The Legislature, by providing that every school, having more than fifty scholars, shall employ an assistant teacher, (unless the district passes an express vote to the contrary,) has intimated its opinion that fifty children are as many as one teacher can well govern and instruct. Universal experience ratifies this opinion. For schools, therefore, consisting of more than fifty children, there should be some equivalent, either in the length of the time, or in the superior qualifications of the teacher, to compensate for the disadvantage of numbers. But a school may be too small as well as too large; and hence may suffer from the want of that natural stimulus and excitement which all children feel when brought together. There should be a compensation for this class of schools also;-usually, however, if not always, this object can be secured in the manner to be noticed below. In some districts, the population is very sparse, the roads bad, and subject to obstructions in the winter from snow, and a majority of the children have a great distance to travel. A contiguous district may have an equal number of scholars, but be compactly situated, and its school always easy of access. In such a case, special interference should compensate for natural disadvantages. In regard to two districts, equal in the number of scholars,-in one, most of the scholars may be large, rendering it advisable to employ a male teacher; in the other, the children may be small, so that a female shall be preferable. Are not these circumstances, also, a fair subject for consideration in making the apportionment? Indeed, wherever the condition of a district is such as to render it expedient to employ a female teacher, that circumstance may well be taken into view. And after all, it will not be advisable to change the rule of apportionment, every year, in order to equalize slight differences; for the evil of a perpetual change may outweigh the evils it would remedy. Only one case occurs to me, where but half or less than half of the money which an impartial tribunal would otherwise award to a district, on the principles above stated, should be allowed to it. I mean a case where two or more districts, which can be united and ought to be united, refuse to join. In such a case, let them suffer the weakness that comes from folly, until they will practise the wisdom that confers strength.

POWER OF TOWNS TO RAISE MONEY FOR SCHOOLS.

A topic not wholly unallied to the preceding, is, the legal power of towns to raise money for the support of schools. Discussions respecting the apportionment of money among districts, and suggestions for increasing the usefulness of our schools, would be nugatory, if towns could not raise money for the purpose. It would be in vain, also, that the pervading spirit of all our institutions should demand a thorough, generous, mind-expanding education for all our people, if there were no body-politic authorized by law to make the requisite pecuniary grants. This raises the direct question,-to what extent our municipal corporations may go, in granting money for the support of schools. This question is still debated; and as, in several instances, it has seriously interfered with the appropriation of moneys, which otherwise would have been unhesitatingly granted, it may not be amiss to consider some of the points on which the issue must be adjudicated.

It is admitted, by all parties, however, that the law requires, (and of course authorizes,) every town, to maintain schools of a certain aggregate length, which are to be kept by teachers having certain prescribed qualifications; and that all towns, without exception, falling below this aggregate in the length of its schools, and this prescribed grade in the qualifications of its teachers, become criminally responsible to the judicial tribunals of the State. But the question remains, whether any town may go beyond the exact requisitions of the law. Here, one party maintains that the minimum amount is also the maximum; that is, when the law requires a town to maintain schools, for such or such a length of time, it impliedly prohibits the town from maintaining schools for a longer period. The argument restricts the legal power to the legal duty; so that when the duty is performed the power is exhausted. It is said that towns have no discretion, as to the amount of their grants; but only as to the mode of expending the limited sum they are authorized to raise.

For instance, the law requires that every town in the Com

monwealth, however low its valuation, or few its numbers, shall keep, each year, one school for six months, or two or more schools, for terms of time, that shall together be equivalent to six months. If the number of families or householders in the town amounts to one hundred, then one school shall be kept for twelve months, or two or more schools, for terms that together shall be equivalent to twelve months. As the number of inhabitants increases, the required length of the school or schools, also increases. Now the point maintained is, that when towns have supported schools, for the prescribed period, their authority is exhausted. Being corporate bodies, incapable of originating powers, but deriving whatever powers they possess, from the law, when that is done which the law commands to be done, both the power and the obligation come to an end.

