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⁹ Fontana, Biancamaria, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Collini, Stefan, Donald, Winch and Burrow, John (eds.), That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forbes, Duncan, “Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce and Liberty,” in Skinner, Andrew and Wilson, Thomas (eds.), Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 179–201;Google ScholarClive, John, The Scotch Reviewers (London: Faber and Faber, 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephen, Leslie, “The First Edinburgh Reviewers,” The Eclectic (1878), 666–77;Google ScholarBagehot, Walter, “The First Edinburgh Reviewers,” in Hutton, Richard (ed.), Literary Studies, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, 1882), 144–87;Google Scholar and Cross, Maurice, Selections From the Edinburgh Review with a Preliminary Dissertation, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, 1833), ix-cxxvii.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Brougham, Henry Lord, “A Discourse on Natural Theology,” in Brougham, Henry Lord, Works, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1872), 1–174Google Scholar. See also New, Chester W., The Life of Henry Lord Brougham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 358.Google Scholar

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¹² Brougham, Henry Lord, Political Philosophy, 3 vols. (London: Charles Knight, 1844).Google Scholar

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¹⁴ A partial exception here is McKillop, A. B., whose studies of Canadian intellectual history consider the influence of Scottish thought. McKillop notes: “Baconian science, with Scottish ‘Common Sense’ philosophy and Paleyite natural theology, completed the triumvirate of intellectual orthodoxy that dominated many Anglo-Canadian minds for the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century” (Contours of Canadian Thought [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987], 44)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also McKillop, A. B., A Disciplined Intelligence (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979), 95.Google Scholar

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¹⁶ Ryerson, Egerton, Civil Government-The Late Conspiracy (Toronto: Joseph H. Lawrence, 1838), 3.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid.Compare Brougham, Political Philosophy, vol. 1, 40.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ryerson, Egerton, “Obligations of Educated Men,” Journal of Education for Upper Canada 1 (1848), 162Google Scholar. Ryerson's thought on women and the family would appear to be problematic. Needless to say it would be unacceptable to modern feminism. While defending the education of women Ryerson nevertheless believed they should be homemakers. “Let her be intellectually educated as highly as possible… [but]let the domestic virtues find ample place” (First Lessons in Agriculture [Toronto: Buntin Brother, 1871], 173). Ryerson's difficulty was that while defending the “nuclear” family he was also a promoter of liberal individualism in politics. He might not have recognized that this political individualism would sooner or later exercise a dissolving effect on the family sphere and thereby effect a transformation in the role of women.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ryerson, Egerton, “A Lecture on the Social Advancement of Canada,” Journal of Education for Upper Canada 2 (1849), 181.Google Scholar

²⁰ , Ryerson, “Obligations of Educated Men,” 162Google Scholar. Compare Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), 135.Google Scholar

²¹ Ryerson, Egerton, “The Education of Mechanics,” in Hodgins, J. George (ed.), Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada, vol. 9 (Toronto: Warwick Brothers and Rutter, 1987), 42.Google Scholar

²² Ryerson, , “A Lecture on the Social Advancement of Canada,” 162.Google Scholar

²³ Ibid., 177; emphasis added.

²⁴ Ryerson, , Civil Government, 19.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Ibid., 3. “By a principle of right, deeply implanted in the moral constitution of man, and recognized in almost all forms of human society, each labourer claims and is assured the fruits of his own industry. This is the basis of all property—the right of each man to appropriate and enjoy the fruits of his labour-and is the great stimulant of human industry” (Ryerson, Egerton, “Political Economy—A Branch of Public Education,” Journal of Education for Upper Canada 5 [1852], 131).Google Scholar

²⁷ Ryerson's distance from Locke himself would be another question. See Tarcov, Nathan, “A ‘Non-Lockean’ Locke and the Character of Liberalism,” in MacLean, Douglas and Mills, Claudia (eds.), Liberalism Reconsidered (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), 131–40;Google Scholar and Tarcov, Nathan, Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).Google Scholar

²⁸ Ryerson, Egerton, Claims of the Churchmen and Dissenters of Upper Canada Brought to the Test (Kingston: The Herald Office, 1828), 94.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ryerson, , First Lessons in Agriculture, 173.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ryerson, Egerton, “The Importance of Education to a Manufacturing and a Free People,” Journal of Education for Upper Canada 1 (1848), 294Google Scholar. Brougham, Lord argues that it is essential that the people develop “the habit of justly estimating the character and conduct of men who guide the affairs of nations” (Political Philosophy, vol. 1, 29). Compare also Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws,xi, 6: “For though few men can tell the exact degree of men's capacities, yet there are none but are capable of knowing in general whether the person they choose is better qualified (plus éclairé) than most of his neighbours.”Google Scholar

