Address in Praise of Founders

"N. B. University. Brilliant Encoenia Exercises for the Year 1890. President Harrison's Tribute to the Founders ..." The Daily Telegraph (30 May 1890): 1.

May it please Your Honor, Gentlemen of the Senate and of the Alumni Society; Ladies and Gentlemen:--

Some 40 years after the landing of the Loyalists, Sir Howard Douglas was appointed lieutenant governor of New Brunswick and major general in command of the troops in this province together with those in Nova Scotia, P. E. Island, Newfoundland and Bermuda. At that time New Brunswick had a population of 74,000 and could boast of only five great roads. These roads were built on the Roman plan of going up hill and down. Sir Howard, by way of improvement, designed the Nerepis road to connect Fredericton and St. John. "Horses could trot this road without danger or distress," and the traveller found goo entertainment whether he stopped at the sign of the Government House or at that of the Douglas Arms.

In Sept., 1825, the residence of the governor was burned to the ground. Sir Howard was absent at the time, but Lady Douglas saved the Douglas papers, most precious to her because they contained the record of her husband's services. After the fire Sir Howard moved to the house now occupied by Sir John C. Allen. A few days after the burning of government house, the great Miramichi fire swept over an area of 6,000 square miles. Sir Howard's heroic conduct at Fredericton at the time of the fire, and his perilous journey to Chatham a week afterwards for the purpose of affording relief to the sufferers there, have immortalized his name in the annals of our province. But at this our encoenial festival we are more especially bound to remember Sir Howard Douglas because after "reams" of controversy, against formidable opposition he secured for this college a Royal Charter, conferring the privileges of a university. He opened the college in his capacity of chancellor on the 1st of January, 1829. His speech on that occasion was republished in our Calendar of 1886. In connexion with the re-printing of Sir Howard's inaugural address, I have received permission to publish the following correspondence which is self-explanatory:--

"24 Mount St. Grosvenor Square,
London, Jan. 23, 1890.

My Dear Sir: You may perhaps remember my name when I remind you that Chief Justice Allen introduced me to you in the latter part of Sept., 1888, at the university of New Brunswick, and that you kindly showed me over the college buildings. On that occasion you asked me if I knew who represented the late Sir Howard Douglas, and you put into my hands a copy of the University calendar of 1886-1887 containing a reprint of Sir Howard Douglas's inaugural address as the first chancellor of the university, with the request that I would forward it to his representative. At that time, as I told you, I did not know who this representative was, but I kept the matter in mind, and having recently found out, I forwarded the calendar to him. He is General Sir Robert Percy Douglas, Bart. He is now an old man having been born in 1805, and a soldier who has held high office, having been governor of Jersey and lieut.-governor of the Cape of Good Hope. You have given him great pleasure by sending the calendar to him. In acknowledging it in a letter to me, he says that in retrospects of long years nothing is more marked in his recollections than the deep and sustained interest his dear father retained to the very last in regard to his sojourn in New Brunswick, and especially to his share in the establishment in its present form and in its existing academical home, of the University of New Brunswick, and that he is proud to think that the relations of his father with the senate of the University are still remembered. He has also sent me the accompanying letter to be forwarded to you, a task which I have great pleasure in performing, and in thus becoming the channel of communication between you.

I entertain a very pleasant recollection of my afternoon visit to you. The beauty of the situation and the view of the city below through the trees with their autumn tints impressed me as befitting the University, and its buildings, and I have since been interested in looking through the calendar you gave me. I hope the University is every way prospering. If you have an opportunity will you remember me to Chief Justice Allen, and with kind regards both to him and to you, 

I remain, my dear sir,
Very truly yours,
F.W. Gibbs."

"Thomas Harrison, Esq. president of the University of New Brunswick,
From Gen. Douglas.
Hotel du Pavillon, Cannes,
France, 15th January, 1890.

My Dear Sir: I have been most deeply interested and gratified by a letter from F. W. Gibbs to my daughter, with whom he made acquaintance at Ickwell Bury, the residence of Mrs. Harvey, a most intimate friend of my family. The letter of Mr. Gibbs affords me the very gratifying intelligence that you, sir, requested him to endeavor to find out the representative of the late general, Sir Howard Douglas, my honored father, in order to transmit to him the calendar of the University of New Brunswick for the academic year 1886, which contains a reprint of the inaugural address of my late father, as the first chancellor of the University of New Brunswick. This calendar I have received, and I lose no time in giving expression to my grateful thanks to you for having laid before me this proof, that the governing body of the university still, after a lapse of 60 years, retain a grateful sense of the devotion shown by my dear father in the cause of the higher education in the province of which he was the lieutenant-governor. My memory serves me faithfully when I assure you and the members of the senate of the University that my dear father and mother, and the numerous children then around them, ever retained a most grateful sense of the happiness of their sojourn in New Brunswick, and my dear father ever spoke with great delight of the loyal support which was accorded by the official personages with whom it was his good fortune and happiness to be associated in his government of the ever loyal province of New Brunswick.

But my father's residence in this province was not his first sojourn in British North America. About the year 1795, then a subaltern in the Royal Artillery, he was ship-wrecked in midwinter on an uninhabited part of the inhospitable coast of Newfoundland.

But I have by inheritance a much earlier association with British America. Sir Howard Douglas's father, Admiral Sir Charles Douglas, saved Canada to the British crown. With the West Indian fleet, of which he was commander-in-chief, he, in 1776, forced the passage up the St. Lawrence and raised the siege of Quebec, then invested on the land side by the American forces--for which service the baronetcy which I now hold was conferred upon my grandfather, Sir Charles Douglas.

Again thanking you for the signal gratification you have afforded to me by your request to Mr. Gibbs, and requesting to give a place on the shelves of your University library, to a life of my dear father, which I will order to be sent to you,

I remain, dear sir,
Yours faithfully and thankfully,
R. P. Douglas, General."

In acknowledging the receipt of Sir Percy Douglas' letter, I took occasion to send photographs of the Government house and the college. I mentioned the fact that Sir Howard Douglas' Treatise on Naval Gunnery was in our library. I also mentioned, incidentally, that our present honored lieutenant governor, when a boy, was presented to Sir Howard, and that Sir Howard gave him a silver coin.

I received another letter from which by permission I make the follow extracts:--

"Hotel du Pavillon,
Cannes, France,
March 5th, 1890.

My Dear Mr. Harrison: Your kind letter of 15th Feb, has afforded me the very greatest pleasure and the two photographs have deeply interested me. That of government house, which remains much as my dear father built it, has called up many precious memories of the events which the dear ones of olden days were constantly speaking about in the year 1833, when I returned from the Mauritius where I was A. D. C. to the governor during the time my father was in New Brunswick. How well do I remember their accounts of the great fire at Miramichi and of the burning of Government house.

Pray present to your lieutenant governor, Sir Leonard Tilley, "the boy to whom my father gave a silver coin," my congratulation upon his distinguished services, and upon his well-merited honors; upon which I will only remark that I ever regarded my dear father as being a man of great discrimination. ...

The copy of my father's life is being clothed in proper garb for presentation, and will soon be forwarded to you direct from London. My father's work on Naval Gunnery was the class book, not only of our own, but of all foreign navies. ...

Yours very truly,
R. P. Douglas, General.

The Life of Sir Howard, referred to in this letter, has since been received. It is very handsomely bound, and bears the following inscription:--

"Presented to the president and members of the senate of the University of New Brunswick by General Sir Percy Douglas, Bart., son of the late General Sir Howard Douglas., G.C.B., G.C.M.G., F.R.S., D.C.L., the first chancellor of the University of New Brunswick, 1st Jan., 1829."

Sir John Allen has written a letter of acknowledgment and the senate have this day put on record an expression of their cordial thanks to Sir Percy Douglas for this highly-prized gift to the library.

The founder of this college led a very eventful life--multum ille et terris jactatus et alto. At the age of 19, Lieut. Douglas was ordered to take charge of a detachment of troops, with women and children, and proceed to Quebec in the Phillis, transport. It was on this voyage that the shipwreck occurred which is mentioned in General Douglas's letter. The story of the horrors of this shipwreck, as related by Mr. Fullom, brings out in bold relief young Douglas's "firm, cool, and undaunted behavior" in the midst of the most appalling surroundings. Such was his skill in sailor-craft that on his voyage back to England, after the shipwreck, he actually did duty as mate all the way across the Atlantic, the mate himself being incapacitated through drunkenness. At the age of 28, Major Douglas had the reputation of being one of the most scientific officers in the British army. He was appointed superintendent of the senior department of the Royal Military College at High Wycombe, where he trained the men who were afterwards the lieutenants of Wellington, men who caused Wellington to bear emphatic testimony that "Douglas was a clever fellow." Colonel Douglas first saw the dangers of the battlefield in Spain, where he joined Lieut-General Sir John Moore in 1808. After Sir John Moore fell, Col Douglas saw the body hurried to the ramparts as narrated in the well--known dirge.

In 1811, Sir Howard at the age of 35, received an official communication from Downing street, enjoining him "to lose no time in repairing to the head quarters of Lieut-General Lord Wellington, commander-in-chief of the British forces in Mar??? Peninsula." Sir Howard's splendid services in Spain won for him the approval and respect of the great Duke, and the gratitude of the Spanish people. He was the darling of Spanish society, although he himself said with respect to Spanish waltzes that he was no proficient and that he "kicked the ladies' feet."

