The following official report was forwarded to Lord Metcalfe, the Governor-General, by the Lord Bishop of Montreal, the Rev. Dr. Mountain, Principal of the Royal Institution, on December 11th, 1844: "The Board of the Royal Institution, at the request of Professor Lundy, Vice-Principal of McGill College, and in consequence of a variety of circumstances leading them to believe such a step expedient and necessary, met at Montreal on the 14th November, and, as Visitors of McGill College under the Royal Charter, entered into an examination of the whole affairs of that Institution. "The general result of their investigation they are now desirous to lay before Your Excellency, both because it is to Your Excellency's interposition that the Board look for obtaining certain important measures, which appear to them indispensable to the prosperity of the College of which they are Visitors and Trustees. "When the visitation of McGill College took place the Visitors found in it nine students (fewer by half than at the same period last year, and these, with one or two exceptions, boys) under the tuition of a Principal, who is also Professor of Divinity, a Lecturer on Divinity, a Vice-Principal, who is also Professor of Classical Literature, a Professor of Mathematics, and a Classical Tutor; the establishment having also the services of a Bursar, a Beadle and others. The regular expenditure for the College Establishment in salaries and contingent charges is two-fold of the income applicable to it; and the Governors have contracted a debt of £1,550 in opening the College, the various items of which expenditure appeared to the Board to be on a scale of extravagance and wastefulness entirely unsuitable to the pecuniary resources of the Institution. There is a great want of cordiality and harmony among the Professors and Officers of the College; some not even speaking to others. There are no Statutes in operation which are binding in Law. "The Principal refused to acknowledge the authority of the Visitors, or to furnish them with any information. The united testimony of the College Officers induces the Board to believe that one main reason of the College having received so little support is that the acting-Principal does not enjoy that confidence on the part of the public of which an individual, standing in his position, ought to be possessed.... "The Board also had the testimony of the College Officers that the inefficiency and unpopularity of the College are also, in part, owing to the general want of confidence, rightly or wrongly entertained, in the Vice-Principal, Professor Lundy. "The Bursar is the Rev. Mr. Abbott, who has a Salary of £100 a year, and is permitted to do his duty by Deputy. He does not, he says, understand accounts; nor do those of his Deputy appear to be regularly and correctly kept.