Chapter XXIX
1838.
The Clergy Reserve Controversy Renewed.
The question at issue, when the House of Assembly was elected in 1836 for the parliamentary term ending in 1839, was adroitly narrowed by Sir F. B. Head to the simple one of loyalty to the Crown, or--as Dr. Ryerson, in a letter to Hon. W. H. Draper (September, 1838), expressed it--"Whether or not ... this Province would remain an integral part of the British Empire." Lord Durham pointed out that Sir F. B. Head led the people to believe "that they were called upon to decide the question of separation [from Great Britain] by their votes."
Under such circumstances the clergy reserve question was subordinated to those of graver moment. Besides, even if pledges had been given by members before the election on the subject, they were not felt, as the event proved, to be very sacred. Speaking of this Parliament, Dr. Ryerson, in his letter to Mr. Draper, (already mentioned), said:--
The present Assembly at its first session adopted a resolution in favour of appropriating the reserves for "the religious and moral instruction of the Province." But its proceedings during the second session were so vacillating that it is now difficult to say what the opinions of the members are.
One explanation of this state of feeling was, that the political views of a majority of the members were in harmony with those of the ruling party in the country, and yet were at variance with the views of their constituents on the clergy reserve question. Advantage was taken of the existence of this political sympathy by the leaders of the dominant party, with a view to secure the removal of the clergy reserve question from the hostile arena of the Upper Canada Legislature to the friendly atmosphere of the English House of Commons, and the still more friendly tribunal of the House of Lords--where the bench of bishops would be sure to defend the claims of the Church to this royal patrimony.[90]
Accordingly, at the third session of this Parliament, Mr. Cartwright, of Kingston, introduced a bill "to revest the Clergy Reserves in Her Majesty"--the first reading of which was carried by a vote of 24 to 5, and passed through Committee of the whole by a vote of 29 to 12. As soon as Dr. Ryerson, then in Kingston, got a copy of this bill he wrote the following letter, on the 13th January, 1838, to the Guardian:--
The professed object of this bill is described by its title, but the real object, and the necessary effect of it, from the very nature of its provisions, is to apply the reserves to those exclusive and partial purposes against which the great majority of the inhabitants of this province, both by petition and through their representatives, have protested in every variety of language during the last twelve years--and that without any variation or the shadow of change. The bill even proposes to transfer future legislation on this subject from the Provincial to the Imperial Parliament! The authors of this bill are, it seems, afraid to trust the inhabitants of Upper Canada to legislate on a subject in which they themselves are solely concerned; nay, they will environ themselves and the interests they wish to promote behind the Imperial Parliament! The measure itself, containing the provisions it does, is a shameful deception upon the Canadian public--is a wanton betrayal of Canadian rights--is a disgraceful sacrifice of Canadian, to selfish party interests--is a covert assassination of a vital principle of Canadian constitutional and free government--is a base political and religious fraud which ought to excite the deep concern and rouse the indignant and vigorous exertion of every friend of justice, and freedom, and good government in the country.
My language may be strong; but strong as it is, it halts far behind the emotions of my mind. Such a measure, I boldly affirm, is not what the people of Upper Canada expected from the members of the present Assembly when they elected them as their representatives; it is not such a measure as, I have reason to believe, a majority of the present members of the Assembly gave their constituents to understand they would vote for when they solicited their suffrages. Honourable gentlemen, if I can be heard by them, ought to remember that they have a character to sustain, more important than the attainment of a particular object; they ought to remember that they act in a delegated capacity; and if they cannot clear their consciences and maintain the views and interests of their constituents, they ought, as many an honest English gentleman has done, to resign their seats in the legislature; they ought to remember to whom and under what expectations they owe their present elevation; above all, they ought to remember what the equal and impartial interests of their whole constituency require at their hands.
If, however, every pledge or honourable understanding should be violated; if every reasonable hope should be disappointed; and if the loyal and deserving inhabitants of Upper Canada should be deceived, and disappointed, and wronged by the passage of this bill into a law, petitions ought to be circulated in every part of the province to Her Majesty the Queen to withhold the royal assent from the bill; and I hereby pledge L50 (if I have to sell my library to obtain the amount) for the promotion of that object. Such an act, under the present circumstances of the country, would be worse than a former alien bill, and ought to be deprecated, resisted, and execrated by every enlightened friend of the peace, happiness, and prosperity of the Province.
In reply to a letter from Rev. Joseph Stinson, urging him to come to Toronto and oppose this bill, Dr. Ryerson said:--
For me to leave Kingston, under present circumstances, and go to Toronto would ruin my ministerial influence and usefulness here and blast all our present hopes of prosperity. You know that by my continued and repeated absence, I have already lost fifty per cent. in the confiding hopes of the people, and consequently in very power of doing them good. You know, likewise, that the financial interests of the Society have so lamentably declined that we are already largely in arrears. I cannot, therefore, leave, unless I am positively required to do so by the Book Committee.
A more serious aspect of the matter, however, was presented to Dr. Ryerson in the extraordinary silence of the Conference organ on the subject. In the same letter he said:--
I cannot but feel deeply grieved at not only the tameness but the profound silence of the Guardian on this bill. Silence on such a measure, and at such a time, and after the course we have pursued hitherto, is acquiescence in it to all intents and purposes, and may be fairly and legitimately construed so by both friends and enemies. Oh, is it so? Can it be so, that the Editor of the Guardian has got so completely into the leading strings of that churchism which is as poisonous in its feelings towards us, and its plans respecting us, as the simoon blast; that he will see measures going forward, which he must know are calculated, nay, intended, to trample us in the dust, and not even say one word, except in praise (as often as possible), of the very men who he sees from day to day plotting our overthrow!
I have also observed, in Dr. Strachan's letters to Hon. Wm. Morris, an attack upon Lord Glenelg, the Colonial Secretary--such a one as would enable us to turn to our account on the clergy reserve question (and against Dr. Strachan's exclusive system) the entire influence of Her Majesty's Government, which would have great weight both in and out of the House of Assembly. How I have heard Dr. Bunting, Mr. Beecham, and other members of the Committee at home, say that Lord Glenelg is one of the best and ablest men of the present day. At all events, after what we have obtained through his Lordship's instrumentality, I think that silence on our part is disgraceful--apart from considerations of local interests in this battle for right and justice.
