Closing Official Acts and Utterances of Dr. Ryerson.
An entire revision and consolidation of the laws relating to public and high schools took place in 1874, in which Dr. Ryerson took a leading part. But the revision related chiefly to details and to the supply of former omissions in the law.
The last important official act of Dr. Ryerson was to arrange for the educational exhibit of the department at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. That was most successfully carried out; and, at the close of that exhibition, the following highly gratifying "award" was communicated to the then venerable ex-chief, after he had retired from office. The award was made by the American Centennial Commission, and was to the following effect:
For a quite complete and admirably arranged exhibition, illustrating the Ontario system of education and its excellent results; also for the efficiency of an administration which has gained for the Ontario Department a most honorable distinction among government educational agencies.
This award was quite a gratification to the now retired chief of the Department, then in his seventy-third year, and amply repaid him, as he said, for many years of anxious toil and solicitude, while it was a gratifying and unlooked-for compensation for all of the undeserved opposition which he had encountered while laying the foundations of our educational system.
In a letter to a friend toward the close of his official career, Dr. Ryerson thus explained the principles upon which he had conducted the educational affairs of the Province during his long administration of them. He said:—
During these many years I have organized and administered the Education Department upon the broad and impartial principles which I have always advocated. During the long period of my administration of the Department I knew neither religious sect nor political party; I knew no party other than that of the country at large; I never exercised any patronage for personal or party purposes; I never made or recommended one of the numerous appointments of teachers in the Normal or Model Schools, or clerk in the education office, except upon the ground of testimonials as to personal characters and qualifications, and on a probationary trial of six months.
I believe this is the true method of managing all the public departments, and every branch of the public service. I believe it would contribute immensely to both the efficiency and economy of the public service. * * * It would greatly elevate the standard of action and attainments and stimulate the ambition of the young men of the country, when they know that their selection and advancement in their country's service depended upon their individual merits, irrespective of sect or party, and not as the reward of zeal as political partisans in elections or otherwise, on their own part, or on that of their fathers or relatives.
The power of a government in a country is immense for good or ill. It is designed by the Supreme Being to be a "minister of God for good" to a whole people, without partiality, as well as without hypocrisy, like the rays of the sun; and the administration of infinite wisdom and justice and truth and purity.
I know it has been contended that party patronage * * * is an essential element in the existence of a government. * * * The Education Department has existed—and it is the highest public department in Upper Canada—for more than thirty years without such an element, with increasing efficiency and increasing strength, in the public estimation, during the whole of that period. Justice, and virtue, and patriotism, and intelligence are stronger elements of power and usefulness than those of rewarding partisans; and if the rivalship and competition of public men should consist in devising and promoting measures for the advancement of the country and in exercising the executive power most impartially and intelligently for the best interests of all classes, then the moral standard of government and of public men would be greatly exalted, and the highest civilization of the whole country be advanced.
In a series of letters published in defence of his administration of the Education Department in 1872, he thus pointed out the character of his difficult and delicate task. He also gave a brief glance at what had been accomplished by the Department since he took office in 1844. He said:—
The Department of which I have had charge since 1844, and during several administrations of government, is confessedly the most difficult and complicated, if not the most important, of any department of the public service. Since 1844, it has devolved on me to frame laws, and to devise, develop, and administer a system of public instruction for the people of this Province. That system has been more eulogized by both English and American educationists, and more largely adopted in other British colonies, on both sides of the globe, than any other system of public instruction in America.
The system of popular education in Ontario has opened a free school to every child in the land, and proclaimed his right to its advantages; it has planted a school house in nearly every neighborhood, and in hundreds of instances, made the school house the best building in the neighborhood; it has superseded the topers and broken-down characters, so common as teachers of a former age, by a class of teachers not excelled in morals by the teachers of any other country, and who, as a whole, compare favorably in qualifications with those of any State in America; it has achieved a uniformity of excellent text-books, earnestly prayed for by educators in the neighboring States, and has spread throughout the land books of useful and entertaining knowledge to the number of nearly a million of volumes; it is the nearest approach to a voluntary system of any public school system in the world; and it has developed larger resources than that of any other State in America, in proportion to the wealth and number of inhabitants.
This unparalleled success is due to the Christian feeling, the energy, patriotism and liberality of the people of this Province; but it has been imposed on me to construct the machinery, devise the facilities and agencies by which so great a work has been accomplished, and to do what I could to encourage my fellow-countrymen in its promotion.
The administration of laws generally is by learned judges, by the pleadings of learned counsel, and the deliberations of selected juries; but the administration of the school law and system is through the agency of several hundred elected councils, and nearly twenty thousand elected trustees,—thus embodying, not the learned professions, but the intelligence, common sense, feelings and interests of the people at large in the work of school administration and local self-government.