1. For thirty years (up to 1820) nothing was heard of an ecclesiastical establishment in the Province: all cla.s.ses felt themselves equally free, and were, therefore, equally contented and happy.
2. From the first open and unequivocal pretensions to a state establishment being made, the inhabitants of Upper Canada, in every const.i.tutional way, have resisted and remonstrated against it.
3. Every appropriation and grant to the Episcopal clergy out of the lands and funds of the Province has been made in the very teeth of the country"s remonstrance.
4. The utter powerlessness of the representative branch of the Legislature has rendered the officers and dependents and partizans of the Executive more and more despotic, overbearing, and reckless of the feelings of the country.
5 This most blighting of all partizanship has been carried into every department of the Executive Government--the magistracy, militia, and even into the administration of justice. Its poison is working throughout the whole body politic; it destroys the peace of the country; rouses neighbour against neighbour; weakens the best social affections of the human heart, and awakens its worst pa.s.sions; and converts a healthy and fertile province into a pandemonium of strife, discontent, and civil commotion.
6. While upwards of $220,000 (besides lands) have been given to the Episcopal clergy since 1827, the grants made by the Imperial Parliament to the clergy of Upper Canada amount to over $400,000, being over $620,000 in all.
7. A very large sum has been expended in the erection of Upper Canada College, on the grounds of King"s College, and with an endowment of $8,000 or $10,000 a year. This inst.i.tution is wholly under the management of Episcopal clergymen, while the Upper Canada Academy, which has been built at Cobourg by the Methodists at a cost of about $40,000, could not without a severe struggle get even the $16,000 which were directed to be paid over to it by Lord Glenelg. The matter had to be contested with Sir F. B. Head on the floor of the House of a.s.sembly before he could be induced to obey the Royal instructions. (Page 179.)
8. In the recent legislation on the clergy reserve question, the high church party resisted every measure by which the Methodist Church might obtain a farthing"s aid to the Upper Canada Academy. And, to add insult to injury, the high church people denounce Methodists as republicans, rebels, traitors, and use every possible epithet and insinuation of contumely because they complain, reason, and remonstrate against such barefaced oppression and injustice--notwithstanding that not a single member of that church has been convicted of complicity with the late unhappy troubles in the Province.
9. A perpetuation of the past and present obnoxious and withering system, will not only continue to drive thousands of industrious farmers and tradesmen from the country, but will prompt thousands more, before they will sacrifice their property and expatriate themselves, to advocate const.i.tutionally, openly, and decidedly, the erection of an "independent kingdom," as has been suggested by the Attorney-General, as best both for this province and Great Britain.
10. It rests with Her Majesty"s Government to decide whether or not the inhabitants shall be treated as strangers and helots; whether the blighted hopes of this province shall wither and die, or revive, and bloom, and flourish; whether Her Majesty"s Canadian subjects shall be allowed the legitimate const.i.tutional control of their own earnings, or whether the property sufficient to pay off the large provincial debt shall be wrested from them; whether honour, loyalty, free and responsible government are to be established in this province, or whether our resources are to be absorbed in support of pretensions which have proved the bane of religion in the country; have fomented discord; emboldened, if not prompted, rebellion; turned the tide of capital and emigration to other sh.o.r.es; impaired public credit; arrested trade and commerce, and caused Upper Canada to stand "like a girdled tree," its drooping branches mournfully betraying that its natural nourishment has been deliberately cut off.
In a third and concluding letter to Lord Normanby, Dr. Ryerson uses this language:--
The great body of the inhabitants of this province will not likely again pet.i.tion on the question of the clergy reserves and a church establishment in this province. They will express their sentiments at the hustings with a vengeance, to the confusion of the men who have deceived, and misrepresented, and wronged them; ... A pet.i.tion would acknowledge the right of the Imperial Parliament to interfere--which ought not to be admitted. If past expressions of public sentiment will not satisfy Her Majesty"s Government, none other can do it; and more efficient means (such as the coming elections), must and ought to be adopted, instead of the fruitless method of asking by pet.i.tion for what has been guaranteed to the const.i.tuencies of the country as a right.