Two able and moderate advocates of the settlement of the clergy reserve question were sent to England in 1837 to confer with Lord Glenelg on the subject, viz.: Hon. William Morris on behalf of the Church of Scotland, and Hon. W. H. Draper on behalf of the Church of England. In November of that year Dr. Ryerson was requested to draw up a paper embodying the opinions of the leading members of the Conference. This was done, and an elaborate paper on the subject was published in the Guardian of January 17th, 1838.[91] Shortly afterwards Dr. Ryerson addressed a letter to Lord Glenelg on the subject. I only insert the narrative part of it, as follows:--
I was favoured with a conversation on the clergy reserve question with Mr. [Sir James] Stephen, in accordance with your Lordship's suggestion, the day before I left London for Canada (27th April, 1837). After my arrival in this Province it was unanimously agreed to support the plan for the adjustment of that important and long agitated question, which had been mentioned by Mr. Stephen, in the interview referred to.
Sir F. B. Head set his face against it from the beginning, and did not wish me to say anything about it publicly. The Attorney-General acknowledged it was equitable, and did not make any serious objection to it.[92]
Recently a meeting of our principal ministers took place in Toronto, in order to consult upon the measures which it was desirable to adopt in order to promote the settlement of the question at the next session of Parliament. At the request of the meeting, another gentleman and myself waited upon the Hon. Mr. Draper (who had taken the most official part in previous sessions), and showed him the resolutions agreed to. We stated that if it would embarrass him in promoting the earliest settlement of the question, we would desist from publishing anything on the subject. He expressed himself as highly gratified at our frankness, courtesy, and general views, and said that if his high-church friends had treated him with the same liberality and courtesy he would have been saved from much difficulty and embarrassment, which he had experienced in his previous exertions; but that he thought there could be no objection to our publishing at large our views on the subject. The preparation of the document was assigned to me. When published, it appeared to meet the views of all parties, except the ultra shade of one party, who want the whole of the reserves; and it is now the most popular plan throughout the Province of settling the question, except that of appropriating the reserves to educational purposes exclusively.
A day or two before the publication of this document, the House of Assembly went into Committee on a Bill to revest the reserves in the Imperial Parliament! Going to Toronto at this time, I did what I could to bring the subject again before the House, and accordingly addressed a letter through the press to Speaker MacNab, of the Assembly, on the importance of an immediate settlement of the question, and also urging the adoption of the plan which had been recently proposed.[93] These papers appeared to create a considerable sensation among the members of the Assembly; it was agreed on all sides that the question ought to be settled forthwith. But the reluctance of the Crown Officers to take up the subject soon became manifest; and it was not for some weeks after, that the subject could be forced upon them.[94] Then all (with very few exceptions) professed that the subject ought not to be postponed any longer. But the Crown Officers had no measure prepared, and differed in opinion on the subject--the Attorney-General consenting to the revesting of the reserves in the Crown, the Solicitor-General contending that they should be divided among four denominations (Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Roman Catholics, according to their relative numbers in Great Britain and Ireland!) This proposition had but three or four advocates in the House, including the author of it. Mr. Boulton, seconded by Mr. Cartwright, moved, in substance, that the clergy reserve provision was made for the clergy of the Church of England;--that it does not provide for more than a competent support for them;--that to appropriate it for them would give most satisfaction to the country. This resolution had five votes in favour of it. All these amendments, and several others, having been lost in Committee, the original resolution moved by Mr. Cartwright, to revest the clergy reserves in Her Majesty, for "the support of the Christian religion in this Province," was adopted by a majority of three or four. A bill was then brought in and read a first time, and ordered to a second reading next day, but was never afterwards taken up--the exclusive church party being anxious to keep it out of sight. Thus the question is laid over for another year, to the great disappointment and dissatisfaction of thousands who have promptly come forward to the support of the Government of the country.
As an indication of the determination of the party then in power in Upper Canada to carry their scheme for the re-investment of the Reserves in the Crown, before the close of this friendly Parliament, I quote the following extract from a despatch from Sir George Arthur to Lord Glenelg, dated 11th July, 1838:--
At the first meeting of the Legislature, I propose to cause a bill to be introduced for re-investing the lands reserved for the clergy in the Crown, to be applied for religious purposes, and I have reason to think that it will be carried by a considerable majority.
In June, 1838, Dr. Ryerson became Editor of the Christian Guardian. It was, as I have shown, at a most critical period in our provincial history. He was called to that post by the unanimous voice of his brethren. That call, too, was emphasized by the fact that the object of the dominant party in decrying the loyalty of their opponents was now clearly seen; and that, therefore, none but a man of undaunted courage, unimpeachable loyalty, as well as unquestioned ability, could successfully cope with the powerful combination of talent and influence which the ruling party possessed.
Nor should it be forgotten, that in the unfortunate crisis through which the Province had just passed, the prestige of the party which had always claimed the whole of the reserves as the patrimony of the Church of England, had, from political causes, immensely increased. This gave them a double advantage; while, on the other hand, the prestige of the party which for years had firmly and consistently resisted these claims, had, for the same political reasons, as sensibly and as seriously declined.
These facts were well known to every one in Upper Canada at the time. They imposed a double burthen upon those who had the courage (or, it might be said, audacity) to question the righteousness of claims, which--not to speak of the invaluable services and inviolable loyalty of the claimants themselves in the crisis of the rebellion--were by words of the statute, as interpreted by the law officers of the Crown, so clearly given to those claimants.
Such was the position of parties, and the condition of affairs in Upper Canada, when Dr. Ryerson was called to the editorial chair of the leading newspaper in the Province. That he was possessed of the requisite ability and firmness to maintain the rights of a discouraged minority, and resist the then almost unquestioned will of a powerful majority, few doubted. The bold defence of the supposed exiled rebel, Bidwell, proved that neither courage nor talent was wanting. The bitter hatred of the revolutionary party, as expressed in the threat that, should they succeed, their first victim would be Egerton Ryerson, showed that in the new crusade he would have no help (if not covert opposition) from that extreme section of his former friends. Nor, as events proved, could he reckon on any support from the British missionary section of the Methodist community. Indeed, they were hostile to his views, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter.
In entering into this contest, therefore, Dr. Ryerson found that he would have to encounter a threefold enemy--each section of it able, resolute and influential, especially that one practically in possession of the reserves--fighting, as it was, for its very existence, and acting entirely on the defensive.
