The Kentucky Gazette

A correspondent observes, that the most obvious trait in the national character of Kentucky, is a neglect (and some are bold enough to construe it into a contempt) of literature. A stranger of acknowledged wisdom and observation, says he, arriving in our country, makes it almost his first enquiry, what are our literary institutions, and in what condition are they? He is told that the first is the Transylvania Seminary, established by the legislature of Virginia, previous to the separation, and endowed with land, &c. now worth more than thirty or forty thousand pounds; which endowments, however owing to some mismanagement, do not yield an annual revenue of more than two hundred pounds—That therefore the trustees have it not in their power to employ professors in the different branches of literature; and there are not at this time 20 students in the seminary. That in consequence of petitions from a number of the citizens, our legislature have incorporated trustees of two other institutions of this kind, viz. the Franklin and Kentucky academies, neither of which has any other existence than a place in the Kentucky code; and such very moderate funds as the industry of their trustees have been able to procure from the voluntary contributions of the friends of science. From this statement, replies the stranger, it appears, that your government has done nothing for the promotion of learning—Is it because they were unable? Have they nothing to appropriate for the accomplishment of that, which in other states have always been considered as a principal object of legislative attention? Nothing of all this, he is told, can be the cause of their backwardness in this business: they are in debt to nobody: their treasury is full, and they have large possessions in unappropriated land. Their inattention to this object, therefore, cannot be accounted for in any other way, than that they have not considered it of sufficient magnitude to merit that legislative encouragement, which it receives in other states. Besides Harvard university, at which there are always from 150 to 200 students, Massachusetts has a number of academies and grammar schools, supported by public authority, Connecticut, and other eastern states, are in different degrees giving similar aid to the general diffusion of liberal science; and, in the opinion of the discerning, the time is not very far distant when this attention to erudition will give the eastern states a decided superiority in our public courts, over the southern.

It is painful to think, that Kentucky is devoted to be in this respect, one of the most insignificant of the union. It were heartily to be wished, that our legislature would take up this subject agreeably to its importance, and do themselves honor, and their country the most lasting benefit.