Such was the original ground-plan of Jefferson's system of public education for Virginia. Although never adopted in its entirety, the plan served Jefferson as a basis for all subsequent educational thinking. For more than forty years his mind moved along these three lines of institutional reform for his native State: (1) subdivision of the coun ties into hundreds, wards, or townships, based on militia districts, which should become school districts; (2) grammar schools, classical academies, or local colleges; (3) a State university. Of the three objects, he held that the first and the third were of the greatest importance to the State and required the highest legislative care. The second objectthe classical academies-could be left with greater safety, he thought, to private enterprise and philanthropy.

Jefferson never advocated university education at the expense of common schools. He labored for both forms of popular instruction, although he always maintained that primary education should be based upon local taxation and self-help, with, perhaps, some assistance from county or State sources where local means were inadequate. As to the relative importance of the university and common schools for the people of Virginia, he once said, in a letter to his friend Joseph C. Cabell, January 13, 1823: "Were it necessary to give up either the Primaries or the University, I would rather abandon the last, because it is safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened than a few in a high state of science and the many in ignorance. This last is the most dangerous state in which a nation can be. The nations and governments of Europe are so many proofs of it."

HIGHER EDUCATION THE SOURCE OF COMMON SCHOOLS.

It is, however, a matter of historical fact that civilization began with the higher education of a few, and that all forms of popular culture have proceeded from higher sources. New England and Virginia both began with classical schools and colleges. Jefferson himself was compelled to repeat the university experiment of the Old World for the higher education of democracy in Virginia. In the development of popular education, as of popular government, there have always been recognized leaders. Neither science nor religion could have gone forth in fertilizing streams for the benefit of mankind unless there had been mountain sources above the plain. The wisdom of the Egyptians was that of "a few in a high state of science." Moses was trained in one or more of those sacred colleges. In no way can we better account for the mental, moral, and religious improvement of the race than by recognizing the influence of chosen men, chosen tribes, chosen peoples, and chosen institutions that have served to train the masses to a knowledge of higher things. The common schools of America sprang from sources bigher than themselves, from lakes far back in historic mountains, more remote and mysterious than were once the sources of the Nile. The history of education is one long stream of continuous, inexhaustible flow from such

high springs of science as the schools of Thebes, Memphis, Alexandria, the Græco-Roman world, and from such fountain-heads of learning as the Benedictine monasteries, the cathedral schools, colleges, and universities of medieval Europe.

It will be disastrous for American democracy and for American educators when they begin to level their high schools and higher education in the interest of what may be thought more popular and practical for the passing moment. To level the higher education in our towns and States in the alleged interest of the people would be as dangerous as for the General Government to level the great light-houses along our coast and suffer our ships to depend upon the friendly rays that shine out from the lowly cottages of men living along the shore. This country needs to-day all the light which scholars can afford. While every State should be as full of school-houses as it is of villages and hamlets, and as rich in local colleges and classical academies as circumstances may require, there will always be need of a few men and a few institutions in "a high state of science." Universities are the light-houses of popular education. They show all educators on what course to steer. All knowledge, like all science, " moves but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point."

FAILURE OF COMMON SCHOOL LAW IN 1796.

Jefferson's idea of introducing common schools into Virginia in connection with higher education received no attention from the Legislature until the year 1796, when a law was passed in the interest of the general education of the people. Although the merits of the measure were freely and warmly recognized, yet a fatal mistake was made by the Virginia legislators in leaving the initiation of schools for the people to a majority of the acting justices in each county. These justices were prominent, well-to-do gentlemen, but they had no inclination to tax themselves for the education of their poorer neighbors. Accordingly free schools went by default. Jefferson strongly condemned this inefficient legislation. The State should have compelled local taxation for educational purposes, and not have left such a great public interest to local option. Jefferson returned again and again to the support of free schools in connection with local government and university education, but this grand combination of ideas found no general recognition in Jefferson's life-time.

IDEA OF LOCAL DIVISION OF COUNTIES.

More than one hundred years ago (1779) Thomas Jefferson declared for the great principles of local independence in both education and government. They were principles second only in importance to national independence and colonial union. Jefferson's political philosophy is summed up in the following striking extract from a private letter to a member of the Virginia Legislature, February 2, 1816: "Let the Na

tional Government be intrusted with the defence of the nation and its foreign and Federal relations; the State Governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties; and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics, from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm and affairs by himself, by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."

one.

In the same letter Jefferson declared his views with reference to the joint institution of local government and common schools: "My idea of the mode of carrying it into execution would be this: Declare the county ipso facto divided into wards for the present by the boundaries of the militia captaincies; somebody attend the ordinary muster of each company, having first desired the captain to call together a full There explain the object of the law to the people of the company; put to their vote whether they will have a school established, and the most central and convenient place for it; get them to meet and build a log school-house; have a roll taken of the children who would attend it and of those of them able to pay; these would probably be sufficient to support a common teacher, instructing gratis the few unable to pay. If there should be a deficiency, it would require too trifling a contribution from the county to be complained of, and especially as the whole county would participate, where necessary, in the same resource. Should the company, by its vote, decide that it would have no school, let them remain without one."1

