212 COMMON SCHOOL-EDUCATION. 



Brunswick yeomen, with your broad unoccupied acres, 

 which our home labourers envy you the possession of, 

 and with a soil most grateful for any industrious atten 

 tion you may bestow upon it why should free men like 

 you complain, that, having brought you up almost to 

 man s estate, and given you yearly assistance in. the 

 shape of a higher price for your timber than we could 

 get it for elsewhere why should you complain and 

 threaten, because the overburdened hard-working com 

 moners of England make an effort to lessen their own 

 need by withholding what is no longer required by your 

 abundance ? There are, at this moment, twenty times 

 the number of your entire population among the slaving 

 labourers and craftsmen of Great Britain who envy your 

 lot, and would be delighted to change places with you. 

 And yet you ask us to tax them more, or threaten to rebel. 

 For shame, yeomen of New Brunswick. In no country 

 of the world have I seen a finer-looking body of men 

 than the farmers of your broad province, but you are 

 heartless men if you would really insist still on taxing 

 the more needy farmers and labourers at home, to add to 

 the comforts of your own families, already better fed, 

 better clothed, more healthful, more comfortable, and 

 more independent than theirs. 



It is not in the material interests of the province only 

 that progress can be discerned. That which lies at the 

 basis of all national as well as of all orderly progress 

 the common school-education of the scattered people 

 has also received attention, according to the means at 

 the disposal of the legislature. The Lieutenant-governor 

 and Executive Council constitute a Board of Education, 

 under whose care the parish or common schools are placed. 

 The teachers receive from the provincial funds salaries 

 of 30, 22, and 18 a-year, according to the class in 

 which they are placed by the Board of Examiners ; and 

 in order to improve this most important body of men, 



