The Story of My Life Part 40

FOOTNOTES:

[104] In the _Guardian_ of September 19th, 1838, the question is put in this form and discussed: "Why do you not appeal to Her Majesty's Privy Council, or to the High Court of Parliament instead of appealing to the public here?" The answer was conclusive.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

1839.

Sir G. Arthur's Partizanship.--State of the Province.

The bill for revesting the clergy reserves in the Crown barely escaped defeat (as just mentioned) in the House of a.s.sembly, on 11th May, 1839.

On the 14th Sir George Arthur sent the bill to Lord Normanby (successor to Lord Glenelg) for Her Majesty's a.s.sent, with an elaborate despatch.

On the 15th, Dr. Ryerson also addressed to Lord Normanby a long letter on the same subject. In it he called the attention of the Colonial Secretary to the following facts, which he discussed at length in his letter:--

1. That the great majority of the House of a.s.sembly in four successive parliaments had remonstrated against the exclusive pretensions of the Church of England in Upper Canada; and that the claims of the Church of England to be the established Church of the Province had from the beginning been steadily denied by such representatives, and elsewhere.

2. That the ground of dissatisfaction in the Province was not merely between the Churches of England and Scotland, but between the high-church party, and the religious denominations and the inhabitants of the Province generally.

3. That from the beginning the House of a.s.sembly had protested against any appropriation of the clergy reserves being made to the Church of England, not granted equally [for educational purposes] to the other Christian denominations.

4. That notwithstanding the annual remonstrances of the House of a.s.sembly, large grants had been paid since 1827, to the Episcopal Clergy, exclusive of grants by the Imperial Parliament and the Propagation Society.

5. That under these circ.u.mstances it was not surprising that there should be a widespread and deeply seated dissatisfaction. It is rather surprising that a vestige of British power exists in the Province.

6. That Sir George Arthur has for the last five months endeavoured--by official proclamations and other published communications through public offices, and by military influences in various parts of the Province--to prevent any expression of opinion on this subject, even by pet.i.tion to the Legislature.

7. That the Lieutenant-Governor has been induced to make himself a partizan with the Episcopal Church in the clergy reserve discussion; the entire influence of the Executive has been thrown into that scale; the representation of impartial sovereignty has been made the watchword of party.

8. That under the pretense of resisting brigand invasion, large militia forces have been raised; violent penniless partizans have been put on pay in preference to respectable and loyal men; and these forces have not been placed on the frontier where invasion might have been expected, but have been scattered in parties over many parts of the interior, in order to exterminate discontent by silencing complaint.

These, with a reference to the embarra.s.sed financial condition of the Province, were the chief points to which Dr. Ryerson called the attention of the Colonial Secretary in this elaborate letter.

On the 22nd of the same month (May) Dr. Ryerson addressed another vigorous letter to Lord Normanby, on the clergy reserves and kindred questions. "That letter," he says, he writes "with feelings which he has no language to express."

The main points of the letter were as follows:--

1. For thirty years (up to 1820) nothing was heard of an ecclesiastical establishment in the Province: all cla.s.ses felt themselves equally free, and were, therefore, equally contented and happy.

2. From the first open and unequivocal pretensions to a state establishment being made, the inhabitants of Upper Canada, in every const.i.tutional way, have resisted and remonstrated against it.

3. Every appropriation and grant to the Episcopal clergy out of the lands and funds of the Province has been made in the very teeth of the country's remonstrance.

4. The utter powerlessness of the representative branch of the Legislature has rendered the officers and dependents and partizans of the Executive more and more despotic, overbearing, and reckless of the feelings of the country.

5 This most blighting of all partizanship has been carried into every department of the Executive Government--the magistracy, militia, and even into the administration of justice. Its poison is working throughout the whole body politic; it destroys the peace of the country; rouses neighbour against neighbour; weakens the best social affections of the human heart, and awakens its worst pa.s.sions; and converts a healthy and fertile province into a pandemonium of strife, discontent, and civil commotion.

6. While upwards of $220,000 (besides lands) have been given to the Episcopal clergy since 1827, the grants made by the Imperial Parliament to the clergy of Upper Canada amount to over $400,000, being over $620,000 in all.

7. A very large sum has been expended in the erection of Upper Canada College, on the grounds of King's College, and with an endowment of $8,000 or $10,000 a year. This inst.i.tution is wholly under the management of Episcopal clergymen, while the Upper Canada Academy, which has been built at Cobourg by the Methodists at a cost of about $40,000, could not without a severe struggle get even the $16,000 which were directed to be paid over to it by Lord Glenelg. The matter had to be contested with Sir F. B. Head on the floor of the House of a.s.sembly before he could be induced to obey the Royal instructions. (Page 179.)

8. In the recent legislation on the clergy reserve question, the high church party resisted every measure by which the Methodist Church might obtain a farthing's aid to the Upper Canada Academy. And, to add insult to injury, the high church people denounce Methodists as republicans, rebels, traitors, and use every possible epithet and insinuation of contumely because they complain, reason, and remonstrate against such barefaced oppression and injustice--notwithstanding that not a single member of that church has been convicted of complicity with the late unhappy troubles in the Province.

9. A perpetuation of the past and present obnoxious and withering system, will not only continue to drive thousands of industrious farmers and tradesmen from the country, but will prompt thousands more, before they will sacrifice their property and expatriate themselves, to advocate const.i.tutionally, openly, and decidedly, the erection of an "independent kingdom," as has been suggested by the Attorney-General, as best both for this province and Great Britain.

10. It rests with Her Majesty's Government to decide whether or not the inhabitants shall be treated as strangers and helots; whether the blighted hopes of this province shall wither and die, or revive, and bloom, and flourish; whether Her Majesty's Canadian subjects shall be allowed the legitimate const.i.tutional control of their own earnings, or whether the property sufficient to pay off the large provincial debt shall be wrested from them; whether honour, loyalty, free and responsible government are to be established in this province, or whether our resources are to be absorbed in support of pretensions which have proved the bane of religion in the country; have fomented discord; emboldened, if not prompted, rebellion; turned the tide of capital and emigration to other sh.o.r.es; impaired public credit; arrested trade and commerce, and caused Upper Canada to stand "like a girdled tree," its drooping branches mournfully betraying that its natural nourishment has been deliberately cut off.

In a third and concluding letter to Lord Normanby, Dr. Ryerson uses this language:--

The great body of the inhabitants of this province will not likely again pet.i.tion on the question of the clergy reserves and a church establishment in this province. They will express their sentiments at the hustings with a vengeance, to the confusion of the men who have deceived, and misrepresented, and wronged them; ... A pet.i.tion would acknowledge the right of the Imperial Parliament to interfere--which ought not to be admitted. If past expressions of public sentiment will not satisfy Her Majesty's Government, none other can do it; and more efficient means (such as the coming elections), must and ought to be adopted, instead of the fruitless method of asking by pet.i.tion for what has been guaranteed to the const.i.tuencies of the country as a right.

The validity of the recent Act of the Legislature, revesting the reserves in the Crown, never will be acknowledged, or recognized by the electors of this province. Any Ministers of the Crown in England would more than lose their places, who should press through the House of Commons, on the last night of the session, in a thin house, a great public measure which had not only been repealed by four successive parliaments, but had been negatived from six to twelve times during the same session of the existing parliament. Nor would the British nation ever submit to any public measure (much less to loss of the control of one-seventh of their lands, and the infliction upon them of an uncongenial ecclesiastical system) which had been forced upon them.

The declarations of the Representative of Royalty have heretofore been regarded in this province as sacred and inviolable; but the reliance of the Canadian electors upon those declarations from the lips of Sir Francis Head has cost them bloodshed, bankruptcy, and misery.... The electors will employ the elective franchise to redress their acc.u.mulated wrongs to the last farthing.

It is, of course, my good or bad fortune to be a.s.sailed from week to week, whether I write or not.... I am no theorist. I advocate no change in the Const.i.tution of the Province. I have never written a paragraph the principles of which could not be carried out in accordance with the letter and spirit of the established Const.i.tution. I desire nothing more than the free and impartial administration of that Const.i.tution for the benefit of all cla.s.ses of Her Majesty's subjects. I only oppose or support men, or measures, for the attainment of that object.

Entertaining such strong feelings in regard to the personal conduct of Sir George Arthur in respect to the pa.s.sage of the clergy reserve bill, Dr. Ryerson felt that he could not accept any social courtesy at his hands. In reply, therefore, to an invitation from Sir George, for Her Majesty's birthday, he felt constrained to decline it. In his letter to the A.D.C., he said:--

After the most mature deliberation up to the last moment in which it is proper to reply, I feel it my duty respectfully to decline the honour of His Excellency's invitation. I most firmly believe that the office of impartial sovereignty has been employed by His Excellency for partial purposes; that an undue and an unconst.i.tutional exercise of the office of royalty has been employed by His Excellency to influence the public mind, and the decisions of our const.i.tutional tribunals on pending and debatable questions between equally loyal and deserving cla.s.ses of Her Majesty's subjects in this Province; that His Excellency has also employed the influence of the high office of the Queen's representative to procure and afterwards express his cordial satisfaction at the pa.s.sing of a Bill, in a thin House, on the very last night of the session, the provisions of which had been repeatedly negatived by a considerable majority of the people's representatives, and which deprive the faithful but embarra.s.sed inhabitants of this Province of the control of a revenue and lands sufficient in value to pay off the whole public debt--a proceeding at complete variance with the fair and const.i.tutional administration of a free monarchical government, and the imperial usages since the accession of the present Royal Family to the throne of Great Britain; and, finally, that His Excellency has employed the influence of his high office to the disparagement of the large section of the religious community whose views, rights, and interests, I have been elected to my present offices to advocate and promote.

I beg that my declining the honour proposed by His Excellency may not be construed into any disrespect to His Excellency personally, or to the high office His Excellency holds--for the inviolableness and dignity of which I feel the jealous veneration of a loyal subject--but I beg that it may be attributed solely to a fixed determination not to do anything that may in the slightest degree tend to weaken, but on the contrary, to use every lawful means, on all occasions, to advance those civil and religious interests which I am most fully convinced are essential to the happy preservation of a prosperous British Government in this country, and to the happiness and welfare of the great body of Her Majesty's Canadian subjects.

In order to insure the a.s.sent of Her Majesty to the Bill which had been sent to the Colonial Secretary by Sir George Arthur, the authorities of the Church of England in the Province circulated a pet.i.tion for presentation to the Queen and the British Parliament[105] containing the following statement and request:--

"Your pet.i.tioners, consisting of the United Empire Loyalists and their children, took refuge in this Province after the American Revolution, under the impression that they possessed the same const.i.tution as that of the Mother Country, which includes a decent provision for the administration of the Word and Sacraments according to the forms of the Church of England."

The prayer of the pet.i.tion was--

That the proceeds of the clergy reserve lands be applied to the maintenance of such clergy, and of a bishop to superintend the same, so that the ministrations of our Holy Religion may be afforded without charge[106] to the inhabitants of every township in the Province.

Dr. Ryerson, having with difficulty procured a copy of this pet.i.tion, pointed out in the _Guardian_ of July 3rd, 1839: 1st. Its historical misstatements, and denounced the selfish and exclusive character of its demands. He showed in effect that the Province was settled in 1783, whereas the const.i.tutional Act (which was invoked as though it had existed long before that date), was not pa.s.sed until 1791--eight years after "the United Empire Loyalists and their children took refuge in Upper Canada." 2nd. That for forty years and more, nine-tenths of the United Empire Loyalists and their descendants, with all their "impressions," might have perished in heathen ignorance had not some other than the Episcopal clergy cared for their spiritual interests; and that after these forty years of slumbering and neglect, and after the incorporation of the great body of the old Loyalists and their descendants into other churches, the Episcopal clergy came in, and now seek, on the strength of these apocryphal "impressions" (which never could have existed), to claim one-seventh of the lands of the Province as their heritage.[107] In proof of these facts Dr. Ryerson referred to the testimony of fifty-two witnesses, given before a select Committee of the House of a.s.sembly in 1828, and published in full at that time.

I have purposely abstained from making any special reference to discussions in the clergy reserve question with which Dr. Ryerson had no connection. An important one, however, took place between Hon. Wm.

Morris and Archdeacon Strachan in 1838-39, chiefly in regard to the claims of the Church of Scotland. Mr. Morris, however, did good service in the general discussion.

In November, 1838, Dr. Ryerson received a letter from Thomas Farmer, Esq., of London, England, in regard to the Centenary Celebration, to which he replied as follows:--

Our prospects as a country are rather gloomy. We have lately had the excitement and loss produced by Lord Durham's departure, and the second rebellion in Lower Canada, followed in a few days by a brigand invasion of this province to distract and destroy us. You refer to a Centenary Offering. I cannot say what we shall be able to do. We have not the slightest provision yet for the education of preacher's children; nor a contingent fund to aid poor circuits, or to relieve the distressed preachers' families; and an unpaid for Book Room, and not an entirely paid for Academy;--all of which subjects have engaged our most anxious consideration;--but in the present entirely unsettled state of our public affairs, we scarcely know what to do in respect to the future. We cannot, therefore, as yet fix upon the objects of our Centenary Offering.

The Methodist Centenary Year occurred in 1839. The Conference set apart the 25th October for its celebration,

By holding religious "services in all of our chapels and congregations, for the purpose of calling to mind the great things which the Lord has done for us as a people; of solemnly recognizing our obligations and responsibilities to our Heavenly Father; and of imploring, on behalf of ourselves and the whole Wesleyan Methodist family throughout the world, a continuance and increase of religious happiness, unity and prosperity."

Meetings were held all over the Province during the months of August, September and October, for the collection of a centenary offering, to be applied to the Superannuation Fund, Book Room, Parsonages, Missionary, and other objects. Dr. Ryerson, as one of a deputation, attended a large number of meetings. Writing from Brockville, he mentions the fact that he