school sections, each with its own Trustee Board, and each fixing its own textbooks and course of study. Such a system was cumbersome, wasteful, and inefficient, and the practical

roperty or to collect rate bills from parents. Any funds needed by the School Board in addition to the Legislative and Municipal grants were to be levied upon the taxable property of the city or town by the Municipal Council. But the Act did n

hief advantage of the new Bill, viz.: that it gave to the poor man the right to have his children, however numerous, educated, whereas the rate bill system compelled him in many cases to claim free schooling only on the ground of his poverty. The new School Act was to enable a poor man to educate his children and still maintain his self-respect. T

ing with the rich man and his children.' All bunkum, Dr. Ryerson. If it is hard to have ten or fifty or one hundred scholars as paupers at present, will it improve the matter to make the children of the common schools all paupers? If one class keep their children away now because the schools are above their means, and pride won't let

of Toronto, out of 4,450 children of school age in 1846, only 1,221 were on the common school registers and that the average attendance was scarcely one thousand. Even if i

law which contemplates the removal of grovelling or selfish ignorance and the elevation of society by means of efficient regulations and general taxation for schools ever has been, or ever will be, popular w

ime had not yet come for the realization of his plans, and Ryerson in his draft Bill restored to towns and cities the

and professional training of teachers; provision for separate schools for coloured children; school libraries for each section, and also township libraries; township School Boards; a School of Art and Design, connected with the Normal School; provincial certificates for Normal School graduates; making trustees personally responsible for a teacher's salary;

careless legislation. It seems to have been taken for granted by the Legislature that the Bill as brought in was prepared by Ryerson. As a matter of fact, Ryerson's Bill had, with Cameron's assent, been so mutilated by an enemy of the Superintendent that its essential provisions were destroyed. As soon as Ryerson learned its real nature, he protested on several grounds, but especially because it aimed to destroy the usefulness of the Chief Superintendent; excluded clergymen from being school visitors; destroyed the provincial nature of the school system; injured the prospects of a Normal School; would subject teache

e Parliamentary recess, 1849-50, the Government issued circular letters to School Superintendents, ministers and other official persons, to secure sug

the dividing line between that which seemed highly desirable and that which was possible. He moved steadily toward a distant goal, but was ever educating public opinion to move with him and seldom showed impatience over the s

re townships. Provision was made for Township Boards of Trustees on the request of a majority of the school supporters, to manage all the schools of a township. County Boards of Public Instruction were formed, consisting of the County Superintendent and the Trustees of the District Grammar School. These boards were to meet four times a year, to hold examinations and license teachers. They were to use their influence to establish school libraries and promote the cause of education. District superintendents were limited to one hundred schools each, and were to receive one pound per annum for each school, besides necessary travelling expenses. The Superintendent was no longer the custodian of school money, but gave orders to the Township Treasurer to pay to teachers their proper allowances. The Superintendent was to visit every school in his District once each quarter, and to deliver a public lecture

ry, in addition to the school fund, for common school purposes. The Board might ask the Municipal Council to levy an assessment for the required sum, in which case the said Council were bound to comply with it

ral sections the ratepayers assembled at the annual meeting, made the decision, and the trustees carried out their wishes; in towns and cities the trustees had full power to decide upon the method

es, and ￡25 a year for each District Teachers' Institute. A sum was also set apart for procuring plans and publications for the impr

t changes relating to Separate Schools,

e never lost an opportunity of helping forward any movement designed to raise the intellectual status of the people. But it was largely Ryerson's unaided efforts that gave Upper Canada in 1850 such a splendid educational mac

vices to the country. The following condensed account of a speech delivered in Parliament in July, by Hon. Francis Hincks, make

f that administration. The present ministry again assumed the duties of the Government, and undoubtedly there was a general feeling among their supporters that one of the first measures expected of them was to get rid of the reverend gentleman in some way or other, and in that feeling most certainly he sympathized. He had found, however, bye-the-bye, that those who were most eager to recommend the Government to dismiss officials, when they were put into similar situations, into the municipal councils for instance, that they did not carry out those views, that they did not turn out their opponents without a reason for it. There were two or three ways of removing the Chief Superintendent; one was to make the office a political one; but after the best consideration being given to the question, it was not considered advisable to do that, and the proposition to abolish the office altogether, he was satisfied would have had the worst possible consequences on the educational interests of the country, after observing the benefits of active superintendents in New York, and our own Province. The only other mode then, if these two were resisted, was to remove the incumbent altogether, and then the question came, whether he had acted in such a manner as to justify his dismissal. He had often asked this question of the persons who urged his dismissal, and they had never given one good reason to support the affirmative. He was not one of those who

lawyers in the House very anxious to reduce the salaries of the judges, but when it came to civilians, to superintendents of schools, then five hundred pounds a year was far too much. Now he considere

