from, or acquired by, the sale or forfeiture of glebe-lands belonging to any county or corporation, or to any parish, and which shall be unappropriated by the citizens of such county or corporation, or parish, shall be vested in the said School Commissioners; the revenue or income of such money, funds, debts, or other property, to be used and applied by the said Commissioners for the education of the poor youth of their county or corporation, in the same manner as they are directed to apply that portion of the "Literary Fund" to which their county or corporation may be entitled: Provided, that before any such funds, money, or other property shall be thus invested in the said Commissioners, the citizens of such county or corporation, or parish, as the case may be, or a majority of them, shall assent to the said investment. If any person shall hereafter (by gift in his lifetime, or by his last will and testament) give any sum of money, or other property, real, personal, or mixed, to the President and Directors of the "Literary Fund," for the use of any county or counties, or any incorporated city, town, or borough, or directly to such county or counties, or to such city, town, or borough, the same may be taken and held by the President and Directors of the "Literary Fund," or by the County or Corporation Courts, as the case may be, to be disposed of in manner and form, to all intents and purposes, as such donor, or testator, or testatrix may have prescribed: Provided, however, that all such gifts or devices shall be restricted to literary purposes, or purposes of education." "The said Commissioners shall have power to determine what number of poor children they will educate; what sum shall be paid for their education; to authorize each of themselves to select as many poor children as they may deem expedient, and to draw orders on their treasurer for the payment of the expense of tuition, and of furnishing such children with proper books and materials for writing and ciphering. The poor children selected in the manner aforesaid shall (with the assent of the father, or, if no father, of the mother of such children respectively, or, if no mother, with the assent of the guardian) be sent to such school, as may be convenient, to be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic." "They may authorize their respective treasurers to purchase on such terms as they may direct, and to distribute among the schools of the county, for the use of the poor children, such quantities of books, stationery, and other articles as they may think proper: Provided, that the amount expended in any one year for such purpose shall not exceed 5 per centum on their respective quotas." 33 Whenever the inhabitants of any one of the said districts shall, by voluntary contribution, have raised three-fifths of the amount necessary to build, either in the centre or such other part of their district as may be agreed on with the School Commissioners of their county, a good and sufficient school-house, of wood, stone, or brick, it shall and may be lawful for the said Com missioners to appropriate, out of the annual quota of their county, the remaining two-fifths of the amount requisite for said buildings: Provided such appropriation shall in no case exceed 10 per centum on said quota; and provided the building erected, together with the ground on which it stands, not exceeding one acre, shall for ever thereafter be vested in the President and Directors of the "Literary Fund," to be held for the exclusive use of the district in which it shall have been so erected." Massachusetts. Education is carefully attended to in Massachusetts, where Mr. Horace Mann is Secretary to the Board of Education at Boston. From the voluminous Reports published we gather, that, instead of contributing from the State Treasury a sum in addition to the local tax on the valued real property of each district, the practice in New England is to appropriate any surplus revenue that may be saved from the political expenditure to purposes of education. The cost of the schools was defrayed in 1844 from these sources in the following manner. TABLE showing the comparative Amount of Money appropriated by the different Counties in the State for the Education of each Child between the Ages of 4 and 16 Years, in each County. From the annexed Table it seems that there were 203,877persons between the ages of 4 and 16 in 1844, and that the school attendance averaged in that year 110,108 in summer, and 128,084 in winter; but as 6018 are stated to have attended school under years of age, and 11,581 were over 16, the number would appear not to have exceeded 110,000 at the schools in winter, or nearly 1 in 6 of the population. Libraries are stated to have been added, at the public expense, to the town schools. 4 A list of schools is published annually by the Board of Education, stating the cost, attendance, and local revenues of each; and in which the schools are arranged numerically according to their efficiency, as reported by the Inspecting Committees. LONDON:-Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and Sons, Stamford Street, |