.MTUzNQ.MTY1MjQ

270

[1825]

[Governors Message]

enlightened community. Whenever the situation of our resources and the circumstances of the people will justify affording them further encouragement, there can be no reluctance, provided their necessities require it. The present annual grant to these institutions is by each faithfully applied to the purposes for which it was intended, and the high character of their respective officers is a guarantee that the important duty of directing the energies and the efforts of our youth in the more advanced stages of education, will be discharged with fidelity to the State as well as to those more immediately interested.

The law establishing the Gardiner Lyceum, having constituted the Governor and certain other officers of the Government its Visitors, it has been my official duty in the discharge of that trust to become acquainted with the circumstances of this institution. Its establishment was a novel experiment in the country. In each of the States academies had been established, in which our young men might become qualified as instructors in the lower branches of education or prepared for admission to the higher seminaries. The course of instruction at our colleges was directed principally with reference to professional or political pursuits, or to high literary attainments; but there was no institution in which those branches were exclusively taught which are particularly applicable to the agricultural and mechanical employment of the people, and to the ordinary business of life. The institution at Gardiner will supply this instruction in such a manner, that the individual who seeks knowledge in one branch only of the