Thus was inaugurated, in 1846, a series of county school conventions which, at intervals of about five years each, were held all over the country. The early ones involved travelling in all kinds of weather and in all kinds of conveyances, so as to keep engagements made weeks before. They were, however, of immense service to the Department in removing prejudice, settling difficulties and solving doubts as to the practicability of plans proposed for improving the condition of the schools and raising the intellectual and social status of the teacher. COMBINED OPPOSITION TO THE PROJECTED SYSTEM OF EDUCATION. It was not to be expected that so comprehensive a scheme of education as that proposed by Dr. Ryerson in 1846 and 1847 would meet with general acceptance. The very reverse was the fact. It was assailed as revolutionary and oppressive. It certainly was revolutionary in the best sense; but not oppressive, for it was largely permissive and wholly tentative. And, for many years the Town of Richmond, in the County of Carleton, refused to establish schools under its provisions. The new measures were so far revolutionary that they differed almost wholly from the former projected school acts. The system proposed was composite. Its machinery was adopted chiefly from the State of New York. The principle upon which the schools were to be supported was taken from New England--Normal schools, from Germany, and the uniform series of school books, from Ireland. All were, however, so blended together and harmonized, to meet the requirements and circumstances of the country that they became, in Dr. Ryerson's moulding hands, "racy of the soil." Up to this time no one but Dr. Ryerson had been able to give a practical turn to the rather crude theories which had been held on the subject of popular education. He, however, had to pay the penalty of all such reformers; but yet he lived to see the fuller details of his system of education worked out on his own lines. It is needless to say that Dr. Ryerson's scheme was assailed as impracticable. This I have explained. It was held to be too comprehensive for the country. Even his reference to the compact and systematized plan adopted in Prussia was seized upon as an indication of his covert design to introduce the baneful system of so-called "Prussian despotism." His commendation of "free schools," as a prospective feature of our educational system was denounced as an attempt to legalize an "outrageous robbery," and as communistic "war against property." As an example of the injustice of these criticisms on Dr. Ryerson's scheme of education, he said in a lecture on education in 1847:-- "I have seen in certain of the public prints, a provision of our school law ascribed to Prussia, which was borrowed from the school law of the City of Buffalo; and another provision declared to be incompatible with the rights of man which forms the basis and glory of the common school system of Massachusetts."