Soon after Dr. Ryerson entered on his editorial duties he published in the Guardian an elaborate series of letters on "The Clergy Reserve Question, as a matter of History, a Question of Law, and a Subject of Legislation," addressed to Hon. W. H. Draper, Solicitor-General. After reviewing the proceedings of the Government and Legislature on the subject down to the end of the session of 1838, he summed up the leading facts which he had established, in the following words:--
I have stated that the Government has been administered for fourteen years in utter contempt of the wishes of the inhabitants, constitutionally, continuously, and almost unanimously expressed through their representatives and otherwise, on a subject which concerns their highest and best interests, and which, as the history of Great Britain amply shows, has always more deeply interested British subjects than any other. Sir, on the unspeakably important subjects of religion and education our constitutional right of legislation has, by the arbitrary exercise and influence of Executive power, been made a mockery, and our constitutional liberties a deception; and it is to the influence over the public mind of the high religious feelings and principles of those classes of the population who have been so shamefully calumniated by the Episcopal clergy and their party scribes, that the inhabitants of Upper Canada are not doing in 1838, what Englishmen did do in 1688, when their feelings were outraged and their constitutional liberties infringed, and the privileges of Parliament trampled upon, in order to force upon the nation a system of religious domination which the great majority of the people did not desire.
As the session of the Legislature of 1839 approached, a vigorous effort was made by The Church newspaper (the clerical organ), and the Patriot (the lay organ) of the church party to influence public opinion in favour of a re-investment of the clergy reserves in the Crown (for the reasons given on page 225.)
It was well known that Dr. Ryerson had strenuously opposed any reference of the questions to the British Parliament as a pusillanimous, and yet an interested, party abnegation of Canadian rights. He, therefore, prepared and circulated extensively a petition to the House of Assembly on this and kindred subjects. This proceeding called forth a counter petition, urging the Legislature to recognize the principle of an established church, etc. Dr. Ryerson, therefore, lost no time in inserting in the Guardian of 24th October, a stirring appeal, in which he urged the Methodist ministers and members throughout the country to sign the petition which he had prepared without delay. He insisted upon the abolition of the rectories surreptitiously established by Sir John Colborne, on the ground that, although authorized by the Act of 1791, yet that their establishment was not in harmony with the terms of the despatch of Lord Ripon, dated November 8th, 1832, which stated that--
His Majesty has studiously abstained from the exercise of his undoubted prerogative of founding and endowing literary or religious corporations, until he should obtain the advice of the representatives of the people in that respect.
He concluded the appeal with these words:--It becomes every man who properly appreciates his civil and religious rights and privileges, and those of posterity after him, to give his name, his influence, and exertions, in the final effort to place those rights and privileges upon the broad foundation of equal justice to all classes of the inhabitants.
In a subsequent appeal, issued in November, he said:--Let every man who has a head to think, a foot to walk, and a hand to write, do all in his power to circulate the petitions for the entire abolition of high church domination, and the perfect religious and political equality of all denominations of Christians.... The majority of the people of England are willing to have glebes, rectories, tithes, church rates, etc.; but the majority of the people of this Province want nothing of the kind.... The right of the inhabitants of this Province to judge, and to have their wishes granted on everything connected with the disposition of the clergy reserves, and the proceeds of them, has been formally recognized in gracious despatches from the Throne.
Few in the present day can realize the storm which these petitions and appeals provoked. Every effort was made (as will be seen) to silence the voice and stay the hand of Dr. Ryerson, the chief promoter of the petitions, and the able opponent of the establishment of church ascendancy in Upper Canada. Thus matters reached a crisis in the latter part of the year 1838. So intense was the feeling evoked by the ruling party against Dr. Ryerson's proceeding, that in many places the promoters of the petitions were threatened with personal violence, and even with death, as may be seen by letters published in the Guardian at this time. The publication of these letters at the present time would excite feelings of amazement that such a state of things was ever possible in a free country like Canada.
Not only was this policy of intimidation pursued in the rural parts of the country, but the newspapers in Toronto and the larger towns, controlled by his opponents, made a combined assault upon Dr. Ryerson, as the central figure in this movement. On the 19th December, 1838, he inserted an able defence of himself. He said:--
The question of the Clergy Reserves, or in other words, of a dominant ecclesiastical establishment in this Province, embracing one or more Churches, has been a topic of public discussion for nearly twenty years. For thirty years after the creation of Upper Canada (in 1783) there was no ecclesiastical establishment in the country, except in the letter of an Act of Parliament. During that time there was no weakening of the hands of Government by discussing the question of a dominant church.... But from the time that the Episcopal clergy commenced the enterprise of ecclesiastical supremacy in the Province, there has been civil and religious discord. The calumnious and persecuting measures they have pursued from time to time to accomplish their purpose, I need not enumerate. For twelve years I have sought to restore peace to the Province, by putting down their pretensions. I have varied in the means I have employed, but never in the end I have had in view, as I have always avowed to them and their partizans, and to the Colonial and Imperial Governments, on every suitable occasion.
It was a favourite weapon of attack to denounce as rebels and republicans all those who opposed the exclusive claims of the then representatives of the Church of England. And this stigma was, in 1838, a personal and social one which every person to whom it was applied resented. But the more such persons resented the charge of disloyalty the more was the charge reiterated, and they were harassed and denounced as "radicals" and "republicans."
In repelling this unfounded charge, Dr. Ryerson did not descend to vindication or explanation. He became in turn the assailant, and began to "carry the war into Africa." With scorn and invective he replied to the charge, and showed that his opponents, with all their boasting and professions of loyalty, had failed to render the necessary aid in time of need. Thus: It has been said that I prevented the militia from turning out when first called upon.... It is true that I did not exhort any one to volunteer.... One reason ... was that I desired to have the country furnished with a practical illustration of high-church patriotism and loyalty in the hour of need. The Church and the Patriot had boasted of their multitudes; but those multitudes shrivelled into a Falstaff's company in an hour which detected the difference between the loyalty of the lip and the heart.... The elongated countenances in certain quarters for a few days [in December, 1837], will never be forgotten! From the Government House to the poorest cottage the omnipotent power of the Guardian was proclaimed as producing this alarming state of things! Indeed, I received a verbal message from His Excellency on the subject. At this juncture ... the heads of the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches formally addressed [their adherents] exhorting them to rally to the standard of their country, and from that hour we have heard nothing but congratulations and boasts in regard to the readiness ... with which the militia came forward in all parts of the Province at the call of the Government. It has been insinuated that I attacked the local Government.... The charge is unfounded. When the local Government was attacked for having pursued a different course from that of Lord Durham towards the political prisoners, I reconciled the course of the two administrations. Several numbers of the Guardian containing that dissertation were requested for the Government House, and ... were sent to England.... But when both my position and myself stand virtually ... impugned by proclamation, I am neither the sycophant nor the renegade to crouch down under unmerited imputations, come from whence they may, even though I should suffer imprisonment and ruin for my temerity.