The validity of the recent Act of the Legislature, revesting the reserves in the Crown, never will be acknowledged, or recognized by the electors of this province. Any Ministers of the Crown in England would more than lose their places, who should press through the House of Commons, on the last night of the session, in a thin house, a great public measure which had not only been repealed by four successive parliaments, but had been negatived from six to twelve times during the same session of the existing parliament. Nor would the British nation ever submit to any public measure (much less to loss of the control of one-seventh of their lands, and the infliction upon them of an uncongenial ecclesiastical system) which had been forced upon them.
The declarations of the Representative of Royalty have heretofore been regarded in this province as sacred and inviolable; but the reliance of the Canadian electors upon those declarations from the lips of Sir Francis Head has cost them bloodshed, bankruptcy, and misery.... The electors will employ the elective franchise to redress their acc.u.mulated wrongs to the last farthing.
It is, of course, my good or bad fortune to be a.s.sailed from week to week, whether I write or not.... I am no theorist. I advocate no change in the Const.i.tution of the Province. I have never written a paragraph the principles of which could not be carried out in accordance with the letter and spirit of the established Const.i.tution. I desire nothing more than the free and impartial administration of that Const.i.tution for the benefit of all cla.s.ses of Her Majesty"s subjects. I only oppose or support men, or measures, for the attainment of that object.
Entertaining such strong feelings in regard to the personal conduct of Sir George Arthur in respect to the pa.s.sage of the clergy reserve bill, Dr. Ryerson felt that he could not accept any social courtesy at his hands. In reply, therefore, to an invitation from Sir George, for Her Majesty"s birthday, he felt constrained to decline it. In his letter to the A.D.C., he said:--
After the most mature deliberation up to the last moment in which it is proper to reply, I feel it my duty respectfully to decline the honour of His Excellency"s invitation. I most firmly believe that the office of impartial sovereignty has been employed by His Excellency for partial purposes; that an undue and an unconst.i.tutional exercise of the office of royalty has been employed by His Excellency to influence the public mind, and the decisions of our const.i.tutional tribunals on pending and debatable questions between equally loyal and deserving cla.s.ses of Her Majesty"s subjects in this Province; that His Excellency has also employed the influence of the high office of the Queen"s representative to procure and afterwards express his cordial satisfaction at the pa.s.sing of a Bill, in a thin House, on the very last night of the session, the provisions of which had been repeatedly negatived by a considerable majority of the people"s representatives, and which deprive the faithful but embarra.s.sed inhabitants of this Province of the control of a revenue and lands sufficient in value to pay off the whole public debt--a proceeding at complete variance with the fair and const.i.tutional administration of a free monarchical government, and the imperial usages since the accession of the present Royal Family to the throne of Great Britain; and, finally, that His Excellency has employed the influence of his high office to the disparagement of the large section of the religious community whose views, rights, and interests, I have been elected to my present offices to advocate and promote.
I beg that my declining the honour proposed by His Excellency may not be construed into any disrespect to His Excellency personally, or to the high office His Excellency holds--for the inviolableness and dignity of which I feel the jealous veneration of a loyal subject--but I beg that it may be attributed solely to a fixed determination not to do anything that may in the slightest degree tend to weaken, but on the contrary, to use every lawful means, on all occasions, to advance those civil and religious interests which I am most fully convinced are essential to the happy preservation of a prosperous British Government in this country, and to the happiness and welfare of the great body of Her Majesty"s Canadian subjects.
In order to insure the a.s.sent of Her Majesty to the Bill which had been sent to the Colonial Secretary by Sir George Arthur, the authorities of the Church of England in the Province circulated a pet.i.tion for presentation to the Queen and the British Parliament[105] containing the following statement and request:--
"Your pet.i.tioners, consisting of the United Empire Loyalists and their children, took refuge in this Province after the American Revolution, under the impression that they possessed the same const.i.tution as that of the Mother Country, which includes a decent provision for the administration of the Word and Sacraments according to the forms of the Church of England."
The prayer of the pet.i.tion was--
That the proceeds of the clergy reserve lands be applied to the maintenance of such clergy, and of a bishop to superintend the same, so that the ministrations of our Holy Religion may be afforded without charge[106] to the inhabitants of every township in the Province.
