University of Virginia Library

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.