ny questions in which the relations of Church and State were
involved. One of these was State endowment of denominational schools.
During Brown's early years in Canada the school system was being
placed on a broad and popular basis. Salaries of teachers were
wretchedly low. Fees were charged to children, and remitted only as an
act of charity. Mr. Brown advocated a free and unsectarian system.
Claims for denominational schools were put forward not only by the
Roman Catholics but by the Anglicans. He argued that if this were
allowed the public school system would be destroyed by division. The
country could barely afford to maintain one good school system. To
maintain a system for each denomination would require an immense
addition to the number of school-houses and teachers, and would absorb
the whole revenue of the province. At the same time, the educational
forces would be weakened by the division and thousands of children
would grow up without education. "Under the non-sectarian system,"
said Brown, "the day is at hand when we may hope to abolish the
school-tax and offer free education to every child in the province."

Eventually it was found possible to carry out Mr. Brown's idea of free
education for every child in the province, and yet to allow Roman
Catholic separate schools to be maintained. To this compromise Mr.
Brown became reconciled, because it did not involve, as he had feared,
the destruction of the free school system by division. The Roman
Catholics of Upper Canada were allowed to maintain separate
denominational schools, to have them supported by the taxes of Roman
Catholic ratepayers and by provincial grants. So far as the education
of Protestant children was concerned Mr. Brown's advocacy was
successful. He opposed denominational schools because he feared they
would weaken or destroy the general system of free education for all.
Under the agreement which was finally arrived at, this fear was not
realized. In his speech on confederation he admitted that the
sectarian system, carried to a limited extent and confined chiefly to
cities and towns, had not been a very great practical injury. The real
cause of alarm was that the admission of the sectarian principle was
there, and that at any moment it might be extended to such a degree as
to split up our school system altogether: "that the separate system
might gradually extend itself until the whole country was studded
with nurseries of sectarianism, most hu