Sagacious men have not been wanting among us, to see the radical defects of our primary school system: and in 1829, the late Mr. Fitzhugh[7] of Fairfax, stimulated the Legislature to a feeble effort towards correcting them, by _empowering_ the school commissioners of any county to lay it off into districts of not less than three nor more than seven miles square; and to pay, out of the public fund, _two-fifths_ of the sum requisite for building a school house, and half a teacher's salary, for any one of those districts, whenever its inhabitants, by _voluntary subscription_, should raise the residue necessary for these purposes: and the schools thus established were to be open, gratuitously, alike to rich and poor. But the _permissive_ phraseology of this statute completely neutralized its effect. It might have been foreseen, and it _was_ foreseen, that _empowering_ the commissioners to act, and leaving the rest to _voluntary contributions_, would be unavailing, where the workings of the school system had so long been regarded with apathy. The statute has been acted upon, so far as I have learned, in but _three_ counties of the State; remaining, as to the other 107, a dead letter. I have the strongest warrant--that of _actual experiment_, in New York and in Massachusetts--for saying, that had the law _commanded_ the commissioners to lay off districts in all counties where the census shewed a sufficiently dense white population; and had it then organized in the districts some local authorities, whose _duty_ it should be to levy the needful amount upon their people;--I should have been saved the ungracious task of reproaching my country with her want of parental care; and Virginia would now be striding onward, speedily to recover the ground she has lost in the career of true greatness. [Footnote 7: William H. Fitzhugh--whose death cannot yet cease to be deplored as a public calamity; cutting short, as it did, a career, which his extraordinary means and his devoted will alike bade fair to make a career of distinguished usefulness.] If a sense of interest, and of duty, do not prompt her people, and her legislature, immediately, to supply defects so obvious, to correct evils so glaring; surely, very shame at the contemplation of her inferiority to those, above whom she once vaunted herself so highly, will induce measures which cannot be much longer deferred without disgrace as well as danger.