ddle grade, may hereafter receive any necessary aids
when the funds shall become competent. In the mean time, they are going
on sufficiently, as they have ever yet gone on, at the private expense
of those who use them, and who in numbers and means are competent to
their own exigencies. The experience of three years has, I presume, left
no doubt, that the present plan of primary schools, of putting money
into the hands of twelve hundred persons acting for nothing, and under
no responsibility, is entirely inefficient. Some other must be thought
of; and during this pause, if it be only for a year, the whole revenue
of that year, with that of the last three years which has not been
already thrown away, would place our University in readiness to start
with a better organization of primary schools, and both may then go on,
hand in hand, for ever. No diminution of the capital will in this way
have been incurred; a principle which ought to be deemed sacred. A
relinquishment of interest on the late loan of sixty thousand dollars,
would so far, also, forward the University without lessening the
capital.

But what may be best done I leave with entire confidence to yourself and
your colleagues in legislation, who know better than I do the conditions
of the literary fund and its wisest application; and I shall acquiesce
with perfect resignation to their will. I have brooded, perhaps with
fondness, over this establishment, as it held up to me the hope of
continuing to be useful while I continued to live. I had believed that
the course and circumstances of my life had placed within my power some
services favorable to the outset of the institution. But this may be
egoism; pardonable, perhaps, when I express a consciousness that my
colleagues and successors will do as well, whatever the legislature
shall enable them to do.

I have thus, my dear Sir, opened my bosom, with all its anxieties,
freely to you. I blame nobody for seeing things in a different light. I
am sure that all act conscientiously, and that all will be done honestly
and wisely which can be done. I yield the concerns of the world with
cheerfulness to those who are appointed in the order of nature to
succeed to them; and for yourself, for our colleagues, and for all in
charge of our country's future fame and fortune, I offer up sincere
prayers.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLX.--TO --------- NICHOLAS, December 11,1821

TO --------- NICHOLAS.

Monticello, Decembe