Chapter xxviii

., page 219] that the object of the Constitutional Act of 1791 was

More especially to confer upon the loyalists such a constitution as should be as near a transcript as practicable of that of England, that they might have no reason to regret, in as far as religion, law, and liberty were concerned, the great sacrifices which they had made.

Allusions of this kind pervade a considerable part of the Bishop's letter, and furnish the first example, within my knowledge, of any writer attempting to invest the dispute between the American colonies and the mother country with a religious character; when every person the least acquainted with the history of those colonies, and of that contest, knows that the question of religion was never alluded to on the part of the colonists--that General Washington and other principal leaders in the revolution were professed Episcopalians--that the Church of England did not exist as an established church in any of those colonies, unless adopted as such by the local legislature, as in the case of Virginia--and that in the northern and eastern parts of those colonies, whence the first emigration to Upper Canada took place after the peace of 1783, the Church of England never did exist as an established church. Therefore, for the "religion of England" in that sense, those "loyalists" never could have "perilled their lives and fortunes;" nor could they have been influenced by any predilections for an establishment which they had never seen. The Bishop says truly that:

The noble stand which the Province made against the United States in the war of 1812, in which the attachment of its inhabitants to the British empire was a second time signally displayed, brought the country into deserved notice.

But nothing can be more fallacious than the claims he would found upon this fact, any more than those of the American revolution of 1776, to the clergy reserve land. For the Lord Bishop himself, when Archdeacon of York, in a printed discourse on the death of the first Bishop of Quebec, represents the benefits of the establishment as "little felt or known" in Upper Canada, and states that down to the close of the American War of 1812--namely, in 1815--there were but five clergymen of the Church of England in that vast province. And a few years afterwards, December 22nd, 1826, the Upper Canada House of Assembly, consisting of the representatives of the Loyalists and their sons, who had twice "signally displayed their attachment to the British empire," adopted, by the extraordinary majority of 30 to 3, the following remarkable and significant resolution:--

_Resolved_, that the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Province bears a very small proportion to the number of other Christians, notwithstanding the pecuniary aid long and exclusively received from the benevolent society in England by the members of that Church, and their pretensions to a monopoly of the clergy reserves.

The original Loyalist settlers of Upper Canada, and their immediate descendants, must be held to have understood their own feelings and sentiments better than the Lord Bishop: and the almost unanimous expression of such sentiments, through their representatives twenty-five years since, together with other circumstances to which I have referred, show how greatly mistaken is his Lordship, and how perfectly baseless are his assumptions and frequent allusions and appeals in reference to the hopes, wishes and sentiments of the original settlers of Upper Canada as a ground of claim to the clergy reserves in behalf of the Church of England.

I have next to say a few words on the Bishop's statement as to the position of the Church of England in Canada, and the professions which he makes in respect to her position. He says, "Our position has, for some time, been that of a prostrate branch of the National Church;" and that position he, in another place, calls "a condition of inferiority to other religious denominations;" and he says, "she has been placed below Protestant dissenters, and privileges, wrested from her, have been conferred upon them." As to the position in which the Bishop would wish the Church of England in Canada to be placed, he says, "We merely claim equality, and freedom from oppression."

These expressions are deeply to be regretted, when it is perfectly notorious that the pre-eminence and peculiar civil advantages claimed by the Bishop for the Church of England, have been the ground of all the disputes which have agitated the Legislature and people of Upper Canada for more than twenty-five years; when every person of the least intelligence in Canada knows that the Church of England, besides other large educational and pecuniary patronage of government, enjoyed until 1840 an exclusive monopoly of the clergy lands which the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada long contended, and which the judges of England have decided, extended by law to Protestants generally--that the Church of England enjoys at this moment the greater part of the annual proceeds of the sales of those lands, besides rectory endowments of portions of them--that every political and religious party in Canada awards every thing to the Church of England that they ask for themselves--"equality and freedom from oppression." During the present session of the Legislature, Bills have passed the Assembly giving the Church of England in Lower Canada all the facilities of holding property and managing her affairs which have been desired by the Bishop of the Diocese, as had been granted a few years since in Upper Canada; and when it was objected that privileges were given by such Bills to the Church of England not possessed by any other religious persuasion, it was replied that others might obtain them by asking for them, and the Bills in question were passed with only two dissentient votes.

I repeat the expression of my regret that the Bishop should draw entirely upon his imagination for such statements, and that his feelings should prompt him to represent objections to his own particular views and pretensions as oppression and persecution of the Church of England.

The next class of the Bishop's statements which I shall notice, relate to the conduct of the Imperial and Canadian Governments towards the Church of England. Throughout his voluminous documents the Bishop represents the conduct of government, both Imperial and Colonial, as hostile to the Church of England; and employs, in some instances, terms personally offensive. The great question at issue is thus stated by the Bishop himself in his recent charge to his clergy:--

In 1819, the law officers of the Crown gave it as their opinion that the words Protestant clergy embraced also the ministers of the Church of Scotland, not as entitling them to endowment in land, but as enabling them to participate in the proceeds of the reserves, whether sold or leased. In 1828, a select committee of the House of Commons extended the construction of the words Protestant clergy to the teachers of all Protestant denominations; and this interpretation, though considered very extraordinary at the time, was confirmed by the twelve judges in 1840.

In his letter to Lord John Russell, the Bishop alludes to two of these decisions in terms peculiarly objectionable, while he omits all reference to the latter. He says:--

The Established Church of Scotland claimed a share of those lands, or the proceeds, as a National Church within the Empire; and in 1819, the Crown lawyers made the discovery that it might be gratified, under the 37th clause of the 31st of George III., chap. 31. Next, the select committee of the House of Commons, in 1828, on the Civil Government of Canada, influenced by the spurious liberality of the times, extended this opinion of the Crown lawyers to any Protestant clergy.

The Bishop thus impugns the impartiality and integrity of the opinions expressed by the law officers of the Crown in England, and by the select committee of the House of Commons, sarcastically calling the one a "discovery," and ascribing the other to "spurious liberality;" while he declares that the Act 3 and 4 Victoria,