rly system. More money is
now paid for the education of a part, than would be paid for that of the
whole, if systematically arranged. Six thousand common schools in New
York, fifty pupils in each, three hundred thousand in all; one
hundred and sixty thousand dollars annually paid to the masters; forty
established academies, with two thousand two hundred and eighteen
pupils; and five colleges, with seven hundred and eighteen students;
to which last classes of institutions seven hundred and twenty thousand
dollars have been given; and the whole appropriations for education
estimated at two and a half millions of dollars! What a pigmy to this is
Virginia become, with a population almost equal to that of New York!
And whence this difference? From the difference their rulers set on
the value of knowledge, and the prosperity it produces. But still, if a
pigmy, let her do what a pigmy may do. If among fifty children in each
of the six thousand schools of New York, there are only paupers enough
to employ twenty-five dollars of public money to each school, surely
among the ten children of each of our one thousand and two hundred
schools, the same sum of twenty-five dollars to each school will teach
its paupers (five times as much as to the same number in New York), and
will amount for the whole to thirty thousand dollars a year, the one
half only of our literary revenue.

Do then, Dear Sir, think of this, and engage our friends to take in
hand the whole subject. It will reconcile the friends of the elementary
schools, and none are more warmly so than myself, lighten the
difficulties of the University, and promote in every order of men the
degree of instruction proportioned to their condition, and to their
views in life. It will combine with the mass of our force, a wise
direction of it, which will insure to our country its future prosperity
and safety. I had formerly thought that visitors of the schools might
be chosen by the county, and charged to provide teachers for every ward,
and to superintend them. I now think it would be better for every ward
to choose its own resident visitor, whose business it would be to keep a
teacher in the ward, to superintend the school, and to call meetings of
the ward for all purposes relating to it: their accounts to be settled,
and wards laid off by the courts. I think ward elections better for
many reasons, one of which is sufficient, that it will keep elementary
education out of the hands of