=Similar Developments in the Other Southern States.=--This advance toward the common school in Virginia is typical of the South. The development in Maryland was very similar to that of Virginia. The state began to move slowly toward universal education by subsidizing the education of the poor (1816), and by the passage of a ‘permissive’ law for common schools in the counties (1825). In South Carolina an annual appropriation for ‘free schools’ was started in 1811. A law was passed establishing a number of schools in each election district equal to that of its members in the legislature and providing $300 for each school. But these schools were largely regarded as pauper institutions, and, because legislative representation was based upon property, the distribution of the appropriation was very inequitable, for the inland parts of the state, which most needed assistance, received least. Yet the amount of appropriation gradually increased, and sentiment for universal education steadily developed. Within the first half dozen years of statehood, Georgia began the provision of land endowment for schools, and the organization of a state system under the title of the ‘University of Georgia.’ While the value of the land was too small to establish a genuine system of public education so soon, before the close of the transition period, a permanent school fund had been started, and sentiment for public education had begun to grow. North Carolina made even earlier progress toward common schools. The constitution of 1776 provided for the establishment of schools, and, by 1817, at the request of the legislature, Judge Archibald D. Murphy, a statesman with broad educational traditions, even formulated an elaborate plan for a complete system of public schools. This scheme failed, because it proposed to ‘maintain,’ as well as educate, the children of the poor. But the suggestions of the Murphy committee shortly brought about the establishment of a ‘literary,’ or common school fund (1825), the income of which was to be used for the support of public schools. [Sidenote: and afterward other commonwealths, had the beginnings of a state system;] [Sidenote: and the larger cities had organized their schools.]