Kentucky Gazette

FOR THE KENTUCKY GAZETTE.

NO. IV.

To the Trustees of the Transylvania University.

Gentlemen,

I have treated the concerns on which I have heretofore addressed you as public concerns; and I have felt gratified to hear, as I hope you will be, that they are becoming more and more, the topics of conversation among the people. If therefore success (of which I will not doubt) should not at the present, attend my efforts, I shall yet console myself with the reflection, that I have not laboured in vain. The people cannot converse on any subject, long, without understanding it, clearly. What they are once convinced is right, they will endeavour to accomplish. It is impossible for them to see, without correctly appreciating, the benefits which men derive from education; or to think of, without perceiving, the important bearing which well regulated schools have on the general interests of society ; and they cannot but desire for their children's sake, to place that one which should become the pride and ornament of our state, in a prosperous, and indeed flourishing condition. As I presume from the stations which you respectively occupy, these truths cannot have escaped your observation ; so (I think, that any attempt to interest the public in your concerns, should meet your approbation, Depend upon it, if
the people begin to consider the University as their property, and as established for their benefit, they will take great pleasure to assist you in promoting its growth, and in correcting all its errors.

The Transylvania University, Gentlemen, should always be the object of public attention. It is, emphatically speaking, our chief literary institution; and was at its formation intended to be, as I hope it will become, the Oxford of Kentucky. Every state needs a great establishment of this nature; and there are none which want one more than ours. We have many private schools, and some public academies endowed with public funds, in various parts of the state ; but none of these can do more, or were intended to do more, than give our youth the mere rudiments, or skeleton of a liberal education. No private establishment has collected together, the requisite number of tutors for this purpose ;—and there is no other public one possessed of funds, sufficiently ample and productive—Yours, however, has the name and style of an University. Your powers are competent to accomplish all your objects. Your funds are extensive : and if husbanded with economy, will enable you as your students increase in number, to create and endow professorships, and enlist in your service, the best talents of America. It is to your Halls, the public have been accustomed to look, for that last finish to the education of our youth, which was to fit them for entering on the busy scenes of active life : to become divines, and teach the mild doctrines of our holy religion ; to become judges, and dispense the benefits of jurisprudence to society; and form themselves into statesmen, and promote the welfare of our state, and maintain its rights and character abroad. In fine, we there expected the seeds of morals and philosophy to be sown in our youth, which would ripen into a glorious harvest, raise many of them to the rank of the moralists & philosophers of other climes, & make them the dispensers of that light and knowledge, which education, and study, and reflection, had stored up in their own minds. Such gentlemen, is the pinnacle to which I would elevate the university, if I could "command circumstances with a wish;" and such are the high destinies which await it—if, discarding all personal feelings, and governed by enlarged and liberal views, you should determine to act, solely upon public consideration.

Why the university does not stand upon this high and commanding ground, and has rather been sinking in the public estimation: I have heretofore shewn to arise from inherent defects in its organization. Suffer me to repeat, there is no enthusiasm excited in the breasts of your students; you turn out no finished scholars; those whom you educate, do not benefit you by their praise; and neither your principal nor your professors, have acquired literary renown. Under those circumstances much allowance might be made, if the number of your students increased in a ratio proportionate to the growth of our state in wealth, population and improvements; to your progressive means; or to the disposition shewn by our countrymen, to bestow on their children, the benefits of a liberal education. But, the number of students, so far from being what it was eleven or twelve years ago, is so much reduced below half that number, as to remind me of the players "beggarly account of empty boxes." You have now an immense real estate; a revenue of several thousand dollars per annum ; you have three salaried professors you educate students at $20 per annum; yet the number of your students is less than forty—and there is one private school in Lexington more numerous, whose teacher charges $60 per annum for each scholar. Nor will it be forgotten that some of your own body have had so little confidence in your professors, as to send their sons to private schools in the town and neighborhood, and indeed to send occasionally abroad; some never having even tried them in the university, and some withdrawing them after they were placed there.—Can the public have any confidence in the university when many of those who rule it, have none themselves? This is a plain question, which the plainest understanding can answer.

But the fact, that many of the wealthy and most intelligent men of our state, send their sons abroad to seek elsewhere, the benefits of a liberal education—not more than the conduct of some trustees, and of many who live under the very nose of your professors; is convincing to my mind that the university requires a thorough reform. No, gentlemen -it is not to expend his money abroad, that the affectionate parent sends his children thither ; it is because he has no confidence in our domestic schools; and because he thinks they can meet with better tutors elsewhere. Every parent desires to have his children around him, to gratify those feelings of affection which constant intercourse with them produce, to form their character : to guard them against the formation of bad habits at the most critical period of their lives; to check such habits if they are forming, and to correct them if formed. Every correct observer knows, that faithful as may the tutor be, in discharging the trusts reposed in him; he never can feel like a parent; nor will his eye be as penetrating and observing; nor does he possess the same powerful and efficient means of control. Parents, moreover know, (and if they do not, they should be told) that the most celebrated eastern colleges are the seats of dissipation and extravagance. Yet all these privations they suffer, and to all these risks they expose their sons, rather than place them in the Transylvania University
But, gentlemen if the fact be, as many of our most intelligent citizens thus practically say, that a good education is not to be obtained in our state, on how many accounts is it to be deeply lamented! To say nothing of the youths who from the avarice or carelessness of their parents, are doomed to be but half informed men ; recollect that the children of the great mass of society, who must ever be poor, are placed in a worse situation; and that to accidental causes alone the few of them who receive an education will be indebted for it.—This is more to be regretted, because the sons of wealthy men do not bring in proportion to their numbers, a greater share of intellect and knowledge into the public stock, than their poorer neighbours under the same circumstances, where the sons of each have received the same education. On the contrary, if the ambition of the latter is excited, it is more than probable that he will excel the youth who reposes on the prospects of Papa's wealth It your institution will not afford the sons of the poor a cheap and at the same time liberal education, they can obtain one no where else : and many a boy whose genius and natural endowments, would with due cultivation, exalt the literature and reputation of his country, enlarge the boundaries of science, and assist to settle the principles of morals and politics; is hence doomed by poverty, to obscurity and insignificance

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The deep unfathomed caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness in the desert air."

Gentlemen—The decision which you are about to give, is, I think more important to the interests of our state than most of those which at our elections excite the passions of the multitude; and believe me it excites a correspondent interest in the breast of most of your neighbours—if not the public of the whole state, and it is correct that it should—
If an error is committed at one election. it may be corrected in the succeeding year. But any error that you commit, will last in its effects, I had almost said in perpetuity. It will affect through life, the interests of those who depend on the university for an education for some years to come.

CIVIS.

P.S. I have within a few days heard that you are about to appoint as principal for life, a man whose very name you were as ignorant of ten days ago, as you must be of his qualifications for the office ; whom those who recommended and are determined to vote for, have mistaken for another man of an opposite profession, though of the same name; and whom none of your neighbours ever heard of, by report, and perhaps but one of you know personally, or ever saw, and he when a boy. Gentlemen, is not this a leap in the dark and will you without further inquiry?—upon mere hearsay, thus commit the interest of our only great literary institution. Have you a right to do this ? show me where any of you have committed the concerns of your own estates to an agent, no better recommended, and I will answer in the affirmative

CIVIS.