Address in Praise of Founders

"Address in Praise of Founders, Prof. Harvey" The Daily Mail (18 May 1922): 6.

Your Honour,
Mr. Chancellor,
Members of the Senate,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

The Epitaph called "Equality of Sacrifices" is inscribed thus: (the one says to to the other:) "I was a 'have'." (The second replies:) "I was a 'have-not'." (Both together:) "What hast thou given which I gave not?"

What shall be given in Memory on these?

"Salute the Sacred Dead,
"Who went and who return not.--Say not so!
"We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.
"Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!
"For never shall their aureoled presence lack
"They come transfigured back,
"Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
"Beautiful evermore and with rays 
"Of morn on their white shields of Expectation".

Those of this University "who went and who return not," what is their expectation? The whole state of the University. The good will of all and the means to the end.

"Studies serve for delight ......; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned." It is, therefore, for you above all to consider, to plan, to marshal these affairs before an end is made of the Memorial Campaign.

In the beginning certain learned men long since dead, were moved to become our honoured Founders. They also, as Founders of a University, are to be numbered with the Kings and Queens, and Mediaeval Saints and Scholars, who were inspired to found the great Universities at Paris, Oxford, and at Cambridge. For these are in the right line of succession with them; the Seven Loyalists, William Paine, William Wanton, George Sproule, Zephaniah Kingsley, John Coffin, Ward Chipman, and Adino Paddock, who in the winter of 1785 presented a Memorial to the First Governor of New Brunswick, asking for those lands which were the basis of the College."

What was the idea of these Seven Founders? The building which stands on the Hill is a lasting monument to their idea, for it was begin in the time of Sir Howard Douglas, in August, 1824, when the idea was fresh in the mind and new on the Hill for all to see. This idea was Life and Learning, in a communitas communitatum, a corporate body. The building was and is solid, and the Founders made it for this end, for to work and to live there. In the Charter it was written that Residence was required, but the wishes of the Dead have been set at naught and the needs of the living ignored. There is now no Residence in the Arts building, and a University without a Residence is Home with a Hearth.

"The State arises out of the need of living; it goes on to live well." It is not otherwise with Universities. First, therefore, the need is great to "make good" what we have and to add it to it--the Scientific Laboratories, the Apparatus; our work has as good a reputation as any College in the Maritime Provinces, care must therefore be taken that we do not fall behind through lack of support. There is, indeed, this danger with state enterprises, that what is everybody's business is nobody's concern, and the history of the College seems to show that the State, having adopted the Child, has left it on the doorstep.

But we must have faith in ourselves, that others may have faith in us. Education is the national proposition; in this Province, Your Honour, it is entrusted to you and to your Advisers. In the old days, when provision was made for a residence, and this condition for a Degree in the Charters was observed, the University produced many celebrated men, such as the Right Honourable Sir George Foster, who was honored by His Majesty for his labours with the Grand Cross of the Most Notable Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, a Doctor of Laws, a Vice President of the League of Nations; Sir George Parkin, whose work as Secretary fo the Rhodes Trustees for the Empire is unparalleled among the Sons of the College; Bliss Carman, the Poet; and Dr. Raymond, the Historian, whose Pioneer work in the field of Acadian History would have won him recognition in Oxford and Cambridge, or London, had he been less sacrificing, had his work been published there. There are many other, and, let them not be forgotten, the Sacred Deac. whose Memorial is to be raised on the Hill. A Residence, some say, is not essential; let it be granted that the work comes first, but the Founders thought a Residence was essential, and we shall hardly develop such men as these once more at a University without one.

Other Universities in the Maritime Provinces, all except one, with less tradition and a lesser history than the old King's College of New Brunswick, have secured some kind of a residence. Were we to acquire again what we had, our supremacy and worth to the community would be unquestioned in this respect, as it is without doubt in others.

It is an old saying, "The Art so long the Life so short to learn". It is indeed a "Pilgrim's Way" and the Wayfaring Man from the Woods is with us there on the Hill. What shall we do for him and for his like? If he asks for bread, shall we give him the stone of learning, of mere instruction? Cannot the life also be afforded him? First the discipline and the means of work, as now, and then together with it the corporate life, a dwelling on the "Pilgrim's Way" through the Wood of Difficulty. For what may he look? For Instruction only, or for Education which includes and transcends it?

Here, in the Acadian Wilderness, as it was once, where Indian and Courour de Bois used to meet by waterway or forest track, there cam the Loyalists and here Governor Carleton set us the City of our Fathers. Not long after that first and terrible winter, when Fathers and Mothers saw their children die the cruel death of cold and starvation, they, like their ancestors in Paris, in Oxford, in Harvard, sought means to educate their descendants. They asked for and obtained a grant of lands for the service of the community, for the Academy, later the College, and then the University of New Brunswick. There was in their minds the spirit of education, of which Von Humboldt spoke when he said that it is "something not yet revealed and never quite revealed." They called that a Liberal Education, in the words of Milton, which fits a man for any office, public or private, in the state. Some of the greatest men who served the Province and the University, and the Dominion herself, were learned men, scholars and men of affairs, from Harvard, from the Scottish Universities, and from Oxford and Cambridge.

