FINANCIAL HISTORY OF OREGON. 157 the remainder in three equal annual installments at ten per cent per annum interest from the date of purchase." 65 With the progress of the sales under this law and the ad- ministration of the proceeds by the territorial treasurers, a small fund accumulated. A radical change in the mode of administration of the fund, however, was made two years later. It was then arranged for turning the moneys received from the sales into the county treasuries and also for distrib- uting at the close of each year the cash that had accumulated in the territorial treasury on the securities it held to the county treasuries in proportion to the number of children in each county between the ages of four and twenty-one years. All moneys thus received into the county treasuries, arising from the sale of common school lands, were to remain an irre- ducible fund to be held "by the several counties in trust for the Territory." 66 The territorial period thus closed with decided decentralization in the method of administering this fund. 67 The earlier statutes pertaining to this fund all provide specifically for the annual apportionment of the income of it to the school districts of the Territory. Because of the lack of a la,w authorizing the sale of the school lands, no fund ac- cumulated until 1856 ; and then from the fact that it remained so small and the net income of it so meagre, or, for some other reason, the machinery for the annual distribution of the in- come was never, during the territorial period, put into oper- ation. The general statistics of the common school fund, from 1856 to 1859, inclusive, are given below. The accounts of the Ter- ritorial Treasurer in this fund are full of most palpable er- rors. The public interest in this matter seems to have had no guardian. The errors are allowed to pass uncorrected and the system of accounting for the moneys and securities in this 65 Oregon Statutes, Seventh Session, 1855-6, pp. 69-71. 66 Oregon Statutes, Ninth Session, 1857-8, pp. 43-45. 67 Oregon Statutes, Ninth Session, 1857-8, pp. 44-45.