I am at length exhorted to silence, but not my opponents.... A royal answer was returned to an address of the Episcopal Clergy a few weeks since.[95] Nor is silence imposed upon me until the entire weight of the Chief Magistracy is thrown into the Episcopal scale. If the injunction had been given to all parties ... then we might have felt ourselves in some degree equally protected.... But at the moment when the Province is turned into a camp--when freedom of opinion may be said to exist, but scarcely to live--when unprecedented power is wielded by the Executive, and the Habeas Corpus Act is suspended, for one party in the Province to have free range of denunciation, intimidation, etc., against Methodists and others ... and then for silence to be enjoined on me and those who agree with me ... does excite, I confess, my anxious concern, as the object of it in regard to myself and a large portion of the country cannot be mistaken.
The despatches of Lord Ripon (Nov. 8th, 1832) and Lord Glenelg (Dec. 15th, 1835) recommended a "comprehensive liberality" in every department, and in all the acts of the Government, they conceded in full the popular demands on the clergy reserve question, and deprecated the establishment of any religious corporations until the advice of the local Legislature had been obtained--these very despatches Sir F. B. Head promised to carry out.... But has that pledge been redeemed by him? Has it not been grossly violated?... In his appointments and dismissals from office, and in the whole tone and spirit of his government, did not Sir F. B. Head become the head of a party instead of the Governor of the Province?... The result of his new system of government already is derangement of the currency--insurrection--bloodshed--loss of property--demoralization, by calling large bodies of men from rural to military employments--decrease of population--cessation of immigration--decrease of credit--decrease of revenue--increase of the public debt--decrease of the value of property--increase of popular dissatisfaction--vast military expenditures from the taxes of an overburthened British population--insecurity of person and property, and general distrust. Under these "Church and King" counsels, for two years more, and this province will be a Paradise!... We have laboured hard to obtain and secure many blessings for our native land, but certainly not such blessings as these!
In connection with this discussion, a Kingston paper stated that Dr. Ryerson was moved by ambitious motives. In reply Dr. Ryerson said:--As to my motives of ambition, etc., my enemies will probably concede to me two or three things. 1. That long before Sir F. B. Head came to Upper Canada I had been honoured by as large a share of popular favour in this province as any individual could reasonably expect or desire.... 2. That the path to royal favour has been opened as widely to me as it is possible for it to be opened to any clerical individual who has laid it down as a rule, and stated it to Ministers of the Crown and Governors, that he never could knowingly receive a farthing from any quarter, or in any way, which was not pointed out and authorized by the discipline of his Church. But as a love of popular favour has not obliterated from my recollection the rightful prerogatives of the Crown, I cannot see why I should thereby be disqualified from a disinterested maintenance of constitutional rights, especially when many more are immediately concerned in the latter than in the former.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] In his despatch to Lord Glenelg, giving an extract of his speech at the opening of the ensuing session of the Legislature, Sir George Arthur puts this idea in an official form. He says:--That such "a tribunal is free from those local influences and excitement which operate too powerfully here." In his seventh letter to Hon. W. H. Draper on the clergy reserve question, dated January, 26th, 1839, Dr. Ryerson argues the whole question of the re-investment of the reserves at length. He also shows that so far from the "tribunal" here spoken of by Sir George Arthur being a desirable one to adjudicate on this question, it would be the very reverse.Return to passage
It should be remembered that in more than one despatch the Colonial Secretary held that the question was one to be settled by the Provincial, rather than by the Imperial Parliament, and declined to interfere with the rights of the Canadian Legislature in the matter. This will be clearly shown in a subsequent chapter. Lord Glenelg's utterances on this question are very emphatic, especially in his despatch dated 5th December, 1835.
[91] The paper was signed by Rev. Messrs. Harvard, Case, Stinson, J. Ryerson, W. Ryerson, E. Ryerson, Green, Evans, Jones, Wilkinson, Beatty, and Wright. See also Guardian of October 10th, 1838.Return to passage
[92] In the Guardian of September 12th, 1838, page 180, Dr. Ryerson makes a fuller reference to this matter. Speaking of the Hume and Roebuck letters (page 167), he says: I was indeed--what I never thought of in London--applauded to satiety by the constitutional press of Upper Canada [for these letters], and by many individuals, several of whom, on my landing in Canada last year, gave me no small thanks for the results of the election of 1836. But all that ceased within a week after my return to Canada.... And why? Because I availed myself of the first opportunity after my return to submit and press upon Sir Francis and the Attorney-General and others, the importance and necessity of an early and equitable settlement of the clergy reserve question, in order to satisfy the expectations of thousands who had voted for constitutional candidates.... The very moment it was seen that my views and intentions on that subject remained unchanged, I saw a change in the expression of countenances. Sir Francis, indeed, never thanked me, for [the letters]; he wished me to say nothing about the clergy reserve question; and within four weeks sent a calumniating letter against me to Lord Glenelg; and the Attorney-General, so far from remembering the estimate he professed (on my return from England) to place upon my services to the Province, sought last winter to get a clause inserted in the Report of the Select Committee on the Upper Canada Academy, impugning my motives and exonerating Sir Francis from the allegations contained in my petition (see page 180), without even investigating its merits, etc.Return to passage
[93] In a letter to a friend, in January, 1838, Dr. Ryerson relates an amusing incident which was characteristic of Sir Allan MacNab's love of a bit of fun. He said:--In conversation one day with Mr. Speaker MacNab, he gravely proposed to me that I should meet Archdeacon Strachan and a clergyman of the Church of Scotland; and for him and other members of the Assembly to hear us put forth our respective claims to the clergy reserves, and for them to say a word now and then if they liked. After having heard the parsons argue the point, some member was to bring such a measure before the Assembly, as we three should propose. This rather amusing way of settling the question was evidently by way of a joke, so I made no objection to it. He is to inform me of the time and place for the argument, after having consulted the other parties concerned; but I shall hear no more of it!Return to passage
[94] The cause of this apathy will be apparent from the narrative in chapter xxxi., and the note on page 225.Return to passage
[95] In their address they designated themselves as the Bishop, Archdeacons, and Clergy of the Established Church of Upper Canada; but Sir George Arthur, in his reply, addressed them as the Bishop, Archdeacons, and Clergy of the established Church of England in Upper Canada.Return to passage
Chapter XXX
1838-1839.
The Ruling Party and the Reserves.--"Divide et Impera."
In dealing with so large and influential a body as the Methodists, made up, as it was years ago, of two distinct elements, somewhat antagonistic to each other, it can easily be understood that the more astute among the high church or "family compact" party clearly saw that their only hope of success in the clergy reserve controversy was by taking advantage of the presence of this antagonistic element in the Methodist body, and to turn it to practical account against Dr. Ryerson, so as to checkmate him in the contest. Queen Elizabeth's motto: Divide et impera, was therefore adopted. And every effort was made to intensify the feelings and widen the breach which already existed between the two sections of the Methodists. This was the more easily done by the appeal which was made to the national prejudices of Methodists of British origin, as against the alleged republican tendency of their colonial brethren.[96] In this effort the ruling party were publicly and privately aided by members of the Missionary Committee in London. To discuss this question now would be practically useless. None but actors in the scenes and conflicts of those times could realize the strong, even bitter, feelings which existed in the chief towns between the two parties at the time. Cherished sentiments of loyalty, strong home feelings, and orthodox Methodist principles, were appealed to, and alternately asserted their influence on opposite sides in the contest.
Added to the difficulty which Dr. Ryerson experienced in conducting the clergy reserve controversy was the fact, that many Methodists of British origin fully sympathized with the claims of the old national and historical Church of England--they held that it was ipso facto the "established" church in every British Colony, as often asserted by the Missionary party.
As the clergy reserve question gradually became the absorbing topic of discussion in the country (with Dr. Ryerson as one of the chief leaders in that discussion), it was natural that so important a matter should receive the attention of Conference. This it did at an early date. In 1837 strong resolutions were passed upon the subject, which excited much uneasiness among the English Missionary party. The Rev. W. H. Harvard, President of the Conference, in writing to Dr. Ryerson on the subject after Conference, said:--
Since I came away from the Conference, I have been greatly concerned as to the anti-church impression likely to be made on the mind of our people by our recent resolutions of Conference; and I would fain engage your interest with Rev. E. Evans, our Editor, to accompany them with some saving paragraph on the general principle of an establishment which may keep our people from the danger of imbibing the principle of dissent, the operation of which will always foster a religious radicalism in our body, and the influence of which our fathers at home strongly deprecate. I think with you, that in the altered circumstances of our Colonial relations, we have reason to plead for concessions of equality of rights and privileges which would never be granted in the Mother Country. In that respect I do not dissent from the spirit of the resolutions. But I more and more think and feel that there is a middle path of respectful deference to the principle of an establishment even in the Colonies, which, so modified, would not be injurious, but rather helpful, to our good cause,--and which is a vantage ground on which none of our enemies could touch us. It is true, that from Wesleyan high quarters you have had encouragement to believe an independent stand against Church domination would not be disapproved; yet even there a denial of the principle of an establishment (or that the Government should profess some one form of Christianity, with equal privileges to other Christians) would meet with reprobation; and if not, who does not see, if we take that anti-Wesleyan ground, it may involve the question of Wesleyan consistency on our part, while at the same time it would be in danger of throwing our people into the arms of the Radical-popish-infidel faction, where they will, bear like, be hugged till the breath of piety is pressed out of them. Of course, it would drive away from our congregations many of those pious or well-disposed Church people who occasionally mingle with and derive good from us. It was Mr. Wesley's conviction that the Methodists were in part raised up to spread scriptural holiness in the Church of England, as well as in the world at large. I must repeat my wish, that you had yielded to my suggestion to admit into the resolution the phrases, "that the principle of an establishment should be so administered in this Province as to secure perfect equality of rights and privileges among all other communities."
You may have ulterior views which I am too short-sighted to perceive. But I am fully convinced, that if the Guardian does not save us from identification with dissent from the Church of England at this crisis, the real friends of our Zion will bitterly deplore it another day.[97]
Here was a broad and distinct declaration of principle, as fully in harmony with the views of the dominant party as they were entirely opposed to those held by the Canadian Conference party. They were perfectly sincere, too, and were uttered by one of the most moderate, and yet most thoroughly representative agents of the British Missionary party in this Province. It can be easily seen how tempting an opportunity it was for the ruling party to foster this feeling amongst the English Missionary section of Methodists, by strong appeals to their well-known loyalty--their respect and love for the old mother-church, which John Wesley so venerated. Even condescension and flattery were employed. The Church and other newspapers made appeals with tact and ability[98] (see page 236); the Lieutenant Governor himself took the trouble to address a letter on the subject direct to the Missionary Committee in London, and Archdeacon Strachan never failed to single out for respectful mention and commendation the representatives of the British Missionary party in Canada, as distinguished from the "disloyal and republican section of the Methodists."[99]
Referring to this period, Rev. John Ryerson, in his Historical Recollections of Methodism (as annotated by Dr. Ryerson) informs us that--
After aiding to suppress the rebellion, the Guardian resumed the discussion of the clergy reserve question, and insisted that it should be settled. But nothing was farther from the thoughts of Dr. Strachan and Sir George Arthur. They contended that the mooting of the question at such a time was evidence of disloyalty on the part of those who were endeavouring to despoil the Church of its lawful rights. The Editor of the Guardian (Dr. Ryerson) was threatened with personal violence, with prosecution, and banishment. Yet the Guardian kept on the even tenor of its way; and in proportion to the fury of the monopolists, did the Editor increase his exertions to wrest from them their unjust gains. Then the oppressors of equal rights, seeing that nothing else would do, called into requisition the old craft to divide the Methodists, or, by other influences, to coercively control them.
Sir George Arthur, the amanuensis of Dr. Strachan in these matters, wrote to the Missionary Committee in London of the evil and disturbing doings of the Guardian, and called on them for their interference. This flattering appeal received a very complimentary reply. The Committee also wrote to their missionary agents in Canada, directing them to interpose and arrest the unjustifiable course of the Guardian. The objection was that the paper "had become party-political;" that "its course was disquieting to the country, and disreputable to Wesleyan Methodism," ... etc. It is not denied (adds Rev. J. Ryerson), that the Guardian at this time was very political for a religious journal....
