TABLE showing the amount of moneys received and expended during each year of the existence of the Public School Society, with the Average Attendance of Scholars, the Annual Expenses, and the Cost per Scholar, exclusive of the Purchase of Real Estate, and Cost and Repairs of Buildings.

NOTE. There is an excess of expenditure over receipts of $15,990.48. The Treasurer's account for the first eight years could not be obtained complete.

* The financial year of the Board of Education commenced on the 1st of January-that of the Society on the 1st of May. To prevent the confusion consequent upon this difference the time was altered to correspond with that of the Board, and the statement for the year 1844 includes a period of twenty months. This gives the cost per scholar for twelve months $4.98, and $8.32 for the whole period.

THE

PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIETY.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF THE SOCIETY, AND PROGRESS TO THE YEAR 1817.

Large Cities-Public Instruction of the Poor-City of New York in 1800-Parochial Charity Schools-An Unoccupied Field-Proposition to Establish a New SchoolThe First Meeting-A Committee Appointed-Memorial to the Legislature-An Act of Incorporation Passed-The Society Organized—The First Board of Trustees-Address to the Public-Subscriptions-The Lancasterian System-The New School Opened-Lot of Ground Presented by Col. Rutgers-Clothing for Poor Children-Memorial to the Legislature-Application to the Common Council— The School Fund-" The Free School Society "-New Apartments for the School -Grant of Lots for a Building-New School House No. 1-Donations-Opening of the School-De Witt Clinton's Address-The Law Amended-School No. 2Death of Benjamin D. Perkins-A School Library-Grant of Money by the Legislature-Land Presented by Trinity Church-Opening of No. 2-Additional Trustees-Moral and Religious Instruction.

THE population of the city of New York, at the commencement of the present century, was 60,489. The limits of the city were marked on the north by the vicinity of Chambers street, the population being located at the southern extremity of the island. By that social gravitation which seems to have always been inseparable from compacted communities, the metropolis was not exempt from the characteristic feature of a substratum of wretched, ignorant, and friendless children, who, even though they had parents, grew up in a condition of moral and religious, orphanage, alike fatal to their temporal and spiritual advancement and elevation.

The influence of that spirit which is the outgrowth and the evidence of true religious convictions, and a high sense of responsibility to the present as well as to the future, was not unfelt in reference to this class of the population. Public economy, not less than religious duty-the merely commercial con