Page:The social and moral elevation of our working classes.pdf/4

 of education in other European countries, but I apprehend it is a generally admitted fact, that education is much more diffused among the populations of many of them than it is with us, and I believe crime is also less prevalent. I can, however, compare, from official papers, what is done in Ireland by the government to extend popular education, with the efforts made for that purpose in the state of Massachusetts, U. S.

The parliamentary grant to our Board of National Education in 1855, was £227,641, and the number of pupils in its schools were 535,905. These figures exhibit a very gratifying state of affairs as compared with former periods, and show the increasing interest which is felt in the education of our people. But when we compare our efforts with the efforts of the citizens of Massachusetts in a like direction, we shall see how far short, indeed, we fall, in our anxiety to provide for the intellectual culture of our people.

In the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education for the year 1849 (the last Report I have access to at present, but we may presume that later ones are not less suggestive or less instructive), I find that the state fund appropriated for educational purposes then amounted to 876,082 dollars, and provision was made from sales of public lands for increase of that fund to one million of dollars. This money was invested, and produced, at an interest of 5 and 6 per cent, per annum, an income of about 39,000 dollars a year. This income is divided among the different towns in the state in proportion to the number of children in each between four and sixteen years of age, and providing that each town shall have raised by taxation at least one dollar and fifty cents for each person from 4 to 16 years of age of its population. The sums levied by 316 towns in the state which made returns, amounted to over 830,000 dollars; of which amount Boston contributed nearly 233,000; and their population was 737,700. That of the entire state was probably 900,000 dollars.

The sum expended by the people of Massachusetts in securing for themselves the blessings—all the elevating influences—of education, amounts annually to about £185,000 British money.

The population of Ireland by last census was 6,551,970, at least seven time as large as that of Massachusetts; so that if we appropriated as large a sum by the taxation of our people for their education, we should levy over £1,100,000 a year for that purpose. How great the difference may be between that sum and the £227,640 given by Parliament to our National Education Board, with that expended by us on private education, beyond what the people of Massachusetts expend in this way cannot be ascertained; I imagine it is a considerable sum in our favour; but let us make what allowance we may under that head, and there will yet be so heavy a balance against us, as proves that our appreciation of the value of education is much less than theirs.

I have no means of ascertaining the comparative advantages, in a social and moral point of view, of this superior anxiety to secure a universal education, as exhibited in the criminal calendar of each country, but I find the following words in the Tenth Annual Report on Education made to the governor of the state, by that