The same view is sometimes taken in regard to the studies. or branches, which may be legally taught in our schools. Respecting the lowest grade of schools known to the law, the statute declares that they shall be kept by teachers of competent ability and good morals, for the instruction of children in orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, arithmetic and good behavior. On the same ground as before, it is argued, that these are the only branches which can legally be taught in this grade of schools;—that composition, rhetoric, logic, book-keeping, the elements of natural philosophy, the history of the world, or even that of our own country, &c., &c., are not merely unprovided for, in our common district schools, but that their introduction is impliedly forbidden. According to the same view, the employment of a teacher, of the most high and varied attainments, provided a greater compensation be given him, on account of his superior competency, would also be illegal. Such is the argument, on the one side, as far as I have been able to learn and to understand it, on the subject of a town's power to grant money for schools.

On the other side, it is maintained that the length of schools and the range of studies prescribed by the statute, are the minimum but not the maximum;-that while every town is obliged to do so much, no town is prohibited from doing more;-and

therefore, that any town may sustain schools for any portion of the year and for any grade of studies, which its own discretion may dictate, subject only to the limitation which binds all bodies politic and corporate, of legislative creation; namely, that their powers shall not be exercised wantonly or fraudulently. By this construction the powers of the towns, though not wholly unlimited and indefinite, still are not specifically fixed and bounded; but they contain a germ of expansion, through whose developments our school system may be enlarged from year to year to meet the increasing wants of the community.

In speaking of the two parties, however, which respectively espouse the opposite sides of this question, I would not be understood to say that there is any comparison between them as to numbers. The above questions have been two or three times started at the Common School conventions; they have been propounded in some half dozen of the school committees' reports; my advice has been occasionally asked by letter; and, in one instance, the subject has been extensively discussed in the public papers.

But, on the other hand, the almost universal practice of the State, has been on the side of a liberal construction of the law; and, should it now be found, on an appeal to the highest judicial tribunal, that this construction is erroneous, probably there is not a town in the State, whose taxes for the support of schools have not been granted and levied in violation of law; and hence have been void for excess.

On a subject so important, if there are data for the formation of a satisfactory opinion, it seems desirable that they should be set forth; so that the public mind, if that be practicable, should rest securely in its convictions, and the advancement of our schools be disencumbered of these embarrassments. With respect and deference, therefore, to the opinions of those from whom I feel obliged to dissent, I propose to submit a few considerations, tending to show, not only that the genius of our government and the necessities imposed upon us by the nature of all our political and social institutions;-not only the interest and the honor of the Commonwealth, but also that both the spirit and the letter of our laws, fortified by all con

temporaneous exposition, sustain the more liberal construction of the statute, to which I have referred.

The proportion of students in all the incorporated academies in the State, when compared with the whole number of children between the ages of 4 and 16 years, belonging to the State, is a little less than one in fifty. There are private schools, under the different appellations of select schools, high schools, &c., where some of the higher branches are also taught. But in towns which maintain no town high school, or school which, in the language of the law, is "kept for the benefit of all the inhabitants," nineteen twentieths, at least, of all the children, receive all the school education which they bring into life, at the district school. Only about forty of the three hundred and eight towns in the State, are required by law to keep a school of a higher grade than the Common School; and, on complying with a condition, to be noticed below, this class of towns can exempt themselves from the obligation to maintain such higher school. Suppose then, the ability of our system of Common Schools to confer an enlarged and generous education, to be curtailed and shrunk to the mere teaching of the elements,-orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography and arithmetic;-and suppose the schools themselves to be restricted to the period mentioned in the law,— and what a meagre, parsimonious, impoverished education, would nineteen twentieths of the children of the State receive. The aggregate length of the Boston schools, last year, was one hundred and thirty-one years; that is, the city had one hundred and thirty-one schools which, with only the customary vacations, were kept through the year. It has a Latin school, an English high school, sixteen grammar schools, and one hundred and thirteen primary schools. According to the narrow construction of the law, which is proposed, its Latin and its English high school must be merged in one; and its sixteen grammar and one hundred and thirteen primary schools, must be reduced to an aggregate of only twenty-four months! But the diminution in the length of the schools which would follow from such a construction of the law, is not more alarming than would be the simultaneous contraction of the range