The grants to these Separate Schools were to be that proportion of the total school fund in any Municipal District that the children in actual attendance at the Separate School bore to the total number of children of school age in the district, and they were subject to the same rules and regulations regarding courses of study and inspection as the Common Schools. In 1847 an amendment to the Common School Act was passed known as the Towns and Cities Act. This Act gave the Trustee Boards of towns and cities full power to determine the number of, and regulate, denominational schools. An extract from Ryerson's Annual Report for 1847 as presented to the Provincial Secretary will make clear the nature of the Act and the Chief Superintendent's views of it. Speaking of the provision for Separate Schools in the Act of 1843 he says: "I have never seen the necessity for such a provision in connection with any section of the Common School Law, which provides that no child shall be compelled to read any religious book or attend any religious exercise contrary to the wishes of his parents and guardians; and besides the apparent inexpediency of this provision of the law it has been seriously objected to as inequitable, permitting the Roman Catholics to have a denominational school, but not granting a similar right or privilege to any one Protestant denomination ... nor does the Act of 1847 permit the election of any sectarian school trustees nor the appointment of a teacher of any religious persuasion as such even for a denominational school. Every teacher of such school must be approved by the town or city school authorities. There are, therefore, guards and restrictions connected with the establishment of a denominational school in cities and towns under the new Act which did not previously exist; it, in fact, leaves the applications or pretensions of each religious persuasion to the judgment of those who provide the greater part of the local school fund and relieves the Government and Legislature from the influence of any such sectarian pressure. The effect of this Act has already been to lessen rather than to increase denominational schools, while it places all religious persuasions on the same legal footing, and leaves none of them any possible ground to attack the school law or oppose the school system. My Report on a system of Public Elementary Instruction for Upper Canada, as well as various decisions and opinions which I have given, amply show that I am far from advocating the establishment of denominational schools; but I was not prepared to condemn what had been unanimously sanctioned by two successive Parliaments."[85] [85] See copy in D. H. E., Vol. VII., p. 178.