point, that, as the Treasury of Virginia would pay the dividends on this stock, this State should have the preference in the selection of the site for the National University which Washington had so long carried in his thoughts. This site might be chosen in the vicinity of the new Capital, if the influence of such a centre should be decided to be essential to its dignity and success. Washington at once disclosed that he was not in sympathy with Jefferson's suggestion. He was convinced, like the General Assembly, that the restriction of the lectures to the French languages would destroy the usefulness of the Genevan faculty in Virginia; and moreover, as that faculty disapproved of the popular freedom now enjoyed by the French, it was not probable that they would find themselves in harmony with their environment in the New World. But he was so far impressed by Jefferson's appeal that he gave the shares in the James River Company belonging to him to the college at Lexington, with the understanding that such of its students as should desire to obtain a more advanced education should seek it in that National University in the Capital which he intended endowing with his shares in the Potomac Company.

When Jefferson reported to D'Ivernois his failure to enlist support for his plan, either public or private, an echo of regret vibrated in the tone of his letter: " I should have seen with peculiar satisfaction," he wrote, " the establishment of such a mass of science in my country, and should probably have been tempted to approach myself to it by procuring a residence in its neighborhood at those seasons of the year when the operations of agriculture are less active and interesting." So far as can be discerned, the scheme of the Geneva College left no impression on his plans for his own university beyond perhaps satisfying him that foreign professors would not object to a permanent appointment in Virginia; and it was, no doubt, this conviction which, many years afterwards, led him, through Mr. Gilmer, to invite certain English scholars and scientists to occupy chairs in the seat of learning which he had founded at Charlottesville. But he was careful then to introduce no instructors from the continent, -unless Dr. Blaettermann, who was residing in England, can be taken to be such, -perhaps, because he recalled the objections which had been urged, in 1794, by the General Assembly and by Washington in opposition to the College of Geneva.

An influence that bore more directly on Jefferson's desire for a system of higher education in Virginia, had its spring with Du Pont de Nemours, whom he had known familiarly while the American minister in Paris. Du Pont reached the United States in 1800, and during his sojourn there, was an acceptable visitor at Monticello on numerous occasions. This accomplished Frenchman, who had already given much meditation to the subject in France, drew up a treatise on popular education, which, at this time, was deeply engaging the thoughts of some of the most distinguished men in America. Instruction

in the highest courses, as well as in the primary and secondary, was discussed in this memorable volume. These advanced courses were to cover, besides other ground, all the varied topics of professional and technical education. The different institutions, representing every grade, from common school to college, in which instruction was to be given, were to be scattered here and there about the country at large; but the apex of the whole system was to be the National University in Washington. This grand central institution was to consist of four distinct schools: (1) medicine; (2) mines; (3) social science and legislation; and (4) higher mathematics. These schools were to assemble in one large building, but to remain always entirely separate. There was to be erected, in addition, an imposing national library, and also a vast national museum, with apartments reserved for the sessions of a National Philosophical Society. This plan of Du Pont was, no doubt, suggested by the system which already prevailed in Paris; but it was also modeled somewhat on the scheme incorporated in the Bill of 1779 for the diffusion of knowledge among the Virginian people. It brought up to Jefferson ideas that he had already acquired by his residence abroad rather than ideas newly imported, which he had not turned over before in his reflections on the subject of education in all its departments.

It was one of the most obvious peculiarities of all Jefferson's schemes for the advancement of education that he confined their practical, though not their theoretical, scope to the inhabitants of his native State. The National University of Washington and Du Pont made no appeal to him, perhaps because he feared lest such a seat of learning should nourish those principles of consolidation, which, as we have seen, he detested so vehemently.

It was possibly one reason for his turning a cold face towards Quesnay that the Richmond Academy was not intended to stand alone, but to possess branches in at least three of the States north of the Potomac. To a clearly defined extent, this institution was to have a national bearing, a characteristic that was absent from the scheme of the Swiss college, which he received with such prompt and unreserved encouragement.

III. Bill of 1779

The first of all Jefferson's practical measures for public education was the Bill of 1779, which carried no expressed purpose in its text that was to reach beyond the borders of Virginia, yet, as it was based upon principles that went down to the foundation of society, its scope, in its broadest significance, was really as universal as the scope of the Declaration of Independence itself. In taking up the subject of his share in the drafting of this bill, we have come to the most interesting chapter in his career as an educational reformer previous to the establishment of the University of Virginia. By this measure, he sought to create in his native State, even before the fires of the Revolution had burnt out, a system of public instruction so far ahead of his times that the community continued too unripe to receive it until the War of Secession had removed everyone of those impediments, which he, with all his zeal and persistency, had found it impossible to surmount. But the credit due him should not be diminished but enhanced by the deferred consummation of his complete design, for it proved that his foresight was one hundred years in advance of the vision of the great body of his own countrymen. It was, however, no new and untried theory that he endeavored to put in

practice. During several centuries, the concept that it was the duty of the State to educate all its citizens had prevailed in many coteries in Europe, but it was not until the eighteenth century that the politico-economical value of that concept was fully tested by Prussia and Austria in a scheme of popular instruction scientifically ordered and rigidly enforced. Massachusetts had adopted a similar scheme as early as 1647. At first, the system in that colony stood upon a religious platform; next, the purely utilitarian view intruded; and then, finally, the belief that, by universal education, the people could be trained to govern themselves more wisely, and to preserve their political freedom more securely.

