The system of popular education in Ontario has opened a free school to every child in the land, and proclaimed his right to its advantages; it has planted a school house in nearly every neighborhood, and in hundreds of instances, made the school house the best building in the neighborhood; it has superseded the topers and broken-down characters, so common as teachers of a former age, by a class of teachers not excelled in morals by the teachers of any other country, and who, as a whole, compare favorably in qualifications with those of any State in America; it has achieved a uniformity of excellent text-books, earnestly prayed for by educators in the neighboring States, and has spread throughout the land books of useful and entertaining knowledge to the number of nearly a million of volumes; it is the nearest approach to a voluntary system of any public school system in the world; and it has developed larger resources than that of any other State in America, in proportion to the wealth and number of inhabitants. This unparalleled success is due to the Christian feeling, the energy, patriotism and liberality of the people of this Province; but it has been imposed on me to construct the machinery, devise the facilities and agencies by which so great a work has been accomplished, and to do what I could to encourage my fellow-countrymen in its promotion. The administration of laws generally is by learned judges, by the pleadings of learned counsel, and the deliberations of selected juries; but the administration of the school law and system is through the agency of several hundred elected councils, and nearly twenty thousand elected trustees,--thus embodying, not the learned professions, but the intelligence, common sense, feelings and interests of the people at large in the work of school administration and local self-government. REASONS FOR DR. RYERSON'S RETIREMENT AS CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION. In "The Story of My Life," I gave the following reasons, amongst others, which induced Dr. Ryerson to propose a change in the headship of the Education Department. I said: "For many years after confederation Dr. Ryerson felt that the new political condition of the Province, which localized, as well as circumscribed, its civil administration of affairs, required a change in the management of the Education Department. He, therefore, (as early as in 1868, and again in 1872) urged upon the Government the desirability of relieving him from the anomalous position in which he found himself placed under the new system. The reasons which he urged for his retirement are given in a pamphlet devoted to a 'defence' of the system of education, which he published in 1872, and are as follows:--