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To

The Honorable the General Assembly now convened at Halifax;

The Petition of the Reverend Robert Willis, Doctor of Divinity, Rector of St. Paul's Church, Halifax, and Archdeacon of Nova Scotia,

Humbly Showeth,

That the African School which has hitherto been favoured with the approbation, and fostered by the aid of your Honorable Assembly, exhibits most satisfactory indications of increasing prosperity and usefulness.

That although the number of day- scholars is such as to render the school-room, in its present state, inconveniently crowded and hot, and thereby to augment the labours of the master and mistress, while those labours are consequently made more than usually wearing and oppressive, — the master, nevertheless, with indefatigable, and meritorious but unremunerated zeal, devotes four evenings of the week to the arduous and engrossing task of teaching a night-school.

That in this night-school there are fifty learners, a great majority of whom are adults, who are living at service, and are indebted to the kindness of considerate employers for being thus permitted to redeem time which might have been lost, or to avail themselves of advantages which may never have heretofore been presented to them.

That a plan for rebuilding the school-house has undergone consideration, and would have been executed but for the hope that by delay such additions might be made to the building-fund as would provide an Institution not merely adequate to all the wants of the People of Colour in Halifax, but capable of becoming a Normal or Training School, in which masters might be qualified for the numerous