McCorkle, Samuel Eusebius, 1746-1811
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Westfield
Dec 20 1799
Dear Sir,
Your very polite and obliging letter of Dec 12 came yesterday, and
I hasten to give you my sentiments freely and without reserve on its
contents.
My former objections against engaging in the service of the
Board are rather multiplyed by time and reflection.
The moment I was informed that the
Board had determined immediately to call for a
president, I that moment foresaw that my salary would immediately be less than
that of a subordinate teacher who had no family to provide for. I therefore
demanded the additional salary of a house-rent whenever I should be turned out
of doors.
This demand you yourself pronounced inadmissable. I judged and
still do judge it a reasonable and admissable demand.
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We differed in opinion.
No change has taken place in the judgment of the
Board. No change has taken place in my judgment. And
this alone is a sufficient objection, or an obstacle that never has and perhaps
cannot be removed.
There are other obstructions. The most leading members of the
Board have not the same views that I have of that
Education, Morality, and Religion which should be laid at the bottom of the
Institution.
I reprobate the modern French Jacobine system of Education
which would govern wholly by Reason without the Rod of correction. I do assert
that Reason is too weak to govern without coercion, and I would never take the
charge of any Institution without express liberty to correct scholars or
students whenever it might appear to be salutary, being accountable to
Trustees only for the abuse of that power.
I reprobate the Jacobine Morality which
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judges the
virtue or vice of an action by its utility alone and its utility by our limited
and often erroneous conceptions, or that Morality which teaches that Motives
sanctify measures, and measures sanctify the end. I would leave out a chapter
in
Doley, and teach in its place that there
is a Moral Sense and in their very nature an essential distinction between
virtue and vice. See the Encyclopedia on the word Promise.
I reprobate the discarding or banishing of examinations on Divinity
every Sabbath evening. This important exercise I labour to page torn dine. But it seems as if religion and for
page torn [morality] had both abandoned the
University. page torn you notice the
Jacobine defence of the students. It
is that their expelled friends were "activated by the purest motives"
[purest] motives to violate the laws when redress was
otherwise so easy. Who will undertake to govern such young men? Without a
change of principles and measures the
University might fall. What effect the prospect of
such a change might produce in my mind I know not. But to approach it at
present is to approach a bursting bomb. I am with personal respect
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