s
hereby declared to be, that these twenty shares are in lieu of, and not
in addition to, the thousand pounds given by a missive letter some years
ago, in consequence whereof an annuity of fifty pounds has since been
paid toward the support of this institution.

_Item._--Whereas, by a law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, enacted in
the year 1785, the Legislature thereof was pleased, as an evidence of
its approbation of the services I had rendered the public during the
Revolution, and partly, I believe, in consideration of my having
suggested the vast advantages which the community would derive from the
extension of its inland navigation under legislative patronage, to
present me with one hundred shares, of one hundred dollars each, in the
incorporated Company, established for the purpose of extending the
navigation of James River from the tide-water to the mountains; and also
with fifty shares, of L100 sterling each, in the corporation of another
Company, likewise established for the similar purpose of opening the
navigation of the River Potomac from the tide-water to Fort Cumberland;
the acceptance of which, although the offer was highly honorable and
grateful to my feelings, was refused, as inconsistent with a principle
which I had adopted, and had never departed from, viz., not to receive
pecuniary compensation for any services I could render my country in its
arduous struggle with Great Britain for its rights, and because I had
evaded similar propositions from other States in the Union; adding to
this refusal, however, an intimation that, if it should be the pleasure
of the Legislature to permit me to appropriate the said shares to
_public uses_, I would receive them on those terms with due sensibility;
and this it having consented to, in flattering terms, as will appear by
a subsequent law, and sundry resolutions, in the most ample and
honorable manner;--I proceed after this recital, for the more correct
understanding of the case, to declare; that, as it has always been a
source of serious regret with me, to see the youth of these United
States sent to foreign countries for the purpose of education, often
before their minds were formed, or they had imbibed any adequate ideas
of the happiness of their own; contracting too frequently, not only
habits of dissipation and extravagance, but principles unfriendly to
republican government, and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind,
which thereafter are rarely overco