cost of instructing each pupil in the common school, after the system shall be fully established and understood, will not exceed one dollar a quarter. Experience will show that the schools cannot be kept open, on an average, more than three fourths of each year, consistently with the convenience of the agricultural and laboring classes, who furnish five sixths of the pupils. The annual cost, therefore, of primary school education, for some years, will be about six hundred and sixty thousand dollars in the whole State, including the city and county of Philadelphia. This calculation is based on the supposition that the common school system will be accepted in all the districts of the Commonwealth, though only four out of five have yet received it.

pre

After the lapse of four or five years, the cost of common school instruction, it is believed, will materially diminish. School houses and other liminary arrangements will then be completed, and will cease to be a heavy item in the annual expenditure. This desirable result will be much hastened by the school house fund, appropriated at the last session of the Lelature. Cheaper, as well as better modes of instruction will be discovered and systematically pursued; and the influx of grown-up pupils who now crowd the school houses, with little benefit to themselves or to society, and much expense to the system, will wholly cease, as the system accomplishes its object. Hence, it may be safely calculated that proper attention and exertion during the next four years, will reduce the expenses of the common school system to five hundred thousand dollars annually, being a decrease equal to one fourth of the whole amount. In this estimate, the system is supposed to be accepted by all the districts.

IN ACADEMIES AND COLLEGES.

Though it is not presumed to be the intention of the Government to divert a large portion of the means now applicable to the purposes of education, from the common school system, for the purpose of applying it to the support of academies and colleges, yet justice and a due regard for the promotion of literature and science demand that their strong claims should not be wholly overlooked. The true way to promote any object is to aid it at the begining, and to give it such an impulse there, as will carry it on to a successful termination. In accordance with this principle, one dollar judiciously applied to primary school learning, is worth more in its effects to society, than three given to colleges or academies. Still the regular and prudent appropriation of small sums in aid of the latter classes of institutions, is calculated to produce much good, which cannot be effected by other means.

The best mode of affording useful, permanent and invigorating assistance to our academical and collegiate system, it is believed, would be the establishment of a liberal literary fund, for their aid. If the proceeds of some considerable sum of money specially set apart for the purpose, or of some particular branch of public revenue-say the tax on writs, or the auction duties were annually distributed among them, by a competent and impartial agency, and in proportion to their real merits, the effect would be instantaneously beneficial. Academies which now dwindle, or are entirely disused, would revive under snch an arrangement: for there is no stronger spur to action, than the danger and disgrace of forfeiting a public benefit,

It is a feeling which stirs into action every motive to honorable

An ulation.

No academy in the State would remain qies ent a single year, une the influence of such an incentive. Thus, no matter what the motive, the public would reap a benefit beyond all proportion greater than the expense; and the State would render productive and useful the capital already invested in these, at present, nearly useless institutions.

The same would be the effect on the colleges. All would be stimulated to fresh and vigorous exertion; and in a short time, the number would be necessarily reduced to one better proportioned to the wants of the the State than the present. The contest would then be, not one of management to obtain governmental or contributed aid, but of merit to deserve it; and none but meritorious and really necessary institutions, could long maintain the struggle. The chief defect of the collegiate system of Pennsylvania, which is the too great number of her institutions, would soon disappear, and a few healthy, flourishing, and creditable to the Commonwealth, would remain to adorn and strengthen her system of education.

3. BEST METHOD OF RAISING THE NECESSARY FUNDS.

LITERARY FUND.

In describing the nature and necessity of a fund for the assistance of colleges and academies, the source from which it must come, if it ever be created, and the manner of distributing it, have been named. Nothing further need, therefore, be said on the subject.

COMMON SCHOOL FUND.

In determining the best means of raising the funds necessary to defray the expenses of the Common School System, the sources from which they are to be derived, the proportions to be derived from each source, and the manner of collection, are all to be considered.

With regard to the sources, necessity has already determined them. The condition of the State Treasury limits the amount derivable from that quarter at a sum far below the real wants of the system. The residue, therefore, is necessarily obtained from direct taxation. By existing laws the proportion raised by tax, cannot be less than equal to that given by the State, as annual appropriation, but is really on an average at least two and one half times that amount.