³¹ The Federalist, No. 63.Google Scholar

³² Smith, , “The Ideological Origins of Canadian Confederation,” 4. Ryerson was “monarchical republican” in that he always argued that constitutional monarchy was the best form of republican government. In modern times the monarchy had evolved from being “the absolute disposer of the people's religion, liberties, property and lives” into the “impartial guardian of public rights and freedom” and the “ keystone in the arch of equal law and liberty” (Ryerson, Egerton, Remarks on the Historical Mis-statements and Fallacies of Mr. Goldwin Smith [Toronto: Leader Steam Press, 1866], 11Google Scholar). It should be noted here that all serious discussion of the “republicanism question” will henceforward have to begin from the new starting point provided by Pangle, Thomas L. in his recent The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).Google Scholar

³³ Ryerson, Egerton, “Canada, Land of Our Birth,” in Ontario, Council of Public Instruction, The Fifth Book of Reading Lessons (Montreal: John Lovell, 1880), 388.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ryerson, , “The Importance of Education to a Manufacturing and a Free People,” 301.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ryerson, , Claims of the Churchmen and Dissenters, 187.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ryerson, , “Obligations of Educated Men,” 198.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ryerson, Egerton, Christians on Earth and In Heaven (Toronto: Wesleyan Methodist Bookroom, 1848), 18.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ryerson, , “Obligations of Educated Men,” 198Google Scholar. According to Brougham, Lord the representative principle is “the greatest of all improvements which have ever been made in the science of government and legislation” (Political Philosophy, vol. 3, 37)Google Scholar. Compare also Mackintosh, Sir James, Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1835), 308Google Scholar; and The Federalist, No. 9, by Hamilton, Alexander.Google Scholar

³⁹ Ibid. On this point see the famous exchange between Dr, Johnson and SirFerguson, Adam in Boswell, James, The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1867), 171.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Ryerson, Egerton, “Inaugural Address at Victoria College,” in Burwash, Nathaniel, The History of Victoria College (Toronto: Victoria College Press, 1927), 499.Google Scholar

⁴² The case of Ryerson poses problems for Peter J. Smith's thesis that nineteenth-century Canadian political thought involved not so much variations on the theme of Lockean liberalism as a debate between enlightenment commercialism and classical republicanism. If, as Smith says, Montesquieu was an authority on “all sides” (“Ideological Origins of Canadian Confederation,” 9), then there could have been no defenders of the idea of man as homo politicus. Anybody who followed Montesquieu, or any of the followers of Montesquieu, had by this fact alone opted for Lockean liberal republicanism over the classical republicanism of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon and Cicero. Ryerson was one of these and so were his more radical opponents such as William Lyon Mackenzie. It is arguable that there never have been any simple defenders of the older republican tradition in the modern world, and certainly none in Canada (or the United States for that matter). See Pangle, Thomas L., Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 48–160Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relationship of Montesquieu to the Canadian political tradition see Resnick, Philip, “Montesquieu Revisited, or the Mixed Constitution and the Separation of Powers,” this JOURNAL 20 (1987), 97–115Google Scholar; Ajzenstat, Janet, “Comment: The Separation of Powers in 1867,” this JOURNAL 20 (1987), 117–20Google Scholar; Preece, Rod, “Comment: Montesquieuan Principles of Canadian Politics?” this JOURNAL 20 (1987), 121–24Google Scholar; and Resnick, Philip, “Reply to Comments on ‘The Mixed Constitution and the Separation of Powers in Canada,’ ” this JOURNAL 20 (1987), 125–29.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ryerson, , “A Lecture on the Social Advancement of Canada,” 177.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ryerson, Egerton, “The Importance of Education to an Agricultural People,” in Hodgins, Documentary History, vol. 7, 142Google Scholar. Clara Thomas calls this particular lecture Ryerson's “keynote speech” (Ryerson of Upper Canada, 107). Compare Brougham, , Works, vol. 8, 108–14.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ryerson, , “A Lecture on the Social Advancement of Canada,” 177.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ryerson, , “The Importance of Education to an Agricultural People,” 141.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ryerson, , “The Education of Mechanics,” 49. Compare Brougham, , Political Philosophy, vol 2, 25 and vol. 1, 30: “They [the people] have lavished upon tyrants and conquerors, and intriguers, who were their worst enemies, their loudest applause; for those pests of the world securing the fame that should have been kept sacred to virtuous and beneficent deeds.”Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ryerson, Egerton, The Story of My Life (Toronto: William Briggs, 1883), 73Google Scholar. It is perhaps worth noting here that Franklin is a central figure in Max Weber's exposition of the psychological interconnections between Protestantism and capitalism (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [Cambridge: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959], 48–54). Significantly enough, however, both for Weber's thesis and for Ryerson's alleged traditionalism, Franklin was not a Protestant Christian but an Enlightenment Deist. Clara Thomas states that Ryerson's admiration for Franklin is surprising because his “Methodism would seem to be worlds apart from Benjamin's general ease of spirit” (Ryerson of Upper Canada, 110). However, this is surprising only if one has overestimated the traditionalism of Ryerson's thought in the first place.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ryerson, , “The Education of Mechanics,” 49.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 26.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ryerson, Egerton, Report on a System of Public Elementary Instruction for Upper Canada (Montreal: Lovell and Gibson, 1847), 10.Google Scholar

