There is another important matter for adjustment. The city has left nothing undone that money and labor could do to make the public schools the best in the United States. It is doubtful whether there has ever before been seen in any city or State an expenditure for public schools so generous, under all the circumstances, as that of Washington within the past few years. The best school-houses here are the best the Prussian commissioners, who lately came to inspect them, had ever seen. A very great number of the pupils educated by the city are the children of government servants whose homes are in the States, and who pay no considerable taxes here. Every State and Territory has received a liberal allotment of public land for school-purposes except the District of Columbia, which has probably done more for schools without the endowment, considering the time and taxable property at command, than any State has ever done with it. Of course the city has received many benefits from the general government, but the considerable ones have been indirect. The excellent water-works, for instance, costing about three millions of dollars, were built with the nation's money and by army engineers, because the nation needed them, and show how entirely identical are the interests of both parties. Their respective duties, while they need defining anew, are so wedded that there is no room for serious difference. It is really a matter for congratulation that the general government held back and did not take more of the improvements into its own hands. The city's present claims are by so much stronger: the two governments can work in harmony, and any efforts that are now made will not be thrown away. Had Congress acted sooner we might have had more Washington canals, and Washington and Georgetown street-cars, and similar Congressional "improvements," beginning nowhere but in ignorance or selfishness, and ending in nothing but nuisances. The improvement of the interiors of the national grounds, however, by the general government, is now keeping pace with that of the exteriors by the city as nearly as is possible under present legislation, and their superintendence has become at last an office of some practical consequence to Washington. The general government owns about one-half of the property in the District, and during seventy years has expended for the improvement of the thoroughfares a little over one million of dollars. The city during the same time has expended for the same purpose nearly fourteen millions of dollars.