As to the proportion of school money which should be given by the State and that which should be obtained from taxation, so as best to comport with the views of theorists on this point, the undersigned hazards no opinion. In asserting that the amount of taxation ought not to be increased beyond its present sum, which he most unequivocally does, reference is had more to the known opposition of our citizens to a school tax, than to any abstract reasoning or minute calculation of the relative advantages of school funds as compared with direct taxation. In other States and countries where the system has been long in existence, and is placed on the solid foundation of public favor, it may be proper and safe to make the whole support of a common school system rest upon annual taxation, as a means of stimulating the exertions and exciting the interest of the people in its behalf. In Pennsylvania another and a previous object is to be accomplished. With us the first measure is to remove prejudice and to render

aroused, which will yet take years of patient exertion, it will be time enough to ascertain what quantum of the so called taxation stimulus will be requisite to keep it alive. At present the best means of aiding the cause of common school education is to forbear coupling it, to any extent that can possibly be avoided, with the unpopularity of the tax collector, and to sustain it, as far as practicable, out of the State Treasury.

Every exertion should be made to raise the amount of State appropriation to the annual sum of three hundred thousand dollars, which would completely turn the balance of public opinion in favor of the system, and would still leave an amout of tax, so light as not to be burthensome, yet so considerable as to keep the eye of public attention beneficially fixed on its expenditures.

An account of the condition of the permanent Common School Fund, established by the act of 2d April, 1831, and formed of the proceeds of the sale of public lands and the late State tax on personal and real property, will be found in the accompanying statement furnished by the Auditor General. From that document it appears that the annual interest of the fund will amount to one hundred thousand dollars, on the 1st April, 1842; which, according to the act creating it, would have been the day when the proceeds of the fund would become actually applicable to the purposes of teaching. That desirable event was, however, anticipated by the nineteenth section of the school law of 1st April, 1834, and by the eleventh section of that of June 13, 1836. So that the State appropriation from the school fund and from the general State Treasury is now annually one hundred thousand dollars from the State Treasury, and one hundred thousand dollars, payable by the Bank of the United States under the sixth section of its charter act, making a present distributive annual sum of two hundred thousand dollars.

It may also be proper here to remark, that the permanent school fund will be increased by the operation of the act of 27th February, 1837, which regulates the temporary disposition of this State's portion of the surplus revenue, and adds the interest of it to the school fund. The interest payable the present year by the deposite banks, under that act, will amount to about seventy-five thousand dollars, which is to be added to the principal of the common school fund. Should the annual distribution of the national surplus means be continued, this source of increase to the fund will soon add materially to the strength of the system.

The amount of taxation, it is believed, should be limited to the bare wants of the system, and should not be made arbitrarily, and in all cases to equal any particular sum of State appropriation. Whenever an amount of tax less than the amount of State appropriation will, with that appropriation, be more than sufficient to keep the schools in operation the requisite time, which in most instances would be nine months in the year, the districts should be permited to decrease their tax to that standard. No absolute minimum of taxation should be required, except for the purpose of causing a sufficient number of schools to be kept in operation, during a proper portion of the year, for the instruction of all the children of the district. When that desirable and main object of the system is achieved, the burthen of taxation should be lightened as much as possible. By such an arrangement taxation will come in to the aid of the permanent school fund, which seems to be its proper duty, and will

This plan would also produce a decrease in the school expenditure. If directors, who are themselves tax payers, and are accountable to the neighbors, who are also tax payers, have it in their power, by strict economy, to diminish the expenditure, and consequently, the taxation of the district, the result will obviously be most beneficial. Under existing laws, the dividend of State appropriation, which is, in all cases, determined by the number of taxables in each district, being the absolute measure of the minimum of taxation, there exists little motive for reducing the expenses below the sum which must thus necessarily come into the district treasury. The evil of this feature, in the law, is not at present felt to any great degree, because, the cost of procuring school houses, and making the other preliminary arrangements of the system, generally exceeds the minimum of annual school money; but, as those preliminary expenses cease, and the amount of State aid increases, it will become manifest, and must be remedied, or beget a carelessness and extravagance, which will be ruinous to the system.

It will, therefore, soon become manifestly necessary to make the real wants of the system, and not any arbitrary relative proportion of sums, the measure of school taxation.

