which the Methodists
asked in establishing the Upper Canada Academy, now Victoria
College; these are views, by pressing which, a royal charter and
government aid were obtained for that institution; these are the
views which received strong confirmation in the recommendation of a
despatch from Lord Goderich to Sir John Colborne in 1832, and which
greatly encouraged the friends of the Upper Canada Academy in their
commencing exertions. That institution was not originally intended
to be a University College; nor was it sought to be made so until
after the establishment of a Presbyterian University College at
Kingston; when, prompted by example and emulation, and
encouragement of aid, it was thought that the operations of a
University might be grafted upon those of the academy, without
interfering with the more extended objects of the latter....

More than a thousand youth have received more or less instruction
at the Cobourg Institution; very few of them, apart from other
considerations, have gone from it without forming a high standard
of education, and a deeper conviction of its importance than they
had before entertained; it has prevented hundreds of youth from
going out of the country to be educated, upon whom, and upon
hundreds of others, it has conferred the benefits of a good
practical education. Its buildings present the most remarkable
monument of religious effort and patriotic energy which was ever
witnessed in any country of the age and population of Upper
Canada....

The Wesleyan Methodists have not, like the Churches of England,
Scotland and Rome, derived any assistance from the clergy reserve
fund, or other public aid to their clergy or churches. It is much
easier to figure upon a platform than to establish educational
institutions, or to preach the Gospel throughout new countries.
Those who have been in Canada twelve months can do the former, and
sneer at the latter. The flippant allusions of certain speakers at
the late Toronto meeting to the Methodists and to Victoria College
... were as unfounded as they were unbecoming.

The discussions on the University question at Quebec in 1860 were, as I
have intimated, bitter and largely personal. Dr. Ryerson, being in the
fore front of the University reformers, was singled out for special
attack by s