A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge

Why this matters

Jefferson’s 1779 bill, drafted for the Virginia legislature as part of his revisal of the Commonwealth’s laws, never passed. It is in the Founders’ Library anyway — and arguably more important than several documents that did pass — because it is the document closest to the school-trust system’s eventual operational reality. Jefferson sketched a three-tier public education system funded by the state, organized geographically into “hundreds,” and explicitly designed to preserve republican liberty by producing an informed citizenry. He drafted it six years before the Land Ordinance reserved the school sections. The bill is the conceptual blueprint the school-trust lands were eventually built to fund.

What’s in it

• Preamble — the philosophical case for state-supported general education; the argument from liberty.
• The hundreds — division of each county into wards or “hundreds” small enough that all children could walk to the local school.
• Tier one: the hundred-schools — three years of free elementary instruction (reading, writing, common arithmetic) for every free child, boy or girl.
• Tier two: the grammar-schools — twenty regional grammar schools across Virginia, where promising students would advance for further study, including Latin, Greek, geography, and higher arithmetic.
• The selection mechanism — annual examinations to identify the most apt students from poor families to continue at public expense (“geniuses raked from the rubbish”).
• Tier three: William and Mary — the most promising grammar-school graduates would advance to the College, again at public expense.
• Funding — local taxation for the hundred-schools; state appropriation for the grammar-schools and the College advancement.
• Administration — local aldermen and visitors; standards and inspections.

Most-quoted passages

“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny…”

The opening of the preamble. Jefferson’s argument begins not with education but with the certainty of governmental degeneracy. Even under the best forms, power perverts itself into tyranny by slow operations. The Library treats this sentence as Jefferson’s clearest articulation of why the school-trust architecture eventually had to be built: the government cannot be trusted to remain free without an external corrective.

“…it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”

The corrective: a population educated enough to recognize tyranny’s shapes when they appear. This is the premise of Federalist No. 10, eight years before Madison wrote it. The school-trust system is the institution by which the corrective was to be delivered.

“…whereby twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expence, so far as the grammar schools go.”

Jefferson’s most-cited and most-debated phrase. The metaphor is harsh; the policy is radical for its moment — a public commitment to fund the advanced education of the poorest students judged most apt. The Library carries the passage as Jefferson wrote it, noting only that the intent is the universalist one: that ability, not birth, would determine educational opportunity.

“Of the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expence… A general diffusion of knowledge among the people [is]… the most legitimate engine of government.”

The phrase “engine of government” is worth holding. Jefferson did not treat the schools as a charitable supplement to government; he treated them as one of government’s working parts. Without the engine, the machinery does not run.

How it connects to the Library’s argument

Jefferson’s bill is the most explicit founding-era statement of what public schools are for. The Sacred Compact white paper’s drift-of-purpose argument depends on a baseline against which present practice can be measured. Federalist No. 10 supplies the political-philosophical baseline; the Massachusetts Constitution supplies the constitutional-fiduciary baseline; Jefferson’s bill supplies the operational baseline. He says, in plain legislative draftsmanship: free elementary instruction for every child, advancement of the most apt regardless of wealth, public funding all the way through, administered locally, geared to producing citizens capable of recognizing tyranny.

The school-trust lands, when they were reserved in 1785 and committed to schools in 1787, were eventually expected to fund institutions of roughly this kind. Compare Jefferson’s design to a present-day school-trust state’s actual practice — proceeds commingled with general funds, the corpus depleted, the curriculum reshaped around workforce metrics, the local-aldermen accountability replaced with distant administration — and the drift becomes legible. The Library carries the bill so that the drift can be measured against a written standard. Jefferson’s bill failed in the Virginia legislature; its idea did not.

How to engage

• Full text (Founders Online, National Archives): https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0132-0004-0079
• Library of Congress, Jefferson Papers: https://www.loc.gov/collections/thomas-jefferson-papers/
• Avalon Project, Yale Law School: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/
• Submit a correction or annotation: /contribute/

Curated by

Library editorial team, 2026-05-07. This editorial summary is the Library’s contribution and is open to community revision.

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