In Robinson v. Cahill, 62 N.J. 473, 303 A.2d 273, the court reviewed the historical development of the 1875 constitutional amendment that became the T & E mandate in the 1947 Constitution. The Court rejected the argument that T & E mandates statewide equality of tax burdens and interpreted T & E to ensure equal educational opportunity, but not taxpayer equality. The Court said: We can find no evidence that the amendment of 1875 was concerned with taxpayers and was intended to incorporate a principle that the tax burden must be met by a statewide tax. It cannot be said the 1875 amendments were intended to insure statewide equality among taxpayers. But we do not doubt that an equal educational opportunity for children was precisely in mind. The mandate that there be maintained and supported 'a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years' can have no other import. Robinson I, supra, 62 N.J. at 512-13, 303 A.2d 273.