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But again, as in 1849, one measure claims an absolute preponderance of interest, not merely on its own merits, but because of its influence on general politics—the question of the clergy reserves. It will be necessary to retrace our steps to the administration of Lord Sydenham. Sydenham had never concealed from himself the fact that in the settlement of this vexed question lay as much difficulty as in the effecting of the Union itself. Indeed, in one place he refers to it as ‘of more importance than ten unions.’

He had probably few greater triumphs than when he induced the legislature to pass a measure of which James H. Price, commissioner of Crown Lands, could say with perfect truth, in 1846: ‘Although three-quarters of the people believed that arrangement was made in injustice and partiality, they quietly submitted as the only means of restoring peace to the land.’ The basis of his legislation lay in the decisive utterance of the English judges: in the first place ‘that the clergy of the Established Church of Scotland constituted one instance of clergy, according to the original act, other than those of the Church of England’; in the second place, that they ‘did not intend that, besides that Church, the ministers of other churches may not be included under the term “Protestant Clergy” ’; and in the third place, that ‘there was no express authority reserved by that Act to the Colonial Legislature to repeal the provisions of such latter statute.’ Accepting the correction of the judges on this last point, Sydenham, who thoroughly believed in the retention, for the churches, of the clergy reserves provision, secured both imperial and provincial legislation, ending the creation of fresh reserves, dividing the proceeds of past sales between the Churches of England and of Scotland, and securing the proceeds of future sales to the Churches of Canada, roughly in proportion to their numbers and importance. Moderate men breathed freely when they thought that a main cause of friction had been removed from political life.

But two forces prevented perfect conciliation. In 1843 Scottish Presbyterianism was shaken to its basis by the great Free Church schism, and while the characteristic state and church doctrines of the Free Church leaders were not of a purely voluntary description, the state connection suffered a rude shock, and Scotsmen in Canada, as at home, assumed an attitude of bitter hostility towards ‘the Establishment.’ It so happened that the sudden growth of Scottish voluntaryism in Canada coincided with the arrival of one peculiarly well fitted to conduct an agitation on the subject. For, in August 1843, George Brown began his work in Canadian journalism, first in the Banner; then, in 1844, in the more famous Globe. Brown’s political qualities will be more fitly characterized at a later stage. Meantime it may suffice to say that he had brought with him from Scotland more than his share of Scottish middle-class Puritanism and of Scottish political dialectic. If he often erred in dealing too largely in what Burke called ‘metaphysics,’ it was a fault rare enough among his fellow-politicians to be regarded almost as a virtue in him. The clergy reserves question, then, had found its advocatus diaboli.

But there was a second and more efficient cause, the character of the Bishop of Toronto. Few figures bulk so largely as does Strachan’s in modern Canadian history in comparison with their real ability. Born of a rude stock, and carrying with him to the grave the aggressive and unconciliatory temper of his Aberdonian ancestors, Strachan was the evil genius of church life in Canada. Of his energy and courage there can be no doubt; but he possessed few of the qualities usually recognized as Christian. The financial episode alluded to under Sydenham’s régime reveals a curious moral bluntness—even obliquity; and his successive statements of the numbers and nature of Canadian sects give but a poor impression of his truthfulness. He had changed religion into ecclesiasticism, and thought any trickery or intrigue sanctified if only it sought an ecclesiastical end.

Sydenham, Bagot, and now Elgin, all record in their private correspondence the irritation and dislike which Strachan’s bustling and misguided energy created in their minds. And now this headlong folly was to meet with its due retribution. Metcalfe’s last parliament had had the old question forced upon it by ecclesiastical petitions, seeking to obtain not simply the annual moneys granted under the act, but control of that which produced the income. A committee of the house, of which Sherwood was the leading spirit, reported on April 17, and although the objects sought by the churchmen were denied them on May 22, the fact remained that, at the very time when the populace—more especially in its Scottish sections—might be counted on as hostile, the whole question of secularization was once more likely to enter practical politics. When the move was made in 1846 to obtain ‘a new Act of the Imperial Parliament, authorizing a division of the land itself, instead of the income arising from the proceeds, among the religious bodies,’ Baldwin, than whom the Church of England had no more faithful friend, prophesied ‘that if the question be reopened, the former fierce agitation will be resumed, and may end in the total discomfiture of the Church.’ By 1850 his prophecy had been fulfilled, and it seemed unlikely that the secularists would be content with anything but absolute victory. At least the numbers of the churches concerned suggested this conclusion, for while the Church of England possessed some twenty thousand of a majority over any other sect, Presbyterians and Methodists were each of them two hundred thousand strong, and there were Anglicans in direct revolt against their leader. Faced with popular defeat in the province, it had always been Strachan’s habit to go behind local opinion and to work the oracle in Britain. But while such tampering with constitutional government might delay the natural conclusion of events for a season, it was certain to result in a more complete disaster, apart from the incidental evils it produced. ‘It is an evil of no small magnitude,’ wrote Elgin on this point, ‘that ... its friends are tempted rather to endeavour to influence opinion in England, than to resort to measures which may strengthen their position in the Colony.’

But trouble was brewing for others besides the Bishop of Toronto. The ministry found itself in a curious dilemma. Its leading members assumed an admirably constitutional and moderate position. The Imperial Act of 1840 seemed to them the true basis for future church and state relations. Baldwin was a sincerely devout believer in a measure of state support for religion; La Fontaine could not well be otherwise; and, whether through the influence of his advisers, or because their views expressed his own, Elgin took up a similar position.

But many of the supporters of government were rabid secularizers, and they had not merely the logic of the situation on their side, but they had, in George Brown, an advocate whose power of vehement advocacy was equalled only by his gift of trenchant criticism. Originally Brown had no intention of identifying himself with the discontented fragments of extreme reform to which the name ‘Clear Grit’ was now being given. As late as October 1850 he talked of ‘Clear Grits’ comprising ‘disappointed ministerialists, ultra English radicals, Republicans and Annexationists.... As a party on their own footing they are powerless except to do mischief.’ But events were driving him into an opposition to the ministry even more extreme than that of the ‘Clear Grits.’ As the session of 1850 proceeded, the support given to the ministry by the Globe began to waver. The centre of danger seemed to be with the French, and Brown, who thought that separation from the French was the inevitable fate of the radicals, hoped that state connection with religion might be the separating issue. What he dreaded most was a political reconstruction, in which ‘moderate reformers, moderate conservatives, and moderate Canadians’ might combine to exclude the changes for which he had hoped. Should Brown separate himself from his party, it might prove difficult for the La Fontaine-Baldwin ministry to maintain its position against a combination of the various factions.

Another circumstance perplexed ministerial action. Whatever the provincial parliament might do, its hands were tied by the necessity of preliminary imperial legislation. Now, while Lord John Russell’s ministry, with Grey at the Colonial Office, might be trusted to look favourably on change, their position was by no means secure from defeat, and, in any case, as the movement for disestablishment of the Irish Church was to prove, the House of Lords was the last stronghold of keen church feeling. As Hincks pointed out at a later stage, even if secularization were decisively accepted in Canada, it might be necessary to disguise the end they sought, when British legislation was called in.

As it was, the question, left an open one, was raised by Price in a motion which alluded to ‘the intense dissatisfaction of the great majority of Her Majesty’s subjects in Upper Canada’; and the essence of his case was contained in the motion of June 21: ‘That this House is of opinion that no Religious denomination can be held to have such vested interest in the revenue derived from the proceeds of the said Clergy Reserves, as should prevent further legislation with reference to the disposal of them, but this House is nevertheless of opinion that the claims of existing incumbents should be treated in the most liberal manner.’

In the debate, which was conducted with very praise-worthy dignity, it was La Fontaine who made the most notable contribution to the subject. Averse himself to any policy of secularization, fair-minded enough to see the case for all the different contending bodies, he stated his conviction that the objects of the Constitutional Act must not be rescinded, that the property should be divided amongst all Protestant denominations, that the division should be an equal division, and that ‘the present division of the Revenues is unequal, unjust, and not in accordance with the opinion of the law officers of the Crown.’ Baldwin, too, spoke in similar vein, declaring that the revenues should be applied to purposes contemplated by the statute as nearly as possible; and all knew that Elgin’s views were on this point those of his ministers. The appeal to the imperial authority was carried, but the house divided, thirty-six for and thirty-four against the address, and among the minority were La Fontaine and other French-Canadian supporters of the government.

It may be well to trace the matter to its end. Already it had discredited one party with the populace in Upper Canada, and had been one of the most active forces making for the Rebellion. Even as it ended, it was to pull down with it the government which gave it a final settlement. From 1850 onwards La Fontaine and the moderate French opinion could rank merely as lukewarm in support; and on the other side Brown and the ‘Clear Grits’ grew fiercer and more impetuous in their attack. Both in the house and through the columns of the Globe Brown directed a constant stream of bitter comment against the moderatism of the ministry; and it became apparent that if only MacNab and the tories could join in factious union with Brown and the radicals—at a sacrifice of principle, justifiable in their eyes as the means of wrecking the ministry—the end might come at any time. When Hincks formed his ministry in 1851, it was on the basis of secularization as a cabinet issue, the only question being that of fitness in the occasion. But again events proved wayward.

The following year found Russell out of power, and Derby, a true church and state man, in. In spite of representations from Canada, and from Hincks, who was at the time in England, the English government refused to move. It was useless, as it was only too easy, to prove that ‘the opinions of the mass of the people have never wavered during the last twenty-five years.’ The high and dry conservatism of Derby’s government, whether worked on from Toronto or not, had a profound distrust of colonial sentiment. ‘They could only regard,’ wrote Pakington to Elgin, ‘any measure which would place it in the power of an accidental majority of the Colonial Assembly, however small, to divert for ever from its sacred object [the Clergy Reserves fund] with the most serious doubt and hesitation.’ In answer to British opposition Hincks proposed his six resolutions in September 1852; and, fortunately, as well for the British connection as for the peace of Canada, the end of the year saw Derby once more out of power, and an Aberdeen ministry, in harmony with Elgin and Grey’s more progressive policy in colonial matters, ready to co-operate in a solution.

On December 28, 1852, Newcastle intimated his appointment as secretary of state for the Colonies. On January 15, 1853, he announced the intention of government to give the colonial legislature a free hand; and on March 24 he dispatched a copy of the bill, which by that time had passed its second reading by a large majority. A few days earlier the Bishop of Toronto had achieved pathos in a letter to the secretary, being willing, he said, ‘to avert, with the sacrifice of my life, the calamities, which the passing of your Bill will bring upon the Church in Canada.’

It must have given at least partial satisfaction to the bishop when the clergy reserves question, in extremis, contrived to wreck the great reform ministry which had held rule so long. But that is to anticipate events. The satisfactory conclusion was reached when Elgin, in his very latest dispatch, reported the passage of the bill which finally secularized the reserves by great majorities in either house. The student of history closes the record with many reflections, among others that pugnacious ecclesiastics are doubtful gifts to any nation, and that religion may not seek support save in the willing hearts and generous impulses of those who truly believe its doctrines and follow its precepts.