But no country in the British Empire has pushed the policy of monopolisation of education so far as our Western Provinces.  Under the specious plea of efficiency and absurd reason of uniformity, they will not even grant charters to independent institutions of higher learning.  This policy surely does not reflect true statesmanship and makes British liberty a misnomer on the lips of many of our ultra-loyal Westerners.  We would ask our Western Governments to take lessons in this matter from England.  When some few years ago the question of converting the university colleges into Universities was before the English public there was much talk of the danger of Lilliputian universities and of low standards of teaching and examination.  But this question was brought to trial by the State before a high tribunal and a firm decision was given in favour of the principle.  A special committee of the Privy Council conducted a semi-judicial enquiry and gave sentence on Febr., 1903.  The result of this decision was that the colleges of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, Durham, blossomed out into teaching universities.  This is the real British way of doing things.

The United States[4] have granted university charters to the various Catholic institutions of higher learning which dot that land of Liberty from coast to coast.  And let us not forget,—­facts and figures will bear us out,—­the independent universities in the United States, in England and in Belgium, only to mention some, have been in many Faculties more efficient and more successful than the state institutions.  The remarkable record of St. Louis University, a Jesuit institution, is illustrative of this point.  A comparison of the respective medical and dental records of this institution with perhaps two of the greatest professional schools of the United States, John Hopkins and Harvard, gives proof of higher efficiency to St. Louis University.  The official bulletins of the Medical Dental Associations give the statistics.

The right of Catholics to their own schools—­primary, secondary, university, is a birthright we must always fight for.  It is the elementary right of a civilized people to educate her sons as she sees fit.  In the battle for this right the best strategy is to offer the accomplished fact of a college and a university which by their efficiency, their intellectual and moral value, impose themselves upon the community and win their way to acceptance.  Let us blaze the trail and to-morrow, it will be the great highway of Catholic education for the coming generation in Western Canada.