Excerpt from An Address Delivered at Nashville, T., October 5th, 1830: Being the First Anniversary of the Alumni Society of the University of Nashville

Shorn of half the resources originally provided for them. Had this diminished fund been faithfully collected and applied, it would still have been a respectable, though inadequate, endowment. But before we censure, with too much severity, the almost total abstraction of it from its destined beneficent uses, it should be remembered, that many of the inhabitants of that part of the country had set tled and improved their lands at the imminent peril of their lives; and if honor and gratitude be due to the first adven turers-ih a new and hostile country, they were among the most meritorious of our population; deserving our grati tude for their daring-enterprize in opening the way to a new and fertile region, and our sympathy for their suffer ings. We should then be slow to impugn the conduct of the legislature in giving an extended credit upon the sales of those lands, in the first place, and in remitting the ln terest in arrear, and giving still fiirther time upon the prin cipal agam and again, while the sources of Wealth were almost dried up, in a long period which preceded the late war; and finally, in being induced by the long habit of indulgence and the small means of many of the settlers, to release a large portion of the principal debt, and in failing to make any adequate provision for the collection of the remainder. All thisi can easily pardon to the good feeling which may have Operated upon' the legislature. And I could look without regret upon the abstraction of a few hundred thousands from the sacred treasury of science, if no other and worse consequences had followed. The privation might have been temporary and the sacrilege stripped of half its enormity, but for the fatal prejudices a gainst education generally, and the habit of regarding slightly the obligations of good faith, which grew up in the' country, with the progress of indulgence to the debtors of the colleges and academies. As the relief sought by that portion of our fellow citizens, could not be expected with out opposition, it became, naturally and inevitably, the leading and almost exclusive political interest of a whole region. Whenever a question comes to be, whether a man shall have a freehold for little or nothing, or be charge ed for it a price his means cannot bear, according to his.

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