incumbents, the stipends on which they had accepted their
charges--some perhaps having come from other countries to fill them
and having possibly thrown up other preferments."[21] The address was
duly forwarded to England by Lord Elgin, with a despatch in which he
explained at some length the position of the whole question. In
accordance with the principle which guided him throughout his
administration of Canadian affairs--to give full scope to the right of
the province to manage its own local concerns--he advised Lord Grey to
repeal the imperial act of 1840 if he wished "to preserve the colony."
Lord Grey admitted that the question was one exclusively affecting the
people of Canada and should be decided by the provincial legislature.
It was the intention of the government, he informed Lord Elgin, to
introduce a bill into parliament for this purpose; but action had to
be deferred until another year when, as it happened unfortunately for
the province, Lord John Russell's ministry was forced to resign, and
was succeeded by a Conservative administration led by the Earl of
Derby.

The Canadian government soon ascertained from Sir John Pakington, the
new colonial secretary, that the new advisers of Her Majesty were not
"inclined to give their consent and support to any arrangement the
result of which would too probably be the diversion to other purposes
of the only public fund ... which now exists for the support of divine
worship and religious instruction in the colony." It was also
intimated by the secretary of state that the new government was quite
ready to entertain a proposal for reconsidering the mode of
distributing the proceeds of the sales of the reserves, while not
ready to agree to any proposal that might "divert forever from its
sacred object the fund arising from that portion of the public lands
of Canada which, almost from the period of the British conquest of
that province, has been set apart for the religious instruction of the
people." Hincks, who was at that time in England, at once wrote to Sir
John Pakington, in very emphatic terms, that he viewed "with grave
apprehension the prospect of collision between Her Majesty's
government and the parliament of Canada, on a question regarding which
such strong feelings prevailed among the great mass of the
population." The people of Canada were convinced that they were
"better judges than any parties in England of what measures would best
conduce to the peace a