d, and
Michigan may be cited as examples of this plan. Where this plan has been
adopted, the districts or townships have generally been required to
raise by tax an amount equal to or greater than what has been received
from the school fund. Where the expense of supporting the schools has
exceeded the whole fund derived from both sources, the balance of the
expense has generally been made up by a rate-bill, parents who are able
being required to pay in proportion to the number of days their children
have attended school. This feature is objectionable even where provision
is made for the children of poor parents to attend without charge, for
it offers a pecuniary inducement, although the schools be nearly free,
to withdraw scholars from attendance upon them for the slightest causes.
This plan has obtained very generally in the states northwest of the
Ohio River, which have received from the General Confederacy a grant of
one section, or six hundred and forty acres of land in each township
for the support of schools. In some of these states the additional tax
is already sufficient, when joined with the avails of the school fund,
to render the schools entirely free. If one plan is superior to both of
the others, this is, perhaps, entitled to the pre-eminence. The school
fund lessens the amount which it is necessary to raise by a direct tax;
and still the sum which is levied in this way has a tendency to beget
and maintain a lively interest on the part of capitalists in the
administration of the educational department, and in the maintenance and
improvement of the public schools.

[67] A year ago the schools of New York were made entirely free by law.
See the foot-note on the 267th page of this work.

Without a correct public opinion and a due appreciation of the
importance of education, either of the three systems named, or any other
which may be adopted for the support of schools, will, and, from the
very nature of the case, must, be inadequate to meet the necessities of
a free people. But let the public be alive to the advantages of
education, and rank it first among the necessaries of life, and almost
any system will be attended with eminent success. If, then, one system
is superior to all others, it is that which is best calculated to beget
in the popular mind a realizing sense of the necessity of educating all
our youth in good schools. If this can be done in a state which has a
large school fund, without dimi