40 The Financial History of Connecticut. 



lists, adding the same to their respective proportions of the county 

 rate, and requiring the constables to levy the said assessments upon 

 the inhabitants of each town within their several precincts."^ In 

 1711 the general assembly resolved that "upon consideration of 

 the great backwardness and neglect among the people of this colony 

 in paying the forty shillings upon every thousand pounds in the 

 lists of estates allowed by law for the supporting and keeping of 

 schools," [it be ordered and enacted that] "the said sum of forty 

 shillings (recovered and to be recovered as county pay) upon the 

 thousand pounds, and at that rate upon the lists of estates of the 

 several towns, villages, and places within this colony, shall be paid 

 by the treasurer out of the public treasury of this colony, to the 

 committee for the schools respectively, or their order, for the support 

 of the schools in the said towns, villages, and places . . . "^ In these 

 two laws are seen the principles which are incorporated in the act 

 of 1800 — the state appropriating a designated sum which it is to 

 receive back in the way of increased taxation. The rate of this 

 tax was changed several times until in May, 1767, it was fixed 

 again at "forty shillings on the thousand pounds." It thus continued 

 until by the act of 1800 its equivalent of two dollars on the thou- 

 sand dollars was substituted. 



The total amount of these annual state appropriations for the 

 support of schools during this entire period (1789—1818), exclusive 

 of the year 1805-1806,-'' was $344,247.70. This is an average of 

 $12,294.56 a year. By adding the dividends from the school fund 

 (from 1799, when the first dividend was distributed, to 1818, inclusive), 

 which were also appropriated for schools, the total sum, with the ex- 

 ception already noted, spent for educational purposes by the state in 

 this first period is found to be $1,113,210.15. Taking into account only 

 the part of this period during which both the dividends from the school 

 fund and the annual appropriations were received by the school 

 societies (1799—1818), the average annual sum of about fifty-one 

 thousand three hundred sixty-four dollars was devoted by the state 

 to the cause of education.^ 



^ Report Supt. of Common Schools. 1853, pp. 44, 45. 



2 Report Supt. of Common Schools, 1853, p. 46. 



'* The exact amount spent for schools by the state for the year ending 

 April 30, 1806, could not be ascertained because the comptroller's semi- 

 annual report of October 1805 is missing. 



* In computing this average, the average annual appropriation of $12,294.56 

 has been substituted for the missing figures of 1806. 



