No man would regret more than I would to see the country thrown into confusion at this time. I entertain a high opinion of the Governor-General (Sir Charles Bagot.) He certainly has shown a disposition to do everything he consistently could to give satisfaction to the prominent party, and being (as he is) of the Tory school, and appointed by a Tory ministry, he certainly is deserving of much credit for going as far as he did to meet the views of the Reformers.
The following was the only record left by Dr. Ryerson of his princ.i.p.alship of Victoria College:--At the end of two years" labours in the station of Adelaide Street Church (the predecessor of the present Metropolitan Church), I was again wrested from my loved work by an official pressure brought to bear upon me to accept the Presidency of Victoria College, which was raised from Upper Canada Academy to a College, and opened and inaugurated, in 1842, as a University College.
On the 3rd of August, 1842, the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, conferred on the Princ.i.p.al of Victoria College the degree of D.D. His old and valued friend Francis Hall, Esq., proprietor of the New York _Commercial Advertiser_, was the first to convey to him the pleasing intelligence. He said:
Perhaps this will be the first communication from Middletown which announces to Victoria College that its head is Rev. Egerton Ryerson, D.D. May you long live to enjoy the distinguished t.i.tle! I hope to take you by the hand in a few days, and congratulate you personally.
On the 21st of June, 1842, Dr. Ryerson was, with appropriate ceremonies, formally installed as Princ.i.p.al of Victoria College. The Editor of this volume well remembers what a joyful day it was for the College; and how heartily and kindly the new Princ.i.p.al spoke words of encouragement to each of the students then present. On that occasion he delivered a carefully prepared inaugural address, which was afterwards published in pamphlet form and widely circulated. On the 10th September, he sent a copy of the address to Hon. W. H. Draper. In his note Dr. Ryerson called Mr. Draper"s attention to what he conceived to be the defective nature of the provisions for the education of law-students, before their entrance on the study of the law (pages 24 and 25 of the address). To this Mr. Draper replied on the 16th. He also added an explanation in regard to his present position in the Government. He said:--
I have perused your address with much satisfaction. The Law Society of Upper Canada, by appointing a well-qualified examiner last term, will, I think, forward your views as to the education which should precede the study of that profession.
By the recent changes which have taken place, I have no longer the right to visit Victoria College officially; but I hope that I may be favoured with an opportunity of doing so in my private capacity.
You will not, I trust, consider it intrusive in me to briefly state the cause of my retirement from the Cabinet. I have long considered the Government in a false position, while the French Canadians saw in the Council no person acquainted with their wants and wishes--able and willing to look after their interests, and in whom they had confidence. Apprehending from what took place in the beginning of last session that they might refuse to take office with me, I signified several months ago my readiness to retire if that were the case. In July I renewed that offer. And now, when a negotiation was opened on, it appeared that they would not come in without Mr. Baldwin. I again offered my resignation, because, taking the view I do of his conduct when we were last in Council together, I feel I should not be in that body if he were there also. From that moment I ceased to advise or have anything to do with the matter. Had every other part of it been satisfactory to me, or had it been altered so as to make it satisfactory, nevertheless his being brought in inevitably put me out. Should you hear my conduct canva.s.sed and misunderstood, this explanation will, I trust, set it right.
To Mr. Draper"s letter Dr. Ryerson replied, and on the 7th October again wrote, asking him to deliver an address to the students at the opening of the session. In his letter Dr. Ryerson said:--
I deeply regret any occurrence which would deprive Canada of the advantage of your official counsels. I have observed your public conduct throughout, and it has been such in my estimation, as I have felt it a pleasurable duty to appreciate and defend, even in the most doubtful and trying circ.u.mstances. You now enjoy the proud distinction of advising and a.s.sisting, on public grounds, to form a government, from which, on personal grounds, you have felt it your duty to retire. You cannot suppose that I entertain a less exalted opinion of your disinterestedness and high sense of honour, when the strong opinions I have again and again expressed of it, have been more than realized by your present patriotic and n.o.ble course of proceeding.
In regard to the address which I have solicited you to deliver at the opening of the next session of our College, I desire to state that you will of course make it long or short, as you like, although I should like it long. It is my intention to get, if possible, some gentleman of high public standing and literary talent to deliver an address at the commencement of each collegiate year. I think that such addresses will have a salutary influence upon the taste and feeling and ambition of the students; and the notices and publication of them in the newspapers will tend to elevate the standard of the public taste, and will, I think, be useful to public men themselves. I shall be gratified, and I am sure good will ensue, from your appearing before the public in a somewhat new character.
