old life-long Friend

And Fellow-labourer,

E. Ryerson.

Dr. Ryerson was confessedly a man of great intellectual resources. Those
who read what he has written on the question--perilous to any writer in
the early days of the history of this Province--of equal civil and
religious rights for the people of Upper Canada, will be impressed with
the fact that he had thoroughly mastered the great principles of civil
and religious liberty, and expounded them not only with courage, but
with clearness and force. His papers on the clergy reserve question, and
the rights of the Canadian Parliament in the matter, were statesmanlike
and exhaustive.

His exposition of a proposed system of education for his native country
was both philosophical and eminently practical. As a Christian Minister,
he was possessed of rare gifts, both in the pulpit and on the platform;
while his warm sympathies and his deep religious experience, made him
not only a "son of consolation," but a beloved and welcome visitor in
the homes of the sorrowing and the afflicted. Among his brethren he
exercised great personal influence; and in the counsels of the
Conference he occupied a trusted and foremost place.

Thus we see that Dr. Ryerson's character was a many-sided one; while his
talents were remarkably versatile. He was an able writer on public
affairs; a noted Wesleyan Minister, and a successful and skilful leader
among his brethren. But his fame in the future will mainly rest upon the
fact that he was a distinguished Canadian Educationist, and the Founder
of a great system of Public Education for Upper Canada. What makes this
widely conceded excellence in his case the more marked, was the fact
that the soil on which he had to labour was unprepared, and the social
condition of the country was unpropitious. English ideas of schools for
the poor, supported by subscriptions and voluntary offerings, prevailed
in Upper Canada; free schools were unknown; the very principle on which
they rest--that is, that the rateable property of the country is
responsible for the education of the youth of the land--was denounced as
communistic, and an invasion of the rights of property; while
"compulsory education"--the proper and necessary complement of free
schools--was equally denounced as the essence of "Prussian despotism,"
and an impertinent and unjustifiable interference with "the rights of
British subjects."

It was a reasonable boast at the time that only