⁵² “Letter from Ryerson to Lord Sydenham, October 5, 1840,” in Sissons, C. B., Egerton Ryerson: His Life and Letters, vol. 1 (Toronto: Clark, Irwin, 1937), 562.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ryerson, Egerton, Elements of Political Economy, Or, How Individuals and a Nation Become Rich (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1877)Google Scholar. Ryerson was in some sense following in a tradition of clergymen-economists. Archbishop Whately was the first Professor of Political Economy at Oxford and Ryerson made use of his work. And the Scot, Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), while being “one of the most prominent pulpit orators of his time,” was also an “ardent economist” who wrote copiously on the subject. See Langer, Gary F., The Coming of Age of Political Economy 1815–1825 (Cambridge: Greenwood Press, 1987), 14Google Scholar; and Brown, Stewart J., Thomas Chalmers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ryerson, , “Political Economy-A Branch of Public Education,” 131.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ The Spirit of the Laws, xx, 23.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ryerson, , “Obligations of Educated Men,” 162–63.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ryerson, , Remarks on Gold win Smith, 14–15.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ryerson identified himself explicitly with Burke in the controversy over the policies of Governor Metcalfe in 1844. See Sir Charles Metcalfe Defended Against the Attacks of His Late Counsellors (Toronto: The British Colonist Office, 1844), 132Google Scholar. It should be noted that while Ryerson was a defender of Burkean political sentimentalism he was a staunch opponent of “Rousseauian” private sentimentalism. He argued that “the maudlin sentiment of the novelist is alien to true love, true benevolence and compassion.” Moreover, the “most extensive readers of fiction” are often “the least disposed to the real duties of life” (“A Lecture on the Social Advancement of Canada,” 182. Compare Etienne Parent, “On the Study of Political Economy,” in Forbes, H. D. (ed.), Canadian Political Thought [Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985], 45Google Scholar. Ryerson had much in common with the great French-Canadian liberal despite their “national” and religious differences.) Ryerson was prone to insist that Canadians put down their novels and read about the “great subjects and great characters” of classical and Biblical literature. Unlike novelistic sentimentalism, which draws the individual more tightly into the private world, sentimental admiration of political and national heroes pulls in the direction of the public realm and the life of citizenship. Ryerson himself was the object of this kind of sentimentalism shortly after his death. See Allen, J. Antisell, Dr. Ryerson: A Review and a Study (Toronto: The Week, 1884)Google Scholar; and Hodgins, J. G., “Sketch of the Reverend Doctor Ryerson,” The Methodist Magazine (1894), 5–15.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Ryerson, Egerton, First Lessons in Christian Morals (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1871), 91.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Ryerson, , “Obligations of Educated Men,” 195.Google Scholar

