I believe this is the true method of managing all the public departments, and every branch of the public service. I believe it would contribute immensely to both the efficiency and economy of the public service. * * * It would greatly elevate the standard of action and attainments and stimulate the ambition of the young men of the country, when they know that their selection and advancement in their country's service depended upon their individual merits, irrespective of sect or party, and not as the reward of zeal as political partisans in elections or otherwise, on their own part, or on that of their fathers or relatives. The power of a government in a country is immense for good or ill. It is designed by the Supreme Being to be a "minister of God for good" to a whole people, without partiality, as well as without hypocrisy, like the rays of the sun; and the administration of infinite wisdom and justice and truth and purity. * * * * * I know it has been contended that party patronage * * * is an essential element in the existence of a government. * * * The Education Department has existed--and it is the highest public department in Upper Canada--for more than thirty years without such an element, with increasing efficiency and increasing strength, in the public estimation, during the whole of that period. Justice, and virtue, and patriotism, and intelligence are stronger elements of power and usefulness than those of rewarding partisans; and if the rivalship and competition of public men should consist in devising and promoting measures for the advancement of the country and in exercising the executive power most impartially and intelligently for the best interests of all classes, then the moral standard of government and of public men would be greatly exalted, and the highest civilization of the whole country be advanced. In a series of letters published in defence of his administration of the Education Department in 1872, he thus pointed out the character of his difficult and delicate task. He also gave a brief glance at what had been accomplished by the Department since he took office in 1844. He said:-- The Department of which I have had charge since 1844, and during several administrations of government, is confessedly the most difficult and complicated, if not the most important, of any department of the public service. Since 1844, it has devolved on me to frame laws, and to devise, develop, and administer a system of public instruction for the people of this Province. That system has been more eulogized by both English and American educationists, and more largely adopted in other British colonies, on both sides of the globe, than any other system of public instruction in America.