The latter was the opinion which Jefferson himself entertained. He wrote Washington, in 1786, that the liberties of the community were only safe when they were in the grasp of an " instructed people"; and that it was the business of the State to give this instruction; and that this could not be done successfully except in harmony with a general plan. What he thought that general plan should be was very lucidly expressed in the bill of 1779. At the time that he drew up this bill, the schools of Virginia differed but little in quality from those in existence there during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: there were the home schools for the children of affluent planters taught by private tutors; the old field schools for the children of the upper and middle classes alike; and the College of William and Mary for the higher training of all who aspired to it. Jefferson, in later years, justly claimed for himself the credit of having been the first citizen of the State to propose, in a formal way, the substitution of a concatenated system of public education for the unarticulated methods of private education which he discovered in use in his youth. Early in

1776, while a member of the General Assembly, he was chosen as the chairman of the committee appointed to revise the laws of the new Commonwealth. After the elimination of Mason by resignation, and of Lee by death, this committee was composed of Wythe, Pendleton, and himself, the three men whom the entire community acknowledged to be the most fully and nicely equipped for the work in view to be found in Virginia; but that work was really performed by Jefferson and Wythe, pupil and master of old, who were keenly in sympathy with each other in liberality of opinion, and quite on a level in breadth of information. As a proof of their insatiable appetite for their task, it is reported of them that they went carefully through the whole collection of British and Colonial statutes, and drew out those that seemed to them to be most apposite to the genius, and most fostering to the peace and prosperity, of the Virginian people.

Of the one hundred and twenty-six bills in which their conclusions were precisely incorporated, the one for the diffusion of knowledge was hammered into shape by Jefferson alone. It was drawn up, in reality, in the form of three bills, which provided (1) for the erection of primary schools, -in which the children of all classes were to be taught the rudiments of education, -and of colleges, in which all higher grades were to be open to older pupils; (2) for the establishment of a university in the broadest sense of the word; and (3) for the collection of a great library, to be used by students and readers of all ages. Jefferson, in drafting this bill, did not narrow his gaze to the intellectual and moral advantages of education only, but, looking forward, he was convinced that he had raised a new bulwark for the defense of political freedom, by providing for the division of each

county into wards as the local unit for the elementary schools.

An examination of the preamble of this famous bill reveals that it was written under the influence of all those emotions which were most inflamed by the Revolutionary struggle that was still in progress. All persons in power, it states in substance, are invariably inclined to use that power for the ends of tyranny. How is this disposition to be combated? By educating the people so thoroughly that they will be able to detect at once the encroachments of sinister and scheming office-holders, and to block them before any permanent damage is done. Education too will make the average office-holder himself more solicitous to guard the rights and liberties of citizens as well as more competent to administer their affairs.

The practical clauses of, the bill provided for the election in every county of three persons to be known as aldermen, who were to meet first at the court-house to divide the county into hundreds, each of which was to embrace a sufficient number of pupils to make up a school. The site of the school-house having been chosen by the voters of the hundred, the aldermen were to erect a suitable building thereon, in which were to gather the children for instruction in reading, writing, and common arithmetic, and also in Roman, Greek, English and American history. They were to be at no expense for this tuition during the first three years of their attendance. Each set of ten schools was to be under the supervision of officers, with authority to appoint the teachers, to visit the several school-houses, and to inspect and question the pupils; and each school was to be subject to a competent overseer. Next the State was to be divided into groups of counties with a view to the establishment of colleges for secondary education. The overseers of the elementary

schools of each group were to choose the site for the college of that group, which they were required to construct of brick or stone, with ten or twelve lodging rooms for the use of double that number of pupils. A master and usher were, in each college, to give instruction in the Greek and Latin languages, English grammar, geography, and the higher branches of arithmetic, -for such was the course which Jefferson thought to be sufficient for the education of the average person who was in the possession of an easy fortune. Each college was to be under the watchful and controlling eyes of a rector and board of visitors, who were to select its teachers and administer its finances.

The expense of gathering up food for the students, employing a steward, and hiring servants, was to be divided among the pupils. Those among them who were attending the classes gratuitously were also to be relieved, through the public treasury, of the cost of subsistence, while the balance of the expenses was to be met by the parents of the pupils who were able to pay. Every elementary school in each group of counties was to have the right to enter its most promising scholar each year, without charge, in the college of that district, if his father or guardian was too indigent to provide for his necessary outlay. Annually, too, one third of the boys thus advanced were to be dropped from the roll; and of those who should succeed in remaining two years because of their industry and talents, one was to be retained, with the privilege of staying two years longer in the college. The students who should thus signalize themselves were to be chosen as seniors; and every year one senior was to be selected from the whole number of those in attendance at each college, to be sent on to William and Mary University,-for the bill, as we see, converted that

institution into a university, -there to be taught, clothed, and boarded at the public charge. This regulation would assure the presence annually in Williamsburg of about twenty young men of no fortune, who had exhibited in the colleges superior capacity and scholarship, and who would, otherwise, have failed to receive the higher education to which their ability and diligence justly entitled them.

