It seems to be the fashion for Candidates to assure you that they will do their best to spare the poverty of the Ratepayers. It is proper, therefore, me for me to add that I can give you no such assurance on my own behalf.
You may trust me that no waste or extravagance that I can prevent shall be permitted. But every penny levied by an Education Rate and rightly employed, now, means hundreds of pennies taken off the Police Rates and the Poor Rates of the future; and thousands of pennies saved and gained by the increase of frugality, the amendment of the habits of life, and the development of the power of production, of the pooer classes of the people.
Of all the illustrators of the "penny wise and pound foolish" proverb, those who object to pay for education are, to my mind, the most outstanding; and my vote will be given for that expenditure which can be shown to be just and necessary, without any reference to the question whether it may raise the rate a halfpenny.
Huxley on Mountin' Kids
The Hornet (1871)
THE HUXLEY FILE