an a wary politician, and when early in 1843 a private member brought
in resolutions in favour of withdrawing the grants from the existing
colleges, and of founding 'one good college, free from sectarian control,
and open to all denominations, maintained by a common fund,' Howe
supported him with all his might. In thus differing from his colleagues
on a question of primary importance he was undoubtedly guilty of ignoring
the doctrine of collective Cabinet responsibility.

The heather was soon on fire. Johnston came vigorously to the rescue of
Acadia. The Baptist newspaper attacked Howe in no measured terms.
Crawley himself in public speeches endeavoured to show 'the extreme
danger to religion of the plan projected by Mr Howe of one college in
Halifax without any religious character, and which would be liable to
come under the influence of infidelity.' Howe repaid invective with
invective. 'I may have been wrong, but yet when I compare these
peripatetic, writing, wrangling, grasping professors, either with the
venerable men who preceded them in the ministry of their own Church, or
in the advent of {78} Christianity, I cannot but come to the conclusion
that either one set or the other have mistaken the mode. Take all the
Baptist ministers from one end of the province to the other--the
Hardings, the Dimocks, the Tuppers,--take all that have passed away, from
Aline to Burton; men who have suffered every privation, preaching peace
and contentment to a poor and scattered population; and the whole
together never created as much strife, exhibited so paltry an ambition,
or descended to the mean arts of misrepresentation to such an extent, in
all their long and laborious lives, as these two arrogant professors of
philosophy and religion have done in the short period of half a dozen
years.'[4]

In reply to Dr Crawley he contrasted the students of an undenominational
college, 'drinking at the pure streams of science and philosophy,' with
the students of Acadia 'imbibing a sour sectarian spirit on a hill.' 'It
is said, if a college is not sectarian, it must be infidel. Is
infidelity taught in our academies and schools? No; and yet not one of
them is sectarian. A college would be under strict discipline,
established by its governors; clergymen would occupy some of its chairs;
{79} moral philosophy, which to be sound must be based on Christianity,
must be conspicuously taught; and yet the religious men who know all this
rai