Dr. Ryerson, having with difficulty procured a copy of this pet.i.tion, pointed out in the _Guardian_ of July 3rd, 1839: 1st. Its historical misstatements, and denounced the selfish and exclusive character of its demands. He showed in effect that the Province was settled in 1783, whereas the const.i.tutional Act (which was invoked as though it had existed long before that date), was not pa.s.sed until 1791--eight years after "the United Empire Loyalists and their children took refuge in Upper Canada." 2nd. That for forty years and more, nine-tenths of the United Empire Loyalists and their descendants, with all their "impressions," might have perished in heathen ignorance had not some other than the Episcopal clergy cared for their spiritual interests; and that after these forty years of slumbering and neglect, and after the incorporation of the great body of the old Loyalists and their descendants into other churches, the Episcopal clergy came in, and now seek, on the strength of these apocryphal "impressions" (which never could have existed), to claim one-seventh of the lands of the Province as their heritage.[107] In proof of these facts Dr. Ryerson referred to the testimony of fifty-two witnesses, given before a select Committee of the House of a.s.sembly in 1828, and published in full at that time.
I have purposely abstained from making any special reference to discussions in the clergy reserve question with which Dr. Ryerson had no connection. An important one, however, took place between Hon. Wm.
Morris and Archdeacon Strachan in 1838-39, chiefly in regard to the claims of the Church of Scotland. Mr. Morris, however, did good service in the general discussion.
In November, 1838, Dr. Ryerson received a letter from Thomas Farmer, Esq., of London, England, in regard to the Centenary Celebration, to which he replied as follows:--
Our prospects as a country are rather gloomy. We have lately had the excitement and loss produced by Lord Durham"s departure, and the second rebellion in Lower Canada, followed in a few days by a brigand invasion of this province to distract and destroy us. You refer to a Centenary Offering. I cannot say what we shall be able to do. We have not the slightest provision yet for the education of preacher"s children; nor a contingent fund to aid poor circuits, or to relieve the distressed preachers" families; and an unpaid for Book Room, and not an entirely paid for Academy;--all of which subjects have engaged our most anxious consideration;--but in the present entirely unsettled state of our public affairs, we scarcely know what to do in respect to the future. We cannot, therefore, as yet fix upon the objects of our Centenary Offering.
The Methodist Centenary Year occurred in 1839. The Conference set apart the 25th October for its celebration,
By holding religious "services in all of our chapels and congregations, for the purpose of calling to mind the great things which the Lord has done for us as a people; of solemnly recognizing our obligations and responsibilities to our Heavenly Father; and of imploring, on behalf of ourselves and the whole Wesleyan Methodist family throughout the world, a continuance and increase of religious happiness, unity and prosperity."
Meetings were held all over the Province during the months of August, September and October, for the collection of a centenary offering, to be applied to the Superannuation Fund, Book Room, Parsonages, Missionary, and other objects. Dr. Ryerson, as one of a deputation, attended a large number of meetings. Writing from Brockville, he mentions the fact that he
Stopped at a graveyard, a few miles west of Prescott, to survey the graves of some of the honoured dead. The remains of Mrs. Heck, the devoted matron who urged Philip Embury (the first Methodist preacher in America) to lift up his voice in the city of New York, in 1766, are deposited here.
FOOTNOTES:
[105] See note on page 224.
[106] This selfish demand--"that the ministrations of our Holy Religion be afforded without charge to the inhabitants of every township" (in which members of the Church of England were persistently educated in those days)--was most unfortunate in its influence on the Church, and has borne bitter fruit in these later times. Its legitimate effect has been to dry up the sources of Christian benevolence, paralyze the arm of Christian effort, and secularize, if not render impossible, any successful plan of Church extension and missionary work. Witness the almost complete failure (as compared with other Christian bodies) to raise sufficient funds to support even the limited number of Home missions in most of the dioceses, and the nearly hopeless task of infusing a genuine missionary zeal in behalf of the "regions beyond."
[107] It should be noted, in connection with this pet.i.tion, that one most important part of its prayer was granted in that year--viz., the appointment of the Archdeacon (who went to England to present the pet.i.tions and to receive the appointment) as first Bishop of Toronto.
His patent bears date, 27th July, 1839. The other part of the prayer was also granted, but not until 1840, when Lord John Russell, then Colonial Secretary, by an unprecedented and unlooked for stretch of official authority, but no doubt with the a.s.sent of his colleagues, introduced a bill into the House of Commons to do what even he and other Colonial Secretaries had deprecated doing--viz., the re-investing of the reserves in the Crown. Dr. Ryerson, then in England, strongly protested against this act of provincial spoliation and legislative invasion, but the bill became law. (See next chapter.)