To this letter Mr. Draper replied, on the 10th October:--
I find that, consistently with my professional engagements at the different a.s.sizes (which are now of paramount importance to me), I cannot prepare an address so as to do justice to your request. If it involved only the attendance on the day, I would cheerfully make some sacrifice to accomplish it; but there is more, for I would wish, if I undertook the task, to perform it well, and try to approximate the favourable expectation of those who were willing to entrust it to me; and for this end I cannot devote time enough out of the short interval between this and the latest day named by you.
Accept my a.s.surance that I feel great reluctance in declining your proposal. The compliment it conveyed was highly gratifying to me under existing circ.u.mstances, and I should have felt sincere pleasure in exciting my humble abilities in favour of an inst.i.tution to which, when I had fuller opportunities, I had endeavoured to be of use (page 179). Accept my acknowledgements for the kindness and courtesy of your other remarks in reference to myself.
Sir Charles Bagot did not long hold the office of Governor-General. Like Lord Sydenham, he was unexpectedly stricken by the hand of death, at Kingston, on the 19th May, 1843. A sketch of his life and character was prepared by Dr. Ryerson and published in the Kingston _Chronicle_. In that sketch he said:--
Sir Charles Bagot has created throughout the length and breadth of United Canada the settled and delightful conviction that its Government is henceforth to be British, as well as Colonial--and, as such, the best on the continent of America; that Canadians are to be governed upon the principle of domestic, and not transatlantic, policy; that they are not to be minified as men and citizens, because they are colonists; that they are (to use the golden words of Sir Robert Peel) "to be treated as an integral portion of the British Empire."
This sketch was very favourably received by the leading public men of Canada, and, after it appeared in the _Chronicle_, was reprinted by Stewart Derbyshire, Esq., Queen"s Printer, who, in a letter to Dr.
Ryerson on the subject, said:--
Your letter in the _Chronicle_ has attracted high admiration in the quarters most competent for criticism, and it is felt you have done a real service to the country. Supposing your wish is to diffuse the sentiments of your letter, I have taken the liberty of giving it to our printers of the _Canada Gazette_ to set up in handsome type, 8 octavo pages, and shall strike off 1,000, and send about, giving away a good many, and putting the rest at book-stores at a very small price. The common run of people do not value what they do not pay for. Have I acted in this in accordance with your wishes--or do you interdict the publication? Many extra copies of the _Chronicle_ were struck off, and about forty copies sent to-day to England by the steamer "Great Western." Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and Sir Charles Buller had one each.
Dr. Ryerson a.s.sented to the republication of his letter.
In the light of after events, the following extract from a letter received by Dr. Ryerson from Hon. R. B. Sullivan, dated Kingston, 21st July, 1843, is somewhat interesting. Mr. Sullivan had placed one of his sons under Dr. Ryerson"s care at Victoria College. After referring to matters relating to the education of youth, Mr. Sullivan proceeded:--"I hope that our friendship will be a sufficient inducement to you to teach my boy that upon his own good conduct under Providence his future happiness depends, and to give him that steadfastness of mind which lads naturally want. In asking these things of you, I place myself under no common obligation. There is no man in Canada of whom I would ask the same. My doing so of you arises from a respect and regard for you personally, which has grown as we have been longer acquainted, and which no prejudices on the part of those with whom I have mixed, and no obloquy heaped upon you by others, have ever shaken."
It is pleasant to get a kind word from those who approve of one"s course. It is pleasanter to get it from those who have been indifferent, or even hostile. Thus, in a letter from Rev. Matthew Holtby to Dr.
Ryerson, written in March, 1842, he said:
Soon after I arrived here from England, I became acquainted with you and your writings, and ever since, I have watched your course, often with painful and prayerful anxiety. It is long since I doubted the propriety of your public conduct, or the justice of your cause; but as I observed the storm gathering around you, and the winds blowing into a hurricane, from all the cardinal points at once, I have had my fears, that you might faint in the apparently unequal conflict. Thank G.o.d, he has delivered you--he has enabled you to stand at the helm, and to steer the Old Ship into smoother water. But we may rest a.s.sured that our foes are not dead. I only wish you may manifest as much nautical skill in a calm, as you have in the long storm, and I doubt not but all will be well.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] This memorable prophecy as to the future of our educational system was evidently made by Dr. Ryerson under the conviction that the verbal promise made to him by Lord Sydenham in 1841,--that he should have the superintendence of that system--would have been carried out by his successor, Sir Charles Bagot. There was no written promise, however, on the subject, and he and his friends were greatly surprised at the singular appointment made in May, 1842. It was not until 1844 that Dr.
