man
who could make a scrawl in the similitude of his name would submit to
the mortification of making his mark, and leaving it on record in a
written application for a marriage license. The requisition was made
upon the officers of the courts, and the evidence, which was of a
documentary or judicial character, is the highest known to the law. The
result was, that almost one fourth of all the men applying for marriage
licenses--more than thirty-three hundred in three years--were unable to
write their names! And Governor Campbell clearly intimates an opinion
that "the education of females is in a condition of much greater
neglect!"

In round numbers, the free white population of Virginia over twenty
years of age is three hundred and thirty thousand. One fourth of this
number is eighty-two and a half thousand, which, according to the
evidence presented by Governor Campbell, is the lowest possible limit at
which the minimum of adults unable to read and write can be stated. But
the census number is less than fifty-nine thousand, making a difference
of nearly twenty-four thousand, or more than forty per cent.

There are several states of about the same rank as Virginia in the
educational scale. Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina sink even
below her. The last-named state, with a free white population over
twenty years of age of less than 210,000, has the appalling number, even
according to the census, of 56,609 who are unable to read and write. In
other words, forty-two hundred more than one fourth of the whole free
population over twenty years of age are, in the educational scale,
absolutely _below zero_.

Now if to the five hundred and fifty thousand free white population in
the United States over the age of twenty years who are unable to read
and write, as shown by the census, we add forty per cent. for its
under-estimates, as facts require us to do in the case of Virginia, it
would increase the total to seven hundred and seventy thousand. Suppose
one fourth of these only are voters--that is, deduct one half for
females, and allow that one half of the male moiety is made up of
persons either between twenty and twenty-one years of age, or of those
who are unnaturalized, which is a most liberal allowance when we
consider where the great mass of ignorance belongs, and that the number
of ignorant immigrants is much less at the South than at the North--and
we have =192,500= voters in the United States who are unable to