which proved useful in subsequent years. The most important step attempted by the ministry in hastening the emergence of the new nationality was thus halted. A thorny issue which had much to do with the fate of the Macdonald-Sicotte ministry was that of separate schools. Early in the history of the Canadas a common school system had arisen which recognized no religious distinctions among those seeking education. The money of all taxpayers went to the maintenance of the system. But, in 1841, an Act allowed public support to denominational schools, and to such institutions Roman Catholic parents sent their children. The separate school principle was developed by later Acts in 1843, 1852, and 1855. Yet many Roman Catholics considered that the status given to their schools was inadequate. In 1860, 1861, and 1862, R. W. Scott of Ottawa introduced legislation to strengthen the Roman Catholic separate school system of Upper Canada. On each occasion he found a warm supporter in McGee. Indeed, in his first election address, in 1857, McGee had chosen this subject for his special championship. It was the one large issue on which he differed radically from Brown, and he was ever frank that in it he would not compromise. He made clear his views. "If you permit the state to form the minds of the young apart from parental or religious control, why not allow the same state to establish a uniformity of belief and worship for the old. The same pretension which justifies the state school will justify a state church." For youth the moral guidance received under the impress of religious teaching was invaluable. "In Scotland, Switzerland, Holland, do they launch men upon the voyage of life without a strong infusion of dogmatic religion--without a standard of right and wrong--without an ethical compass by which they may tell the moral north from the moral south?" The logical corollary from which he did not shrink was that all sects should have their separate schools. The followers of Brown viewed such a doctrine with dismay. To them the common school was the least expensive and the most likely to alloy sectarian feeling. The _Globe_ lucidly stated their case. "We need the common school system more than New England to blend into one homogeneous people all these races of men. Carry out Mr. McGee's ideas, and we shall never accomplish that. We shall be a nation of sects fighting for supremacy; a people backward, unintelligent, unenterprising."