First, the object of the fund was the aid and
encouragement of the schools, and not their support; and secondly, the
limit of appropriation to the respective towns was the amount raised by
each. There is an apparent inconsistency in this restriction when it is
considered that the income of the entire fund would have been equal to
only forty-three cents for each child in the state between the ages of
five and fifteen years, and that each town raised, annually, by
taxation, a larger sum; but this inconsistency is to be explained by the
fact that the public sentiment, as indicated by resolves reported by the
same committee for the appointment of commissioners on the subject,
tended to a distribution of money among the towns according to their
educational wants.
As early as 1828, the Committee on Education of the House of
Representatives, in a Report made by Hon. W. B. Calhoun, declared, "That
means should be devised for the establishment of a fund having in view
not the _support_, but the _encouragement_, of the common schools, and
the instruction of school teachers." This report was made in the month
of January, and in February following the same committee say: "The
establishment of a fund should look to the support of an institution for
the instruction of school teachers in each county in the commonwealth,
and to the distribution, annually, to all the towns, of such a sum for
the benefit of the schools as shall simply operate as an encouragement
to proportionate efforts on the part of the towns.
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