LETTER V.

Our system is based upon an idea directly the reverse of the one on which
rests the English system--that of decentralization; and we may now study
its effects as shown in the development of literary tendencies and in the
reward of authors.

Centralization tends towards taxing the people for building up great
institutions at a distance from those who pay the taxes; decentralization
towards leaving to the people to tax themselves for the support of common
and high schools in their immediate neighborhood. The first tends towards
placing the man who has instruction to sell at a distance from those who
need to buy it; while the other tends towards bringing the teacher to the
immediate vicinity of the scholars, and thus diminishing the cost of
education. The effects of the latter are seen in the fact that the new
States, no less than the old ones, are engaged in an effort to enable all,
without distinction of sex or fortune, to obtain the instruction needful
for enabling them to become consumers of books, and customers to the men
who produce them. Massachusetts exhibits to the world 182,000 scholars in
her public schools; New York, 778,000 in the public ones, and 75,000 in
the private ones; and Iowa and Wisconsin are laying the foundation of a
system that will enable them, at a future day, to do as much. Boston taxes
herself $365,000 for purposes of education, while Philadelphia expends
more than half a million for the same purposes, and exhibits 50,000
children in her public schools. Here we have, at once, a great demand for
instructors, offering a premium on intellectual effort, and its effect is
seen in the numerous associations of teachers, each anxious to confer with
the others in regard to improvement in the modes of education. School
libraries are needed for the children, and already those of New York
exhibit about a million and a half of volumes. Books of a higher class are