At the conclusion of the peace he was made a Companion of the Bath and Knight of the Spanish Order of Charles III; and he afterwards received the Peninsular medal and clasps. By the year 1818 Sir Howard had completed the manuscript of his Treatise on Naval Gunnery. To prepare himself for this great task he studied spherical trigonometry, and nautical astronomy. It cost him years of severe labor, patient thought, and close observation and investigation. But the reward came in the adoption of the treatise as a class book even in foreign navies. His inventions while engaged in this work cause him to be elected a fellow of the Royal society. In 1824 as we have seen, Sir Howard was appointed governor of New Brunswick. In 1829 he was recalled to England to assist in preparing the English case in the dispute about the boundary line between Maine and New Brunswick, which Great Britain and the United States had agreed to refer for arbitration to the king of the Netherlands. His return to England was hailed with joy in that country. The University of Oxford determined to confer on him the degree of D. C. L. The public orator who presented him for his degree made a Latin oration, of which Mr. Fullom gives the following translation:--

"Most Illustrious Vice Chancellor and you,
Learned Doctors:--

I present to you a distinguished man adorned with many virtues and honors belonging to military and civil affairs as well as to literature--Howard Douglas, a knight and a baronet, a worthy heir of the latter order from a renowned father, the former richly deserved from his own king and that of Spain; a member of the Royal Society of London on account of the fame by his writings; for many years the governor of New Brunswick, followed by the admiration and favor of his country and the reverence and love of the province; lastly, a chancellor of a college in that province, built under his care and direction, to which its patron the king gave the privileges of a university. Behold the man! I now present him to you that he may be admitted to the degree of a Doctor of Civil laws, honoris causa."

The duke of Wellington gave Sir Howard a most kind welcome. Sir Walter Scott persuaded him to be his guest at Abbotsford. In 1835 Sir Howard was appointed lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands, where he won universal respect and esteem during six years of office. In 1842, shortly after his return to England, he was elected a member of parliament for Liverpool. In 1847 he retired from public life, being then in his 72nd year. His life was prolonged until he had nearly completed his 86th year. At the time of his death, in 1861, King's College had become the University of New Brunswick.

It would not be in very good taste for us to compare our college with the other colleges of the maritime provinces; but we are certainly free to compare ourselves with ourselves. For certain reasons I am desirous, at the risk of being tedious, to give the following facts and figures to the public.

I have counted the names of the matricula and the number of degrees conferred from 1829 to the present time, and I have arranged them in periods of five years with the following results:--

                                                                            Matriculants
Period ending 1834 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . 20
Next five years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . 32
"         "       " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
Then . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Then . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
The period ending 1859, there were . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Making the total number of those who matriculated in King's college, 178. In the University of New Brunswick from--

                                                                         Matriculants
1860 to 1864 inclusive, in all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
For the next five years . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
   "     "      "      "       " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Then . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Then . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
And for the last five years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Making a total for the University of 549 names on the matricula. In 31 years there were 178 names on the matricula of King's College; in 30 years there have been 549 names on the matricula of the University of New Brunswick and of these 162 have been entered in the last five years. It is true that a number of these have not attended lectures after matriculation, but still the University is enlarging its work by holding entrance examinations at different centres.

Let us now apply another test and a severe one --the total number of degrees conferred:--

                                                             Degrees Conferred
For the period ending 1835 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
From 1835 to 1840 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
   "     1840 to 1845 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
   "     1845 to 1850 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
   "     1850 to 1855 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
   "     1855 to 1860 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Total for King's College . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137

For the University of New Brunswick:--
From 1860 to 1865 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
   "     1865 to 1870 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
   "     1870 to 1875 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
   "     1875 to 1880 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
   "     1880 to 1885 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
   "     1885 to 1890 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

 

It should be added that besides these there are 12 students who have completed their third year, and who, under the three years' system, would now be admitted to the examination for the B. A. degree. There is, then no ground for despondency on the score of numbers, if we compare the present with the past. The question remains, are we trying to adapt ourselves to the wants of the people with respect to the higher education?

The establishment of a school of engineering, and the appointment of a distinguished professor of experimental science, ought to be a sufficient indication that the senate are alive to the necessities of the practical age, which demands an education, not of words only, but of things.

Concerning the representative character of our students, I think it necessary to repeat here what I have said elsewhere, that during the four years preceding the encoenia 59 students took the degree of Bachelor of Arts; of these 15 were from St. John, and 10 belonged to Fredericton, while the remaining 34 represented the counties of Restigouche, Northumberland, Westmorland, Albert, Charlotte, Kings, Queens, York (outside of Fredericton), Carleton and Victoria. Sunbury was not represented, but it is now represented by two under graduates, one of whom is the winner of the Douglas medal. Before calling upon the Douglas medallist of the year to read a portion of his able essay, I beg to publish once more the closing words of Sir Howard's memorable address in 1829. Referring to the medal, "I desire," he said, "always to enjoy identity with this institution. I shall leave with you in trust for ever a token of my regard and best wishes. It shall be prepared in a form and devoted to a purpose which I hope may prove a useful incitement to virtue and learning, and in periodical commemoration of this commencement, it may serve to remind you of the share I have had in the institutions and proceedings of a day I shall never forget."

The best tribute that can be paid to our founder's memory is to narrate the story of his brilliant actions. He was a man of "plain living and high thinking," a devout Christian, always active, a lover of his country and of all ranks and conditions of men; a man who, even after four-score years, retained the freshness of youth and the keenest interest in human affairs. Soldier, sailor, author, inventor, statesman, and withal as humble as a child, as good as he was great. "What he did, he did in honor, led by the impartial conduct of his soul."