(a.) The Council of Public Instruction and its Committees 152 (b.) The Superintendent of Public Instruction and his Staff - 157 (viii.) Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning 220 A. An account of the Protestant Schools of Montreal, 1900. 232 B. Extracts from the Regulations of the Protestant School 236 C. Regulations of 1890 for the issue of debentures by the Roman Catholic and Protestant School Commissioners for Montreal 250 D. Special Regulation of 1893 concerning tenure of Roman 253 E. Course of study in Roman Catholic Academies and Model -254-5 F. Course of study in Protestant Elementary Schools 256 G. From the Report of the Montreal Protestant School Commissioners 1897-1899 257 THE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION IN THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. [This account has been compiled mainly from the “Revised Statutes" of the Province. Use has also been made of the annual reports of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for recent years, which have been supplied to the Board of Education by the Quebec Department of Public Instruction.] INTRODUCTORY. Among the Provinces of the Dominion, Quebec shares with Nova Scotia the distinction of having two Chambers constituting its Parliament. The Upper Chamber is called the Legislative Council, and the Lower, the Legislative Assembly. The total area of the Province is 347,350 square miles, of which 344,050 square miles are "land area." Quebec was, of course, one of the original Provinces of the Dominion. The original Act of 1791 divided Canada into two Provinces, Upper Canada, now Ontario, and Lower Canada, now Quebec. The present constitution of the Province was, in its main outlines, fixed by the "British North America Act" of 1867. It is not without reason that the experience of the Dominion of Canada is cited as showing how completely a fusion may be effected by judicious legislation between two races of different language, creed, and ideals. We need not stop to estimate how far this wonderful fusion of the French and the British, the Roman Catholic and the Protestant, population has been the result of the educational legislation in particular. It is at least obvious that in the three provinces of the Dominion where "separate or "dissentient" schools are provided for the religious minority in each educational unit of the country, a working arrangement has been devised which recognises in large measure the rights of conscience, at least so far as two broadly distinguished types of religious belief are concerned, while maintaining effective Government control and securing to every school, whether sectarian or not, its national character. The Provinces which first succeeded in this were Ontario, Quebec, and the North-west Territories. But in the last case a distinction must be made; for in the Territories little short of half the financial support of the schools comes from the Government, and it is not until differences of creed involve, or threaten to involve, some disputable incidence of local taxation that the problem becomes really difficult, In Ontario and Quebec, on the other hand, the difficulty of preserving the rights of conscience to "religious minorities" while providing for the local support of all schools by taxation, could hardly have presented |