The manner of collecting school money requires serious consideration That portion of it, receivable from the State, is sufficiently well regulated by existing law, and needs no modification. It is not payable until evidence is produced of the assessment of the requisite amount of tax by the district, and its receipt and disbursement are so guarded as to create all proper accountability. But, in the manner of collecting school tax, is to be found a main obstacle to the spread of the system, and as the same defect runs through the whole system of taxation for public purposes, the following remarks will not be confined to the school tax.

The citizen is first called on for his county rate, and until recently, for his State tax; then the supervisor demands the road tax; a short time afterwards, probably a militia fine is to be paid; and finally, when all patience is worn out, the school tax collector comes with his duplicate.The tax payer's opposition to the whole system of taxation is thus pent up and discharged against the school tax, which, because the last imposed, the least understood, and with many, the most unpopular, becomes the favorite theme of complaint, and often of political declamation. It has been known that collectors, opposed to the system, have delayed calling for the tax till the eve of an election, and have then loudly demanded payment, thereby increasing opposition. It has even occured, that county and other tax has been collected under the name of school tax, with an effect upon the system that needs no comment.

Nor is the present system of taxation objectionable alone on account of its unnecessary and vexatious sub-divisions. The inequality of its effects on the differet kinds of property begets opposition and discontent, which operate injuriously throughout, but especially upon the school system.

State tax was levied on both real and personal estate; county expenses are almost wholly paid by the owners of houses and land, while the possessors of money, and most kinds of personal property, contribute nothing; the same is the case with regard to road and poor taxes. For school purposes only, a small amount can be levied on personal property, the chief

These unnecessary and unjust distinctions have created, and will create much discontent that might be avoided by a just equalization, and by a simultaneous collection of the whole. All public objects, whether they be the support of Government, or the payment of county expenses-the mending of a road, or the education of youth-the relief of the poor, or the defence of the State, have equal claims upon the citizen, and should be contributed to out of the same purse, and at the same time. The amounts required for each, will, of course, be different, but the distribution of the proper proportions among them should take place after, and not before collection.

As an instance of the unequal effect of the present ill arranged system of taxation, it may be mentioned that when the late State tax was in operation, the county of Allegheny, with four representatives, and containing the rich city of Pittsburg, paid four hundred and seven dollars tax on personal property, while Adams, with only two representatives, paid four hundred and eighty-four dollars. Berks, having an equal valuation of real estate, and an equal representation with Chester, only paid one thousand seven hundred and forty-five dollars personal tax, though the latter paid three thousand and forty-five dollars. York, with three representatives, paid only one thousand two hundred and six dollars. Westmoreland, with as many representatives as York, and fully one half the amount of real estate, only paid one hundred and fifty-six dollars personal tax. Philadelphia city and county, with an immense real estate, and all their costly buildings, only paid double as much real estate tax as the county of Lancaster; while the county of Lancaster, with six representatives, paid as much personal property tax as the fourteen considerable counties of Allegeny, Adams, Bedford, Bradford, Centre, Franklin, Huntingdon, Luzerne, Northumberland, Somerset, Schuylkill, Union, Washington, and Westmoreland, put together, with five times as many representatives, and more than twice her amount of real estate.

This unjust and unequal effect of taxation is wholly attributable to the absence of an uniform mode of ascertaining the amount and value of the property to be taxed. One county, who e first rate land is worth $100 an acre, may value it, for the purposes of county taxation, at that sum; an adjoining county containing land of the same description and value, may estimate it at $50. The result, when a tax is to be collected, is obvious. This practice produces no injustice in the collection of county levies, so long as the rate of appraisement is uniform over the whole county. But when a difference of valuation prevails among the townships of the same county, which is not unusual, the same oppressive inequality is produced, as in the case of State tax.

The trifling amount of the late State tax on personal property proceeded from the ineffectual means provided by law to ascertain its actual amount, and the exemption of many descriptions of it from taxation altogether.

By reference to the accompanying statement of the Auditor General, on this subject, the amount of real and personal valuation and taxation in each county and in the whole State for 1835, will be seen, and the unequal opera tion of the present system at once perceived,

That statement will show that a tax of one mill on the dollar, even under