6th, 1850, speaking on the d

chment committee had operated upon Lower Canada. Now, why not say at once that five hundred pounds is the proper salary for the Superintendent of Education of nearly a million people, and stick to it? We are no admirers of Egerton Ryerson, and we have always thought, and we think still, that the present ministry should have turned him

. George Brown, the Globe Editor, was too shrewd a man, and had too strong an interest in popular education, not to see that Ryerson was working a r

ooked upon by parents as a sort of nurse for their naughty children, who received their wages for their services, and not to meddle with the affairs of the world. We but repeat what we wrote some years ago, prior to any of Egerton Ryerson's schemes, when we say that it is a reproach to the Christian world, that those who prepare the rising generation for entry into business life, should have been left so long to poverty, and to have occupied so low a place in society. Only conceive a schoolmaster-profoundly versed in the vast variety of knowledge which the human mind can master, a man who can solve the most difficult problem in mathematic

ny wealthy men who objected to free schools, and where private and denominational schools were more popular than in any other part of Upper Canada. In March, 1851, a committee of the Toronto Board submitted to the Chairman a special report showing that 3,403 children who should be

the change that was taking place among the people of Upper Canada in regard to free schools. I shall, therefore, quote from the Globe

r Canada. The best gift the people of Canada can confer on their children is education, sound, practical education available to all. Public money employ

, the Globe expresse

t meantime let us seek to obtain the best system which our position admits of, and that, we believe, is an entirely free system supported by a direct tax. There are many reasons urged against this proposed change by sincere friends of education, which are not without weight. It is said to be unjust and tyrannical to make people who are childless pay for those who are blessed with a numerous progeny; it is urged that parents will value the blessing of education more, when they are compelled to pay for it; it is alleged to be a weakening of the parental tie, to take the expense of the e

e to which they have a right to go, having paid a quota of the expense in proportion to their means, in the same way that they claim the right to walk the pavement, and on the same grounds. It is indeed a noble thought to place the education of the people in the same position as the protection of the people and the government of the people, to make it one of the necessaries of the existence of a state in peace and security, and to provide it at the expense of all,

g to give a lesson in aristocracy, probably, pointed out two lads who occupied the same seat. He told him that one of these was the son of Abbot Lawrence, the great manufacturer, and now American minister in England, and the other was the son of the doorkeeper of the City Hall, which they had just left. They were enjoying the same advantages, the son of the millionaire and the son of the doorkeeper; that was what he wished to see in Canada, the sons of our poor have the same opportunity of educational advancement as those of the rich. Did it appear from this that the rich did not attend the common schools of Massachusetts? The Governor of that State, in a speech which he made lately at Newbury Port, said that if he had as many sons as old Priam, and wa

l the sound arguments were on the side of free schools. The following letters from the Reverend John Roaf, a Toronto clergyman (Congregationalist), will giv

e thus discharged the power, for there cannot be any such right, so wrongfully given them by the School Act, to educate their own children at the expense of their more wealthy neighbours. All praise to their honesty. Thus they will escape from the pauperizing tendencies of the free school system. They encourage their schoolmaster with

ous counsel which is introducing communism in education to the undermining of property and society? The French

blished in the Toronto G

hey seldom need be convinced by their poor neighbours where their true interests lie. Gain indeed; why, probably three-fourths of the children now in the Toronto common schools will carry their education away to the West, and

t will throw education into the hands of an electioneering party, and what kind of party that will be in such places as Toronto, need not be said. It will destroy all the confidence and love felt towards the teacher as the employee and friend of the child's parents, and substitute for them a cold respect due to the public official. It will render school attendance desultory and variable, beca

res in Upper Canada. The managers of these schools had to depend wholly upon subscriptions and fees. So long as all schools were supported mainly from rate bills upon parents the purely voluntary schools were not at a serious disadvantage. But if free common schools w

nd destroy their efficiency. When the schools are supported entirely by taxation, no such attempts can be met with success. No sectarian school only partially supported by the State can compete with the free institution, and no one would be foolish enough to propose to endow more than one entirely free school. The people would not stand the taxation. The free principle is a deathblow to the attempts of the priests to get the education of the people into their own hands, to train up the children in classes and denominations, to shut them out from free knowledge, and to give them just what pleases their prejudiced views. The Patriot thinks it would be tyrannical to prevent the establishment of sectarian schools by means of a free system. We cannot see it in that light. The denominational plan has been tried in England, but it has failed. The schools were never

sands of people in regard to the education of their children without at times feeling that these people would appreciate schools much more if they had to make some personal sacrifice to secure their advantages. But further though