[burwash] a review OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 67 



cerned; but from 1857 to 18G1 the combined forces of the outlying 

 colleges made a determined attack upon the management of the provin- 

 cial university as extravagant and wasteful in its expenditure and as 

 swallowing up the public funds for the exclusive benefit of the minority 

 of the student body of the country. The result of the controversy was 

 the appointment of a Parliamentary committee, which after hearing 

 voluminous evidence was afterwards replaced by a commission which 

 finally in 1862 reported various reforms in the management of the 

 University, The only result to the outlying colleges was an increase 

 of their annual grant from Parliament to $5,000 a year, and the awaken- 

 ing of a bitterness of party feeling on the university question which 

 wellnigh proved fatal to their very existence. 



But neither the Parliamentary committee nor the Eoyal Commis- 

 sion reached the root of the matter. The true need of the country was 

 a comprehensive constitution for the provincial university, which should 

 unite all sections of the people in its support. Such a desideratum was 

 now postponed for a whole generation, and indeed all parties had much 

 to learn. The outlying colleges were willing, at least some of them, to 

 €nter the Provincial University on the proposed plan modelled after the 

 University of London; but they connected with this the idea suggested 

 by some of the schemes of the forties of a partition of the university 

 endowment funds. They had yet to learn that as institutions of the 

 Christian Churches they must stand upon the voluntary principle alone, 

 and that they would find there a safer, stronger and in every way a 

 more desirable foundation than in any form of state aid. The state 

 college had also yet to learn that her attitude to the denominational 

 colleges must not be that of rivalry, but of friendly cooperation in com- 

 mon work. She had also yet to learn to estimate a,t their true value 

 the strength of conviction and loyalty of attachment on the part of 

 their supporters which made the reduction of the Church colleges to 

 divinity schools a moral impossibility. 



The final outcome of the controversy of 1861 appeared in 1867 when 

 the whole question was thrown into the narrower arena of provincial 

 politics. In the session of 1867-8 the grants to the denominational 

 colleges were passed mth the distinct intimation that henceforth they 

 should entirely cease. To those opposed to the denominational colleges, 

 this seemed to be their death-knell, as it was to many of their friends 

 a day of deep discouragement. As a matter of fact it became the be- 

 ginning of a vigorous and independent life, such as they had tnever 

 kno\vn before. In a few years their income from voluntary endowments 

 was greater than had ever been received from the public treasury. Not 

 onlv was a general endowmient provided, but specific chairs were en- 



