George Jehoshaphat Mountain, Anglican priest and son of Bishop Mountain, the president of the Royal Institution, was named the first Principal of McGill College in 1829.
The Principal and his colleagues were determined and broadminded in their development of the constitution and set of rules for the government, to which he remarked that those rules were liberal in every sense of the word, "they imposed no test upon Professors or Students ... all offices in McGill College were left freely open either to Protestants or Roman Catholics, and students of all denominations would be permitted to attend." Taken in a contemporary context this was truly a liberal practice.