There were four remarkable features in this scheme of public instruction. The first was that the pupils in the elementary schools, which embraced the children of the entire white population, were to be grounded in history, both ancient and modern. The reason given for this provision was characteristic of Jefferson: by apprising them of the experience of other times and other nations, they would be the better qualified to fortify themselves against the intrigues of lurking tyranny. A second feature was that it would enable the poorest boys of talent to enjoy every advantage of education that was in the reach of the sons of the wealthy. And, thirdly, by giving an opportunity to youths of promise to advance from the lowest to the highest grade, -that is to say, from the elementary school to the university, -it would knit all parts of the system firmly together. Finally, by imposing local taxes for the support of the elementary schools, it would establish a principle that would entirely relieve the State treasury of their charge, and also ensure a more careful attention to the proper use of the money to be raised, by obtaining it exclusively from the parents of the pupils immediately benefited.

By the terms of the second bill, the College of William and Mary was to he transformed into a veritable university. The courses of instruction laid off for it, in its altered form, were to be distributed under the following

heads: the fine arts, applied science, municipal and foreign law, theology, and also ecclesiastical history so far as it was not coupled with sectarianism. No provision seems to have been made for languages, perhaps because the Greek and Latin tongues were expected to make up an essential part of the curriculum of the district colleges. Under the head of applied science, military and naval science was to he taught; horticulture and agriculture too; and also the practical relations of science to the arts and manufactures, to medicine, surgery, and pharmacy.

It was Jefferson's opinion that the whole educational scheme of 1779 failed to become law largely on account of this second bill. He had hoped that, by arranging for the elementary schools and colleges in a separate measure, and by making the divinity course at the new university purely historical, he would disarm the hostility of the Presbyterians and Baptists, and bring them to a hearty concurrence with his plans; but they soon began to suspect that there was some secret purpose to favor the Episcopalians by placing the old Episcopal College at the apex of the public school system; and they coldly turned their patronage away from the whole design. [5] But it is possible that the reluctance of the property-holders to shoulder the additional taxes, which, as will be seen, cropped up in 1796, when the like plan was broached, had much to do with the defeat of these educational bills. Had Jefferson not been kept out of the State by his mission to France, and afterwards, by his occupancy of a seat in Washington's Cabinet, his energy and persistency, brought to bear directly on the spot, would, perhaps, have led to the early adoption of his scheme of popular education,-

not simply in the letter, as was partially done in 1796, but in positive actual practice.

IV. Jefferson's Schemes of Popular Education

It was not until the close of his Presidential term in 1809, that Jefferson was so completely released from all official responsibilities that he could fix his mind continuously on the subject which had enlisted his earnest sympathy and support so early in his political career. Hardly had he taken up his residence under the roof of Monticello, when he once more turns to that subject, and during the remainder of his long life, it held a place in the very centre of all his daily thoughts. In no form did these ponderings find a weightier expression than in his famous letter to Peter Carr in 1814. In that letter, he again laid down the various lines which a system of public instruction, in his judgment, should follow. Again he broadly declared, by way of introduction, that every citizen was entitled to an education commensurate with his condition and calling in life. How was this to be determined? By the social station to which he belonged. The whole community was capable of division into two classes: (1) the laboring class; and (2) the learned class. Members of the first would require elementary tuition to qualify them for the proper performance of their tasks; members of the second would need it as an indispensable forerunner to further study. So soon as the primary school had been left behind, the laboring class were expected to begin the pursuit of agriculture, or serve apprenticeships in different handicrafts, while, on the other hand, the learned class were expected to enter the colleges, which were to be divided into General Schools and Professional Schools, representing, respectively, the second

grade, and the third or most advanced grade of instruction.

The entire learned class was to receive their secondary training in the General Schools, in which the highest branches of knowledge were to be taught. The round of studies there was to embrace the languages, mathematics, and philosophy. Provision was to be made in the department of languages for lessons in history, both ancient and modern; and belles-lettres, rhetoric, and oratory were also to be included in this department as well as such special tuition as was suited to the needs of the deaf and dumb. The course in mathematics was to embrace pure mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural history, and anatomy and the theory of medicine, while the course in philosophy should take in ideology, ethics, the law of nature and nations, government, and political economy. The Professional Schools,-to which all deciding to follow a profession were to have access, after passing through the General Schools,-were to cover as wide a field as the latter, but on a higher level; they were to consist of three distinct divisions: (1) department of fine arts, which was to embrace civil architecture, painting, sculpture, and the theory of music; (2) department of military and naval architecture, projectiles, agriculture, horticulture, technical philosophy, practice of medicine, materia medica, pharmacy, and surgery; (3) department of theology and ecclesiastical history, and municipal and foreign law.

These several departments were designed to offer the graduate of the General Schools the opportunity to acquire the necessary knowledge of any one of the following professional subjects: law, medicine, theology, agriculture, army and navy architecture, painting, and landscape gardening. In the school of technical philosophy,

instruction was to he given in the arts of the optician, metallurgist, founder, cutler, druggist, vintner, distiller, dyer, bleacher, soapmaker, tanner, powder-maker, saltmaker, and glass-maker, and in all the other arts pursued by practical tradesmen. In the same school, there would be assembled students in geometry, pure mechanics, statics, hydraulics, navigation, astronomy, optics, pneumatics, acoustics, physics, chemistry, natural history, botany, mineralogy and pharmacy. All these branches of study were to be maintained at the public expense. And on appointed days, the entire corps of scholars in each college were to be trained in manual exercises, and in military evolutions and manoeuvres.

