al discourtesy and ill-treatment, or a reduction of
means of support and usefulness. But when I see the fruits of four
years' anxious labours, in a single blast scattered to the winds, and
have no satisfactory ground of hope that such will not be the fate of
another four years' labour; when I see the foundations of great
principles, which, after extensive enquiry and long deliberation, I have
endeavoured to lay, torn up and thrown aside as worthless rubbish; when
I see myself deprived of the protection and advantage of the application
of the principle of responsible government as applied to every other
head of a Department, and made the subordinate agent of a Board which I
have originated, and the members of which I have had the honour to
recommend for appointment; when I see myself officially severed from a
Normal School Institution which I have devised, and every feature and
detail of which are universally commended, even to the individual
capacities of the masters whom I have sought out and recommended; when I
see myself placed in a position, to an entirely novel system of
education at large, in which I can either burrow in inactivity or labour
with little hope of success; when I find myself placed in such
circumstances, I cannot hesitate as to the course of duty, as well as
the obligations of honour and self-respect.... I think it is my right,
and only frank and respectful, on the earliest occasion to state, in
respect to my own humble labours, whether I can serve on terms and
principles and conditions so different from those under which I have, up
to the present time, acted; though I cannot, without deep regret and
emotion, contemplate the loss of so much time and labour, and find
myself impelled to abandon a work on which I had set my heart, and to
qualify myself for which I have devoted four of the most matured years
of my life.

Having now fulfilled my promise--to communicate to you, in writing, my
views on this important and extensive subject--I leave the whole
question in your hands.

The result of this letter was, the suspension and abandonment of the Act
of 1849, and the preparation and passing of the Act of 1850.

Now Mr. Cameron might naturally feel deeply at the repeal of his own Act
without a trial; but after he had time for further examination and
reflection, and a more thorough knowledge of the nature and working of
the system I was endeavouring to establish, I believe no man in Canada
more sincerel