The principle involved in this condition of affairs may be simply illustrated thus: Suppose the head of each family had to pay directly for the education of his own children. Then, even with an equality of means, the burden would, as a matter of course, fall heavier on the one with a numerous than the one with a small progeny. To make apparent the effect of this inequality in the proportion of minors to adults in different parts of our common country, let us suppose that the mean average cost of schooling is four dollars per annum for each child. It appears that in Connecticut, out of every one hundred persons, fifty-nine are adults, and forty-one are minors. At this supposed rate, then, the fifty-nine adults would have each to pay two dollars and seventy-eight cents per annum in order to make up the one hundred and sixty-four dollars per annum needed for the education of the forty-one children. It appears also that in South Carolina, out of every one hundred persons, forty-three are adults and fifty-seven are minors. At the supposed rate, then, these forty-three adults would have each to pay five dollars and thirty cents per annum in order to make up the two hundred and twenty-eight dollars per annum needed for the education of the fifty-seven children. Now, this is a very important fact, indeed, and must lead all fair minded advocates of education to modify somewhat the criticisms they may have made touching the expenditure in the South for education as compared with that in the North and West; for here it becomes palpable that two dollars and seventy-eight cents per adult in Connecticut is equivalent to five dollars and thirty cents per adult in South Carolina for the schooling of the children respectively, in those states. Nearly twice as much in one state as in the other. But this result is from an assumed uniform mean average standard of the cost of educating each child in the Union. Let us test the matter by a comparison founded on actual cost. Take, for instance, the states of Maine and Mississippi. In Maine there are fifty-eight adults to forty-two minors in every one hundred persons. In Mississippi there are forty-three adults to fifty-seven minors in every one hundred persons. In Maine[F] the educational expenditure per capita of the school population is four dollars and sixty-seven cents per annum. This enforces an annual expenditure for this purpose of three dollars and thirty-eight cents by each adult. An equal school tax of four dollars and sixty-seven cents per annum for each scholar, imposed upon the adult population of Mississippi would call for six dollars and nineteen cents from each adult—or nearly twice what the adult of Maine must pay.