This is manifestly unfair. Ryerson knew from previous experience and without any further special investigation, the answer to every one of the five questions propounded above. In 1848, just after the Baldwin-Lafontaine administration was formed, and before the newly-formed ministry had met Parliament, there was more or less discussion about dismissing Ryerson from his position as Superintendent of Education. The _Globe_ of April 29th, 1848, says: "Will any man, except a few of his own clique, say that Egerton Ryerson should be Superintendent of Education under a Liberal Government? We apprehend none. He has done nothing wrong since his appointment, it is said. We say he has. He spent many months on the Continent of Europe and in Britain in amusement or recreation, professing to get information about things which every person knew already.... We have had hints of the Prussian system being applicable to Canada and we feel convinced that he, who sold himself to the late Administration, would have readily brought all the youth of Canada to the same market and placed them under the domination of an arbitrary and coercive power. He had sold their fathers for pelf, why not sell the sons also? Was he not in league with that party which would retain the Province in vassalage to the old Compact which he had so heartily denounced in former times? Is he not a member of that Methodist Committee which bargained away to a worthless Ministry the Methodist votes for £1,500 to Victoria College? These are most memorable events in the annals of political corruption.... But we care not if there had been no ground for complaint since 1844. We know that Egerton Ryerson sold himself body and spirit to Lord Metcalfe and that he broached doctrines of the most unconstitutional kind, threatening those who were but asking the common rights of British subjects with the vengeance of the whole Empire. The man who holds such views is unfit to be at the head of the country's education. He would convert the children of the Province into the most pliable tools of an arbitrary system." These articles show clearly that the party press was not disposed to judge Ryerson by his work as Superintendent of Education. They claimed that because he championed Lord Metcalfe in 1844 he was a partizan, and if a partizan in 1844 he must still be one in 1848.