Such a scholar often became a Sergeant of the Law, then, and now in New Brunswick it may be that, where the School of Law elsewhere may be transferred, the Scholars here could without impossible expense be afforded the discipline and fuller training in the Law which would enrich the Province. Arts, Science, and the Law, these three go hand in hand and all three are not perhaps impossible of attainment in our University. Sirs, may not this idea commend itself to you, and to the Bench and Bar and to the learned authorities of the House and the University Senate?

The late Chancellor, Dr. Brydone Jack, was fond of quoting a phrase: "pathemata mathemata", a classic proverb. He added: "This institution has suffered many trials and vicissitudes; it must have possessed in a marvelous degree the principle of vitality to have enabled it to survive, the apathy and mistakes of friends and the wrongs and assaults of enemies." He thought, that there ought to be Faculties of Arts, Science, and Law, including Engineering and Agriculture. In regard to the future of the University, he said in those dark days, "I can see no good reason for being case down or discouraged, but am rather disposed to view our prospects as brighter and more promising."

Dr. Jack, like our present Chancellor, spent part of his holidays travelling about the Province, enlisting by his public addresses the sympathy of the people in the work of the University, making known the advantages of College Training, personally interviewing candidates at the schools, and securing many of these. Could not this principle and method of judicious advertisement be extended under authority and after consideration, to some of the best of the Senior Students, who are indeed the best advertisement of the work and service of the College to the community at large? Could not they be so instructed and advised that they would help to secure for us more of the best of the High School and Grammar School boys and girls? Other Colleges do not apparently hesitate to filch such from us; may it not be permitted to organize a counterblast to this obnoxious influence, or must we let sleeping possibilities lie? The Schools and the University cannot be too strongly knit together. The scheme of the University Commissioners of 1854 was a comprehensive one, and such was its ideal.

Such a spirit, and such a system, the spirit above all, even with crippled resources has brought forth a list of distinguished graduates the like of which can hardly be excelled in any College of the size in ay country; the list is too long for enumeration here, but Sir George Foster, Sir George Parkin, Dr. Raymond, and Bliss Carman have been mentioned, while there are several present, and Dr. Murray, The President of the University of Saskatchewan should not be forgotten; we owe more also to the Fathers of Responsible Government in the Province thane we realize, His Honour Lemuel Allan Wilmot and Mr. Justice Fisher, of the Supreme Court, both distinguished Alumni of the University.

The University has the fulfilled in many ways and in divers persons and professions Milton's noble ideal of a Liberal Education; but these, "the Mean, the Possible, and the Becoming", must always be kept in view, and chiefly the Golden Mean. Arts, Science, and possible Law, all subjects of a liberal education; neither any of them for their own sake but for the good of the whole body, lest one suffering, or being exalted above the others, the whole be impaired. The work then, as it is, should surely receive support; he that wishes the end, should will the means. If the State cannot just now, or does not support the University entirely, that cannot absolve individuals from their responsibility in what concerns all. If because the State did not conscript men at once in the late War, families and individuals had refused to enlist, both the old Country and Canada would now have been conquered.

The work as it stands requires much larger quarters for all Departments, renewed interest on the part of the people of the Province whose College it is the provision of means to the end--trained minds and bodies. Money well spent on this would be the best investment, for the return is in living service and personal sacrifice, which is inestimable. The Memorial Building, it is hoped will soon be raised with adequate Science Laboratories and apparatus. These ought to be on the Hill. Only those who work there can realize at all how extreme is the need, how the very stones cry out aloud in the ears of a deaf province for support, for improvements, for new laboratories, for the means to carry on and improve the essential work, the bare essentials. These new Laboratories can scarcely be established away from the main centre of University activity. With new buildings we should be able to accommodate more students and be able to do more for and with them. We could send them out into the world unashamed to meet men and women from any University of the size. We seek and work for quality, and quantity must take second place where it means superficial megalomania, that last heresy of University education. Visit the College on the Hill during working hours, and you will be moved beyond the power of mere words. "Justorum Semita Lux Splendens". The Path of the Just is as a shining Light; will you not follow in the steps of those who sacrificed all, their lives, their loves, their very names which are already forgotten, it seems, and seek and work for the good estate of the College? You will not suffer the work, the generation now on the Hill, to be half starved. In the Bidding Prayer for the Founders at the old Universities, it is customary to pray for them.