9

tion, that the amount of money annually carried from Virgi-
nia, for purposes of education alone, exceeded $250,000. Since
that period, it has been greater. Take a quarter of a million as
the average of the last eight and twenty years, and the amount
is the enormous sum of $7000,000. But had our schools been
such as the resources of Virginia would have well allowed, and
her honors and interest demanded, it is by no means extrava-
gant to suppose that the [fair?] States which bind on ours would
have sent as many students to us, as under the present wretch-
ed system, we have sent to them. This then, makes another a-
mount of $7000,000! Let our economists look to that. Fourteen
millions of good dollars lost to us by our parsimony!! Let our
wise men calculate the interests of our losses, & add it to this
principal! They will then see what are the fruits of this pre-
cious speculation". ('Jefferson & Cabell' Corresp. p. 167.)

These are the words of one of the most distinguished
men, as he was among the most eminent and revered [divines?]
that {this} Virginia,- not unfruitful of great men,- has ever pro-
duced. The estimate, made in 1879, refers to a period ten years
earlier. If half a million of dollars were lost {then}, with our
then population, and the degree of appreciation of fin-
ished education then existing, would it be unreasonable to
double the amount now, when the population is so much in-
creased in this & in adjacent States, and the desire of know-
ledge is so much more universal, and craving? Nor will this
estimate seem so extravagant when it is remembered that
the numerous schools, the offshoots & feeders of the University,
to which so many southern & western youth {were} have been accus-
tomed to resort, must share the fate of the parent institution,
prospering, enlarging, multiplying, as she prospers and ex-
pands, or languishing & expiring as she languishes & dies.

Surely it is an uncalculating economy that would
incur this prodigious loss to save 1 1/2 cents to each citizen!

The authorities of the University are well aware of the financial