aste and idle, were set
apart in each township, under the name of "Clergy Reserves" for the
Episcopalian Church. Since the majority of the incoming settlers were
Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, or Roman Catholics, many of them
from the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland, some from America,
some even from Germany, these conditions caused intense irritation,
checking both the development of the country and the growth of solid
character among the colonists. Absentee ownership was a grave economic
evil, though happily it was not complicated and embittered by a vicious
system of tenure. Education suffered severely through the diversion of
the income from public lands to private purposes.

The ascendancy was maintained on lines familiar in Ireland--through the
mutual dependence of the colonial minority and the Home Government
acting through its Governor. A few leading Episcopalian families from
among the United Empire Loyalists, installed at Toronto, with the
support of a succession of High Tory Lieutenant-Governors, monopolized
the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, the Bench, the Bar, and
all offices of profit, denying a Canadian career to the vast majority of
Upper Canadians, just as Irishmen were excluded from an Irish career.
For a long time the Assembly itself, which retained its original
Constitution long after the influx of immigrants had rendered necessary
its enlargement on a new electoral basis, was a subject of monopoly
also. Even when enlarged in 1821 it was helpless against the nominated
Council and Executive, backed by Downing Street. The oligarchy came to
be known by the name of the "family compact," and, as the reader will
observe, it bore a close resemblance in form to the "undertaker" system
in Ireland before the Union, and to the monopoly of patronage obtained
by certain families, notably the Beresfords.

While the Colony was still small, the system worked tolerably well; but
from the second decade of the nineteenth century onwards, when the
population grew from 150,000 to 250,000 in 1832, and to 500,000 a few
years later, and the Episcopalians sank into a numerical minority as low
as a quarter, troubles of the Irish type became proportionately acute.
The Colony was in reality perfectly content with its position under the
Crown, and in the war with America in 1812 all classes and creeds united
to repel invasion with enthusiasm. One of the prominent leaders was an
Irishman, James Fitzgi