This letter to Peter Carr, -of which we have given only a meagre synopsis, -contains the most complete description which Jefferson ever drew up of his plans for public education. It reveals that his point of view had not changed in spite of the interval of forty years since 1776, during which his observations and impressions of scholastic institutions of every sort had been broadened and ripened by foreign travel. He himself, in a letter written to Governor Nicholas in 1816, referred to it as a digest of all the information which he had been able to gather on the subject upon which it bore; and it will always possess an uncommon interest as foreshadowing the courses of instruction which he introduced into the lecture-rooms of the University of Virginia. In the teeth of popular hostility, he persisted in pronouncing the local school, supported by local taxation, to be the only proper one for elementary tuition; and time and reflection, he said, had but confirmed his opinion as to the correctness of the general principle of subdividing the counties into wards for this purpose.

Jefferson perceived very clearly that the sentiment of

the General Assembly; so soon as it took up the question of public instruction in earnest, with the establishment of the Literary Fund in 1810, gave the priority to elementary education over collegiate and university education, at the State's expense. Was it possible for the resources of the Commonwealth to sustain the entire system as urged by him? If that system was to be kept up, as a whole, he was precisely right in thinking that the elementary schools should be maintained by local taxation, and the general funds of the State reserved for the support of advanced tuition. And this opinion he again engrafted in the bill which he was requested by Joseph C. Cabell, in 1817, to prepare for submission to the General Assembly during the session of 1817-1818. "If twelve or fifteen hundred schools," he wrote, " are to be placed under one general administration, an attention so divided will amount to a dereliction of them to themselves. It is surely better then to place each school at once under the care of those most interested in its conduct. In this way, the Literary Fund is left untouched to complete at once the whole system of education by establishing a college in every district of about eighty miles square, for the second grade of education; and for the third grade, a single university, where the sciences shall be taught in their highest degree." The new bill which he presented was at first entitled an Act for Establishing Elementary Schools, but it was subsequently expanded in its scope to take in numerous colleges and a university, and was then entitled: A Bill to Establish a System of Public Education. There is an undertone of pathos in the letter which he wrote to Cabell when sending on its final draft: " I wish it to be understood," he said, " that I do not intermeddle with public affairs. It is my duty, and equally my wish, to leave them to those who are to feel the benefit and burden of measures. The interest I feel in the system of education and wards has seduced me into the part which I have taken as to them, and still attaches me to their success . . . . There is a time to retire from labor, and that time has come for me."

This bill differed only in petty details from the bill of 1779, or from the scheme of general education set forth in the letter to Peter Carr, in 1814. First, a school was to be established in each ward, in which the children of that ward alone were to receive instruction during three years at the common charge. The school-house and the dwelling-house for the teacher were to be built by the parents at their own expense. A log cabin was to be considered sufficient in each instance, since the constant shifting of the population was certain to render necessary the frequent removal of both houses to some situation more convenient for the majority of the pupils in attendance. A teacher capable of grounding these pupils in reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, was to be employed at a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a year, with an allowance of bread and meat for subsistence. In selecting the instructors, the board of visitors, who were to have charge of the schools, were always to give the preference to members of the laboring class, such as mechanics, overseers, and tillers of the soil; and among these, the first choice should fall on persons who were infirm in health, crippled in limb, or advanced in years.

Secondly, the State was to be divided into nine districts, in each of which a college was to be erected, to be subject to a board of visitors composed of one member from each county belonging to that district, and all under the control of the President and Directors of the Literary Fund. There was to be built for each college a house of brick or stone, to contain two rooms in which the recitations

were to be held, and four for each professor's use, with sixteen dormitories for the accommodation of thirty-two pupils. There were to be two instructors, at least; and they were to be required to teach the Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages, the higher branches of mathematics, the mensuration of land, the handling of globes, and the fundamental rules of navigation. Each professor was to receive five hundred dollars out of the Literary Fund of the State, with such additions as should accrue from the tuition fees of the members of his classes; who were also expected to pay rent for their apartments and the charges for their board.

Thirdly, a university was to be established in a healthy and central part of the State; and here all the divisions of the useful arts were to be taught in their highest branches. Visitors were to be annually nominated by the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, now to be known as the Board of Public Instruction; the site of the new institution was to be chosen by the first set of these visitors; but the plan of the buildings vas to be furnished, or at least, approved by the Central Board. The dormitories were to be so constructed as to admit of additions to their dimensions as the number of students should increase. The-professors were not to exceed ten in number; and the fixed salary of each should be one thousand dollars, to be swelled by the tuition fees of his pupils. The courses of instruction were to embrace history, geography, natural philosophy, agriculture, chemistry, theory of medicine, anatomy, botany, zoology, mineralogy, geology, pure and mixed mathematics, military and naval science, ideology, ethics, the law of nature and nations, municipal and foreign law, the science of civil government, political economy, languages, rhetoric, belles-lettres, and the fine arts. The visitors were to have the

control of all the buildings; and they were also to appoint and overlook all officers and agents; select the professors; and draw up rules for the general discipline of the students and regulations for their subsistence.

