e people of Lower Canada to
greater efforts on behalf of education. They continued their agitation,
but their efforts had little immediate success. The conditions in Lower
Canada were earnestly and anxiously set forth in the following appeal
made to the Governor-General, Sir R. S. Milnes, by the Rev. Dr. Jacob
Mountain, Lord Bishop of Quebec, on October 19th, 1799:

"There is so intimate and obvious a connection between the education of
youth and the general state of public morals, that I trust I shall not
be thought to deviate from the duties that are more particularly
assigned to me, if I presume to solicit your Excellency's attention to
the disadvantages under which the Province has long laboured from the
want of proper schools for the instruction of the children both of the
higher and of the lower orders of the community.

"In doing this, it is by no means my intention to enter into the
examination of these disadvantages so far as they are common to us with
every other society which is without proper institutions for the
education of youth; I shall take the liberty of mentioning such only as
appear to be in a great measure peculiar to ourselves.

"Let me be permitted, then, to suggest the danger which may result to
the political principles and to the future character as subjects of such
of our young men among the higher ranks as the exigency of the case
obliges their parents to send for a classical education to the colleges
of the United States.

"In these Seminaries, most assuredly, they are not likely to imbibe that
attachment to our constitution in Church and State, that veneration for
the Government of their country, and that loyalty to their King, to
which it is so peculiarly necessary in the present times to give all the
advantage of early predilection in order to fix them deeply both in the
understanding and the heart.

"To obviate this danger, it would seem expedient to found at least one
good Grammar School in this Province and to invite able Masters from
England by the liberality of the endowment.

"It may not be improper to state here that there is already at Quebec a
respectable school, which offers the means of instruction to those who
are designed for the more accurate professions, or for the pursuits of
Trade and Commerce in which, together with the lower branches of
education, are taught the Latin language, Mathematics, and Navigation,
by a master well qualified for the task he has undertaken.