308 
PROCEEDINGS OP THE VICTORIA INSTITUTE. 
rivals (see speeches of Andre Knox at the Town hall and Grey- 
friars Church January 1870). It is not the object of this paper 
to dwell on the changes and improvements in education from 
1868 to 1890. Whoever cares to trace them will find them 
specified in my published reports. I have only to remark here 
that in introducing the various improvements mentioned into 
our schools I was met by the bitterest hostility at every step 
and I was practically fined £400 a year for the efforts I made to 
preserve and improve our education system — a sum representing 
roughly about one per cent, on the money I saved to the Govern- 
ment by my recommendations and exertions. But for me to 
have acted otherwise than I did would have been treachery 
which I could not have been guilty of. Since my retirement 
from office I have as an employer of labour in a small way been 
brought into a closer contact than previously with certain classes 
of our agricultural population. I have thus been able to see in 
a clearer light one or two points always more or less evident to 
me as I have partly indicated. Of the lower classes of the town, 
population I do not now speak for I have little acquaintance with 
them otherwise than from having had to deal with the children 
of those classes in the course of my duty as Inspector of Schools. 
No doubt however that what is applicable to the one is partly 
applicable to the other also. I think that any one really ac- 
quainted with our country population must be more or less 
aware of the state of ignorance, vice and superstition into which 
it is plunged. It is true that there exists “ a little Christianity- 
which is what one of the most eminent men in this country 
declared to be the only education necessary for our people. But 
moral principle seems deficient. Truth, honor and purity if they 
exist in any form are not evident in the family life. A rude 
species of honesty is sometimes found and it is true that other 
good qualities exist but' they are usually individual and there is 
no consensus of opinion in favour of right tendencies. There is 
in fact no encouragement to the growth or developement of tha 
tribal conscience I have referred to. In a most admirable book 
published near sixty years ago we read : “ no attention to t e 
health and comfort of the working people will be effectual wit 
out their own discretion. Intemperance, waste and ignorance 
will destroy the sources of health and happiness faster 
than any hand can replenish them. It is in vain to guar 
against external ills, while in the man himself early corruption 
is suffered age after age almost to preclude the existence of ® 
moral sense, and gross ignorance leaves him incapable of ration® 
conduct. There is no substitute for early education, not mere y 
directed to the rudiments of learning, but calculated to awaken 
* Woman’s Rights and Duties. By a Woman. London MDCCCXL. 
