CUESTIÓN XIV.

Another objeft of the revifal is, to difFufe knowledge more generally through the mafs of the people. This bill pro- pofes to lay off every county into fmall diftrifts of five or fix miles fquare, called hundreds, and in each of them to eflabhfh a fchool for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. The tutor to be fupported by the hundred, and every perfon in it entitled to fend their children three years gratis, and as much longer as they pleafe, paying for it. Thefe fchools to be under a vifitor who is annually to choofe the boy, of beft genius in the fchool, of thofe whose parents are too poor to give them further education, and to send him forward to one of the grammar fchools, of which twenty are proposed to be erected in different parts of the country, for teaching Greek, Latin, Geography, and the higher branches of numerical arithmetic. Of the boys thus sent in one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniuffes will be raked from the rubbifti annually, and be inftrudled, at the public expence, so far as the grammar schools go. At the end of six years instruction, one half are to be discontinued (from among whom the grammar schools will probably be supplied with future masters;) and the other half, who are to be chosen for the superiority of their parts and disposition, are to be sent and continued three years in the study of such sciences as they shall choose, at William and Mary college, the plan of which is proposed to be enlarged, as will be hereafter explained, and extended to all the useful sciences. The ultimate result of the whole scheme of education would be the teaching all the children of the state reading, writing, and common arithmetic: turning out ten annually, of superior genius, well taught in Greek, Latin, Geography, and the higher branches of arithmetic: turning out ten others annually, of still superior parts, who, to those branches of learning, shall have added such of the sciences as their genius shall have led them to: the furnishing to the wealthier part of the people convenient schools at which their children may be educated at their own expense.—The general objeds of this law