On this Dr. Ryerson remarked--
It is true, as my brother has intimated, that the Guardian was "very political," because the Editor was intensely in earnest on the great object for which he had been elected by the Conference.... The times of his former proposed conciliations and compromises were now past. He felt the awfulness of the crisis and the responsibility of his position. The Reform party had been crushed by the rebellion of 1837, and the Reform press silenced; there was, in fact, no Reform party. The high-church party thought that their day of absolute power and ecclesiastical monopoly had dawned. It had been agreed by Mr. W. L. Mackenzie and his fellow rebels ... that Egerton Ryerson [should be their first victim]. He alone stood above successful calumny by the high-church party, and backed as he was by his Canadian Methodist brethren, he determined to defend to the last, the citadel of Canadian liberty....
He knew that, as in a final struggle for victory between two armies, when that victory was trembling in the scales, the wavering of a single battalion on either side might animate and decide victory in favour of the enemy; so a compromising sentence or ambiguous word from the Editor might rouse the high-church party to increased confidence and action, and proportionally weaken the cause of civil and religious liberty in Upper Canada. The Editor of the Guardian had no fear, and he evinced none.... I contended that all the political questions then pending had a direct or indirect bearing on this great question; ... that I would not be turned aside from the great object in view until it was obtained; that the real object of the Government and of the Missionary Committee was not so much to prevent the introduction of politics into the Guardian, as the discussion of the clergy reserve question itself, and of the equal religious rights of the people altogether, so that the high-church party might be left in peaceable possession of their exclusive privileges, and their unjust and immense monopolies, without molestation or dispute.
Rev. J. Ryerson adds: Had Dr. Ryerson "yielded to the dictation of Sir George Arthur's government, and the interference of the London Missionary Committee, one-seventh of the land of the Province might now be in the hands of the Church of England. But the course of the Guardian in this matter, however right, brought upon [the Canadian Methodist Church] calamities and sufferings of seven years' continuance."
About a month before the Conference of 1839 met, Sir George Arthur received a reply, by the hands of Dr. Alder, from the Missionary Committee in London (signed by Dr. Bunting and the other Secretaries), which he published in the Patriot newspaper. Dr. Ryerson inserted the letter in the Guardian of the 22nd May, with these remarks:--
We copy from the Patriot a letter, addressed by the Wesleyan Missionary Secretaries in London to Sir George Arthur, disclaiming "all participation in the views expressed in the Guardian on the ecclesiastical questions of this Province."
He then goes on to show that the views expressed in the Guardian were identical with those embodied in the proceedings of the Wesleyan Conference in Upper Canada from the beginning, and that they were explicitly avowed and understood by both parties at the time of the union of the Conferences in 1833.
The object of the publication of the letter was evidently twofold: 1st. To put a weapon into the hands of the friends of a dominant church in Upper Canada. 2nd. To paralyze the efforts of Dr. Ryerson to secure equal rights for all religious bodies, and thus to weaken his powerful influence as a champion of those rights.
It was a noticeable fact that all of the disclaimers from the British party first appeared in the Church of England organs, and were there triumphantly appealed to as the unbiassed expression of Methodist opinion from headquarters in England. In supplementing Rev. John Ryerson's Historical Narrative of events at this period, Dr. Ryerson stated, in substance, that:--
It was soon found that Sir George Arthur had thrown himself into the hands of the oligarchy on the question of the clergy reserves--he would not consent to have them applied to any other purpose than the support of the clergy, and was anxious to have them revested in the Crown. When Sir George's views and plans were brought before the Legislature, I opposed them. The Missionary Committee interposed (at Sir George's own request) and supported him on that question. However, Her Majesty's Government subsequently set aside the proceedings of Sir George Arthur, upon the very same grounds on which I had opposed them; but that made no difference in the feelings towards me of Dr. Alder and his colleagues.
Early in June, 1839, Dr. Alder addressed a letter to the Guardian, explaining and defending his views on church establishments. On the 12th of that month, Dr. Ryerson replied to him at length, and, at the close, put a series of questions to Dr. Alder. From the 2nd and 6th I make the following extracts:--
2. Are you satisfied that you are providentially called of God to attempt to make Methodism an agency in promoting a national establishment of religion in a new country, in the teeth of an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants?
6. Are you warranted from any writings or authority of Mr. Wesley to insist that, "under no circumstances," the principle of an establishment shall be abandoned?... Mr. Wesley and his coadjutors have left it on record, in the minutes of their Conference, as their deliberate judgment, that "there is no instance of, or ground at all for, a national church in the New Testament;" that they "apprehended it to be a merely political institution." How can any true Wesleyan convert that into a matter of faith and religious principle for which Mr. Wesley declared there "was no instance or ground at all in the New Testament?" ... I know that the local Executive is most intent to secure the aid of the Missionary Committee to support the recent re-investment act of spoliation; I believe that your letter ... emboldened and encouraged them in the re-investment scheme, and His Excellency stated some months since that he had written for you to come to this country; they think that they can bargain with you upon more advantageous terms than they can with the Methodist Conference in this Province, but I entreat you to pause before you proceed to insist that that which Mr. Wesley declares ... to be "a merely political institution," forms any part of Wesleyan Methodism.[100]
Dr. Ryerson's account of what transpired at the ensuing Conference is in substance as follows:--
Dr. Alder attended the Conference at Hamilton, June, 1839, and introduced resolutions expressive of his views, to which he insisted upon the concurrence of the Conference. The resolutions were discussed for three days. On the last day Dr. Ryerson replied, after which the resolutions were negatived by a vote of 55 to 5.[101]
At the same Conference Dr. Ryerson was appointed secretary, by a vote of 41 to 14. But it was in regard to the election of Editor that the greatest interest was taken, not so much amongst the Canadian section of the Methodist people as amongst the members of other religious bodies. The Guardian stated:--
For the last two months the several provincial journals have renewed their efforts of vehement vituperation against the Editor; ... they have sought and hoped to create a division in the ranks of the Methodist family, and, by thus dividing, to conquer; they even triumphed by anticipation--so much so, that the Editor of The Church oracularly predicted the speedy release of the Editor of the Guardian from his editorial duties.
The chagrin which was felt by these parties can be well imagined when the ballot announced that Dr. Ryerson had been re-elected editor, by a vote of 60 to 13! Speaking of this memorable triumph, Dr. Ryerson declared that:--
Never before did I receive, directly or indirectly, so many unequivocal testimonies of respect and confidence, not merely from the Methodist Church at large, but also from members of other churches.
