This prelate endorsed, _con amore_, all the
extreme views of the Bishop of Toronto; and with the aid of Lord Seaton
(Sir John Colborne) and the Bench and Bishops in the House of Lords,
compelled the Government to perpetuate an act of legislative usurpation
and injustice, which even the tyros in constitutional law, as applied to
the Colonies, were wont at the time to instance in the press as examples
of history repeating itself--quoting, as an illustration, the
ill-advised Imperial legislation in the case of the Stamp Act, etc.

By a singular fatality, which often attends arbitrary and unjust
proceedings, the success of the scheme, which had been so carefully
prepared, and carried through the British Parliament in the interests of
the Church of England, was destined to become a source of weakness to
that Church, and a foreboding of financial disaster. On the 29th
December, 1843, the Attorney and the Solicitor-General of Canada (as
stated by the Bishop of Toronto in his pastoral letter of the 10th of
December, 1844) reported that having attentively examined the provisions
of the acts for this subject, it was their opinion that the proper
construction of the law threw upon the revenues of Canada the burthen of
making up any deficiency in the clergy reserve fund, in paying the
usual and accustomed allowances and stipends to the Ministers, ... and,
while that deficiency lasted, the Imperial Treasury could not be called
upon to make any payments to the two Churches. (See page 4 of Pastoral.)

The Bishop then charges the Provincial Government with being the cause
of this financial difficulty, and accounts for the deficiency in the
fund by the mismanagement of that Government. He adds further on:--

But, alas! the mismanagement has increased, pending these
difficulties; and while my clergy are left in a state of
destitution, large sums continue to be wasted in remunerating
services which are really worse than useless, and this to such an
extent as to render hopeless the expectation that the clergy
reserve fund will ever answer the wise and holy purpose for which
it was established.

In this dilemma the Bishop states what he had done to extricate the
Church out of its difficulty. In doing so, he uses language which
partakes more of the character of a wail than of a simple statement of
facts. He also draws a most gloomy picture of the prospective religious
state of Upper Canada, should the de