at the extracts
from the local reports, published annually by the Board of Education,
constitute the best series of papers in the language upon the various
topics that have from time to time been considered.[4] By the
publication of these abstracts, the committees, and indeed the people
generally, are made acquainted with everything that has been done, or is
at any time doing, in the commonwealth. Improvements that would
otherwise remain local are made universal; information in regard to
general errors is easily communicated, and the errors themselves are
speedily removed, while the system is, in all respects, rendered
homogeneous and efficient.

Nor does it seem to be any disparagement of Massachusetts to assume
that, in some degree, she is indebted to the school fund for the
consistent and steady policy of the Legislature, pursued for more than
twenty years, and executed by the agency of the Board of Education. In
this period, normal schools have been established, which have educated a
large number of teachers, and exerted a powerful and ever increasing
influence in favor of good learning. Teachers' institutes have been
authorized, and the experiment successfully tested. Agents of the Board
of Education have been appointed, so that it is now possible, by the aid
of both these means, as is shown by accompanying returns and statements,
to afford, each year, to the people of a majority of the towns an
opportunity to confer with those who are specially devoted to the work
of education. In all this period of time, the Legislature has never
been called upon to provide money for the expenses which have thus been
incurred; and, though a rigid scrutiny has been exercised over the
expenditures of the educational department, measures for the promotion
of the common schools have never been considered in relation to the
general finances of the commonwealth. While some states have hesitated,
and others have vacillated, Massachusetts has had a consistent, uniform,
progressive policy, which is due in part to the consideration already
named, and in part, no doubt, to a popular opinion, traditional and
historical in its origin, but sustained and strengthened by the measures
and experience of the last quarter of a century, that a system of public
instruction is so important an element of general prosperity as to
justify all needful appropriations for its support.

It may, then, be claimed for the Massachusetts School Fund, that the
ex