NECESSITY FOR THE CHANGES IN THE SCHOOL LAW OF ONTARIO IN 1871. We will now proceed, in the light of the educational facts and illustrations which we have given from other countries, to discuss the recent improvements which have been effected in our own law. The population of this Province, according to the recent census, is 1,620,842. The number of children of school age is 483,966, or a little over one-fourth of the whole. The number of Elementary Schools is not much below 5,000, and are maintained at an annual cost of nearly $1,800,000, or one dollar per head of the population. Such being the magnitude to which our Educational System has grown, every man will feel how imperative it is upon us to see that that system is as thorough and complete in all of its details as possible; and that in no respect should it be allowed to fall below the standard now reached by the other educating countries to which we have referred. So long as our system of schools was in its infancy, and might be fairly regarded as yet an experiment, so long as we confine our efforts to mere elementary organization and be content with very moderate results. Experience has shown, however, that without great care and constant effort the tendency of all systems of education, and ours among the rest, is to a state of equilibrium, or to a uniform dead level of passable respectability. This is the stage in its history, as elsewhere, at which our system has arrived, and at which, as we have explained, many of its friends are disposed to leave it. But those who have carefully studied the subject in all its bearings, and have looked more closely into the educational history, the progress and failures of other countries, know full well that our school system would fall behind that of other countries and become stationary, unless it embodies within itself from time to time the true elements of progress, and provides fully and on a sufficient scale for the educational wants of the youth of the country. Since 1850 it was left to the ratepayers in each school division to decide annually whether the schools should be free or partly supported by rate-bill on pupils attending the school. The principle, that a Public School education is the right of every child in the land, and that every man should contribute, according to his property, to the education of every child in the community, by whose influence and labors such property is protected and rendered valuable, had greatly obtained, so that Free Schools had increased from one hundred to five hundred per annum, until upwards of four thousand of the four thousand four hundred Public Schools were made free by actual experiments, and by the annual discussions and votes in these primary meetings of the people. The demand was very general for several years, that all the Public Schools should now be made free by law, and all local disputes on the subject be thus terminated. This has now been happily accomplished by the new law.