attendance or non-attendance of their children upon school. At the head of the catalogue stands the town, in which the average attendance of the whole number of children belonging to the school, as compared with the number between 4 and 16 years of age belonging to the town, is greatest; and then follow, in numerical order, all the other towns in the State, according to their precedence in this respect. Other tables show the same facts in regard to all the towns in the respective counties. The basis of this comparison is found by taking the mean of the average attendance for both summer and winter terms, and then stating the proportion, in decimals, between this mean and the whole number of children in the town between 4 and 16. See Appendix, pp. lii, lx.

Twice, within a few years past, a proposition has been brought forward in the Legislature, aiming at an apportionment among the towns of the annual income of the State school fund,-not, as at present, according to the number of children between 4 and 16 belonging to the town,—but according to their average attendance upon the schools. On both occasions, the proposition was voted down, without inquiry, on the assumed ground that the average attendance would be greatest in cities and populous towns, where access to the schools is easiest; and, of course, that it would be least in rural and sparsely populated districts, where many of the children reside at a distance from the schoolhouse, and where snowblocked roads in the winter, and severe storms at all seasons, throw obstacles in the way of regularity. The hasty and unwarrantable inference was drawn, that children would attend most who could attend most easily; and that the attendance would diminish as its difficulties increased.

It required but a very partial acquaintance with the condition of our schools, and the character of our people, to know that such an inference was most erroneous. But as it will usually be found impracticable, in the press of legislative business, to go through with the labor of an arithmetical demonstration of such facts, I have set them forth in detail, in the tables above mentioned. The results are most extraordinary. In the list of 311 towns, the last ninety-three contain half the children

in the State between the ages of four and sixteen. In the last eighty-three, but a little more than one quarter of all the towns in the State,-ten shire towns, or county seats of government, are included; and the city of Boston, which, as it was apprehended, from the facility with which its children can attend school at all seasons of the year, would run away with the lion's share of the income, falls to No. 287, in a catalogue of 311, or leaves below itself only 24 towns; and among these are the populous ones of Newburyport, Hingham, Dorchester, Taunton and Fall River.

It is most obvious, then, that an apportionment of the income of the school fund, according to the average attendance of the children upon the schools,-taking the mean of attendance for both summer and winter schools,-would conduce greatly to the benefit of the smaller, the more agricultural, and the more sparsely populated towns. It would distribute the bounty of the State on the principle of helping those who help themselves. It would confer the benefit of the income on the children who attend the Public Schools, instead of bestowing it in behalf of children who attend academies and private schools, and never enter Public Schools at all; and thus it would give a practical answer to the pertinent question, why money should be given to those who disdain to use it. And, lastly, it would be a new argument, of great weight in many minds, in favor of a more uniform attendance upon school; because, the detention from school of any child who ought to be in it would diminish the town's share of the income, and thus inflict palpable injustice not only on the absentee, but on all the other school children in the town.

Should the towns adopt the same principle in apportioning among the districts the money raised by taxation, (as some of them have already done,) the efficacy of the measure would be greatly increased.

The expediency, however, of making any change in the basis of apportionment rests with the Legislature. My main objects, in preparing the tables, were two:-1st, to rectify the error, that the actual attendance of children upon school is proportioned to the facility of attendance; and, 2nd, to hold up a mirror before

all the towns in the State collectively, and also before the towns in the several counties respectively, where they may see their own beauty or deformity, when their features are compared with those of their neighbors. Unhappily, the standard of beauty, so far as this part of their moral aspect is concerned, is very low. It is to be hoped that a sense of shame, if no higher motive, may arouse some of the towns to action on this subject, in regard to which the public conscience seems, at present, to be either dormant or non-existent.

ACT OF 1847, CH. 183.

