rginia, had an
extraordinary amount of natural advantages. It had fine harbors,
numerous navigable streams, a climate more temperate by several degrees
than its rival, the soil in its lowlands and valleys unsurpassed in any
of the Plantations for its capacity to produce wheat, corn, and tobacco,
its mountains filled with untold treasures of lime, iron, and coal,
(and, it now seems, with petroleum also,) and withal that wonderful
variety of natural resources, which seems best suited to stimulate and
reward the productive industry of its inhabitants.

The Governor of the less favored colony replied to the Royal
Commissioners, as follows: "_One-fourth_ of the annual revenue of the
Colony is laid out in maintaining free schools for the education of our
children." The policy thus early impressed upon the colony has been
maintained with steadfast and almost proverbial consistency to this day,
that region being known the world over as the land of schoolmasters. The
Governor of the other colony replied, "I thank God, there are no free
schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred
years." To this policy she also has until lately only too faithfully
adhered. Now what is the result?

By referring to the tables accompanying the Census of 1860, we find the
following significant facts.

1. The average cash value of land was not quite $12 an acre in one
commonwealth (Virginia), and a little over $30 an acre in the other.

2. One commonwealth sustained only five inhabitants to every hundred
acres of her soil, the other sustained eighteen inhabitants to every
hundred acres.

3. The value of all property, real and personal, averaged by the
population, was in one commonwealth $496 to every inhabitant, in the
other $965 to every inhabitant.

4. The value of all property, real and personal, averaged by the acre,
was in one commonwealth less than $26 to the acre, in the other more
than $177 to the acre.

To which facts I may add, what is true, though not in the Census, it was
the invention of Eli Whitney, a travelling schoolmaster from
Connecticut, that has trebled the value of land in nearly every Southern
State.

I have been endeavoring to show that popular education, though it is
expensive, tends to national wealth. The argument is that an educated
population is capable of producing greater material results than a
population uneducated can produce. The example of Eli Whitney, just
referred to, suggests the