759. Funds Provided by the States. Many of the States that did not share in the bounty of Congress, have provided school funds out of their own resources, Connecticut leading the way in 1795. Perhaps the largest source of such funds has been the sale of lands belonging to the States.

760.

School Income.-This is derived from a variety of sources, as follows:

1. The income of permanent funds or endowments. 2. State school taxes. These are levied in various ways. Connecticut levies a tax on the property of the State amounting to $1.50 for every person between the ages of 5 and 16 years, and New Jersey one of $4.00 for every person between the ages of 4 and 18. Pennsylvania levies a lump sum of $5,000,000. New York levies a tax of one and one-fourth mills, Ohio and Michigan of one mill, and Nebraska of one and one-half mills, on the dollar upon the tax duplicate of the State. Indiana votes 16 cents and Kentucky 22 cents on every $100 of taxable property in the State. A number of the States, most of them in the South, levy poll taxes of small amounts for the same purpose.

3. Local taxes. In most States the great resource for school support is taxes imposed by the local authorities. These local taxes are of several kinds, as county, township, city, and district taxes. There is in some States a growing tendency to depend less than formerly upon local taxes and more upon State taxes.

4. Miscellaneous. Of these the variety is considerable. Fines, license moneys, penalties, taxes on banks, etc., are utilized for school purposes in different States.

761. Modes of Distributing Funds.-These cannot be described in small compass, but the following points may be noted:

I. In the first States receiving lands from Congress for common schools, each Congressional township has its own special fund arising from its own section; but in the later States, beginning with Michi

gan, in 1837, there is one consolidated fund from which distribution is made to the counties and townships.

2. The common mode of distributing the State funds, no matter from what source it comes, with the above modification, is for the State to distribute to the counties, and the counties to the townships or districts, according to the number of persons between certain specified ages, as 4 and 16, 5 and 18, or 6 and 21.

3. It is not uncommon to pay over funds arising from special sources, as fines and licenses, to the county, township, or city in which they are collected.

762. Free Schools.-Formerly even the so-called public schools were supported in part by means of rate bills, or tuition charges, assessed upon those who used the schools. But such fees are now almost wholly, if not wholly, unknown in the United States. Charges are sometimes made for instruction in higher branches in high schools, and in universities, but the State common schools are now practically free. The principle is generally admitted that the property of the State should educate the youth of the State. It has, however, been found necessary in most States to protect the public schools and school funds against sectarian religious zeal. Both these ends the constitution of Ohio secures by this provision: "The General Assembly shall make such provision, by taxation or otherwise, as, with the interest arising from the school trust-fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the State, but no religious or other sect or sects shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of the State."

NOTE.—It is a very common misapprehension that the educational land grant policy of the National Government originated in the Ordinance of 1787. That document is wholly silent on the subject of educational lands. The misapprehension has arisen from confounding this Ordinance with earlier legislation. The Ordinance says in respect to education merely that schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged. Grants for common school purposes are first heard of in the Land Ordinance of 1785, and University grants in the sale to the Ohio Company in 1787. Both of these acts of legislation were of merely local application. But they recognized the principle of educational land grants, and this principle has been progressively applied to every public-land State on or before its admission to the Union. The grants are not traceable to any single act of legislation, but have been made in single acts of specific application.-See Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1892–93, Vol. II, pp. 1268–1288, for an historical and statistical view of the subject.

CONCLUSION.

NATURE OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.

763. The United States a Federal Republic.From the beginning of Colonial history, government in the United States has been dual. From the beginning, also, it has been largely republican, and since 1776 wholly so. Accordingly, the United States are a federal state, or, more narrowly, a federal republic. Again, government, both National and State, is constitutional; in no other country is so much stress laid on written constitutions. A prescriptive constitution may be better for England, but nothing short of written constitutions, ordained in the most formal and solemn manner, would satisfy the American people. The central idea of the English constitutionthe sovereignty of Parliament-is thoroughly repugnant to them.

764. Features of Federal States.-Federal States are of several classes, but the class to which the United States belong presents the following features:

Each member of the union is wholly independent of the other members and of the union in all matters which concern itself only, but is subject to the national government in all matters which concern the members collectively. In its own sphere it is wholly independent and sovereign; in the national sphere, it has no independence or sovereignty whatever. It makes its own constitution and enacts and executes its own laws; but this constitution and these laws must be in conformity with the National Constitution and laws.

765. Origin of Federal States.-These States are almost always formed by integration, rarely by disintegration. They commonly result from uniting states part'v or

wholly independent, not from dividing States before consolidated. This is shown by the names applied to them : federation, confederation, and union. Of this process no better example can be given than the origin of the United States as traced in Part I. of this work.

766. Advantages of Federal States. Such states, when they work successfully, combine in large measure the advantages that are claimed for large and small states respectively. These are strength, permanence, and freedom from internal strife and faction, on the one hand; the adaptation of government to local wants, liberty, and high political intelligence and public spirit, on the other. If it is held that federal states do not combine these excellencies in the highest degree, the reply may be made that they do avoid the peculiar dangers of large and small consolidated states, oppression and local strife.

767. Disadvantages.-The principal disadvantages of a federal state arise from the complexity of its machinery; to adjust the two jurisdictions, or what Mr. Bryce calls the two loyalties and the two patriotisms, in a manner to avoid friction and to secure harmony and efficiency, is one of the most difficult of political problems. Dr. E. A. Freeman, the distinguished historian of Federal Government, says: "The federal idea, in its highest and most elaborate development, is the most finished and the most artificial production of political ingenuity. It is hardly possible that federal government can attain its perfect form except in a highly refined age, and among a people whose political education has already stretched over many generations.

. . That ideal is so very refined and artificial that it seems not to have been attained more than four or five times in the history of the world."

768. The Dual Constitution of the United States. -This is thus described by Judge Jameson: "And here I may remark that the Constitution of the United States is a

1 History of Federal Government, pp. 3, 4.

part of the constitution of each State, whether referred to in it or not, and that the constitutions of all the States form a part of the Constitution of the United States. An aggregation of all these constitutional instruments would be precisely the same in principle as a single constitution, which, framed by the people of the Union, should define the powers of the General Government, and then by specific provisions erect the separate governments of the States, with all their existing attributions and limitations of power.'

1

769. Relations of the Two Systems.-Neither part of this complicated system is a complete government; neither one can be understood without the other; each one is essential to the other, and to society, and neither one is more essential than the other. The citizen is always subject to two jurisdictions. Were the National jurisdiction destroyed, he would have no protection against foreign powers. Were the State jurisdiction withdrawn, he would be at the mercy of internal faction and anarchy. The Nation might assume the powers of the States, the States might become independent nations; or, as Jameson puts it, the American people might melt down their forty-five constitutions, and cast the material into a new mold, thus constituting a consolidated system like that of France. But were they to do this, they would destroy the characteristic features of their political system, and sacrifice those political functions upon which they have always most prided themselves.

770. Relative Prominence of the Two Jurisdictions. This has undergone considerable change since 1776. At first the Union was more conspicuous than the States; but when the States reorganized their governments, and especially when Congress fell into contempt at the close of the Revolution, the States quite overshadowed the Union. With the Constitution, the Union assumed a new impor

1 The Constitutional Convention, p. 87.