arly prized, and as dearly bought,
Imperial Clergy Reserve Act prove, after all, to be an apple of Sodom.

It is curious to notice how the Bishop, in his despairing outburst,
studiously ignores the active and successful labours of the several
voluntary churches--whose claims to a share in the reserves he had so
strongly and selfishly opposed--churches which were even then actively
engaged in "spreading scriptural holiness throughout the land," without
the aid of a penny from the State. In his Pastoral, the Bishop says:--

I applied to the venerable [Propagation Society] in England to
advance, in the meantime, the salaries (only L100 per annum each)
to my five suffering clergy,--assuring the Society that I had the
fullest conviction it would be repaid as soon as it was decided
which Government was liable.... The Society paid the stipends for
the year ending 30th June, 1843, but have declined since that time
to continue the advance.... In consequence, my five clergymen have
been left without their stipends since June, 1843 [to December,
1844], ... and this large and increasing Diocese [then the whole of
Upper Canada], already so destitute of the means of public worship
(if the statute be allowed to operate as it has done for the last
four years), will, in a spiritual sense, become, through half its
extent, a wilderness. Not only are five clergymen in a state of
want, but two parishes are left vacant, and the process is
unhappily going on.... I have brought this disheartening and
deplorable state of things under the notice of the Provincial
Government.... I have pressed [the matter] upon His Excellency the
Governor-General.... But all that was in my power to do has been
without avail (page 6).

I also quote the foregoing passages from this noted Pastoral, as they
throw a vivid side-light upon the course of the Bishop in so vehemently
pursuing the shadow of a state endowment for the Church of England in
Upper Canada. The subsequent utterances of the Pastoral show how
persistently the otherwise clear-headed and practical chief ruler of
that Church shut his eyes to the remarkable success and vitality of the
non-endowed Churches in the Province, and how much he deplored the
necessity of adopting their successful voluntary system in his own
church.[128] He says:--

I represented to His Excellency, in May last, that, "on a revi