In the meantime (as Dr. Ryerson stated elsewhere) the discussion on the question of a dominant church monopoly and party ... proscription waxed hotter and hotter; ... rumours prevailed of a change of Governors in Upper Canada; the high church party felt that this was their time, and perhaps their last chance to confirm their absolute power.... Under these circumstances, I stated to the Conference that the moment that the clergy reserve and other questions affecting our constitutional and just rights as British Canadian subjects, and as a religious body, were adjusted, we ought to abstain entirely from any discussions in reference to civil affairs. When Dr. Alder's resolutions were rejected by our Conference, one prepared by myself was agreed to, as follows:--
While this Conference has felt itself bound to express its sentiments on the question of an ecclesiastical establishment in this Province, and our constitutional and religious rights and privileges, and our determination to maintain them, we disclaim any intention to interfere with the merely secular, party-politics of the day.
This resolution, as it afterwards appeared, did not go far enough to meet the wishes and designs of Dr. Alder. He, therefore, brought the matter before the Book Committee, Toronto, in October, 1839. To that Committee he stated at length his decided objection to the course pursued by the Guardian since Conference as "a violation of the known design of the resolution adopted by it." Dr. Ryerson, while fully justifying the course which he had pursued, nevertheless tendered to the Committee his resignation as Editor. The Committee, however, instructed Rev. William Case to write to him as follows:--
By request of the Book Committee, I beg leave to communicate the result of their deliberations on the subject of your proffered resignation of the editorship of the Guardian. "Resolved, That the Committee do not feel themselves at liberty to accept of the resignation of the Editor of the Guardian, and that he be affectionately requested to withdraw it, and to continue his services in accordance with the deliberately framed regulations of the Committee until the ensuing Conference, the regulations to which he objects having been adopted, not for the purpose of reflecting in any way upon the Editor; and that we assure him that we have the utmost confidence in his ability, his integrity, and his anxious desire to promote the best interests of the Connexion."
Dr. Ryerson withdrew his resignation at the time, but resolved to press it at the next Conference. This he did; and peremptorily declined re-election at the Conference of 1840--in fact other and more serious matters were pressed upon him. He thus finally retired from the editorship of the paper which he had established in 1829, and which he had made such a power in Upper Canada. He justly felt that, with the enlarged Methodist constituency which the Guardian at this time represented, it would be impossible for him, while great questions remained unsettled, to harmonize the conflicting opinions on politico-religious matters which were then held by opposite and influential sections of the Methodist Church. He clearly foresaw further conflict on these and other inter-connexional subjects, and was, therefore, the more anxious to free himself from the unwise, official trammels, which a hostile, anti-Canadian and unpatriotic party sought to impose upon him--single-handed as he was. He longed for more congenial work. He also felt that literary freedom was essential to him in his thorough and practical discussion of the all absorbing questions of the day.[102] This it was well known he could do, in dealing with these questions, not only on their own merits, but with the comprehensive grasp which his enlarged experience, intuitive clearness of perception, and naturally statesmanlike views on grave public questions, eminently qualified him for.
As an illustration of the acknowledged ability, fairness, and conclusiveness of argument with which he dealt with questions which touched the sensibilities and even prejudices of leading members of the British Missionary party in Canada, it is a striking fact that when these gentlemen were not under the direct and potent influence of the Mission House, they were Dr. Ryerson's personal friends, and gave him an active support. This was particularly the case with the late Rev. Dr. Stinson, a man of noble and generous impulses; Rev. W. H. Harvard, always kind and courteous; Rev. Dr. Richey, a man of much refinement and culture, and others. In the important crisis of 1838, both Dr. Stinson and Dr. Richey voted for Dr. Ryerson as Editor. The former wrote a strong letter urging his appointment as Editor. (Page 201.) The latter, on his way to Halifax, after the Conference of 1839, wrote from Montreal to Dr. Ryerson, as follows:--
Sir John Colborne, on whom I called, and by whom I was graciously received, is delighted with the continuance of the Union. So are all our Montreal friends, after my explanations. They will immediately order the Guardian. Sir John paid a handsome tribute to your talents, as who with whom I conversed did not? however they might happen to view your course. They all say you commenced admirably,--that the moment the paper passed into your hands, it manifestly improved; and they all approve of your course for the last six months, just about as well as you know I do. Adhere most religiously, my dear brother, to the spirit and letter of the resolutions, by which the Conference has expressed its will that you should be guided. Your friend Joseph Howe[103] begins, I perceive, to mingle with tories, as they are invidiously designated. I do not wish you to be a tory; and I will not insult you by expressing a desire that you were a high conservative.
I do not flatter you in saying, that on no man in Upper Canada does the peace of our Church and of the Province so much depend, as on yourself. May all your powers be employed for good! Guard against the fascination of political fame. It will do no more for you on a dying bed than it did for Cardinal Wolsey. O! that your fine mind were fully concentrated upon the [Greek: politeuma] of Heaven!
