er adopts on all points
the most ultra-democratic creed. It professes no very warm attachment
to the endowments of the Roman Catholic Church, and is, of course, not
likely to prove itself more tender with respect to property set apart
by royal authority for the support of Protestantism. The French-
Canadian Representatives who do not belong to this party are, I
believe, generally disinclined to secularisation, and would be brought
to consent to any such proposition, if at all, only by the pressure of
some supposed political necessity. They are however, almost without
exception, committed to the principle that the 'Clergy Reserves' ought
to be subject to the control of the Local Legislature. While the
battle is waged on this ground, therefore, they will probably continue
to side with the Upper Canada Liberals, unless the latter contrive to
alienate them by some act of extravagance....

I am aware that there lie, beyond the subjects of which I have
treated, larger considerations of public policy affecting this
question, on which I have not ventured to touch. On the one hand there
are persons who contend that, as the 'Clergy Reserves' were set apart
by a British Sovereign for religious uses, it is the bounden duty of
the Imperial authorities to maintain at all hazards the disposition
thus made of them. This view is hardly, I think, reconcilable with the
provisions of the statute of 1791; but, if it be correct, it renders
all discussion of subordinate topics and points of mere expediency,
superfluous.

[Sidenote: In the Church;]

On the other hand even among the most attached friends of the Church,
some are to be found who doubt whether on the whole the Church has
gained from the Reserves as much as she has lost by them--whether the
ill-will which they have engendered, and the bar which they have
proved to private munificence and voluntary exertion, have not more
than counter-balanced the benefits which they may have conferred; and
who look to secularisation as the only settlement that will be final
and put an end to strife.

Up to this time Lord Elgin appears to have entertained at least a hope,
that, if the Colony were left to itself, it would settle the matter by
distributing the reserved funds according to some equitable proportion
among the clergy of all denominations. But as time went on, this