APPLICABILITY OF OITE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 423 



to promote its efficiency, and especially its extension to the lowest 

 classes in the social scale. The aims and ends of education, though 

 manifold and various, may be summed up in this expression, the 

 "formation of character." Education is the "cultivation, training 

 and discipline of every faculty of the intellect, and every affection and 

 disposition of the moral and religious nature, for the attainment and 

 fulfilment of the great purposes for which existence was conferred." 

 If then, in the case of the individual, any faculty or power, intellectual . 

 or moral, be left undeveloped, in so far will he be incapacitated for 

 rightly discharging the duties devolving upon him as a rational and 

 intelligent being, and necessarily fail to attain the " purposes of his 

 existence." An ignorant and uncultivated man forms, it has been 

 very justly remarked, "a broken link in the chain of society, a jarring 

 chord in the harmony of life." Every child, therefore, born into the 

 world has a right, by the very laws of its existence, to such an education 

 as will fit it for the due performance of its individual and relative 

 duties, and no parent can deprive his child of such right without 

 inflicting on him a serious injury, and doing a grievous wrong to 

 society. "A parent has no more right," to use the forcible language 

 of the Chief Superintendent of Education, "to leave his children 

 intellectually blind, than he has to make them physically blind. He 

 has no more right to leave them intellectually neglected than he has 

 to maim them physically. The law will punish him in the one case, 

 and it should punish him in the other. If a parent be so unnatural as 

 not to provide for his children, the law will step in and protect them. 

 So should it in like manner snatch those orphan children from the 

 grasp of parents who would neglect their education. The Province 

 has thus far a right to protect all its citizens, and if it has a right to 

 protect life and liberty and property, it has a right to provide for the 

 education and the efficient discharge of duty on the part of those not 

 properly cared for by their parents." The soundness of the principle 

 here enunciated, few, we imagine, would venture to impugn. Let us 

 now see how Dr. Ryerson connects with this the principle of Free 

 Schools. " The education of a people," he adds in the speech from 

 which I have just quoted, " under a free government is essential to the 

 very existence of that government, the wise administration of its laws, 

 and the stability and efficiency of all its institutions. If that be so, a 

 corresponding duty necessarily follows. If it be right that each child 

 should have an education that will fit him for th^ efficient discharge 



