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EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.
months’ residence. It is provided in the Bill that no person having the remainder of the qualification shall be at liberty to use it, unless he has also been resident in the parish or township for the full period of twelve months. These, then, are the persons who, independent of the rate-payers, will be admitted to the franchise. The Board will have the power of enrolling, by an act of its own, all Mechanics’ Institutions, all Associations for Education, all Literary Societies for all classes, and all Education Societies for all classes, under certain restrictions and according to certain rules ; so that all persons who have, for a certain time, been members of those most useful, most meritorious bodies—all persons who, for a certain time, have devoted themselves to the affairs of those societies and associations, and thus promoted the Education of others or improved their own—all those persons, having passed a certain time in such courses, shall have a right to vote, each in the parish in which he resides, for the members of the School Committee. I go a step further. I propose to extend this privilege to all persons, of whatever rank, who have been educated at either of the Universities, at the Inns of Court, at the Inns of Chancery, at the Public Schools, or any Schools whatever enrolled and connected with the Board, and of all classes of the community whatever, be they high, middle, or low—I propose that all these persons, the time they have spent at school being taken as a guarantee that they are not ignorant, illiterate, uneducated and dissolute persons, shall, after a year’s residence, be admitted to the right of voting on the school affairs of the town, parish, or district in which a School Committee shall be appointed. I have thus detailed, boldly, and at once, all the points of the Bill upon which I anticipate the strongest opposition. The principle of election which I last