Excerpt:
As it is the distinguishing happiness of free governments that civil Order should be the Result of choice and not necessity, and the common wishes of the People become the Laws of the Land, their public prosperity and even existence very much depends upon suitably forming the minds and morals of their Citizens. When the Minds of people in general are viciously disposed and unprincipled and their Conduct disorderly, a free government will be attended with greater Confusions and with Evils more horrid than the wild, uncultivated State of Nature. It can only be happy where the public principles and Opinions are properly directed and their Manners regulated. This is an influence beyond the Stretch of Laws and punishments and can be claimed only by Religion and Education. It should therefore be among the first objects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to encourage and support the principles of Religion and morality, and early to place the youth under the forming hand of Society that by instruction they may be moulded to the love of Virtue and good Order. Sending them abroad to other countries for their education will not answer these purposes, – is too humiliating an acknowledgment of the Ignorance or Inferiority of our own, and will always be the Cause of so great foreign attachments that upon principles of policy it is not admissible. This Country in the times of our common danger and distress found such Security in the principles and abilities which wise regulations had before established in the minds of our countrymen, that our present happiness joined to pleasing prospects should conspire to make us feel ourselves under the strongest obligation to form the youth, the rising hope of our Land to render the like glorious & essential Services to our country. And whereas for the great purpose of internal education, divers allotments of land have, at different times, been made, particularly by the Legislature at their Session in July One thousand seven hundred and eighty three, and February One thousand seven hundred and eighty four, all of which my be comprehended and made the basis of one general and complete establishment.
Source Citation:
Georgia General Assembly. 1785. Charter of the University of Georgia, by Abraham Baldwin. Charter. University of Georgia Hargrett Library. https://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/archives/exhibit/charter/index.html