"No provision is made by law for free schools. The inhabitants of the severe! townships are left to a voluntary support of schools, according to their own discretion.
"An Act of the Provincial Legislature, in 1807, granted a hundred pounds a year to the teacher of one school, in each of the eight districts under the direction of trustees. In some districts the school thus provided for is made a free school; but in other districts the salary is considered as a public encouragement to a teacher of literary eminence, in addition to the compensation received for the tuition of each scholar."--_Statistical Account of Upper Canada, etc., by Robert Gourlay, 2 vols., London, 1822._
The Rev. Dr. Strachan became a master of one of these schools, and Rev. George Ryerson and his brother, Egerton, master and usher of another.
As to the state of feeling in the rural parts of the oldest settled portions of Upper Canada, we make the following extracts from a letter written to Mr. Gourlay from the township of Grimsby, in 1818, by a highly respected resident there, William Crooks, Esq. Mr. Crooks remarks:--
"The state of education is at a very low ebb, not only in the township, but generally throughout the [Niagara] district; although the liberality of the legislature has been great in support of the district (Grammar) schools, (giving to the teachers of each £100 per annum), yet they have been productive of little or no good hitherto, for this obvious cause, they are looked upon as seminaries exclusively instituted for the education of the children of the more wealthy classes of society, and to which the poor man's child is considered as unfit to be admitted. From such causes, instead of their being a benefit to the Province, they are sunk into obscurity, and the heads of most of them are at this moment enjoying their situations as comfortable sinecures. Another class of schools has, within a short time, been likewise founded upon the liberality of the legislative purse, denominated common, or parish, schools, but like the preceding, the anxiety of the teacher employed, seems more alive to his stipend than the advancement of the education of those placed under his care: from the pecuniary advantages thus held out, we have been inundated with the worthless scum, under the character of school masters, not only of this, but of every other country where the knowledge has been promulgated, of the easy means our laws afford of getting a living here, by obtaining a parish school, which is done upon the recommendation of some few freeholders, getting his salary from the public, and making his employers contribute handsomely beside.