WEST VIRGINIA. 



45 



EDUCATION AND PROGRESS. 



The people of "West Virginia are departing from the wisdom of the fathers 

 of the early days, when Sir William Berkeley, the proprietor of a large tract 

 in Shenandoah valley, eighty years ago, wrote of the new country as follows: 

 "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall 

 not have these hundred years, for learning has hrought disobedience and heresy 

 and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the 

 best government. God keep us from both." But this departure leads in the 

 direction of a superior wisdom, and a school system has been adopted since the 

 oa'ganization of the State, modelled upon the best State systems in the country, 

 the results of which will soon be manifested in general educational improvement. 



Schools of a higher grade are beginning to be organized — academies and high 

 schools, and seminaries, for young ladies — and the impetus already given to 

 popular progress in mental culture will soon occasion a further demand for 

 superior educational facilities. 



There is awakened throughout the State a spirit of lively interest in the con- 

 struction of roads and the improvement of river navigation, in new enterpiises 

 that develop its varied resources, in all measures essential to its security, and the 

 happiness and thrift of its people, and to their mental and moral advancement. 



There is a feeling of relief from an irksome and heavy burden in separation 

 from Virginia, whose malign influence has long rested like a nightmare upon 

 this region. Its system of taxation was unequal, discriminating against the 

 free mountain section, taxing lightly those interests which the west did not 

 possess, while expensive internal improvements, adding greatly to local property 

 values, were only undertaken in the east. Railroads, of greatest feafiibility and 

 utility, surveyed and brought into notice by public-spirited individuals, were 

 procrastinated and killed by the same determination to override the interests 

 of this region. 