When Jefferson drafted this bill for public education he was eager for the conversion of Central College into the University of Virginia; and he went so far as to insert the name of the former seat of learning in the alternate column opposite the words that required the choice of a site for the projected university to be made in a central and healthy part of the State. He did this with the hope that the General Assembly would, if the bill were accepted, authorize the adoption of this secondary clause by amendment.

The bill is significant from another point of view: now that Jefferson was actively employed in building Central College, and was looking forward to its transformation into a great State university, which would need a large annual appropriation for its support, he appeared to be less generous and less enlightened in his attitude towards primary education. Log cabins for schoolhouses and crippled mechanics for teachers seem to he a rather scant provision for elementary tuition; and in making such a suggestion, he plainly had cheapness in view to an extent that promised little for the real improvement of the class that needed instruction most. He would hardly have ventured on this suggestion, had he not apprehended that an appropriation by the State at large for elementary education would diminish the chance of obtaining an appropriation for university education. In 1820, when the highest branch of his general plan had been adopted, and the University of Virginia was in the course of erection, his fear of a shortened State bounty for that institution returned, and again he deprecated a large outlay for the

primary school. "The inhabitants of each ward," he wrote to Cabell that year, in repetition of his old scheme, " meeting together as when they work the toads, building good log-houses for their school and teacher, and contributing for his provision rations of pork, beef, and corn in proportion each of his other taxes, would thus lodge and feed him without feeling it; and those of them who were able, paying for the tuition of their own children, would leave no call on the public fund but for the tuition fee of here and there an individual pauper, who would still be fed and lodged with his parents."[6]

There was an additional reason now, -and a highly characteristic one, too, -why Jefferson advocated the ward school: it would keep elementary education out of the hands of fanatical preachers, " who, in the county elections," he said, " would be universally chosen, and the predominant sect of the county would possess itself of all its schools."

But while he appeared to be inclined to favor the higher institutions at the expense of the dignity and prosperity of the elementary schools at this particular moment of his career, he never swerved in his loyalty to his general plan; and he went so far as to write to Cabell, in 1823, that, were it necessary to give up either the primary schools or the university, he would rather abandon the university, " because it was safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened than a few in a high state of science, and the many in ignorance." " The last," he added, " is the most dangerous in which a people can be." He saw at this time, with regretful clearness, that the resources of the Literary Fund were not sufficient to support that entire system of public education which he had so long urged, and he preferred that the second grade,

composed of the colleges, should be dropped, if any lopping off had to be done, because the large body of students who expected to attend these colleges, were the offspring of parents of some fortune, who could easily afford to send them to academies of repute already in existence. But how closely he still had the intermediate schools in his old scheme at heart was revealed in the plan which he sent to Cabell in 1824, when it was proposed to remove the College of William and Mary from Williamsburg to Richmond. He, as well as Cabell, was hostile to that step as tending to jeopardize the success of the University of Virginia, now on the point of throwing open its doors. It seems that the College of William and Mary possessed an endowment fund of one hundred thousand dollars. Now, exclaimed Jefferson, we have an opportunity of establishing the secondary colleges; let the General Assembly strip the old institution of its fortune and distribute it, in the form of endowment funds of ten thousand dollars each, among the ten colleges which should be erected in the ten districts into which Virginia should at once be divided. This would relieve the central treasury of the tax that would have to be imposed, should these colleges have to be set up at the State's expense. The College of William and Mary might be reserved as one of them; so might Washington College; and so might Hampden-Sidney College too. Thus out of one college, there might be created ten, every one of which would be as useful as the mother of them all, now reduced to the level of her own numerous offspring.

Cabell threw cold water on the proposition, because, in his judgment, the pear of public opinion was not ripe for it; and in addition, the colleges then in existence could not be effectively insinuated into the projected system. This, however, was not thought by Jefferson to be essential

as each district, in order to obtain its share of the endowment fund, would, he anticipated, be willing to contribute a site and the buildings for the institution assigned to it. As the College of William and Mary was not removed to Richmond, the liberal disposition of its funds which he rather gratuitously suggested, ceased to be a practical question. When, for the last time, he brought forward his general plan for public instruction, he stood only a little way from the closing year of his long life. While it may be correctly said of him that he had shown more energy in pushing that part of his scheme which looked to the establishment of a university, nevertheless he made no groundless claim when he asserted, in 1818, that " a system of general education, which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so it will be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." In his advocacy of that system, he had remained singularly consistent to his original plan, from 1779, when it was first publicly broached, down to 1825, when it was last brought up. First, there were to be the elementary schools, which were to be confined to the hundreds or wards into which every county was to be divided; secondly, the grammar schools, which were really classical academies or colleges; and thirdly, a State university. "But I am not tenacious," he earnestly declared in 1818, "of the form in which it (public education) shall be introduced. Be that what it may, our descendants will be as wise as we are, and will know how, to amend it until it shall suit their circumstances. Give it to us in any shape, and receive for the inestimable boon the thanks of the young and the blessings of the old, who are past all other but prayers for the prosperity of their country and blessings for those who promote it."

