1849.
The Bible in the Ontario Public Schools.
Early in 1849 an important crisis occurred in the history of our Public School system, the evil effects of which were only prevented by the prompt and emphatic protest on the part of Dr. Ryerson, and the equally prompt measures taken by Hon. Robert Baldwin in the matter. The event to which I refer was the hurried passage of a revolutionary School Bill at the end of a Session of Parliament by parties hostile to Dr. Ryerson—a Bill the effect of which would have been the exclusion of the Bible and religious teaching and influence from our Public Schools. In regard to that calamitous event, Dr. Ryerson stated that within three hours of learning that such a Bill was law he informed Mr. Baldwin that the office of Chief Superintendent of Education was at his disposal.
I was absent from Toronto at this time. Dr. Ryerson therefore wrote me a letter on the subject, dated December, 1849, in which he said:—I am happy to say the scandalous School Bill of last session is upset. The members of the Government (including the Governor-General) have examined my letter to Mr. Baldwin, of July last, and have come entirely into my views. Mr. Malcolm Cameron is also out of office, and is striving to create opposition against his former colleagues. Some of the extreme radical papers (Examiner, Mirror, Canada Christian Advocate, Provincialist, &c.,) all state that I had tendered my resignation, and had been persuaded by one or two members of the Government to withdraw it, and they speak piteously of the Government having succumbed to me. The Canada Christian Advocate says I have watched my opportunity to get "Mr. Baldwin and the Government under my thumb." I have been permitted to publish the correspondence of July last, and it has placed me in this new and proud position. I thank God for His goodness in thus opening before me a wider field of usefulness than ever, and for sealing at so early a period, with His approbation, adherence to great principles of Christian truth and social advancement, irrespective of men or parties. I shall commence the New Year with new courage and hope, and I am anxious to see you that we may together devise and prosecute the best means to promote our great work.
The circumstances under which this abortive School Bill, as it proved, of 1849, was passed, is thus described by Dr. Ryerson in a letter written ten years afterwards (in 1859):—
From 1846 to 1849 a host of scribblers and would-be school legislators appeared, led on by the Globe newspaper. It was represented that I had plotted a Prussian school despotism for free Canada, and that I was forcing upon the country a system in which the last spark of Canadian liberty would be extinguished, and Canadian youth would be educated as slaves. Hon. Malcolm Cameron, with less knowledge and less experience than he has now, was astounded at these "awful disclosures," and was dazzled by the theories proposed to rid the country of the enslaving elements of my Prussian school system. Mr. Cameron was at length appointed to office; and he thought I ought to be walked out of the office. Messrs. Baldwin and Hincks (as I have understood), thought I should be judged officially for my official acts, and that, thus judged, I had done nothing worthy of evil treatment. The party hostile to me then thought that, as I could not be turned out of office by direct dismissal, I might be shuffled out by legislation; and a School Bill was prepared for that purpose. That Bill contained many good, but more bad provisions, and worse omissions, but of which only a man who had studied the question, or rather science, of school legislation could fully judge. Mr. Cameron was selected to submit it to his colleagues, and get it through Parliament. He executed his task with his characteristic adroitness and energy. Mr. Hincks never read the Bill, and had left for England before it passed. Mr. Baldwin, amid the smoking ruins of a Parliament House and national library, looked over it, and thought from the representations given him of its popular objects, and a glance at the synopsis of its provisions, that it might be an improvement on the then existing law, while the passing of it would gratify many of his friends. On examining the Bill, I wrote down my objections to it, and laid them before the Government, and proceeded to Montreal to press them in person. I left Montreal in April, 1849, with the expectation that the Bill would be dropped, or essentially mended. Neither was done; the Bill was passed in the ordinary manner of passing bills during the last few hours of the Session; and within three hours of learning that the Bill was law, I informed Mr. Baldwin that my office was at his disposal, for I never would administer that law.
As to the effect of Mr. Cameron's Bill on Dr. Ryerson's future, he said:—The new Bill on its coming into operation, leaves me but one course to pursue. The character and tendency of the Bill clearly is to compel me to relinquish office, or virtually abandon principles and provisions [in regard to the Bible in the Schools] which I have advocated as of great and vital importance, and become a party to my own personal humiliation and degradation—thus justly exposing myself to the suspicion and imputation of mean and mercenary conduct. I can readily retire from office, and do much more if necessary, for the maintenance of what I believe to be vital to the moral and educational interests of my native country; but I can never knowingly be a party to my own humiliation and debasement. I regret that an unprecedented mode of legislation has been resorted to to gratify the feelings of personal envy and hostility. I regard it as a virtual vindication of myself against oft-repeated allegations, that it was felt I could not be reached by the usual straightforward administration of Government. Lately, in the English House of Lords, the Marquis of Lansdowne stated, that Mr. Lafontaine had returned to Canada, and boldly challenged inquiry into any of the allegations against him in reference to past years. I have repeatedly done the same. No such inquiry has been granted or instituted. Yet I am not only pursued by the base calumnies of certain persons and papers, professing to support and enjoy the confidence of the Government, but legislation is resorted to, and new provisions introduced at the last hour of the Session, to deal out upon me the long meditated blows of unscrupulous envy and animosity. But I deeply regret that the blows, which will fall comparatively light upon me, will fall with much greater weight, and more serious consequences, upon the youth of the land, and its future moral and educational interests.... Acting, as I hope I do, upon Christian and public grounds, I should not feel myself justified in withdrawing from a work in consequence of personal discourtesy and ill-treatment, or a reduction of means of support and usefulness. But when I see the fruits of four years' anxious labours, in a single blast scattered to the winds, and have no satisfactory ground of hope that such will not be the fate of another four years' labour; when I see the foundations of great principles, which, after extensive enquiry and long deliberation, I have endeavoured to lay, torn up and thrown aside as worthless rubbish; when I see myself deprived of the protection and advantage of the application of the principle of responsible government as applied to every other head of a Department, and made the subordinate agent of a Board which I have originated, and the members of which I have had the honour to recommend for appointment; when I see myself officially severed from a Normal School Institution which I have devised, and every feature and detail of which are universally commended, even to the individual capacities of the masters whom I have sought out and recommended; when I see myself placed in a position, to an entirely novel system of education at large, in which I can either burrow in inactivity or labour with little hope of success; when I find myself placed in such circumstances, I cannot hesitate as to the course of duty, as well as the obligations of honour and self-respect.... I think it is my right, and only frank and respectful, on the earliest occasion to state, in respect to my own humble labours, whether I can serve on terms and principles and conditions so different from those under which I have, up to the present time, acted; though I cannot, without deep regret and emotion, contemplate the loss of so much time and labour, and find myself impelled to abandon a work on which I had set my heart, and to qualify myself for which I have devoted four of the most matured years of my life.
Having now fulfilled my promise—to communicate to you, in writing, my views on this important and extensive subject—I leave the whole question in your hands.
The result of this letter was, the suspension and abandonment of the Act of 1849, and the preparation and passing of the Act of 1850.
Now Mr. Cameron might naturally feel deeply at the repeal of his own Act without a trial; but after he had time for further examination and reflection, and a more thorough knowledge of the nature and working of the system I was endeavouring to establish, I believe no man in Canada more sincerely rejoiced than Mr. Cameron at the repeal of the Act of 1849, and no man has more cordially supported the present system, or more frankly and earnestly commended the course I have pursued.[135]