168 A HISTOEY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



that it has not accomplished all that was expected of it, is readily 

 admitted. The first great drawback is the enormous outlay involved, 

 and the tendency, in common with all public departments, to fatten 

 on taxation. The expenditure for the first half-dozen years averaged 

 about 600,000 per annum, after which it gradually crept up until 

 in the financial year 1890-91 it exceeded 840,000. Then the prun- 

 ing-knife was violently applied to the staff ; many small schools were 

 amalgamated, others were closed, and in the course of four or five 

 years the amount was again brought temporarily under the 600,000 

 which had come to be considered the normal figure. Much of the 

 enforced economy, however, was only at the expense of postponing 

 necessary works, and by the closing year of the century the expendi- 

 ture exceeded 670,000. It must be borne in mind that this outlay 

 is on primary schools only, and that concurrently the Government 

 spent 35,000 on secondary education, in the form of endowment to 

 the Melbourne University, maintenance of technical schools, schools 

 of mines, and in exhibitions and scholarships. The annual outlay 

 under the Common Schools Act up to 1872 had never exceeded 

 200,000, yet in Parliamentary debates of that year quite as much 

 fault was found with the " excessive cost " as with the " inefficiency " 

 of the old system. The new Act came into force on 1st January, 

 1873, and before the century closed the expenditure under it had 

 reached 19,000,000, of which about 1,100,000 was provided from 

 loans for school buildings, and the balance from the general revenue. 

 Such an expenditure on a community averaging during this 

 period less than a million persons of all ages, with approximately 

 220,000 possible scholars, should have accomplished all that the 

 most sanguine supporters of the Act desired. But it was far from 

 doing so. Its authors found it pleasant and popular to confer upon 

 the people gratuitously a privilege for which they had hitherto been 

 required to pay. In a short time hundreds of well-to-do tradesmen, 

 civil servants and highly paid clerks sent their children to share 

 in the free education the country provided. Nor were they to be 

 blamed for availing themselves of services for which, with the 

 assistance of many who had no benefit from them, they paid in- 

 directly through the taxes. The result was the closing of over 300 

 private schools between 1872 and 1875, though it by no means 