V. Educational Measures Adopted

How far was this boon, which the venerable statesman had striven so persistently and so disinterestedly throughout his long career to bestow, conferred by legislative action previous to the establishment of the University of Virginia? To what degree did his comprehensive scheme fall short of legislative consummation, and why did it fail to that extent? A variety of influences were working to scotch his activities in this field, if not to make them wholly abortive and fruitless. In a letter to Cabell, dated February 4, 1826, he said, " I have been long sensible, that while I was endeavoring to render our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising generation on the level of our sister states, which they have proudly held heretofore, I was discharging the odious function of a physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient insensible of needing it."

In reality, the patient declined to take any of the medicine, except in a dose so small and so diluted as to produce no perceptible improvement in his condition. Although Jefferson informs us that the bill of 1779 was received at first " with enthusiasm," it soon had no spark of life in its bowels, and lay as it were still-born in the minutes of the General Assembly for seventeen years. In 1796, a bill was introduced which was based in substance on the principle of that of 1779, so far as the latter bill related to elementary schools; and it was only to such schools that the new measure applied. Each county having been divided into districts, aldermen were to be chosen by its voters to decide upon the expediency of summoning the householders of each district together to pass upon the question of erecting primary schools for that district.

If its citizens were found to be favorable to the establishment of such schools, -which every child within its bounds was at liberty to attend three years without charge, -then a local tax was to be levied to meet the cost of the school-house, its site, and the services of a teacher.

Unfortunately, an amendment granted the right to the county court to determine the year in which the aldermen were to be appointed, and until this was done, no valid election could be held by the householders. This clause, which was really inserted to sound the death-knell of the bill, was a subtle political device at bottom. The members of the General Assembly knew that the measure was a popular one with the lowest class of voters, and an unpopular one with the highest class, and they, therefore, shifted the responsibility from themselves to the magistrates, without appearing to be at all opposed to the wishes of their constituents. It is certain that the magistrates as a body felt no sympathy with any general plan of popular education; and in addition, were not disposed, as the representatives of the wealth of the community, to shoulder the expense of providing free instruction for the children of their less fortunate neighbors. They refused to acknowledge the force of Jefferson's argument that they would profit by public education because it would people every countryside " with honest, useful, and enlightened citizens "; nor did they discover any pertinency to themselves in his suggestion that, as there were only three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves, their grandchildren, having fallen to the level of the poor, would have to depend upon the taxes paid by the rich for their restoration, through education, to the affluence and social position of their grandfathers.

The opportunity opened up by this Act was used only by those few counties which were sagacious enough to perceive

the advantages which it would confer on all classes of their population. On the other hand, into such comparative neglect did collegiate tuition in his native State during the next few decades, gradually sink that Jefferson thought himself justified in saying that the Old Dominion was in immediate danger of becoming the " Barbary of the Union." " The mass of education in Virginia before the Revolution," he exclaimed, with an undisguised bitterness, " placed her foremost of her sister colonies. What is her condition now? Where is it? We have to import like beggars from other States, or import their beggars to bestow on us their miserable crumbs." It was estimated that, down to 1825, the number of pupils in attendance at the three important colleges, William and Mary, Washington, and Hampden-Sidney, did not annually rise above one hundred and fifty. On the other hand, nearly one half of all the matriculates of Princeton, from year to year, at this time, were said to be young men from Virginia; and it was calculated that a quarter of a million of dollars was, during every twelve months, paid into the treasuries of Northern institutions by students coming up from that State. Perhaps this was not so great an evil in itself as Jefferson was inclined to think, for, by drawing young men from the South into the North even temporarily, it had a tendency to nourish a stronger national feeling, and to lessen the narrow and mischievous spirit of provincialism. The reciprocation lay in the large band of tutors from Northern States, who, during this period, were employed in wealthy Virginian families; they were, with few exceptions, graduates of Northern colleges; and many of them bore old and honorable names. It was nit their scholarship, but their inherited leaning towards Federalism, in most instances, that probably prompted Jefferson to describe them as " beggars," an epithet that did them, in the mass, as we shall see, grave injustice.

Even if he exaggerated the need of more numerous facilities for secondary instruction, -which, in reality, were fairly abundant, -he was right in lamenting the languishing condition of higher education and in condemning the very small provision for primary education which existed in Virginia at this time. After his return to Monticello, in 1809, -his incumbency of the Presidency having come to an end, -he began at once to exert his influence to bring about an improvement; and a revival of interest in the subject in the public mind was soon to be noted. Governor Monroe, in 1801 and 1802, and Governor Cabell, in 1806 and 1808, had, .in their annual messages, referred to the shrinkage of general education in the State, but no popular response had followed. In October, 1809, Jefferson was the guest of Governor Tyler, a man ardently in sympathy with him in all his plans for the public welfare, and it is possible that the conference of the two, on this occasion, was the root of the noble message submitted by Tyler, in December of the same year, to the General Assembly, in which urged, with earnest and far-sighted patriotism, the needs of Virginia in the way of popular instruction. Tyler had been among the most zealous supporters of the bill of 1779, and had, at all times, upheld the plans which Jefferson had framed for the curtailment of the general illiteracy. That part of his message which related to education was referred, in December, to a committee, who, in the following January, reported the bill that authorized the establishment of the Literary Fund.

