tructive
of moral rectitude and virtuous feeling in the management of public
affairs. Corruption, indeed, has reached such a height in this Province
that it is thought no other part of the British Empire witnesses the
like, and it is vain to look for improvement until a radical change is
effected. It matters not what characters fill situations of public trust
at present--all sink beneath the dignity of men--become vitiated and
weak, as soon as they are placed within the vortex of destruction.
Confusion on confusion has grown out of this unhappy system; and the
very lands of the Crown, the giving away of which has created such
mischief and iniquity, have ultimately come to little value from abuse.
The poor subjects of His Majesty, driven from home by distress, to whom
portions of land are granted, can now find in the grant no benefit; and
Loyalists of the United Empire--the descendants of those who sacrificed
their all in America in behalf of British rule--men whose names were
ordered on record for their virtuous adherence to your Royal Father--the
descendants of these men find now no favour in their destined rewards;
nay, these rewards, when granted, have in many cases been rendered worse
than nothing, for the legal rights in the enjoyment of them have been
held at nought; their land has been rendered unsaleable, and, in some
cases, only a source of distraction and care. Under this system of
internal management, and weakened from other evil influences, Upper
Canada now pines in comparative decay; discontent and poverty are
experienced in a land supremely blessed with the gifts of nature; dread
of arbitrary power wars, here, against the free exercise of reason and
manly sentiment; laws have been set aside; legislators have come into
derision; and contempt from the mother-country seems fast gathering
strength to disunite the people of Canada from their friends at home."
Notwithstanding these long, involved, awkwardly-constructed sentences,
there is no more accurate picture to be found anywhere of the effect of
the pernicious administration of affairs in the Public Lands Office at
York in 1818. Twenty years later Lord Durham found it not much
improved.[40]

Another hydra-headed monster which ate into the very vitals of the
commonwealth was the provision for the clergy, known as the Clergy
Reserves. This was perhaps the greatest of all the curses imposed upon
Upper Canada by the Constitutional Act, for its ill effects were