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
1838-1840.
The New Era--Lord Durham and Lord Sydenham.
In the midst of the gloom which overspread the Province, in consequence of the long continued exercise of irresponsible and arbitrary power on the part of the local executive, Dr. Ryerson, like many other loyal-hearted Canadians, rejoiced at the advent of Lord Durham,--a man possessed of plenary powers to inquire into and report on the grievances existing in Canada. Those who wished to perpetuate the reign of the ruling party, strongly deprecated Dr. Ryerson"s advocacy of Lord Durham"s schemes of reform. One of the most respectable organs[108] of that party (Neilson"s Quebec _Gazette_) in a complimentary editorial on Dr. Ryerson (in May, 1839), expressed regret that a man "of his undoubted talents and great industry" should have endorsed Lord Durham"s system of Responsible Government. In the _Guardian_ of the 5th June, Dr.
Ryerson replied, pointing out the fair and equitable system of Responsible Government advocated by Lord Durham, as compared with the crude one put forth by Messrs. W. L. Mackenzie and L. J. Papineau. He then ill.u.s.trates the necessity for the reform proposed by Lord Durham, by referring to the arbitrary and irresponsible acts of Sir Francis Head. He said:--
The published word of the Representative of Royalty had [until Sir F. B.
Head"s time] been sacred and inviolable in Upper Canada; the majority of the people believed him. In 1836 they elected a House of a.s.sembly in accordance with his wishes. He fulfilled his pledges by dismissing many of the magistrates and militia officers, because they voted against his candidates at the elections, and finished his career by plunging the country into misery, and thereby insuring its ruin.
Now, where (he asked) was the "responsibility" under which ... such a Governor acts? He abuses the confidence reposed in him,--where is his censure? He disobeys the orders given him from England,--where is his punishment? He ruins men [Bidwell, etc.] whom he was ordered to appoint,--where is their redress, and his accountability? They are exiles, and he is made a Baronet! He disgraces and degrades numbers of persons without colour of reason, or justice, or law--yet they are without redress, and he is even without reproof. He tramples upon the orders from Her Majesty"s Government, and attacks her ministers in their places--then returns to England, and boasts of his disobedience.... And there are those who tell us of the responsibility of our Governors to the Queen and Parliament!... The history of Sir F. B. Head"s administration is enough to make the veriest bigot a convert to "Responsible Government."
For these and other important reasons it can be seen how the great question of the day (in 1839) was that of responsible government for these provinces. Dr. Ryerson and others had written freely on the subject, claiming that the government of the country should be administered, as it was then expressed--"according to the well understood wishes of the people." This could only be done by men representing their wishes, and responsible to the legislature for their exercise of power and for every official act of the Governor.
In October, Dr. Ryerson received a letter on this subject from a well-known advocate of the principle of responsible government in Nova Scotia--Hon. Joseph Howe. He said:--
May I beg your acceptance of a little work on responsible government, the object of which is to advance the good cause in which you have so heartily and with so much ability embarked. It is a great satisfaction to the friends of responsible government here, that the cause has been taken up in Canada by men about whose intentions and loyalty there can be no mistake. So long as we deprive the family compact of their only defence, which the folly of rebels and sympathizers raised for them, and act together without just cause for suspicion that we are anything but what we say, there can be little doubt of ultimate success. Should your electors return a majority favourable to responsibility at the next election, and all the colonies unite in one demand, it will be yielded. Our legislature, and any that can be chosen here, will uphold the principle. So will the majorities in Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. I cannot speak with certainty, but hope they will soon understand the question thoroughly in that province. It may be necessary for all the provinces to send delegates at the same time to England, to claim to be heard on the subject at the Bar of the Commons and Lords, and to diffuse, through every fair channel, correct views of the question. Think of this, and drop me a line at your leisure.
This Dr. Ryerson did in due time.
The coming of Lord Durham was the first harbinger of better days for Canada. His mission was one of enquiry, and for the suggestion of remedial measures. The mission of Mr. Poulett Thompson (who followed Lord Durham as Governor-General) was hailed with delight by the people generally. He came to give practical effect to pressing measures of reform--to unite the provinces, and to introduce a new element of strength into the administrative system of the country.