This beneficent measure, which alone enabled Jefferson to carry out a part, -fortunately the greater part, of his splendid scheme of popular education, passed the

General Assembly on February 2, 1810. It provided that all escheats, compositions, fines, penalties, and forfeitures, should be especially reserved for the encouragement of learning. Its author was James Barbour, who was then the Speaker of the House, and afterwards a distinguished figure in national politics.[7] The fund thus created was designed primarily for the instruction of the poor, but as the parents of indigent children were slow to take advantage of it, it was, in time, expended chiefly for the benefit of the higher seats of learning. During the session of 1815-16, the remainder of the principal of the debt due Virginia by the National Government was transferred to the credit of this fund, which, by December, 1817, had grown to nearly one million dollars. So soon as it was created, the principal and interest were put under the control of a Board known as the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, a body which was composed of the Governor of the State, the Lieutenant Governor, the Treasurer, Attorney-General, and President of the Court of Appeals, -the foremost officials and most responsible men in the Commonwealth. In January, 1816, Cabell had shown Charles Fenton Mercer, the Chairman of the Committee on Finance in the House of Delegates, a copy of the letter written by Jefferson to Peter Carr, in 1814, which gave in detail his views as to the system of public education to be set underway in Virginia.[8] This letter was also published in the Enquirer. It, no doubt, inspired the epochal resolution, adopted February 24, 1816, which required the President and Directors of the Literary Fund to report to the Legislature an elaborate scheme of public instruction. On December 6, 1816, this scheme was submitted, and was found to consist of a graded system of schools; namely, elementary schools, academies, and a university.

How had the Board arrived at a decision in harmony at least with the framework of Jefferson's plan? The President of that body was Governor Nicholas, a friend and fellow-countyman. He had applied to Jefferson for advice so soon as the report was ordered, and Jefferson had suggested that he should read his letter to Peter Carr as embodying his ripest thought about the subject under investigation. While counsel was obtained by the Board from many distinguished men, both in America and in Europe, -whose letters were formally delivered with the report, -its recommendations bore, in their main features certainly, the perceptible stamp of Jefferson's long projected system of public education. There was the partition of the county into wards or townships for the establishment of elementary schools; there was the division of the State into districts for the establishment of academies, in which the Latin, Greek and French languages, mathematics, geography and astronomy were to be taught; and there was provision for the erection of a university, which would furnish advanced instruction in the whole round of the arts and sciences. The same opportunity was thrown open to indigent boys of promise to pass on, at the public charge, from the lowest to the

highest grade. Above all, it must have been gratifying to Jefferson to find that the Board urged that the site of the university should be chosen in a central part of the State; and that they adopted the plan for professorships and courses of tuition which he had always advised, and which he believed in as firmly now as he had done in the beginning.

In one important particular, however, the tenor of the report must have caused him disappointment: it recommended that the income of the Literary Fund should be first applied to the establishment of an elementary school in each township; that an academy in each district should be next founded; and that an appropriation should be made for the university only in case the surplus remaining should be sufficient in volume. Twenty thousand youths, the report asserted, were looking to the Literary Fund for primary education, and they could rightly demand that they should be the first to be considered in its annual distribution. This was altogether in harmony with Jefferson's opinion, too, should the money for public instruction be limited to the Literary Fund; and it was his calculation that the income from this Fund would not furnish means enough for a general system of education, which led him to advocate a local levy for the support of the elementary schools. But the upshot of the bill of 1796 had shown very plainly what would be the fate of any provision for local taxation; and in urging, as the President and Directors of the Literary Fund did, the education of all the poor at the expense of all the people, they were bringing forward the only practical scheme for the improvement of that part of the population which had a far higher moral and civic claim upon the benevolence of the Commonwealth than that more fortunate part which would be able to seek the shades of

the projected academies and of the university at their own expense.

Their recommendation, however, -wise and patriotic as it was, -was too radical for the spirit of that shortsighted age. Charles Fenton Mercer, Chairman of the Finance Committee, framed a bill which took in the most important features of the Board's report. It passed the House of Delegates, February 18, 1817, but was defeated in the Senate two days later, on the ground that the expenditure of so large a sum of money should be first submitted for approval to the popular vote. It had reached the Senate at an unfortunate moment, for that body, as Cabell, a member of it, has recorded, was now impatient to break up and return to their homes. Before they adjourned, they ordered a general distribution of the report of the Board of the Literary Fund.

Although the Mercer bill had been suggested, partly by the letter to Peter Carr, and partly by the report of the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, which reflected Jefferson's views in general, it nevertheless contained, like this report also, one stipulation of which he disapproved. While it divided the counties into wards, it required the Board to pay to the trustees of each elementary school two hundred dollars to cover the necessary outlay for the teacher's salary, and also ten dollars with which to purchase books for the pupils. The bill called for the acquisition of fifty acres near the centre of the State as a site for the university; and it appropriated one hundred thousand dollars for the buildings and ten thousand for the library. Although provision was thus made for the establishment of a university, and also of a large number of academies, priority in the distribution of the money was still to be given to the support of the elementary schools.

When the Mercer bill, after passing the House, miscarried in the Senate, Cabell requested Jefferson to put his scheme for public education in a shape that would allow of its being submitted to the General Assembly as a substitute. He cheerfully complied. His first purpose, he wrote, in October, 1817, " was to contrive a plan which would conform to the real resources of the State." " Unless something less extravagant," he said of the Mercer bill, " can be devised, the whole undertaking must fail. The primary schools alone in that plan would exhaust the whole fund; the colleges as much more; and a university would never come into existence."

