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30
TEXAS, STATE LIBRARY
No. 667
1838 Jan. 26, SAM[UEL] M..WILLIAMS, QUINTANA, [TEXAS], TO 111 [IRABEAU BUONAPARTE] LAMAR, BRAZORIA, [TEXAS] Inclosing a letter [Jones to Lamar, 1838, Jan. 8?] A. L. S. 1 p.
No. 668
1838 Jan. 29,. A. P. BURR, MACON, [GEORGIA], TO M[IRA- BEAU] B[UONAPARTE] LAMAR, HOUSTON, TEXAS
Application for an office in the Texas army. A. L. S. 2 p.
No. 669
1838 Jan. 31, S. ROWLAND TO M. B. LAMAR
Dear Sir, Permit me to lay before you the following thoughts on the neces- sity of establishing a system of Education in our young Republic; and it is with the greatest confidence I do so, feeling well assured that a subject so intimately connected with the welfare and happin[ess] of society will receive from you every merited attentio[n] Since the Declaration of our national Independence and the re- pulsion of the enemy from our land, our first object has been, and ought to be, the establishment of Peace within our borders: O·ur next, as it appears to me, ought to be the diffusion of its blessings to every family and every bosom. ·To effect this, Education is indis- pensably necessary. By the wise and great of every age and country, Education has been reg-arded as a matter of paramount importance. Let us consider the influence it has on virtue and happiness. With- out knowledge there can be no virtue; and without education there can be no knowledge. Some, indeed, have entertained the mistaken notion that a savage life or a state of nature is the best and purest mode of human existence: and some have carried this absurd notion to such extravagant length[s], as to forget that they themselves lived jn civilized society. But, to whatever part of the Globe, or to what- ever history of mankind we cast our eyes, we shall find that igno- rance and vice, are by an immutable law or nature, the inseparable associates of each other. We can no more alter this arrangement than we can alter the constitution of the, universe. In the savage the noble faculty of reason is a dormant principle. And hence, destitute of instinct and uninfluenced by reason, he is the perpetual slave of his ungoverned and ungovernable passions; and is the only animal in ~he world that has been known to kill or abandon ..its own offspring in a state of destitute and helpless infancy. And it is a. fact too well established to be doubted, that man in a savage state has been known to murder his own kind, for the purpose of feasting:npon the carcase. We may also remark that cannibalism has been practised, not only
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