Excerpt from The Clergy Reserves: A Letter From the Lord Bishop of Toronto to the Duke of Newcastle, Her Majesty's Secretary for the Colonies

Had that portion which belongs to the Church of England been. Finally arranged in 1817, and the objects of the 31 Geo. III. Cap. (called the Constitutional Act) been fairly carried out, there would have been little or no trouble. But the continued heat and discussions in the Colonial Legislature Were permitted for a long time without notice, and when they forced attention, feeble palli atives, instead of efficient remedies, were applied, which produced increased irritation.

Allow me to remark that the Church of England has suffered exceedingly from the protracted discussions on the Clergy Re serves, as it theirs were the only ecclesiastical provision in Canada likely to produce difficulty. The rich endowments of the Roman Catholic Church have been carefully kept out of sight, and are only now coming into notice, while accumulated odium has been heaped on the National Church in the Colony, as if her assertion of her just rights were offensive and unbecoming, and the sole cause of all the trouble.

The endowments for the support of religion in the different parts of the Province, cannot be dealt with separately, or confined to those appropriated to the sustenance of a Protestant Clergy, but such dealing must embrace those also which sustain the Roman Gatho lic Clergy. Both are equally local and domestic, and if the one is to be consigned to the management of the Colonial Legislature, so must the other. Both stand upon the same grounds of security, or rather the tenure of the Church of England to the possession of her property is admitted by your Grace as well as Mr. Peel, to be far stronger in law than that of the Church of Rome.

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