ilized the world."
What creates civilization can alone preserve and advance it. The great
question, after all, in the present discussion, is not which system will
teach the most classics, mathematics, etc. (although I shall consider
the question in this light presently), but which system will best
protect, develop, and establish those higher principles of action, which
are vastly more important to a country itself--apart from other and
immortal considerations--than any amount of intellectual attainments in
certain branches of secular knowledge. Colleges under religious control
may fall short of their duty and their power of religious and moral
influence; but they must be, as a general rule, vastly better and safer
than a College of no religious control or character at all. At all
events, one class of citizens have much more valid claims to public aid
for a College that will combine the advantages of both secular and
religious education, than have another class of citizens to public aid
for a College which confers no benefit beyond secular teaching alone. It
is not the sect, it is society at large that most profits by the high
religious principles and character of its educated men. An efficient
religious College must confer a much greater benefit upon the State than
a non-religious College can, and must be more the benefactor of the
State than the State can be to it by bestowing any ordinary amount of
endowment. It is, therefore, in harmony with the first fundamental
principle of the Common School system, as well as with the highest
interests of society at large, that the best facilities be provided for
all that is affectionate in the parent and faithful in the pastor,
during the away-from-home education of youth; and that is a College
under religious control, whether that control be of the Church of the
parent or not.

I have already given on page 344, Dr. Ryerson's opinions in regard to
the provisions of Hon. Robert Baldwin's University Bill of 1843. From
the extract there inserted it will be seen that the practical objection
which he raised in 1859, to the administration of the University Act of
1853, was in general harmony with the views and opinions on University
matters which he had expressed fifteen or sixteen years before. A fuller
expression of these opinions was given in a letter which Dr. Ryerson
wrote to the _British Colonist_ on the 14th of February, 1846. From that
letter I make the following extracts:--