liberty so much contemned everywhere else. For how fares it with the liberty of the parents who have done their duty? They must pay for the school. They are told how essential schools are to make good citizens, how much better it is to pay for schools than for jails, and so on. But, if the tax-payer has any rights, why is it not one of the first of them, after he has provided schools, under the view of the matter just rehearsed, that he should know that those for whom the schools are provided are taking the good of them, and that the commonwealth will have the advantages for which he is paying?
Instead of being guaranteed of this fact, he is met by a new demand that he shall provide text-books and stationery. In order to make an argument for schools supported by taxation, it has been said that schools "support republican institutions," "save jails," etc., etc. If that is true, schools exist for the good of the community and not for the purpose of fitting the children to fulfil their careers on earth. Then the schools are not a good to be struggled for and paid for by those who get the good of them, but the children go to school in order to subject themselves to the discipline that the good of the community imposes upon them. In that view of the matter, it is consistent and reasonable, as well as quite in accord with human nature, that it should be constantly necessary to provide new inducements in order to secure attendance. It is said by those in a position to know that the children of Connecticut do not, on the average, take more than one-half of the schooling that the tax-payers provide for them all.
In the next stage, however, the tax-payer is called upon to pay inspectors and agents to seek out and force upon the children of his negligent neighbor the boon
