in carrying the plan into execution, by the erection of what is now
called the Penitentiary, built under his direction. In the mean while,
the public opinion was ripening, by time, by reflection, and by the
example of Pennsylvania, where labor on the highways had been tried,
without approbation, from 1786 to '89, and had been followed by their
Penitentiary system on the principle of confinement and labor, which was
proceeding auspiciously. In 1796, our legislature resumed the subject,
and passed the law for amending the Penal laws of the commonwealth. They
adopted solitary, instead of public, labor, established a gradation in
the duration of the confinement, approximated the style of the law more
to the modern usage, and, instead of the settled distinctions of murder
and manslaughter, preserved in my bill, they introduced the new terms of
murder in the first and second degree. Whether these have produced more
or fewer questions of definition, I am not sufficiently informed of our
judiciary transactions, to say. I will here, however, insert the text of
my bill, with the notes I made in the course of my researches into the
subject. [See Appendix, Note E.]

The acts of Assembly concerning the College of William and Mary, were
properly within Mr. Pendleton's portion of the work; but these related
chiefly to its revenue, while its constitution, organization, and scope
of science, were derived from its charter. We thought that on this
subject, a systematical plan of general education should be proposed,
and I was requested to undertake it. I accordingly prepared three bills
for the Revisal, proposing three distinct grades of education, reaching
all classes. 1st. Elementary schools, for all children generally, rich
and poor. 2nd. Colleges, for a middle degree of instruction, calculated
for the common purposes of life, and such as would be desirable for
all who were in easy circumstances. And, 3rd., an ultimate grade for
teaching the sciences generally, and in their highest degree. The first