Much debate followed, in course of which “the Mayor declared that his opinion was so decidedly adverse to the continuance of the school, that he could not vote in its favor.” Largely, no doubt, through the influential opposition of Mr. Quincy, who was then Mayor of the city, and on motion of a Mr. Savage, who said that, though, “as a member of the city council he had voted for the appropriation for the high school for girls, it was merely to make a public experiment of the system of mutual instruction as regards females”; it was voted on June 3, 1826, “that the girls be permitted to remain in the English common school throughout the year.” Precisely what was meant by this vote, beyond the abolition of the high school, appears, if we recall that girls were not yet admitted to the grammar school except for half the year. As Mr. Quincy states it, “The project of the high school was thus abandoned and the scale of instruction in the common schools of the city was gradually elevated and enlarged.” As in 1834, eight years later, it was voted “that the school committee be directed so to arrange the town schools that the girls enjoy equal privileges with the boys throughout the year,” it is to be presumed that the permission voted in 1826 was inoperative until this date. But the end was gained. The school was abolished, of which Mayor Quincy said in an address to the board of aldermen in 1829: “It may be truly said that its impracticability was proved before it went into operation”; and he again refers to “this high, classical school” with the remark that “no funds of any city could endure the expense.” It may have been that those who were parents of daughters as truly as of sons, saw this action in relation to the fact that the English High School, “for boys only,” had been supported for four years, and the Latin School, “for boys only,” for almost two centuries, both from the public funds; for, when Mr. Quincy wrote the account from which the above quotations and summary have been made, he recalled the intense opposition to his views of “a body of citizens of great activity and of no inconsiderable influence.” In 1851, speaking of his former opinions with regard to the high school, he wrote: “The soundness of these views and their coincidence with the permanent interests of the city, seem to be sanctioned by the fact that twenty-three years have elapsed, and no effectual attempt during that period has been made for its revival, in the school committee, or in either branch of the city council.”