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Updated: July 19, 2025
The theatres swarm with spies, and to censure a revolutionary piece, however detestable even as a composition, is dangerous, and few have courage to be the critics of an author who is patronized by the superintendants of the guillotine, or who may retaliate a comment on his poetry by the significant prose of a mandat d'arret.
Such is the present state of the mineralogical collection of the Conseil des Mines, which the superintendants will, no doubt, with time and attention, bring to the highest degree of perfection. It is open to the public every Monday and Thursday: but, on the other days of the week, amateurs and students have access to it.
'No. 'What is the office of the proctors, heads of houses, deans, and other superintendants, of whom I have heard? 'To watch and regulate the tufts of caps, the tying of bands, the stuff and tassels of which gowns are made: to reprimand those who wear red, or green, and to take care that the gownsmen assemble, at proper hours, to hear prayers gabbled over as fast as tongue can give them utterance, or lectures at which both reader and hearers fall asleep. 'What are the public rewards for proficiency in learning? 'Few, or in reality none. 'Beside numerous offices, are not exhibitions, fellowships, professors' chairs, and presentations bestowed? 'Yes, on those who have municipal or political influence; or who by servility and effrontery can court patronage. 'Surely you have some men of worth and genius, who meet their due reward? 'Few; very few, indeed.
I have often wished, that as in our Constitution there are several Persons whose Business it is to watch over our Laws, our Liberties and Commerce, certain Men might be set apart as Superintendants of our Language, to hinder any Words of a Foreign Coin from passing among us; and in particular to prohibit any French Phrases from becoming Current in this Kingdom, when those of our own Stamp are altogether as valuable.
The want of some able superintendants in different branches of business is at present much felt, since such individuals might be usefully employed in training up youth to the pursuits of industry; by which means the commission of crimes would be rendered less frequent, and the dispositions of children would receive a proper bias.
I thought it of good height, and the ears well filled, but it is far from thick. And Mr. Clarke, who was put in his room, is one of the superintendants, sent out by government, on a salary of forty pounds per annum. While I was looking at it, Clarke came up. I told him I thought he would reap fifteen or sixteen bushels an acre; he seemed to think seventeen or eighteen.
I am afraid my cheeks glowed, and my eyes sparkled; for I observed the looks of all my superintendants fixed anxiously upon me; and I was next day cautioned against him from all hands, as a man of the most dangerous and formidable kind, who had writ verses to one lady, and then forsaken her only because she could not read them, and had lampooned another for no other fault than defaming his sister.
In addition to this calamity, the Sierra Leone Company had to lament the inefficiency of its superintendants, their want of unanimity, and various other disasters and unforeseen difficulties which operated to augment the charge in their establishment, and diminish its funds; and with every deference to the benevolent undertakers, whose motives merit the highest approbation of every enlightened mind, I would observe, they have likewise to regret their misconception of the eligible grounds upon which so beneficent a plan is to be productive of operative influence; but as at a future stage of my narrative, I shall be enabled from more minute investigation to enter at large upon this interesting subject, I shall for the present dismiss it.
I know that many other circumstances which I could specify, if I had room, contributed towards its growth; but I must be allowed to maintain, that unless the Negroes, who were then free, had done their part as labourers, both by working regularly and industriously, and by obeying the directions of their superintendants or masters, the colony could never have gone on, as relates to cultivation, with the rapidity described.
The mildness and temper with which the guard and superintendants appear to behave is not likely to counteract sufficiently the effect of the constant gaze of passengers, a circumstance which to judge by one's own sensations must tend to stifle those feelings of repentance which solitary confinement naturally induces, and harden every manly particle of the mind into rebellion.
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