Ryerson received the promised appointment--the reward (as was then most unjustly alleged against him) of services rendered to Sir Charles Metcalfe in the crisis of that year. (See, however, chapter xliii. on Dr. Ryerson"s appointment as Superintendent of Education.)
[120] This correspondence ill.u.s.trates one phase of the political history of the times.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
1843.
Episode in the Case of Hon. Marshall S. Bidwell.
As mentioned in Chapter xxiv., page 188, an effort was made in 1843 to induce Hon. M. S. Bidwell to return to Canada. Copies of the correspondence on the subject were enclosed to Dr. Ryerson, by the Hon.
Robert Baldwin, in a letter dated Kingston, 5th June, 1843, as follows:--
I enclose you copies of letters which I am sure will afford you much pleasure. At present this communication of them must be confidential, as you will see by their date that they have not yet reached their object himself. But after the warm interest you have taken in the cause of my friend, at a time when any interference on my part would have been worse than useless, I feel it due to you to make you early acquainted with what has taken place. I have seen, with much pleasure, that you have carried out the intention you hinted to me when I last had the pleasure of seeing you at Kingston. Your admirable letter must have had a good effect. I see that some little popguns were let off at you on the occasion, but they are too puny to excite anything but a smile at their imbecility.
I regret much my inability to have been present at your last annual examination, but hope to be more fortunate another year.
The Hon. Robert Baldwin"s letter to Mr. Bidwell, enclosed to Dr.
Ryerson, dated Kingston, 2nd June, 1843, was as follows:--
I have great pleasure in being able to transmit to you a copy of a note addressed by me to His Excellency the Governor-General, with a copy of that of Mr. Secretary Harrison, conveying His Excellency"s reply, which, I am happy, so distinctly removes every obstacle to your return to what has been in all essentials your native country; and that without the descent on your part, by even a single step, from the high ground which you have always maintained in relation to your unjust expatriation.
I will at present only stop to a.s.sure you of the sentiments of unabated affection and respect with which you have ever continued to be regarded in this country, during the whole period of your exile, and to express my conviction of the satisfaction with which your return will be hailed by all your former friends, and by many even of your former political opponents--in which satisfaction, I trust, I need scarcely add that no one will more sincerely partic.i.p.ate than myself.
The following is a copy of Mr. Baldwin"s note to Sir Charles Metcalfe, the Governor-General, dated 25th May:--
Mr. Robert Baldwin, having been informed by Mr. Secretary Harrison that with reference to the case of Mr. Bidwell, which Mr. Baldwin had the honour of bringing under the notice of the Governor-General shortly after his a.s.sumption of the Government, His Excellency only requires a request to be made to him as a foundation for his directing that the pledge taken from that gentleman, in his departure from Upper Canada, should be cancelled, and giving His Excellency"s sanction for the introduction into Parliament of a Bill to restore to Mr. Bidwell the political rights of which his residence abroad, under pressure of that pledge, has deprived him, Mr. Baldwin respectfully begs leave to make that request.
The letter in reply, of Mr. Secretary Harrison to Hon. Robert Baldwin, dated 29th May, was as follows:--
I am commanded by the Governor-General to inform you, in reply to your note of the 25th inst., that His Excellency considers it right that whatever pledge may have been given by Mr. Bidwell on his departure from Upper Canada, to preclude his return, should be cancelled. The letter of that gentleman to the then Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head, supposed to contain such a pledge, is not to be found in the archives of the Secretary"s office. I am, therefore, directed to say that the pledge is considered as cancelled, and that the letter, if ever found, may be returned.
I am also further desired to acquaint you that in the event of Mr.
Bidwell"s proposing to return, His Excellency will give his sanction to the introduction into Parliament of a Bill to restore to that gentleman the political rights of which his residence abroad, under pressure of his pledge, deprived him.
On the 14th August, 1843, Hon. Robert Baldwin wrote the following letter to Dr. Ryerson:--
I send you a copy of a letter from our friend, Mr. Bidwell, in answer to my letters to him. The original I have sent up to my father, but had a copy made for you, knowing the interest you have ever taken in his case.
Hon. M. S. Bidwell"s letter to Hon. Robert Baldwin, dated New York, 31st July, 1843, was as follows:--
I hardly know how to commence my answer to your letter after so long a delay which has been unintentional and unexpected, and in a great measure unavoidable. I might, indeed, and ought to have written to you when I first received it, but I then hoped it would be in my power to make you a short visit in compliance with your invitation. On this point I was kept in suspense by the state of Mrs. Bidwell"s health, and was besides very laboriously occupied with indispensable professional engagements. With this frank explanation I throw myself upon your indulgence to pardon my delay.