class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="{34}"/> met with a tragic end. The Scottish clergyman, appointed to the district by government, opened a school at the request of the inhabitants. All went well, and a generous government provided fifty pounds by way of annual stipend; until a licentiate of the Anglican Church arrived. By virtue of the standing of his church, the newcomer took precedence of the Scottish minister and displaced him as educational leader. But, says the Scot, with an irony, unchristian but excusable, "the school under the direction of my clerical successor, soon after died of a consumption, and the school-house has been for sometime empty."[33]

The main difficulty in education was to provide an adequate supply of competent teachers. Complaints against those who offered their services were almost universal. According to a Niagara witness, not more than one out of ten teachers in the district was competent to instruct his pupils even in the humblest learning,[34] and the commissioners who reported to the government of Upper Canada in 1839 both confirmed these complaints, and described the root of the offence when they said, "In this country, the wages of the working classes are so high, that few undertake the office of schoolmaster, except those who are unable to do anything else; and hence the important duties of education are often entrusted to incompetent and improper persons. The income of the schoolmaster should, at least, be equal to that of a common labourer."[35] In so precarious a position, it was unfortunate that sectarian and local feeling should have provoked a controversy at the capital of the western district. Much as the education of the province owed to John Strachan, he did infinite harm by involving the foundation of a great central school, Upper Canada College, and of the provincial university, in a bitter religious discussion. It was not until the public capacity and unsectarian enthusiasm of Egerton Ryerson were enlisted in the service of provincial education, that Upper Canada emerged from her period of failure and struggle.

Apart from provincial and governmental efforts, there were many voluntary experiments, of which Strachan's famous school at Cornwall, was perhaps the most notable. After all, the colonists were Britons, many of them trained in the Scottish system of national democratic education, and wherever the struggle for existence slackened down, they turned to plan a Canadian system as like as possible to that which they had left. Kingston was notably enterprising in this respect. Not only were there schools for the more prosperous classes, but attempts were made to provide cheap education for the poor, at first supported by the voluntary contributions of ladies, and then by a committee representative of the best Anglican and Presbyterian sentiment. Three of these schools were successfully conducted at very small charges, and, in certain cases, the poorest received education free.[36] In higher education the period of union in Canada exhibited great activity. The generous provision made for a King's College in Toronto had been for a long time stultified by the ill-timed sectarian spirit of the Bishop of Toronto; but a more reasonable temper prevailed after the Rebellion, and the second governor-general of the united provinces, Sir Charles Bagot, spent much of his short time of service in securing professors and seeing the provincial university launched.[37] At the same time, the two other Canadian colleges of note, M'Gill University and Queen's College, came into active existence. In October, 1839, after many years of delay, Montreal saw the corner-stone of the first English and Protestant College in Lower Canada laid,[38] and in the winter of 1841-2, Dr. Liddell sailed from Scotland to begin the history of struggle and gallant effort which has characterized Queen's College, Kingston, from first to last. It is perhaps the most interesting detail of early university education in Canada, that the Presbyterian College started in a frame house, with two professors, one representing Arts and one Theology, and with some twenty students, very few of whom, however, were "fitted to be matriculated."[39]

It is well to remember, in face of beginnings so irregular, and even squalid, that deficiencies in Canadian college education had been made good by the English and Scottish universities, and that Canadian higher education was from the outset assisted by the genuine culture and learning of the British colleges; for the main sources of university inspiration in British North America were Oxford and Cambridge, Glasgow and Edinburgh.[40]

There were, of course, other less formal modes of education. When once political agitation commenced, the press contributed not a little to the education of the nation, and must indeed be counted one of the chief agencies of information, if not of culture. Everywhere, from Quebec to Hamilton, enterprising politicians made their influence felt through newspapers. The period prior to the Rebellion had seen Mackenzie working through his Colonial Advocate; and the cause of responsible government soon found saner and abler exponents in Francis Hincks and George Brown. At every important centre, one, two, or even more news-sheets, not without merit, were maintained; and the secular press was reinforced by such educational enterprise as the Dougalls attempted in the Montreal Witness, or by church papers like the Methodist Christian Guardian.[41] Nothing, perhaps, is more characteristic of this phase of Canadian intellectual growth than the earlier volumes of the Witness, which played a part in Canada similar to that of the Chambers' publications in Scotland. The note struck was deeply sober and moral; the appeal was made to the working and middle classes who in Canada as in Scotland were coming into possession of their heritage; and if the intellectual level attained was never very high, an honest attempt was being made to educate the shop-keepers and farmers of Canada into wholesome national ideals.

Little literary activity seems to have existed outside of politics and the newspapers. For a time cheap reprints from America assisted Britons in Canada with their forbidden fruits, but government at