By the laws of the Commonwealth, as they have existed for many years, the income of the State school fund is apportioned among the towns, on two conditions:-1st, that they raise by tax, to meet the current expenses of the schools, a sum equal to $1 25 for each child in the town between the ages of four and sixteen; and, 2nd, that the school committees, on or before the last day of April in each year, transmit a Return and a copy of their annual Report to the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The object of this last provision was, to obtaìn from each town a Return and a Report, from which the Annual Abstract of School Returns might be prepared. But it sometimes happened that the towns forfeited their share of the school fund, not through any delinquency of their own, but through the failure of the school committee to make the Return and the Report required by law. But the law still authorized the committees to demand payment of the towns for their services, notwithstanding any loss which the towns might have incurred through the committees' neglect or unfaithfulness. It was therefore proposed, in the last Legislature, that when a town should be deprived of its share of the income of the fund, through the failure of the committee to make and transmit either a Return or a Report, the committee themselves should forfeit their claim upon the town for services performed. The proposition was referred to the Joint Committee on Education, who prepared a bill which afterwards became the act of 1847, ch. 183; but, by a strange oversight, they provided a penalty for not making a Return, but none for not making a Report.

As the law now stands, therefore, no grossness of neglect, in relation to the Report, will work a forfeiture of a committee's claim upon the town for compensation; although, in consequence of that neglect, the town forfeits its share of the income of the fund.

TEACHERS' INSTITUTES.

Teachers' Institutes have now been held in Massachusetts for three successive years, their expenses having been defrayed, the first year, by the gift of a thousand dollars, made by a well-known friend of education; and, the last two years, by an appropriation from the State treasury. They are found to fulfil their promises of utility. They are now held, not only in New York and New England, but in all parts of the country where Common School education is perceptibly advancing.

The appropriation made by the Legislature, for the encouragement of Institutes, applies alike to all parts of the State. Wherever "reasonable assurance" is given, that the required number of teachers will assemble, there an Institute is appointed. But different parts of the State manifest very different degrees of interest in their behalf. With one exception, all the Institutes yet held, have been held in the counties of Berkshire, Franklin, the northern part of Worcester, Middlesex, the western part of Essex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable. The one above referred to, as an exception, was held at Grafton, which is on the northern border of the southern half of Worcester county. It was the smallest we have had, and its members, with a very few exceptions, came from the northern half of Worcester county, from Middlesex, and from Norfolk. There is a range of towns lying contiguous or near to the State of Connecticut, extending from Berkshire county, eastward, as far as Norfolk, and reaching into the interior, in some places two or three tiers deep, from all of which, taken together, not half a dozen members have ever attended the Institutes. The gales that blow over them from the south, bear no healing on their wings.

Some parts of the State are more unfavorably situated than others, in regard to holding this class of meetings. On the

Cape and the Islands, for instance, it is difficult to find seventy teachers, within a commodious distance, who will attend. Added to this, many of the teachers who are employed on the Cape and the Vineyard, come from abroad, and do not reach their field of labor until a day or two before their schools are to commence. There is a strong desire, on the part of many, that the present legal limit, in regard to number, should be removed; and that the Board should be authorized to appoint an Institute, wherever, under all the circumstances, they may deem it expedient. The law of Maine, in other respects like ours, imposes no limitation on its Board in regard to number.

Our law, too, restricts the expenditure of each Institute to the sum of two hundred dollars. In some instances, where the place of meeting has been remote, and where, in addition to the cost of teachers, lecturers, rooms, fuel, attendance, and so forth, I have been obliged to procure some indispensable apparatus, the actual expense has exceeded the amount of the appropriation. In these cases, although my own services at the Institutes are always gratuitous, I have had to pay the balance from my own pocket.

STATE SCHOOL FUND.

The amount of the State School Fund, on the first of December instant, was $843,347. Notwithstanding the extraordinary demands made upon it, during the last year, (to pay an instalment of the grant to Amherst College, and for other purposes,) its increase, during the year, has been $21,775.

STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS.

These institutions are steadily fulfilling their great mission. They are gradually revolutionizing the methods and processes of instruction, improving its quality and enlarging its quantity, throughout the State. It has been often remarked by the teachers who have assisted me at the Institutes, that, although entire strangers to every member of these bodies, yet, during the first or second day of the session, they were able, without failure, to select those who had attended a Normal School, by the promptness and correctness of their answers.