termine whether the young practitioner of medicine
or of law who settles among them is competently acquainted with his
profession, and so a fit person to be entrusted with the care of
their health or the protection of their property. And hence the
necessity which exists in all these cases for testing, licensing,
diploma-giving courts or boards, composed of men qualified to decide
regarding those special points of ability or acquirement which the
people, as such, cannot try for themselves. In no case, however, are
courts of this nature more imperatively required than in the case
of the schoolmaster. Neither the amount of literature which he
possesses, nor yet his mastery over the most approved modes of
communicating it, can be tested by the people, who, as parents and
ratepayers, possess the exclusive right to make choice of him for
their parish or district school; and hence the necessity that what
they cannot do for themselves should be previously done for them by
some competent court or board, and that no teacher who did not possess
a licence or diploma should be eligible to at least an endowed
seminary supported by the public money. With, of course, the
qualifications of the mere adventure-teacher, whether supported by
Churches or individuals, we would permit no board to interfere. As
to the composition of the board itself, that, we hold, might be
determined on very simple principles. Let the College-bred teachers
of Scotland, associated with its University professors, select for
themselves, out of their own number, a dean or chairman, and a court
or committee, legally qualified by Act of Parliament stringently
to try all teachers who may present themselves before them, in order
to be rendered eligible for a national school, and to grant them
licences or diplomas, legally representative of professional
qualification. Whether a teacher, on his election by the people,
might not be a second time tried, especially on behalf of the State
and the ratepayers, by a Government inspectorship, and thus a check
on the board be instituted, we are not at present called on to
determine; but on this we are clear, that the certificate of no
Normal School, in behalf of its own pupils, ought to be received
otherwise than as a mere makeweight in the general item of
professional character; seeing that any such document would be as
much a certificate of the Normal School's own ability in rearing
efficient teachers, as of the pedagogical sk