In reply to this the governor, in a speech to the legislature, intimated the intention of the government “to set apart a portion of the crown domain instead for the establishment of a competent number of free schools for the instruction of their children in the first rudiments of useful learning and in the English tongue; and also as occasion may require for foundations of a more enlarged and comprehensive nature.” In 1801, therefore, an act entitled “an act for the establishment of free schools and the advancement of learning in the province” was passed by the provincial legislature to give effect to these promises. It provided also for “the establishment of a Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning.” To this corporation was entrusted the entire management of all schools and institutions of royal foundation in the province as well as the administration of all estates and property appropriated to these schools.
This act remained practically a dead letter, since no grants were ever made. What rendered the scheme a failure was the additional reason of its unpopularity with the majority. Of the eighteen trustees of the Royal Institution, four only were Roman Catholics; and of the fourteen Protestants, three were prominent officials in Upper Canada. The teachers, too, were principally from Britain, unacquainted with the French language and generally ignorant of the habits of the people.
In 1818 in order to give practical effect to the act of 1801 all the government schools then receiving government aid were placed under the Royal Institution. The question of representative trusteeship was made more simple and more equitable, but the Protestant Lord Bishop of Quebec was named principal. This again kept the Catholics from participating, the movement being still looked upon as Protestant and Anglicizing. So that Lord Dalhousie wrote from Quebec on the 10th of June, 1821, to Lord Bathurst, asking that His Majesty would sanction the establishment of a Catholic institution precisely similar to that of the Protestants for the government of their schools. “The Catholic religion in this province,” he said, “is certainly the most sure defense yet against our neighbours and every fair encouragement should be given to it in promoting education and learning. One great objection complained of is the being subjected to the superintendence of the Royal Institution, of which the Protestant bishop is president. That objection is natural in a country where the Catholic religion prevails as to numbers and is guarded by ministers always watchful and perhaps jealous of the Protestant church.”
The Royal Institution was never popular because of its want of sympathy with the people whom it wished to benefit. It cannot be said to have been a success, owing to the peculiar denominational constitution of its charter and the apathy in its own council. Still it pointed the way to a general scheme of public education which afterwards bore fruit. Its greatest success is in the present day McGill University, whose official title is still the “Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning.”
Various attempts were made by the legislature to introduce a more popular system of management in the schools. In 1824, on the elaborate report of a special committee of the province which represented that in many parishes not more than five or six of the inhabitants could write; that generally not above one-fourth of the entire population could read and that not above one-tenth of the entire population could write, a counterpoise measure to the royal institution was passed for the Catholics entitled the “Fabrique act” by which the Fabriques or corporations of the parish churches consisting of the curé and church wardens as school commissioners, could hold and acquire property, etc., to found and carry on elementary schools, one for every one hundred families. One of the great reasons for the failure of educational legislation down to 1836 was the want of permanency about it all. Another was the jobbery of politicians in a time of seething turmoil. Arthur Buller, commissioner, appointed by Lord Durham in 1838, reports clearly on this. “In short, the moment that they found that their educational provisions could be turned to political account, from that moment those provisions were formed with a view to promote party rather than education. This was their essential fault. This, it was, that pervaded and contaminated the whole system and paralyzed all good that was otherwise in it.” There were about one thousand, six hundred schools in Canada and these had to be closed.
It is now in place to review the state of education in Montreal under the Royal Institution. When finally funds were forthcoming they were supplied by an annual vote of the provincial parliament of £2,000, but under an authority from Lord Bathurst, dated January 24, 1817, a grant was made from the revenues of the Jesuit estate confined to the grammar schools of Quebec and Montreal. The latter received £200 a year with £52 a year for the rent of the schoolhouse. By the rules of the foundation twenty free scholars were to be admitted. At this date there were fifteen all told who paid for their education as day scholars. The terms for instruction in the higher education were £10 a year and £8 for the lower.
There were also two elementary schools at Montreal which received appropriations from the government, viz., the British and Canadian schools (£300) and the National free school (£200). With regard to the schools under the institution a memorandum of Sir John Kempt states that “by a return made in the year 1818 the number of schools in this province was stated to be thirty-seven attended by only 1,048 scholars and maintained at an expense to the public of £1,883 10 strg.”
In 1829 he also states the number of schools up to July 1st as seventy-eight and the number of scholars 3,772. Up to this date Catholics had no connection with the institution. In Lord Aylmer’s report of 1832 the schools under the royal institution of which the names are given as well as those of the teachers and their salaries, number seventy. The schools of Montreal given among the list of “society or private” institutions receiving occasional aid from public funds are given thus:
There were in addition many private Catholic and Protestant schools. We may note the origins of some of the most important public schools. The Royal Grammar school was founded in Montreal in 1816, with Mr. Alexander Skakel, M.A., who came out from England as head master. A writer in the Montreal Daily Herald of Saturday, March 15, 1913, writes: