There is, therefore, no analogy whatever between endowments thus obtained and held, and lands appropriated by the Crown for certain general objects, which have been vested in the hands of no religious community, and over which Parliament has expressly reserved the power of discretionary legislation.
I shall now offer a few remarks on the Bishop's statements respecting the Toronto University and system of public schools in Upper Canada. As these are questions which have been set at rest by local legislation, by and with the sanction of the Imperial Government, I need only refer to the Bishop's statements so far as to remove the erroneous impressions and unjust prejudices which they are calculated to produce.
In reference to the Bishop's statements, that "graduates in holy orders are declared ineligible as members of the Senate," I remark that such graduates are and have been members of the Senate from the commencement. And when the Bishop pronounces the University "essentially unchristian," he must have known that not only a Parliamentary law, but a University statute, exists for the religious instruction and worship of all the students of the University; whereas, when the Bishop had the management of it, no provision whatever existed for the religious instruction and worship of any of the students except members of the Church of England. The statement, therefore, of the Bishop, that—
There is at present no Seminary in Upper Canada in which the children of conscientious churchmen can receive a Christian and liberal education,
is contradicted by the fact that the children of many churchmen, as "conscientious" as the Bishop himself, are receiving such an education at a "Seminary in Upper Canada."
The lands out of which the University has been endowed were early set apart by the Crown, not on the application or recommendation of any authority or dignitary of the Church of England, but on the application of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada; and the cause of all the agitation on the subject is, that the Bishop, unknown to the Canadian people, and by representations which they, through their representatives, declared to be incorrect and unfounded, obtained a University Charter in England, and the application of those lands as an endowment, which the Legislative Assembly never would recognize. And now that that Assembly has at length got these lands restored to the objects for which they were originally appropriated, but from which they had for a time been alienated, the Bishop seeks, by the most unfounded imputations and representations, to do all in his power to damage a Seminary which he ought to be the first to countenance and support.
In his recent charge to his clergy, the Bishop has sought to damage the public elementary schools; and here his statements are equally at fault with those noticed in regard to the University. The Bishop says, "Christianity is not so much as acknowledged by our School law." This statement is contradicted by the 14th section of the School Act, and the general regulations which are made under its authority, headed, "Constitution and government of schools in respect to religious instruction," and which commence with the following words:—
As Christianity is the basis of our whole system of elementary education, that principle should pervade it throughout.
The Bishop says again:—