"Resolved, that next to life and liberty, we consider education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind.
"Resolved, that the public funds should be appropriated (to a reasonable extent) to the purpose of education upon a regular system that shall insure the opportunity to every individual of obtaining a competent education before he shall have arrived at the age of maturity."
CHAPTER XXVI
[1] Connecticut and New York both had set aside lands, before 1800, to create such a fund, Connecticut's fund dating back to 1750. Delaware, in 1796, devoted the income from marriage and tavern licenses to the same purpose, but made no use of the fund for twenty years. Connecticut, in 1795, sold its "Western Reserve" in Ohio for $1,200,000, and added this to its school fund. New York, in 1805, similarly added the proceeds of the sale of half a million acres of state lands, though the fund then formally created accumulated unused until 1812. Tennessee began to build up a permanent state school fund in 1806; Virginia in 1810; South Carolina in 1811; Maryland in 1812; New Jersey in 1816; Georgia in 1817; Maine, New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Louisiana in 1821; Vermont and North Carolina in 1825; Pennsylvania in 1831; and Massachusetts in 1834. These were established as permanent state funds, the annual income only to be used, in some way to be determined later, for the support of some form of schools.
[2] Now for the first time direct taxation for schools was likely to be felt by the taxpayer, and the fight for and against the imposition of such taxation was on in earnest. The course of the struggle and the results were somewhat different in the different States, but, in a general way, the progress of the conflict was somewhat as follows:
1. Permission granted to communities so desiring to organize a school taxing district, and to tax for school support the property of those consenting and residing therein.
2. Taxation of all property in the taxing district permitted.
3. State aid to such districts, at first from the income from permanent endowment funds, and later from the proceeds of a small state appropriation or a state or county tax.
4. Compulsory local taxation to supplement the state or county grant.
[3] Concerning the system, "The Philadelphia Society for the Establishment and Support of Charity Schools," in an "Address to the Public," in 1818, said: