The Story of My Life Part 41

Stopped at a graveyard, a few miles west of Prescott, to survey the graves of some of the honoured dead. The remains of Mrs. Heck, the devoted matron who urged Philip Embury (the first Methodist preacher in America) to lift up his voice in the city of New York, in 1766, are deposited here.

FOOTNOTES:

[105] See note on page 224.

[106] This selfish demand--"that the ministrations of our Holy Religion be afforded without charge to the inhabitants of every township" (in which members of the Church of England were persistently educated in those days)--was most unfortunate in its influence on the Church, and has borne bitter fruit in these later times. Its legitimate effect has been to dry up the sources of Christian benevolence, paralyze the arm of Christian effort, and secularize, if not render impossible, any successful plan of Church extension and missionary work. Witness the almost complete failure (as compared with other Christian bodies) to raise sufficient funds to support even the limited number of Home missions in most of the dioceses, and the nearly hopeless task of infusing a genuine missionary zeal in behalf of the "regions beyond."

[107] It should be noted, in connection with this pet.i.tion, that one most important part of its prayer was granted in that year--viz., the appointment of the Archdeacon (who went to England to present the pet.i.tions and to receive the appointment) as first Bishop of Toronto.

His patent bears date, 27th July, 1839. The other part of the prayer was also granted, but not until 1840, when Lord John Russell, then Colonial Secretary, by an unprecedented and unlooked for stretch of official authority, but no doubt with the a.s.sent of his colleagues, introduced a bill into the House of Commons to do what even he and other Colonial Secretaries had deprecated doing--viz., the re-investing of the reserves in the Crown. Dr. Ryerson, then in England, strongly protested against this act of provincial spoliation and legislative invasion, but the bill became law. (See next chapter.)

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

1838-1840.

The New Era--Lord Durham and Lord Sydenham.

In the midst of the gloom which overspread the Province, in consequence of the long continued exercise of irresponsible and arbitrary power on the part of the local executive, Dr. Ryerson, like many other loyal-hearted Canadians, rejoiced at the advent of Lord Durham,--a man possessed of plenary powers to inquire into and report on the grievances existing in Canada. Those who wished to perpetuate the reign of the ruling party, strongly deprecated Dr. Ryerson's advocacy of Lord Durham's schemes of reform. One of the most respectable organs[108] of that party (Neilson's Quebec _Gazette_) in a complimentary editorial on Dr. Ryerson (in May, 1839), expressed regret that a man "of his undoubted talents and great industry" should have endorsed Lord Durham's system of Responsible Government. In the _Guardian_ of the 5th June, Dr.

Ryerson replied, pointing out the fair and equitable system of Responsible Government advocated by Lord Durham, as compared with the crude one put forth by Messrs. W. L. Mackenzie and L. J. Papineau. He then ill.u.s.trates the necessity for the reform proposed by Lord Durham, by referring to the arbitrary and irresponsible acts of Sir Francis Head. He said:--

The published word of the Representative of Royalty had [until Sir F. B.

Head's time] been sacred and inviolable in Upper Canada; the majority of the people believed him. In 1836 they elected a House of a.s.sembly in accordance with his wishes. He fulfilled his pledges by dismissing many of the magistrates and militia officers, because they voted against his candidates at the elections, and finished his career by plunging the country into misery, and thereby insuring its ruin.

Now, where (he asked) was the "responsibility" under which ... such a Governor acts? He abuses the confidence reposed in him,--where is his censure? He disobeys the orders given him from England,--where is his punishment? He ruins men [Bidwell, etc.] whom he was ordered to appoint,--where is their redress, and his accountability? They are exiles, and he is made a Baronet! He disgraces and degrades numbers of persons without colour of reason, or justice, or law--yet they are without redress, and he is even without reproof. He tramples upon the orders from Her Majesty's Government, and attacks her ministers in their places--then returns to England, and boasts of his disobedience.... And there are those who tell us of the responsibility of our Governors to the Queen and Parliament!... The history of Sir F. B. Head's administration is enough to make the veriest bigot a convert to "Responsible Government."

For these and other important reasons it can be seen how the great question of the day (in 1839) was that of responsible government for these provinces. Dr. Ryerson and others had written freely on the subject, claiming that the government of the country should be administered, as it was then expressed--"according to the well understood wishes of the people." This could only be done by men representing their wishes, and responsible to the legislature for their exercise of power and for every official act of the Governor.

In October, Dr. Ryerson received a letter on this subject from a well-known advocate of the principle of responsible government in Nova Scotia--Hon. Joseph Howe. He said:--

May I beg your acceptance of a little work on responsible government, the object of which is to advance the good cause in which you have so heartily and with so much ability embarked. It is a great satisfaction to the friends of responsible government here, that the cause has been taken up in Canada by men about whose intentions and loyalty there can be no mistake. So long as we deprive the family compact of their only defence, which the folly of rebels and sympathizers raised for them, and act together without just cause for suspicion that we are anything but what we say, there can be little doubt of ultimate success. Should your electors return a majority favourable to responsibility at the next election, and all the colonies unite in one demand, it will be yielded. Our legislature, and any that can be chosen here, will uphold the principle. So will the majorities in Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. I cannot speak with certainty, but hope they will soon understand the question thoroughly in that province. It may be necessary for all the provinces to send delegates at the same time to England, to claim to be heard on the subject at the Bar of the Commons and Lords, and to diffuse, through every fair channel, correct views of the question. Think of this, and drop me a line at your leisure.

This Dr. Ryerson did in due time.

The coming of Lord Durham was the first harbinger of better days for Canada. His mission was one of enquiry, and for the suggestion of remedial measures. The mission of Mr. Poulett Thompson (who followed Lord Durham as Governor-General) was hailed with delight by the people generally. He came to give practical effect to pressing measures of reform--to unite the provinces, and to introduce a new element of strength into the administrative system of the country.

The year 1839 was noted for the enthusiasm with which "Durham Meetings"

were held throughout Upper Canada. These meetings were for the purpose of endorsing the famous report of Lord Durham, and for approving of the many valuable reforms which that report suggested. Much opposition and even violence characterized these meetings; but they revived and again inaugurated the right of free speech on public questions. The only record which Dr. Ryerson has left of this period of his history is as follows:--

In 1838 I yielded to persuasion and remonstrances, and was again re-elected Editor, and continued as such until June, 1840, when I relinquished finally all connection with the Editorship of the _Christian Guardian_.

It was during this period, from 1833 to 1840, that the most important events transpired in Upper Canada; the controversy respecting the clergy reserves, and a church establishment, was steadily and earnestly maintained.

The const.i.tution of Lower Canada was suspended for two years, and an Executive Council Government was established in its place. The dominant party in Upper Canada by liberal professions succeeded in the elections, in 1836; but, instead of adopting a just and liberal policy, they sought to exclude all Reformers from a share in the Government as virtual rebels, and set themselves to promote a high-church establishment policy, to the exclusion of the Methodists and members of other religious denominations.

This unwise, unjust, and inverted-pyramid policy laid the foundation for a new agitation. The Methodists were the only party capable of coping with the revived high-church policy to crush out the rights of other denominations and the liberties of the country, and to paralyze their influence. The Presbyterians being divided, the Canadian Conference was not to be deterred, or moved from its principles, avowed and maintained for more than ten years; the result was a contest between the English and Canadian Conferences, which culminated in 1840 in a separation of the two bodies, and a conflict of seven years--wholly political--for London Wesleyan, English superiority, and tory ascendancy on the one side, and Canadian Methodist and Canadian liberty on the other side.

It is not my purpose to enter into detail, except in so far as Dr.

Ryerson became an actor in the new scenes and events which followed the appointment of Mr. Charles Poulett Thompson as Governor-General.

Mr. Poulett Thompson arrived in Quebec on the 19th October, 1839, and in Toronto on the 21st November. As Governor-General, he superseded both Sir John Colborne at Quebec and Sir George Arthur at Toronto.

On the 3rd December, the Governor-General opened the Upper Canada Legislature; and on that very day Dr. Ryerson addressed to him an elaborate letter on the chief object of his mission. In referring to the clergy reserve question, he said:--

For sixteen years this question has been a topic of ceaseless discussion; and one on which the sentiments and feelings of a very large majority of the inhabitants have been without variation expressed; notwithstanding that Governor has succeeded Governor, and party has succeeded party.... From the time when, at the elections of 1824, the sentiments of the country were first called forth to the present moment, its collective voice has demanded, what your Excellency has avowed on another subject, "equal justice to all of Her Majesty's subjects." This question is the parent of social discord in Upper Canada; all the other party questions have originated in this. The elevation of one cla.s.s above all others in a community where there is little diversity of rank or intelligence, begets a necessity for special means to support that elevation. Hence partizan appointments to office; hence partizan administration of offices; hence party animosities, embittered by the jealousies of conscious weakness on one side, and a deep sense of unmerited exclusion and provocation on the other.... Hence on the one side a selfish, insolent, baseless ecclesiastical and political oligarchy, and, on the other side, an abused, an injured, and dissatisfied country.

The bill providing for the vesting of the proceeds of the reserves in the Imperial Parliament, to which I have referred in the preceeding chapter, was not sanctioned by Her Majesty. This was "a sore blow and a heavy discouragement" to those who had laboured so a.s.siduously to carry such a bill through the local Legislature. The objection raised to it by Lord John Russell was twofold. The chief reason, however, was thus expressed:--

It appeared to Her Majesty's Government that strong objections existed to this delegation to Parliament by a subordinate authority of the power of legislation. The proceeding should have been by address to the three estates of the Realm, asking them to undertake the decision of the question.

Thus by a stroke of Lord John Russell's pen, the whole of the pet scheme of the ruling party, devised after three months' anxious local legislation, was irrecoverably lost. And yet it was not lost, for by the after careful manipulation of Lord John and his colleagues by Bishop Strachan, Lord Seaton (Sir John Colborne) and Sir George Arthur, that bill afterwards proved to be, for ten years, the basis of a far more sweeping and unjust measure than even the most reckless and partizan member of the Legislature in Upper Canada would have ventured to propose.

When it was known that Her Majesty had declined to sanction Sir George Arthur's bill, steps were taken by the Governor-General to devise such a measure as would meet with the approval of the great ma.s.s of the people in Upper Canada. To aid him in accomplishing this desirable end, Mr.

Poulett Thompson privately sought the aid of leading public men in the Province. Having obtained their a.s.sistance, he, with the advice of his Council, prepared a compromise measure which was designed to be just and equitable to all parties concerned.

On the 6th January, 1840, the Governor-General sent a message to the House of a.s.sembly, in which he thus outlines the measure which, with his sanction, Hon. Solicitor-General Draper submitted to the House:--

The Governor-General proposes that the remainder of the land should be sold, and the annual proceeds of the whole fund, when realized, be distributed [one half to the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches, and the other half among other religious bodies desiring to share in it] for the support of religious instruction within the Province, and for the promotion there, of the great and sacred objects for which these different bodies are established or a.s.sociated.

On this bill, Dr. Ryerson remarked:--

From this message, the hopelessness of success in any further attempts to get the annual proceeds of the reserves appropriated to exclusively secular objects, is apparent.... Up to the present time I have employed my best efforts, by every kind of argument, persuasion and entreaty, to get the proceeds applied simply and solely to educational purposes.... This is unattainable, and is rendered so by an original provision of our Const.i.tution (of 1791), as stated by the Governor-General.

The bill was fiercely attacked by the then newly-appointed Bishop of Toronto. He denounced it as--

Depriving the National Church of nearly three-fourths of her acknowledged property, and then, in mockery and derision, offering her back a portion of her own, so trifling as to be totally insufficient to maintain her present Establishment; it tramples on the faith of the British Government by destroying the birthright of all the members of the Established Church who are now in the province, or who may hereafter come into it; it promotes error, schism and dissent, and seeks to degrade the clergy of the Church of England to an equality with unauthorized teachers, etc.

The Bishop then uttered, that which events proved to be a memorable and true prophecy, that the Church--

Need be under no great apprehension in regard to any measure likely to pa.s.s the Provincial Legislature on the subject of the reserves:--reckless injustice in their disposition will not be permitted; although the Church may appear friendless and in peril, from the defection and treachery of some professing members.... If any of her children incline to despondency, let them turn their eyes to England, where we have protectors both numerous and powerful, watching our struggles, and holding out the hand of fellowship and a.s.sistance. [See next page.]

Dr. Ryerson at once joined issue with the Bishop, and--

Confuted the pretensions of "John Toronto" by the doctrines and statements of "John Strachan," who, when in England in 1827, published a pamphlet in which he stated that "the provincial legislatures have nothing to do, either directly or indirectly, with the Romish Church; but the same legislatures may vary, repeal, or modify the 31st Geo. III., cap. 31, as far as it respects the Church of England."

Dr. Ryerson pertinently asked the Bishop--

How could a "birthright" be "varied, repealed, or modified," as he had admitted that the const.i.tutional act could do, "as far as it respects the Church of England?" Can (he asks) the Legislature "vary or repeal" the deeds by which individuals hold their lands?--Which of the "dissenting" denominations recognized by law is not as orthodox in doctrine as the Church of England, and far more orthodox than those who endorse the Oxford "Tracts for the Times?"

The bill was finally pa.s.sed in the House of a.s.sembly, by a vote of 31 to 7, and in the Legislative Council, by a vote of 13 to 4, notwithstanding a remarkably outspoken and defiant speech from the Bishop. In it he used the following language: