Deduct the difference to be accounted for (as above) 8,455 86 ---------- Grand total of profits made by the depository after paying all charges, as above, during the years 1850-1875 71,054 55 DR. RYERSON A COMMISSIONER ON KING'S COLLEGE, ETC., NEW BRUNSWICK IN 1854. On the 1st of May, 1854, the Legislature of New Brunswick passed an Act empowering the Lieutenant-Governor to appoint a Royal Commission:-- "To enquire into the present state of King's College, its management and utility, with a view of improving the same, and rendering that institution more generally useful, and of suggesting the best mode of effecting that desirable object," etc. In accordance with this Act, Sir Edmund Head, the then Lieutenant-Governor, in August, 1854, appointed the following gentlemen as commissioners, viz.:--Hon. John Hamilton Gray, (late Judge of the High Court of British Columbia), Rev. Dr. Egerton Ryerson, John William (now Sir Wm.) Dawson, Hon. John Simcoe Saunders, and Hon. James Brown. In accepting the position of commissioner, Dr. Ryerson, at the close of his letter to Provincial Secretary Partelow, said:-- "When I mentioned to the head of the Canadian Administration the request which had been made to me from New Brunswick, and the probability that a compliance with it would cause my absence for two or three weeks from the duties of my department, he thought I ought, by all means, to go--that it was part of my appropriate work, and that we should regard each Province of British North America as a part of our own country. "New Brunswick is so to me, in a peculiar sense, as the birth-place of my sainted mother and my elder brothers and sisters." The commission met first at Fredericton, and afterwards at Toronto. To Dr. Ryerson was entrusted the principal duty of drawing up the elaborate report, and in Hon. J. H. Gray's letter as chairman, accompanying the report in December, 1854, he says: "I beg to express, with the full concurrence of my fellow commissioners, our acknowledgements of the very valuable assistance afforded us by Dr. Ryerson. His great experience and unquestioned proficiency on all subjects connected with education, justly entitle his opinion to great weight." Sir Wm. Dawson, in a letter to Mr. Gray, thus summarizes the contents of the report:-- "1st. The improvement of the College course of instruction and its extension by the introduction of special courses. 2ndly, The definition of the true place of the Provincial College in its relations to the other educational institutions of the Province, and to the religious beliefs of the people; and 3rdly, The union of all the educational institutions in a Provincial university system, under official supervision."