"That the moneys required to pay for the establishment and support of Normal and Model Schools are little less than a waste of so much of the Legislative grant, is an opinion in which your committee are so far from concurring, that they believe it is from these sources must mainly arise the instrumentality through which the friends of education can alone hope for the first considerable amelioration of the evils they lament.... Nor can your committee reconcile it either with their just expectations, or their sense of duty to rest satisfied with the services of those whose physical disabilities from age and decaying energies render them unfit, or of those 'newly arrived emigrants,' whose 'unknown character and abilities' render them unable to procure a livelihood by any other means than by becoming the preceptors of our children; the dictators of their sentiments and manners; the guardians of their virtue; and in a high degree the masters of their future destinies in this world and the next." This report was prepared by Mr. Thomas Benson, Chairman of the Education Committee, and Warden of the District (father of Judge Benson of Port Hope). It was adopted by the Colborne District Council in February, 1848.[49] [49] Correspondence between members of the Government and the Chief Superintendent, 1850, pp. 17-20. The Western District Council, in its memorial to the Legislature against the School Act, represented that "spite, hatred and malice between neighbors and friends," existed, and was "occasioned by the present School Act." It added: "So numerous are the petitions on the subject that more than half of the time of the Council is taken up in endeavoring to settle the differences, but unfortunately without any beneficial effect." The Chief Superintendent, in his report, referring to this statement says: "Now, in examining the printed report of the committee, to whom all these petitions were referred, I find that of the twenty-nine petitions presented to the Council, one prayed for the establishment of a female school in one of the sections (which was granted); one prayed for a local school tax in a section; two related to the formation of new school sections, and the remaining twenty-five related to the disputes as to the boundaries of school sections and the non-payment of school moneys by township superintendents. Thus not one of these disputes could have arisen out of the School Act, but must have all been caused by an improper division of the school sections, either by the township superintendents under the late Act, or by the Council under the present statute." In this (Western) District the Council says: