44 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
where the youths were taught sentiments “ hostile to the parent state ” 
from books used in the United States—a practice stopped by statute in 
1846. 
Adequate provision, however, was made for the higher education of 
youth in all the provinces. “I know of no people,” wrote Lord Dur- 
ham of Lower Canada, “among whom a larger provision exists for the 
higher kinds of elementary education.” The piety and benevolence of 
the early possessors of the country founded seminaries and colleges, 
which gave an education resembling the kind given in the English pub- 
lic schools, though more varied. In Upper Canada as early as 1807 gram- 
mar schools were cstablished by the government, and the one at Cornwall 
under Reverend Dr. Strachan was famous in its day. By 1837, Upper 
Canada College—an institution of a high order still in existence—and 
the Home District Grammar School offered special advantages to youth 
whose parents had money. In Nova Scotia, King’s College—now the 
oldest university in Canada—had its beginning as an academy as early 
as 1788, but, while educating many eminent men during its palmy days, 
its usefulness was always cramped by unwise regulations of the Church 
of England shutting out from its advantages all dissenters. Pictou 
Academy was established by Reverend Dr. McCulloch as a remonstrance 
against the sectarianism of King’s, and the political history of the pro- 
vince was long conspicuous for the struggle of its promoters against the 
narrowness of the Anglicans, who dominated the Legislative Council, 
and frequently rejected money grants made by the Assembly. Dalhousie 
College was founded in 1720 by Lord Dalhousie, when governor of Nova 
Scotia, to afford that higher education to all denominations which old 
King’s denied. Acadia College was founded by the Baptists at Wolf- 
ville, on a gently rising ground overlooking the fertile meadows of 
Grand Pré. In New Brunswick, a university was founded in 1828 at 
Fredericton, under the auspices of the Church of England, but it had 
only an indifferent success until 1858, when its sphere of usefulness was 
enlarged and it became non-sectarian and provincial in the full sense of 
the word. McGill University, founded by one of those generous Mont- 
real merchants who have always been its benefactors, received a charter 
in 1821, but it was not opened until 1829. The Methodists laid the 
foundation of Victoria College at Cobourg in 1834, but it did not com- 
mence its work until after the Union; and the same was the case with 
King’s College, the beginning of the university of Toronto. King’s 
originally owed its existence to the energy of Bishop Strachan, who suc- 
ceeded in obtaining for it a large provincial endowment; and when in 
1849 it was thrown open by the government to all denominations, he 
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