Nor does the proposition for the state to appropriate annually $180,000
in aid of the common schools seem unreasonable, when it is considered
that the military expenses are $65,000, the reformatory and correctional
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.
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