Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/29

 This is the true picture of Europe. Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves." Probably the very next document he produced after drawing up the Declaration of Independence was the Virginian code "for the diffusion of knowledge among the people." In later years, when the whole state code was being revised, he spoke of the part providing for schools as the most important, for "no other foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness." He never departed from the idea that "true knowledge and freedom re indissolubly linked together."

In 1810, after having retired from the presidency, he was urged to take a seat in the legislature. He declined, not because his life was no longer devoted to the public good, but he could accomplish more with his peculiar talents from this time on as a private citizen. "I have, indeed," he says, "two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: (1) That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. (2) To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it." These school districts or "hundreds" were to be the centers for all local government and social activity. All that the free library, the good roads, and the grange movements of to-day contemplate were to be organized in them. "These little republics would be the main strength of the great one." Years afterward he still wrote: "There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the subdivision of counties into