The first official visitor of schools was appointed this year, in the person of Mr. John McNeill, who, in his report for the year, gave the number of schools in the three counties as fifty-one, and the number of scholars as fifteen hundred and thirty-three. In his report, Mr. McNeill gives us an interesting peep at the educational condition of the country at this period, specifying the various causes to which the extreme deficiency of the educational machinery was attributable. In many of the settlements the inhabitants were poor, and having to struggle with numerous difficulties in procuring subsistence for their children, their education was regarded as a matter of secondary importance. Little encouragement was, in most cases, held out to teachers of character and qualification, and the precarious mode in which their salaries were paid operated powerfully as a bar in the way of educational advancement. Hence it not unfrequently happened, when the necessary literary attainments were wanting, that it was only persons of shipwrecked character, and blasted prospects in life, who had assumed the important office of schoolmaster. “I must also mention,” reported Mr. McNeill, “another practice which is too prevalent in the country, and which, I conceive, is exceedingly injurious to the respectability of the teacher in the eyes of his pupils, and, consequently, hurtful to his usefulness,—that is: receiving his board by going about from house to house; in which case he is regarded, both by parents and children, as little better than a common menial.” Mr. McNeill’s suggestions, by way of reformation, were judicious and well put. He held the situation of visitor for ten years, and seems to have been well qualified for the post. When he vacated the situation, in 1847, there were one hundred and twenty schools, of all grades, and over five thousand scholars.