We have already cited the details of the bill which Jefferson now drafted. It followed closely the lines of all his previous expressions on the subject. It was introduced into the House of Delegates by Samuel Taylor, of Chesterfield; but on February 11, (1818), it failed of passage, and a substitute, in the form of an amendment, offered by Mr. Hill, of King and Queen county, was adopted. This amendment restricted the expenditure of the income of the Literary Fund to the education of the poor. This had always been the disposition of the members of the popular branch of the Legislature, who were opposed to ward taxation for that purpose because they believed it to be altogether repugnant to the wishes and convictions alike of their most influential constituents. The money that was to be appropriated under the Hill amendment was to be distributed among the counties as a bounty for the maintenance of charity schools. There was some political animosity to Jefferson in the support which this amendment received; and this seems to have been most acute in the breasts of the delegates from the western counties, who, finding that he had inserted in his bill, in a parallel column, the name of the Central

College at Charlottesville as the site of the projected university, took it for granted that, if this institution was established there, the State capital would soon be removed thither rather than beyond the Blue Ridge, as they so earnestly desired. The opposition to his bill in the House, -of which he had been informed by Cabell, caused a wave of unwonted despondency to pass over his mind, for on February 11, he wrote, "I believe that I have erred in meddling with it (the educational provision) at all, and that it has done more harm than good. A strong interest felt on the subject through my whole life, ought to excuse me with those who differ from me in opinion, and should protect me from unfriendly feelings. Nobody more strongly than myself advocates the right of every generation to legislate for itself, and the advantages which each succeeding generation has over the preceding one from the constant progress of science and arts."

The amended bill soon reached the Senate. It was first brought up before a committee composed of Chapman Johnson, John W. Green, and Joseph C. Cabell. Cabell submitted two propositions: one, which had been suggested by Jefferson, divided the State into academic districts without any consideration of the existing colleges; the other, which sprang from Cabell alone, took in these colleges as a part of the general system. He also renewed the demand for a university in accord with the tenor of the original bill. His colleagues pressed upon him that he was aiming for too much, and that, at this stage of the campaign for the entire scheme, it would be wiser to insist only upon the restoration of a university to the plan. The bill passed the Senate in this form by a vote of fourteen to three; and on February 21 finally became law. Those members who favored only

the instruction of the poor were forced to consent to the establishment of a university, while those who favored a university were compelled to give up for the present all hope of securing a large number of district colleges to serve as feeders for the proposed higher seat of learning. It was a compromise won by the advocates of advanced education in spite of those " local interests, factious views, and lamentable ignorance," upon which Cabell reflected, with acute exasperation, in a letter to Jefferson written at the time.[9]

Forty-five thousand dollars was to be annually appropriated for the support of the elementary schools and only fifteen thousand for that of the projected university. School commissioners, to be appointed by the courts of the counties, towns and cities, were to determine how many children were to be taught, and also how much money was to be paid out for that purpose by the different treasurers, whose number was to be in proportion to the needy white population. This was to be derived from the annual appropriation of forty-five thousand dollars; but all funds and properties in the hands of the overseers of the poor, not otherwise assigned, were to form an additional resource. The commissioners were to return to the President and Directors of the Literary Fund an annual report showing how many pupils there were then in the schools, and estimating the sum that would be required, the following year, to educate all the penniless children in the State. Advantage was taken by many counties and towns of the benefits offered by this Act. It soon became the custom for teachers to enroll the children of the poor in their schools, and at the end of the session, send in a list of them to the nearest

commissioner for approval; this list was then handed over to the sheriff; who, when all the lists had been received, divided among the teachers proportionately to the number of their respective indigent scholars, the sum which had been appropriated for the county out of the Literary Fund.

Not until the War of Secession had altered the economic and social condition of Virginia was the system of public education in the lower grades, advocated by Jefferson, put in practice. Not even then, however, were the elementary schools made entirely dependent upon even county taxation, but in confirmation of his foresight, it has been noticed that the most efficient public schools are to be found wherever local taxation has been relied on chiefly for their support.[10] Not until 1906 was any test made of that part of his scheme which created a large number of district secondary schools; in the course of that year, fifty thousand dollars, increased to one hundred thousand later, was appropriated for maintaining a system of such schools distributed among the Congressional districts, with special provision for the training of teachers.

Jefferson was not to live to see the realization of his great scheme for public education as a whole; but when in February, 1818, the General Assembly voted in favor of the establishment of a State university, he had succeeded in securing that part of it in which he was most deeply interested, and the one which he was best equipped to carry out by his own previous studies and observations. It was certainly the part that supplemented most fully the practical experiment in college building which, for sometime previous to 1818, had seized upon his whole attention, and absorbed all his physical and intellectual

powers. Before beginning the narrative of how Central College was converted into the university which the General Assembly, in 1818, ordered to be established, it will be necessary to turn back and follow up the noble record that he had already made as the father of the promising institution of learning which he had founded in the shadow of his own home at Monticello. It will be seen that he had not been satisfied to wait for the consummation of his plans through legislative assistance, but, in his leisure, taking hold of that section of them which he was able to inaugurate himself, he had done so with a clearness, persistence, and firmness of purpose, a concentration of energy and a constancy of supervision, in spite of his advanced years, which constitutes the most astonishing chapter even in his own illustrious life.