Office that the Jesuit Estates might possibly be appropriated in aid of
the McGill bequest, there seems to have been no intention to limit the
assistance which should be provided by this increased revenue to McGill
College alone. On the contrary, the object appears to have been to use
the additional funds in order that, irrespective of race or creed, the
benefits of education might be diffused as widely as possible throughout
the country. But delay again followed, and it was not until the next
year that definite instructions were issued by Lord Bathurst for the
transfer of the Jesuits' Estates to the Royal Institution for the
Advancement of Learning. These instructions were contained in the
following historic letter, destined to have so large a part in the
establishment of McGill College and in Canadian education, and forwarded
to the Officer Administering the Government of Lower Canada by Lord
Bathurst from Downing Street on May 10th, 1816:

"I have already expressed to you the gracious intention of His Royal
Highness, the Prince Regent, to forward the extension of education in
the Provinces of Canada and I have pointed out the preliminary measures
necessary on your part to give effect to that intention. In furtherance
of this object, I have received the commands of His Royal Highness to
instruct you to transfer to the Trustees of the Royal Institution for
the Advancement of Learning all those estates which formerly belonged to
the Society of Jesuits, which, since the abolition of that order, have
been vested in the Crown, in order that the Royal Institution for the
Advancement of Learning may possess present means for establishing and
maintaining the Seminaries which it may be necessary to found and may
possess the revenue which cannot fail progressively to increase in
proportion to the improvement of the Provinces and the consequent demand
for additional means of instruction.

"In transferring, however, those estates to the management of the Royal
Institution for the Advancement of Learning, you will retain for the
future disposal of His Royal Highness the accumulation of the rents and
profits of preceding years which may be either in the hands of the
Receiver of those estates, or which may have been by him paid to the
Colonial Government, and you will with as little delay as possible
transmit to me a detailed account of the amount of the Fund which has
been so created."

Meanwhile the executors of the will of Ja