MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA. 463 



sopliy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the 

 production of works for the beneftt of the life of man." (Quoted in 

 Hill's English Monasticism, p. 409.) 



I hasten now to shew a certain subtle connexion existing between 

 Walter de Merton's College and Canada ; a connexion which, when I 

 had detected it, helped to invest Merton College, in my view at least, 

 with such a peculiar interest. 



It happens that three distinguished governors in Canada have been 

 Merton men ; and each of them has been conspicuously concerned 

 either in the founding or else in the actual promotion of a system of 

 University Education for the sons of the Canadian people. And it will 

 be seen, I think, in the case of each of these Canadian rulers, that 

 he, either consciously or unconsciously, transplanted to this side of the 

 ocean, and handed on, so far as surrounding cu-cumstances allowed, 

 the Merton traditions — the Merton spirit — in relation to sound 

 learning and wholesome knowledge. 



General Simcoe was a member of Merton College. Lord Elgin was 

 a Fellow of Merton. Sir Edmund Head was a Fellow and Tutor of 

 Merton. 



I propose to give a sentence or two from the correspondence or 

 public declarations of each of these now historic personages, on the 

 subject of higher Education in Canada ; that you may observe for 

 yourselves how the animus of Walter de Merton of the year 1264 

 still lived and breathed in each of them. 



I. — I begin with portions of the correspondence of Governor Simcoe, 

 preserved in the Parliamentary Library at Ottawa and elsewhere. 

 Governor Simcoe was appointed to the newly-constituted Province 

 of Upper Canada in 1791. He had previously seen much active 

 service on this continent during the American Revolutionary war, 

 and had become well acquainted with the character and spirit of 

 colonial communities. Successively an officer in the 35th and 40th 

 regiments, he afterwards had command of a provincial light cavalry 

 corps, known as the Queen's Rangers, which became famous for its 

 efficiency. In all accounts of the struggle for independence the name 

 of the gallant leader of the Rangers repeatedly occurs. In 1790 he 

 was chosen to represent the borough of St. Mawes, near Falmouth, 

 in the county of Cornwall, in the House of Commons, in which 

 capacity he took part in the debates on the Quebec bill in 1791. 

 Even before his depai"ture from England to undertake the oversight 



