Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLV.—­TO JOSEPH C. CABELL, November 28, 1820

TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.

Poplar Forest, November 28, 1820.

Dear Sir,

I sent in due time the Report of the Visitors to the Governor, with a request that he would endeavor to convene the Literary Board in time to lay it before the legislature on the second day of their session.  It was enclosed in a letter which will explain itself to you.  If delivered before the crowd of other business presses on them, they may act on it immediately, and before there will have been time for unfriendly combinations and manoeuvres by the enemies of the institution.  I enclose you now a paper presenting some views which may be useful to you in conversations, to rebut exaggerated estimates of what our institution is to cost, and reproaches of deceptive estimates.  One hundred and sixty-two thousand three hundred and sixty-four dollars will be about the cost of the whole establishment, when completed.  Not an office at Washington has cost less.  The single building of the courthouse of Henrico has cost nearly that:  and the massive walls of the millions of bricks of William and Mary could not now be built for a less sum.

Surely Governor Clinton’s display of the gigantic efforts of New York towards the education of her citizens, will stimulate the pride as well as the patriotism of our legislature, to look to the reputation and safety of their own country, to rescue it from the degradation of becoming the Barbary of the Union, and of falling into the ranks of our own negroes.  To that condition it is fast sinking.  We shall be in the hands of the other States, what our indigenous predecessors were when invaded by the science and arts of Europe.  The mass of education in Virginia, before the Revolution, placed her with the foremost of her sister colonies.  What is her education now?  Where is it?  The little we have, we import, like beggars, from other States; or import their beggars to bestow on us their miserable crumbs.  And what is wanting to restore us to our station among our confederates?  Not more money from the people.  Enough has been raised by them, and appropriated to this very object.  It is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their greatest good.  That good requires, that while they are instructed in general, competently to the common business of life, others should employ their genius with necessary information to the useful arts, to inventions for saving labor and increasing our comforts, to nourishing our health, to civil government, military science, &c.