"That there is in this Province a very general want of education; that the insufficiency of the Common School Fund to support competent, respectable and well-educated teachers, has degraded common school teaching from a regular business to a mere matter of convenience to transient persons, or common idlers, who often stay but for one season, and leave the schools vacant until they accommodate some other like person, whereby the minds of the youth of this Province are left without due cultivation, or, what is worse, frequently with vulgar, low-bred, vicious and intemperate examples before them in the persons of their monitors," (_i.e._, teachers). The motion goes on to say that:-- "If provision were made for the liberal and punctual payment of common school teachers ... the teaching of common schools would soon become a regular and respectable calling, gentlemanly, well-educated persons would not be ashamed to take charge of youth, the schools would be no longer vacant, nor the scholars ignorant. Upper Canada would then form a national character that would command respect abroad and ensure peace, prosperity and happiness at home, perpetuate attachment to British principles and British institutions, and enable posterity to value, as they ought, the inestimable blessings of our glorious constitution." The motion went on to urge the Lieut.-Governor to represent to the Colonial Secretary the important necessity--in view of the facts cited--of entreating "That His Majesty, William IV., be graciously pleased to place at the disposal of the Provincial Legislature a portion of the waste lands of the Crown as a permanent fund for the support of common schools within the same." Dr. Charles Duncombe, with a prescience of the future, and of the necessities of the case, (which were not then recognized, nor for many years afterwards,) strongly urged, as did other members of the Assembly, that at least one million acres of the "waste lands" of the Province should be set apart for the support of common schools.[34] [34] It is gratifying to know that, although defeated at the time, Dr. Duncombe's efforts bore fruit nearly twenty years afterwards--in 1850--when Hon. Wm. Hamilton Merritt, then President of the Council, introduced and had a Bill passed by the Legislature setting apart 1,000,000 acres of the Crown Lands for the permanent endowment of public schools in United Canada. The motion was negatived. Dr. Duncombe was, however, determined not to be beaten. Mr. David Burn and other friends of his in the county of Oxford--no doubt on his suggestion--got up a petition to the Legislature on the subject, and on the 21st December--a week after his motion was defeated--Dr. Duncombe read this petition and had it referred to a select committee for report thereon.