⁶² Clive, , The Scotch Reviewers, 175.Google Scholar

⁶³ Ryerson, Egerton, “Elements of Social Progress,” Journal of Education for Upper Canada 13 (1860), 50.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ryerson, Egerton, Wesleyan Methodism in Upper Canada (Toronto: The Conference Office, 1837), 1Google Scholar. See Prentice, , The School Promoters, 30–31; and Fiorino, “The Moral Foundation of Egerton Ryerson's Idea of Education,” 69.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ryerson, Egerton, “The Chief Superintendent's Report for 1857,” in Hodgins, Documentary History, vol. 13, 210.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Ryerson, , Claims of the Churchmen and Dissenters, 35.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ryerson, , “The Importance of Education to a Manufacturing and a Free People,” 296. Ryerson was very open to American liberal and reforming ideas, particularly as they were articulated by such writers and educationalists as Horace Mann, Jared Sparks, Henry Barnard, Francis Wayland, Joseph Story and Fennimore Cooper.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Ryerson, was a firm opponent of the Paine-Jefferson political tradition. He described Paine as ”a blasphemous infidel and beastly drunkard“ (The Loyalists of America and Their Times, vol. 2 [Toronto: William Briggs, 1880], 66). The tradition to which Paine and Jefferson belonged turned from the Providential God of Biblical Revelation to “Nature and Nature's God.” In a word, Ryerson was unwilling to drop the Biblical God completely. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that he was genuinely orthodox. Like the “infidel” Paine he was profoundly influenced by the natural theology tradition which is at the foundation of modern liberal thought. His writings are strewn with natural theology arguments taken mainly from the work of William Paley. Thus, in line with the “Free-thinking” tradition most commonly associated with names like Spinoza, Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke, Ryerson was willing to allow that the “God of Grace is the God of Nature.” But unlike the radical Enlightenment he was inclined to split the difference between narrow orthodoxy and Deistic enthusiasm. Modern rationalist thought may well have shown that the “footsteps” of God are evident in “the laws of the material universe,” but these “footsteps” nevertheless continue to be evident in “the pages of Revelation.” Thus, whatever Ryerson's private thoughts on the relation of the God of Revelation to the God of Nature, he sought to follow in the Swift, Warburton, Johnson, Burke “reaction” to the excesses of modern rationalism by insisting that natural theology was by itself insufficient as a basis for popular religion. For a religion to “render the men professing it perceptibly better,” he argued, it must call their attention to God's “holiness, justice, truth and mercy,” and above all to “a state of future retribution.”Google Scholar

In these particulars the teaching of the Bible is “superior to that of natural religion.” The Bible teaches religion through “the express declarations of Jehovah, plain to the understanding of a child.” Natural theology, by contrast, depends on “speculations and inferences of reasoning beyond the habits and capacity of the masses of mankind” (First Lessons in Christian Morals, 65), “Men of science” who study the laws of nature may, by progress of the intellect, become well enough acquainted with the “works of God” so as to be less in need of the “express declarations of Jehovah” for the maintenance of a moral life. But this can never be the case for “the masses of mankind.” Natural theology may constitute a crucial element in a reasoned approach to religious faith but it cannot be substituted for revealed faith on the political or social level. It will not do as a basis for social morality. “Deny the divine origin of Scripture and nevertheless you must keep the volume as a kind of textbook of morality” (First Lessons in Christian Morals, iv). Compare “Washington's Farewell Address,” in Commager, Henry Steele (ed.), Documents of American History (Cambridge: Crofts, 1946), 173.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Ryerson, , First Lessons in Christian Morals, 71.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Ibid., iv.

⁷¹ Ibid., 58.

⁷² Ryerson, Egerton, “Impressions of England,” in Sissons, Egerton Ryerson: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 196.Google Scholar More recently, Professor Joseph Hamburger has followed Ryerson in arguing that the skepticism or antipathy on the part of the whigs towards religion constituted a fundamental defect in their political theory. According to Hamburger, it “made it difficult for a whig to express those moral impulses and principles that can never be driven out of the political arena” (“The Whig Conscience,” in Marsh, Peter (ed.), The Conscience of the Victorian State [Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1979], 23)Google Scholar. About the Philosophical Radicals or Utilitarians in the Britain of the 1830s Ryerson had little good to say. In the end they were a group of “Infidels, Unitarians and Socinians” whose association with the cause of political and ecclesiastical reform resulted in the driving away of “the truly religious portion of the nation” (Sissons, , Egerton Ryerson: His Life and Letters, vol. 1, 197).Google Scholar