Correspondence with Jefferson and Cabell, 53, 54. Other interesting evidence of Jefferson's views of the relation of local government to popular education may be found in the above Correspondence, pp. 103, 186, 413. See also Jefferson's Writings, VI, 542, 566; VII, 205, 357, 358. Very suggestive upon the importance of local government as a means of education for citizens are the remarks of Colonel Coles, Jefferson's private secretary, addressed to Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, July 17, 1807. The secretary undoubtedly reflected the opinions of his chief: "Our division into counties is certainly much too large, and attended with a thousand inconveniences. The division into townships or hundreds might very easily be made in Virginia, if in forming them we would follow the bounds of the militia companies, which are already well known and which exist in every county in the State. Each hundred should be a little republic within the republic of the county. Each hundred should regulate its own police, should have a magistrate to try warrants, etc., hold elections, at which the most aged and infirm might attend; should provide for its own poor; establish a public school, to which even the most indigent might send their children; should annually select a jury man who, with those selected by the different hundreds throughout the State, might be distributed by lot or otherwise among the superior and inferior courts, so as to provide a sufficient number for each. In this way the elective principle would be introduced into every department of the government, and an independent and impartial jury might always be had, which under our present system must depend entirely on the character of the marshal or sheriff. The people, too, of each hundred, becoming familiar with the transaction of business when summoned together on an occasion of emergency, would act with promptitude and force, which the particular character of a part of our population will render the more valuable."-Correspondence of Jefferson and Cabell, p. 18.

FIRST APPROPRIATION FOR SCHOOLS.

In the year 1818 the first general provision for elementary education was made by the State of Virginia. It was agreed by the Legislature that $45,000 a year should be appropriated from the income of the socalled "literary fund" (which will be hereafter explained, for it was the economic basis of the University of Virginia). A radical legislative mistake was made in distributing this money to the counties as an educa tional bounty for the education of the poor. The county authorities took the money for the support of charity schools, which were supported in certain towns or in convenient local centres. Popular education was regarded in much the same pitiful light as was the care of the poor. The better class of people provided for their children by private schools, academies, and family tutors. It was an error in public policy to grant a State subsidy for county education. The counties should have been required to tax themselves.

Jefferson saw this error, and contended that local taxation was the proper basis for the support of common schools, and that State aid should be reserved for higher education. But he was not able to convince the men of his time of the soundness of his views. Not even a compromise between local taxation and State aid, which under the circumstances would have been a wise policy, would the Virginians accept for their counties. Jefferson argued that wealthy planters could well afford to tax themselves for local education, for it would people their "neighborhood with honest, useful, and enlightened citizens, understanding their own rights, and firm in perpetuating them." He said that the descendants of the rich would usually become poor in the third generation, and would then find a chance of rising again through popular education, for which other rich men would pay. The debt of one age would be repaid by succeeding ages. Jefferson said in the year 1818: "A system of general instruction which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so it will be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." It was reserved for later times (1870) to begin the complete realization of Jefferson's generous and democratic ideal of education for the people.

The rapid and gratifying progress of common school education in Virginia since the year 1870 is shown in the able and highly instructive reports of the superintendents of public instruction in that State, notably those by Dr. W. H. Ruffner, son of a former president of Washington College, Dr. Henry Ruffner, who wrote a remarkable his. tory of that institution, still in manuscript and in the keeping of the secretary and librarian of Washington and Lee University. The recent history of popular education in Virginia is given in the reports of the present superintendent of public instruction, Dr. John L. Buchanan, to whose courtesy as well as to that of Dr. Ruffner the writer is greatly indebted for documents and information. The Educational Journal of Virginia is a valuable collection of papers and discussions, showing a growing interest in school work, improved methods, and educational history. The reports of the Peabody Education Fund are also a mine of useful materials for the student of these

JEFFERSON ON TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT.

Jefferson greatly admired the town governments of New England, because of their compact, vigorous organization. He had experienced their energy at the time of the Embargo. "I felt the foundations of the Government shaken under my feet by the New England townships. There was not an individual in their States [New England] whose body was not thrown with all its momentum into action; and although the whole of the other States were known to be in favor of the measure, yet the organization of this little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the Union. What would the unwieldy counties of the Middle, the South, and the West do? Call a county meeting, and the drunken loungers at and about the court houses would have collected, the distances being too great for the good people and the industrious generally to attend. The character of those who really met would have been the measure of the weight they would have had in the scale of public opinion. As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words, 'Carthago delenda est,' so do I every opinion, with the injunction, 'Divide the counties into wards.' Begin them only for a single purpose; they will soon show for what others they are the best instruments."

TOWNSHIPS IMPRACTICABLE IN RURAL VIRGINIA.

While admiring Jefferson's ideal of local government, one may seriously doubt its practicability in that rural and widely scattered condition of Virginia population. The actual condition of society must always be taken into account when measures of social, educational, or administrative reform are under consideration. As a matter of fact, hundreds, towns, and boroughs were prominent features, on paper, in the early institutional history of Virginia; but the local government and communal life which naturally evolve with such local institutions, when suited to the actual wants of the people, did not and could not evolve in the Old Dominion. Society dispersed and sought to reproduce the more or less isolated country life of the English landed gentry. The Virginians, if they could afford it or cared to do it, educated their children after the immemorial custom of Old England, by a combination of home training under competent tutors or local clergymen, with college training and public life. William and Mary College was the Oxford of Virginia. County government played in Virginia the same rôle in the political education of the people as it has always played in Old England. County court day and county elections were subjects at the South. A good summary of the educational advantages of Virginia, based upon Dr. Ruffner's reports, was given in 1876 by Maj. Jedediah Hotchkiss, in his Virginia: A Geographical and Political Summary, which is for our time what Jefferson's Notes on Virginia were for his contemporaries.