Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/216

202 Pardon and privilege of clergy are propoſed to be aboliſhed; but if the verdict be againſt the defendant, the court in their diſcretion may allow a new trial. No attainder to cauſe a corruption of blood, or forfeiture of dower. Slaves guilty of offences puniſhable in others by labor, to be tranſported to Africa, or elſewhere, as the circumſtances of the time admit, there to be continued in ſlavery. A rigorous regimen propoſed for thoſe condemned to labor.

Another object of the reviſal is, to diffuſe knowledge more generally, through the maſs of the people. This bill propoſes to lay off every county into ſmall diſtricts of five or ſix miles ſquare, called hundreds, and in each of them to eſtabliſh a ſchool for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. The tutor to be ſupported by the hundred and every perſon in it entitled to ſend their children three years gratis, and as much longer as they pleaſe, paying for it. Theſe ſchools to be under a viſitor who is annually to chuſe the boy, of beſt genius in the ſchool, of thoſe whoſe parents are too poor to give them further education, and to ſend him forward to one of the grammar ſchools, 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 geniuſſes will be raked from the rubbiſh annually, and be inſtructed, at the public expence, ſo far as the grammar ſchools go. At the end of ſix years inſtruction,