onal
about $200,000, the charitable about $45,000, and the pauper expenses
nearly $250,000 more, all of which will diminish as our schools are year
by year better qualified to give thorough and careful intellectual,
moral, and religious culture.

This increase seems to be necessary in order that the Massachusetts
School Fund may furnish aid to the common schools during the next
quarter of a century proportionate to the relative influence exerted by
the same agency during the last twenty-five years. Nor will such an
addition give occasion for any apprehension that the zeal of the people
will be diminished in the least. Were there to be no increase of
population in the state, the distribution for each pupil would never
exceed forty cents, or about one-fifteenth of the amount now raised by
taxation.

So convinced are the people of Massachusetts of the importance of common
schools, and so much are they accustomed to taxation for their support,
that there is no occasion to hesitate, lest we should follow the example
of those communities where large funds, operating upon an uneducated and
inexperienced popular opinion, have injured rather than benefited the
public schools. The ancient policy of the commonwealth will be
continued; but, whenever the people see the government, by solemn act,
manifesting its confidence in schools and learning, they will be
encouraged to guard and sustain the institutions of the fathers.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] An eminent friend of education, and an Englishman, speaking of the
reports for the year 1866-7, says: "The views enunciated by your local
committees, while they have the sobriety indicative of practical
knowledge, are at the same time enlightened and expansive. The writers
of such reports must be of inestimable aid to your schoolmasters,
standing as they do between the teacher and the parent, and exercising
the most wholesome influence on both. Let me remark, in passing, that I
am struck with the power of composition evinced in these provincial
papers. Clear exposition, great command of the best English, correctness
and even elegance of style, are their characteristics."

[5] Distributed among the cities and towns, according to an Act of 1835.
(Stat. 138, Sec. 2.)

[6] Distributed among the cities and towns, according to the number of
persons in each between the ages of four and sixteen years. (Rev. Stat.,
chap. 23, Sec. 67.)

[7] Income distributed among the cities and towns, according t