Il6 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



Earnest efforts were put forth by a large number of people to 

 advance the cause of popular education ; petitions were presented to 

 the Legislative Assembly, on the strength of which committees were 

 appointed to consider the matter, and devise some means of relief, 

 but all these efforts proved futile. The reasons for this failure are so 

 forcibly and clearly stated in a memorial presented to the colonial 

 ofifice in 1832 that I cannot forbear giving you the following extract 

 from it. The memorialists say : " The establishing of places of 

 learning for the children of persons holding situations under the 

 Local Government and a few other wealthy or influential individuals, 

 at great public cost, but placed beyond the control of public opinion, 

 and from which the sons of the yeomanry derive no benefit or 

 advantage, while the exceedingly numerous and very reasonable 

 petitions of that yeomanry for public support to the all important 

 cause of general education throughout the colony are steadily resisted 

 by persons in authority, in and out of the Assembly, and even declared 

 to be unnecessary in the present state of the public finance, has the 

 effect of preventing that steady increase of capable men, fit for jurors, 

 for township and county officers, and for the halls of legislation, 

 whose feelings and interests would be most closely united and iden- 

 tified with the welfare, the happiness, the general prosperity of their 

 native country, and whose minds would (under a better order of things) 

 become fitted for the correct transaction of the public business of the 

 colony by previous observation, study and contemplation." One of 

 the most important of these committees was that composed of Dr. 

 Charles Buncombe and Messrs. T. D. Morrison and T. Bruce, who 

 presented an elaborate report, and a carefully prepared Act in which 

 a comprehensive scheme of popular education was laid before the 

 Legislative Assembly. This met the fate of other reports, and it was 

 not until the Union of 1840 was an accomplished fact that any 

 attempt was made at School Legislation. 



In 1 84 1 an Act was passed providing for the establishment and 

 maintenance of Common Schools, and by it an attempt was made 

 to bring these schools under the provisions of the same law 

 both in Upper and Lower Canada. This, however, proved a 

 failure, for in 1843 ^^ '^^^ repealed and two separate Acts passed, one 

 for each of the Provinces. This Act, shortlived as it was, is deserv- 

 ing of more than a passing notice, since it indicated the strong current 



