100

94.

means lately adopted for the instruction of youth
by the formation of Townships and Sunday Schools
together with the example of respectable emigrants
will in due time gradually effect a thorough reform.

The population of the Province is sadly behind
in education. The backwoodsmen and children of
the emigrants are steeped in ignorance, such a state
of things is incidental to all thinly settled countries
unless the fostering hand of the parent state interposes.
Recent events must have convinced every thinking
mind that the grand panacea to prevent discontent
in the province is to educate its rising generation
the children who are to be the future men and women
in it. It is to be hoped that Lord Durham's
measures on this important subject will be carried
out, that of appointing a permanent public officer
under the designation of superintendent of Education
whose duties will be of a very responsible
nature both as regards education, abilities, loyalty
and perserverance.

But at present the inhabitants of the
forest are entirely destitute of moral and religious
instructions, whatever difference of opinion may
exist upon questions purely religious no one
can deny that some kind of religious and moral
training is essential to the formation of a virtuous
character. To expect the fulfilment of an
obligation from one who knows not the relations
on which it is based is preposterous. Do men gather
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles.