"I proceed,"
he said, "after this recital for the more correct understanding of the
case, to declare that it has always been a source of serious regret
with me to see the youth of these United States sent to foreign
countries for the purposes of education, often before their minds were
formed, or they had imbibed any adequate ideas of the happiness of
their own; contracting too frequently not only habits of dissipation
and extravagance, but _principles unfriendly to republican government
and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind_, which thereafter
are rarely overcome; for these reasons it has been my ardent wish to
see a plan devised on a liberal scale, which would have a tendency
to spread systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire,
thereby to do away with local attachments and state prejudices, as
far as the nature of things would or indeed ought to admit, from our
national councils."
Were these the words of an English country gentleman, who chanced to
be born in one of England's colonies? Persons of the English country
gentleman pattern at that time were for the most part loyalists;
excellent people, very likely, but not of the Washington type. Their
hopes and ideals, their policies and their beliefs were in the mother
country, not here. The faith, the hope, the thought, of Washington
were all in the United States. His one purpose was to make America
independent in thought and action, and he strove day and night to
build up a nation.
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