262 HISTORY OF OHIO. 



week after week, and prepared for the press and printed, the 

 three pamphlets aforesaid, at the expense of printing and pa- 

 per, paid for by the chairman, and never fully remunerated to 

 this day, by the state! Fifteen hundred copies of each, or 

 four thousand five hundred copies, after an absence from 

 home on that business, of eighty-two days were printed, 

 and done up in handsome covers. They were circulated 

 over the whole state in the spring, summer and autumn 

 of 1823. 



On the assembling of the legislature in December, as soon 

 as that body were properly organized the report of the com- 

 missioners was presented to the general asembly which they 

 accepted, thanking, but not paying any thing for their labors and 

 expenditures. This session had a majority in both houses, op- 

 posed to the school system and the sale of the school lands, and 

 all that was done by them, was to quarrel about these subjects. 

 They finally broke up in a row and went home. During the 

 next summer and autumn, the contest about the sale of the 

 school lands, the school system, the canal, and an equitable 

 mode of taxation, was warm and animated, but the friends of 

 all these measures, triumphed over all opposition, at the polls 

 in the October election of 1824. Large majorities were elec- 

 ted in both houses, friendly to these highly beneficial meas- 

 ures. These measures were carried through the general assem- 

 bly, and the greatest revolution, politically, was effected that 

 our history offers to the reader. That legislature was the 

 ablest in point of talents and moral worth that we ever had 

 in the state. 



They gave us a system of education for common schools; 

 changed the mode of taxation; created a board of fund com- 

 missioners who were authorized to issue stock and borrow mo- 

 ney on it, wherewith to make our canals. They passed many 

 other wise, morally healthful and useful acts. These measures 

 effected more for us than all others, ever originatinor with the 

 people, and carried out into execution by the legislature. 



Our domestic policy thus established, has never varied since 



