Lieutenant-General J. Graves Simcoe, the first Governor of Upper Canada, arrived here in 1792. He was a man of comprehensive views and noble impulses in regard to university education. He was educated at Eton College and partly at Merton College, Oxford, but entered the army before taking his degree. He served with distinction under Wolfe at Quebec, and during the American revolutionary war. In April, 1795, Governor Simcoe addressed a letter to the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Quebec.[20] In that letter Governor Simcoe uses the following striking language in describing the social condition of the people in the rural parts of Upper Canada, and the utter absence of schools and churches, as contrasted with their existence on the United States side of the lines. He said:-- "There was nothing, in my late progress, that has given my equal uneasiness with the general application of all ranks of the most loyal inhabitants of the Province, that I would obtain for them churches and ministers. They say that the rising generation (of the U. E. Loyalist settlers) is rapidly returning into barbarism. They state that the Sabbath, so wisely set apart for devotion, is literally unknown to their children, who are busily employed in searching for amusements in which they may consume the day. And it is of serious consideration that on the approach of the settlements of the United States, particularly on the St. Lawrence frontier, these people, who, by experience, have found that schools and churches are essential to their rapid establishment (as a nation), may probably allure many of our most respectable settlers to emigrate to them, while in this respect we suffer a disgraceful deficiency." [20] For fuller details on this point, see the section on the universities, page 61. The remedy which Governor Simcoe suggested for the state of things which he so graphically described is thus set forth in the same letter to the Bishop of Quebec. It was, as will be seen, entirely general in its character:-- "Nothing has happened since I left England, in the least, to invalidate, to my own conception, the policy of the measure I then proposed. And as far as may be now in the power of His Majesty's ministers, I most earnestly hope that what remains to be effected--that is by giving the means of proper education in this Province, both in its rudiments and in its completion, that from ourselves we may raise up a loyal, and, in due progress, a learned clergy." EARLY BEGINNINGS OF EDUCATION IN UPPER CANADA, 1785-1805.