d
collected and arranged his facts, analyzed the various systems of
education in Europe (largely in Germany) and America, and fortified
himself with the opinions of the most eminent educationists in those
countries, yet his projected system for this province was fiercely
assailed, and was vehemently denounced as embodying in it the very
essence of "Prussian despotism." Still, with indomitable courage he
persevered in his plans, and at length succeeded in 1846 in inducing the
legislature to pass a School Act which he had drafted. In 1849 the
Provincial administration personally favourable to Dr. Ryerson's views
went out of office, and one unfavourable to him came in. The Hon.
Malcolm Cameron, a hostile member of the cabinet--although he afterwards
became a personal friend of Dr. Ryerson--having concocted a singularly
crude and cumbrous school bill, aimed to oust Dr. Ryerson from office,
it was (as was afterwards explained) taken on trust, and, without
examination or discussion, passed into a law. Dr. Ryerson at once called
the attention of the Government (at the head of which was the late
lamented Lord Elgin) to the impracticable and un-Christian character of
the bill, as under its operation the Bible would be excluded from the
schools. Rather than administer such an Act, Dr. Ryerson tendered the
resignation of his office to the Government. The late Honourable Robert
Baldwin, C.B., Attorney-General (the Nestor of Canadian politicians, and
a truly Christian man), was so convinced of the justness of Dr.
Ryerson's views and remonstrance, that he took the unusual course of
advising His Excellency to suspend the operation of the new Act until
Dr. Ryerson could prepare a draft of a bill on the basis of the repealed
law, embodying in it, additional to the old bill, the result of his own
experience of the working of the system up to that time. The result was
that a law passed in 1850, adapted to the municipal system of the
Province, so popular in its character and comprehensive in its
provisions and details, that it is still (in a consolidated form) the
principal statute under which the Public Schools of Ontario are
maintained.

The leading features of that measure may be briefly summed up under the
four following heads:--

1. The machinery of the system was mainly adapted to the circumstances
of Upper Canada, from the school laws of the Middle (United) States.

2. The method of supporting the schools by a uniform rate upon p