contributions. The committee further remark, that the proportion of children attending schools in Lower Canada is only one in twelve, while, in the state of New York, it is one in four. In the following year (1832,) the three preceding acts of 1829, 1830, and 1831 were repealed, and a more general and comprehensive school act substituted in their place. Among other things, this act provided for the establishment of a girls' school in each parish, and the yearly distribution of two dollars' worth of prizes by the senior county member in each boys' school. It also provided that legislative councillors, members of parliament, senior magistrates, highest militia officers, and the rector or chief minister of the denomination most numerous in the parish, should be county school visitors. These school visitors were invested with extensive powers. Among other things, they were authorized to decide disputes about school-houses, form and alter the boundaries of school divisions, and fix the site for a superior school in each county. The teacher was required to obtain a certificate of character and qualification, signed by at least five school visitors, including the county member and rector; to keep the school open at least one hundred and ninety days in the year, from nine to twelve, and from one to four o'clock each day; to keep a school journal; and to hold a public examination of his school. In the same year (1832,) L'Assomption College was founded in the county of that name by the Rev. M. Labelle and Dr. J. B. Meilleur (afterwards superintendent of edu cation for Lower Canada, i. e., from 1841 to 1855.) In 1833, this act was amended so as to authorize superiors and professors of colleges and academies, and presidents of all educational societies, to act as school visitors. It further granted sixteen dollars per annum extra to any teacher who could teach both the French and English languages, and two dollars for prizes in girls' schools. In 1834, the act of 1832 was further amended, so as to authorize an extra grant of forty dollars per annum to the best teacher in the county, who had taught French and English, grammar, geometry, and book-keeping in his school. In case none of the teachers merited the grant, the school visitors had it in their power to appropriate two hundred dollars to any superior institution in the county, not receiving other public aid, in which those branches were taught. CHAPTER V. FINAL EDUCATIONAL MEASURES OF THE LOWER CANADA LEGISLATURE-CONTESTS-FATAL DEFECTS OF TEMPORARY LEGISLATION -1836-1840. IN 1836, the standing committee of the house of assembly, in their report, regret that the liberality of the legislature, instead of stimulating local liberality in aid of education, had rather paralyzed it. As a proof of the unreasonable selfishness of the parties concerned, they state that an application had been received from three families to constitute them a school division, so as to receive public aid as such. They also comment upon the universal incompetency of schoolmasters; and recommend the establishment of normal schools. An act was passed giving effect to this recommendation, and providing for the establishment, for five years, of a normal school at Montreal and at Quebec. Sixteen hundred dollars were granted to each school, for preliminary expenses in procuring professors and obtaining books, maps, and apparatus, &c.; and thirty-four hundred dollars per annum for current expenses; besides four hundred and eighty dollars per annum for the board and lodging of at least five teachers for three years, at the school. The same sum was granted for a like period to each of the convents of the Ursulines at Quebec and Three Rivers, and to the convent of the congregation of Notre Dame, at Montreal, for the training of at least five female teachers for three years in these institutions. A supplementary bill (continuing the system of elementary schools in Lower Canada, and designed to replace the school act of 1832, which had expired) was passed by the house of assembly, simultaneously with the normal school act; but it was rejected by the legislative council. Two features in the rejected bill were new and deserve notice. The first was the permission to establish model schools, and the other was the authority (not compulsory) of the majority of the inhabitants to raise a rate by tax to support the school. As the usefulness of the one act depended on the passing of the other, the rejection of the elementary school act brought the whole educational system to a standstill. In the mean time a normal school was opened at Montreal by the Rev. John Holmes, principal of the Semin ary of Quebec, aided by two assistants,-one obtained from France and the other from Scotland. In consequence, however, of the political troubles of the succeeding year, the school was abruptly closed, and the grants suspended. It is proper to state, that the reasons for rejecting the bill of the house of assembly by the legislative council, were candidly expressed in a report on the subject. This report stated that the expenditure on behalf of education, for the last seven years, had already reached the aggregate sum of $600,000, and that the appropriations under this bill amounted to $160,000 per annum. The committee of the legislative council concurred with the house of assembly in the belief that this liberal legislative aid had superseded, rather than stimulated, local effort. They further deprecated the anomalous and improper practice of confiding the superintending and application of the educational grant to members of the house of assembly. It was liable in their hands, the committee urged. to be used to promote political and party ob jects rather than strictly educational ones. In this part of their report, the committee enumerate, under nine different heads, the extraordinary and irresponsible powers which were conferred upon the county members by this and preceding school acts, in the administration of the law, and the expenditure of the legislative school grant.* The political troubles which, in 1837-8, shook the province to its center and paralyzed its educational efforts, having to some extent subsided, an inquiry into the state of education, and the causes of its failure in Lower Canada, was instituted, in 1838, by the Earl of Durham, Her * Arthur Buller, Esq., commissioner, appointed in 1838 by Lord Durham, to inquire into the state of education in Lower Canada, in reviewing the proceedings of the legislature of that province, in regard to its system of temporary or party political legislation in educational matters, uses the following striking language : "Another great evil to which this system was subjected by its connection with politics, was its want of permanency. Every alternate year it was liable to expire altogether, or undergo modifications, which, as regarded those embarked in it, in many cases, amounted to expiration. The house of assembly knew well the power which they derived from their common habit of temporary legislation. It was no slight hold to possess in the country, this of continuing or at any given time withholding its sole means of education. It is true that it would be almost impossible to make a system permanent which was to be supported entirely by legislative grants. I trust that I have not done injustice to the house of assembly. * It is extremely difficult to ap* In the bill * that portion to them their proper share of praise and blame. * of 1814-31, their main struggle was to subject the school system to popular control. * * * The standing committee of the house labored diligently and in good faith. They received evidence on all points. They did not shrink from the investigation of alleged abuses, nor, in many instances, from the application of proper remedies. * They knew nothing short of compelling the inhabitants to contribute a direct and not scanty proportion towards the expense of the system. They saw all this; but they did not dare to propose so unpopular a measure. In short, the moment they found that their educational provisions could be turned to political account, from that moment those provisions were framed with a view to promote party rather than education. This was their essential fault; this it was that pervaded and contaminated the whole system and paralyzed all the good that was otherwise in it." * * * * * Majesty's lord high commissioner and governor-general of British North America. This duty he confided to the able hands of Arthur Buller, Esq., one of his suite, who prepared an elaborate and comprehensive report on the subject, from which we have already made several extracts. Lord Durham, also, from his own observation, gave expression to his views on the subject, and from his own report we make the following extracts: "The bulk of the population is composed of the hard-working yeomanry of the country districts, commonly called habitans. * It is impossible to exaggerate the want of education among them, no means of instruction have ever been provided for them, and they are almost universally destitute of the qualifications even of reading and writing. The common assertion, however, that all classes of the Canadians are equally ignorant, is perfectly erroneous; for I know of no people among whom a larger provision exists for the higher kinds of elementary education, or among whom such education is really extended to a larger proportion of the population. The piety and benevolence of the early possessors of the country founded, in the seminaries that exist in different parts of the province, institutions of which the funds and activity have long been directed to the promotion of education. Seminaries and colleges have been, by these bodies, established in the cities and in other central points. The education given in these establishments greatly resembles the kind given in the English public schools, though it is rather more varied. It is entirely in the hands of the Catholic clergy. The number of pupils in these establishments is estimated, altogether, at a thousand, and they turn out every year, as far as I could ascertain, between two and three hundred young men thus educated." In concluding a review of the causes which had led to a failure of the system of education devised by the legisla ture, Mr. Buller sketched the broad outlines of a system of |
