The United Empire Loyalist Period in Upper Canada.
We might pursue this branch of our subject further, were it desirable. But that is not necessary. Our object was to show that to British Colonial foresight, zeal, and self-sacrifice, was due, not only the foundation of the best colleges and universities on the continent, but the introduction and diffusion of the principle of "free and universal education for the masses of the people." This we have done on the authority of American writers themselves. We might multiply examples on the subject; but the fact is already sufficiently established. We should rather seek to draw lessons of instruction from the noble example of the devotion to education on the part of our British colonial progenitors, whose descendants have shed such a lustre of heroic self-sacrifice and patriotism on the history and exploits of the United Empire Loyalists of the thirteen colonies. To the Americans they have left a rich legacy from the colonial times in such universities as Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton—of which the descendants of the expatriated Loyalists, no less than those of the victorious revolutionists, are so justly proud. Let us, as worthy representatives of these clear-headed and far-seeing Loyalists, bequeath to our children as noble a heritage as the fathers of the founders of this Province did to New England, and indeed to the whole Republic.
Trained in such an educational school, and animated with the educational zeal of these old colonial times, the "United Empire Loyalists" brought with them into Canada their love for education and their devotion to the sovereign.
In order to keep up the historical sequence of this Retrospect, I shall now refer to the early beginning of Educational life in Upper Canada, and then take up the thread of the narrative at the point where the educational forces—afterwards directed by the Rev. Dr. Strachan and the Rev. Dr. Ryerson—took practical form and shape. (See page 59.)