⁷³ Ryerson, Egerton, “The Question of Religious Instruction in Schools,” in Hodgins, Documentary History, vol. 11, 226.Google Scholar In 1851 Ryerson attacked certain “newspaper-writers” who sought the “abolition of all religious corporations” regardless of their missionary, charitable or educational purposes. According to Ryerson such people were exhibiting “the intolerant and proscriptive spirit of Canadian socialism” as contrasted with “the tolerant and enlightened spirit of our American neighbours” (A Few Remarks on Religious Corporations and American Examples of Them [Toronto: Thomas H. Bentley, 1851], 3).Google Scholar

⁷⁴ This point can be readily illustrated by a few observations on Ryerson's approach to the theory of the “moral sense.” Ryerson was familiar with the moral sense argument as it descended from Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Reid, Stewart and others. But he was clearly dubious about the very idea of the moral sense, having early been trained in the thought of Locke and Paley who dispensed with the idea. In 1828 he argued that the “approbation of one's own conscience” proved only one's sincerity, and “ can be no criterion of moral rectitude” (Egerton Ryerson, Letters from the Reverend Egerton Ryerson to the Honourable Reverend Doctor Strachan [Kingston: The Herald Office, 1828], 6). And even when he allowed for the moral sense being an “original faculty of the mind” he insisted that “it may be darkened and debased by ignorance and vice, as well as enlightened by moral and religious culture” (First Lessons in Christian Morals, 56). But whatever his doubts about the philosophical plausibility of the moral sense arguments, Ryerson clearly thought them politically salutary. He liked the teaching of the Scottish school because it described individuals as at bottom “moral beings.” This meant it was an indirect boost to “religious culture” because “the cultivation of [man's moral powers and feelings] is the province of Christianity” (Report on a System of Public Elementary Instruction, 34). Thus, although Ryerson was more intellectually inclined towards Locke and Paley than to the Scots on this question, he could say, in a book of “lessons” on Christianity, that “whatever may be the diversity of the terms of exposition, all agree as to the existence and office of conscience” (First Lessons on Christian Morals, 52). It is to be preferred that “Canadian families and schools” believe in the existence of conscience or the moral sense, regardless of the doubts which Locke, Paley and others have raised about the idea.

⁷⁵ Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), 18.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Ryerson, Egerton, “The Advantages of Religion to Society,” Christian Guardian, July 16, 1834. Compare Mackintosh, Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 308.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ See especially Grant, George, English-Speaking Justice (Sackville, New Brunswick: Mount Allison University, 1974), 62–73.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Dicey, A. V., Lectures on the Relationship Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1962), 403Google Scholar. See also Westfall, William, “Order and Experience: Patterns of Religious Metaphor in Early Nineteenth Century Upper Canada,” Journal of Canadian Studies 20 (1985), 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brantley, Richard G., Locke, Wesley and the Method of English Romanticism (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1984), 16–19Google Scholar. This point about political and religious individualism is worthy of emphasis because of the ongoing debate as to whether “English Canada's ‘essence’ is both liberal and non-liberal” and has been shaped in some sense by “corporate-organic-collectivist ideas.” See Forbes, H. D., “Hartz-Horowitz at Twenty,” this JOURNAL 20 (1987), 287–315Google Scholar. Ryerson's Methodism definitely “touches” his liberalism but Methodist theology was far from being “corporate-organic-collectivist” in character. “Christianity recognizes in each and every man, a moral agent-a personal accountability to God” (Ryerson, Letters from the Reverend Egerton Ryerson to the Honourable Reverend Doctor Strachan, 170). Thus, it might be possible to allow Frank Underbill's assertion of a half-century ago that “there is nothing more distinctively and essentially Canadian than [the] combination... pioneer loyalism and pioneer Methodism” (In Search of Canadian Liberalism (Toronto: Macmillan, 1960), 149). But this would not involve the suggestion that “corporate-organic-collectivist ideas” are at the base of English-Canadian political culture. See also Ryerson, The Loyalists of America, vol. 1, iii; and Burwash, The History of Victoria College, xv, 1, 5.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Vintage Books, 1945), 318Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of this aspect of Tocqueville's thought with a Canadian focus, see Ajzenstat, Janet, The Political Thought of Lord Durham (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), 35–41Google Scholar. See also Shklar, Judith N., After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸⁰ Ryerson, , Civil Government, 4.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Ryerson, , “Obligations of Educated Men,” 205.Google Scholar