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the means to defray the expenses of instruction. Charity and 

 the government mustdivide the burthen between them; though 

 I hold it to be the duty of the government to charge itself 

 with the support of the system, receiving all the aid which 

 charity may be pleased to bestow, but by no means leaving it 

 to depend on her caprices. The plan must be made effectual 

 to meet the vast purpose in view — that of universal illumina- 

 tion — which requires on the one hand an expenditure of the 

 utmost liberality; a liberality which must be met on the other 

 with the practice of a sound economy. 



Now I do not call it good economy to build and endow an 

 academy for the instruction of one or two hundred boys in the 

 branches of a common school education, at an expense which 

 would be sufficient to construct fifty school-houses on an im- 

 proved model, where six or eight thousand children might be 

 equally well instructed. Let individuals build and establish 

 and support as many such private academies as they will. 

 But they should not be adopted by the State as belonging to 

 the public schools. The public academies should be sustained 

 solely to supply a grade of instruction decidedly above that of 

 the common schools, though below that of the colleges, and 

 wnth a view, in all of them, to the education of teachers. In 

 this way, if I do not mistake, a considerable saving may be 



A worse error than the one just mentioned, in my judgment, 

 is committed in the establishment of colleges; by expending 

 vast sums of money in the construction of buildings designed 

 for the accommodation of the collegers as a monastic commu- 

 nity. I deem this a practice to be utterly reprobated. It is as 

 bad in point of government and morals, as it is on the score 

 of economy. The buildings of a public college should fur- 

 nish ample accommodations for the extensive collections which 

 are to be employed in it as the aids of study, and abundant 

 room for all the exercises of instruction and exhibition. It 

 should then supply apartments for a janitor, and nothing 

 more. Situated, as it ought to be, in a city or well populated 

 viUage, professors, tutors and scholars would find no difficulty 

 in dwelling, as christians should do, in familie^■, and mingled 



