and inspection of schools, the examination of teachers, religious instruction, and uniform text-books for the schools.  Secondly.  That the principle of supporting schools in the State of Massachusetts was the best, supporting them all according to property, and opening them to all without distinction; but that the application of this principle should not be made by the requirements of state or provincial statute, but at the discretion and by the action, from year to year, of the inhabitants in each school municipality—­thus avoiding the objection which might be made against an uniform coercive law on this point, and the possible indifference which might in some instances be induced by the provisions of such a law—­independent of local choice and action.  Thirdly:  That the series of elementary text-books, prepared by experienced teachers, and revised and published under the sanction of the National Board of Education in Ireland, were, as a whole, the best adapted to schools in Upper Canada—­having long been tested, having been translated into several languages of the continent of Europe, and having been introduced more extensively than any other series of text-books into the schools of England and Scotland.  Fourthly:  That the system of normal-school training of teachers, and the principles and modes of teaching which were found to exist in Germany, and which have been largely introduced into other countries, were incomparably the best—­the system which makes school-teaching a profession, which, at every stage, and in every branch of knowledge, teaches things and not merely words, which unfolds and illustrates the principles of rules, rather than assuming and resting upon their verbal authority, which develops all the mental faculties instead of only cultivating and loading the memory—­a system which is solid rather than showy, practical rather than ostentatious, which prompts to independent thinking and action rather than to servile imitation.

“Such are the sources from which the principal features of the school system in Upper Canada have been derived, though the application of each of them has been modified by the local circumstances of our country.  There is another feature, or rather cardinal principle of it, which is rather indigenous than exotic, which is wanting in the educational systems of some countries, and which is made the occasion and instrument of invidious distinctions and unnatural proscriptions in other countries; we mean the principle of not only making Christianity the basis of the system, and the pervading element of all its parts, but of recognising and combining in their official character, all the clergy of the land, with their people, in its practical operations—­maintaining absolute parental supremacy in the religious instruction of their children, and upon this principle providing for it according to the circumstances, and under the auspices of the elected trustee-representatives of each school municipality.  The clergy of the