FOOTNOTES:
[96] Dr. Ryerson, in the Guardian of October 31, 1838, says:--Five columns of The Church, of the 20th ult., are occupied with an appeal to the old country Methodists, to induce them to oppose the Conference and Connexion in this Province in the clergy reserve question. The Cobourg Star follows in the wake of The Church, in the same pious crusade. The Patriot of the 26th inst. also copies the schismatic appeal of The Church.Return to passage
[97] Even Rev. J. Stinson (who heartily sympathized in many things with the Canadian Methodists), in a letter to Dr. Ryerson, written in February, 1839, said:--I have read your address to Hon. W. H. Draper, on the clergy reserve question, with considerable attention; and while there is much in it which I admire, I must honestly tell you, en passant, that it contains more against the principle of an establishment in this Colony than I like.Return to passage
[98] Not satisfied with these strong appeals in the newspapers, resort was had to personal ones, made to leading members of the missionary party. In a kind and yet candid letter which Dr. Ryerson received in November, 1838, Rev. Joseph Stinson says:--I sincerely sympathize with you in your present perplexing and trying circumstances. I heard to-day that some of the dominant church champions are appealing to me to array myself against you. They may save themselves the trouble of making such appeals. Whenever I have differed in opinion with you, I have told you so, and shall do so again,--but shall never, unless you become a revolutionist, either directly or indirectly sanction any factious opposition to you. I think, as Wesleyan Methodists, we ought, openly and fearlessly, to advocate the righteous claims of our own Church; but we ought to do it without detracting from the merits or opposing the interests of that Church which is so closely connected with our Government, as is the Church of England. I know that the exclusive spirit--the arrogant pretentiousness--the priestly insolence--the anti-Christian spirit of certain members of that Church richly deserves chastisement.... I know that your public services have been undervalued; your faults have been shamefully exaggerated; your motives have been misrepresented; your influence (connected as you are with a large and influential body of Christians) is feared, and your enemies are as bitter as Satan can make them; but, if you are conscious that, in the sight of God, you are aiming at the right object, why not leave your cause in His hands? why so frequently appeal to the people? You may not see it; but there is a recklessness in your mode of writing, sometimes, which is really alarming, and for which many of the members of the Conference of our Society do not like to be responsible. I know well, that the acts of the high church party are far more likely to excite rebellion than your writings. There is a strong, a very strong, feeling against a dominant Church; but a majority of the Province would rather have that, and connection with Great Britain, than republicanism.Return to passage
[99] On the other hand, the Editor of The Church thus sketched Dr. Ryerson:--As The promoter, if not originator, of prejudices of indigenous growth, against the Church of England, and as the thoughtless scatterer of the seeds of political error and of antipathy to the national church. Notwithstanding these counteracting influences, the Editor does not despair of seeing the day when Methodists in Canada will join with Churchmen in vindicating the Church's right to the property of the reserves, which will enable them to plant the established church in every corner of these Provinces. And this they will do, not upon the ground merely of filial partiality, but on the most rational security for the permanence and purity of our Protestant faith, etc. Under these circumstances, Dr. Ryerson said:--Return to passage
I have felt it due to the Guardian connexion to enter my protest against the claims of the Episcopal Church, and to combat and explain the opinion of my English brethren as not those prevalent in this Province.
A lengthened communication, embodying those views, appearing on page 109 of the Guardian of May 16th, 1838.
[100] With a view to increase the clamour against the Editor of the Guardian on this subject, Mr. Alex. Davidson, writing to Dr. Ryerson from Niagara, said:--Dr. Alder's letter to you had been printed and circulated there in the form of a hand-bill. Mr. E. C. Griffin, of Waterdown, writing from Hamilton on the same subject, said: I have learned from brother Edward Jackson what are the feelings of the Society in Hamilton, respecting the letter of Dr. Alder. He says, that if the leaders' meeting is any index of the views of the entire Society here, they are a "unit" to a man (except the preacher) in their determination to support you in your principles and proceedings.Return to passage
[101] The following incident in connection with this vote is mentioned by Dr. Ryerson: Dr. Alder (he said) appeared disappointed and depressed; and, after the close of the Conference I said to him: Dr. Alder, you see how entirely you have mistaken the state of Canadian society, and the views and feelings of the Methodist people. Now, I do not wish that you should return to England a defeated and disgraced man. I purpose to write a short editorial for the Guardian, stating that the differences and misunderstandings which had arisen, after having been carefully considered and fully discussed, were adjusted in an amicable spirit, and the unity of the Church maintained inviolate. Dr. Alder appeared delighted and thankful beyond expression. I prepared the editorial. Dr. Alder used and interpreted this editorial on his return to England, to show that the Canadian Conference and its Editor had acceded to all of his demands, and that he had been completely successful in his mission to Canada! The English Committee adopted resolutions complimentary to Dr. Alder in consequence; but I did not imagine that Dr. Alder's fictitious representation of the results of his mission would afterwards be made the ground of charges against myself!Return to passage
[102] Dr. Ryerson gave full expression to these views in a letter addressed to the Governor-General in April, 1840. (See chapter xxxiii., page 266.)Return to passage
[103] See letter from Mr. Howe to Dr. Ryerson on page 258.Return to passage
Chapter XXXI
1839.
Strategy in the Clergy Reserve Controversy.
The year 1839 was somewhat noted for the prolonged and animated discussions which took place in and out of the Legislature on the clergy reserve question. There were some new features in the discussion of the preceding year which had their effect on the clergy reserve legislation of that year. And while they partially ceased to be influential in the discussions of 1839, yet the legislation of that year was practically brought to the same issue as that of 1838, only that it was more decisive. It may be interesting, therefore, to refer to these special features in the discussion of 1838-9.
The first was the final change of tactics on the part of the leaders of the Church of England party in the contest. The second was the persistent and personal efforts which Lieutenant Governor Arthur put forth in behalf of that party, so as to enable them to accomplish their object, and, at the same time, to counteract the efforts of those who were seeking to uphold Canadian and popular rights. The third was (as shown in the last chapter) the plan adopted to foment discord in the Methodist body--which was by far the most formidable opponent of the scheme of monopoly and aggrandisement which the ruling party was seeking to promote.
At this distance of time it is easy to survey the whole field of conflict, and to note the plans and strategies of the combatants. Although efforts had hitherto been made to shift the battle-ground from Upper Canada to England, yet, as the Colonial Secretary had discouraged such efforts as unwise, and as an unnecessary interference with the rights of the Provincial Legislature, the matter was not openly pressed in 1839. Nor was it pressed at all to a conclusion in 1838. For, by a singular coincidence, the very day (29th December, 1837) on which Mr. Cartwright had moved to bring a bill into the House of Assembly to revest the clergy reserve in Her Majesty, Sir George Grey penned a despatch to Sir George Arthur, in which he disclaimed, on behalf of the Imperial Government, any wish or intention to interfere, in the settlement of the clergy reserve question, with the functions of the Provincial Legislature, on the ground that--
Such interference would tend to create a not unreasonable suspicion of the sincerity with which the Legislature have been invited to the exercise of the power [to vary or repeal] reserved to them on this subject by the Constitutional Act of 1791.
It is likely that the publication of this despatch prevented the House of Assembly from proceeding any farther with Mr. Cartwright's bill, than ordering it to a second reading on the 26th February, 1838. In this dilemma the ruling party were evidently at a loss how to act. It required much tact and skill to break the ranks of the chief forces arrayed against the scheme to revest the reserves in the Crown--a scheme distasteful to Canadians generally, and subversive of the legislative independence of Upper Canada. Two methods were therefore adopted: The first was to divide the Methodists (as shown in the last chapter). The second and more astute one was to appeal to the professed loyalty of that class which hitherto had been held up to scorn as disloyal, and denounced as republican in its tendencies, as well as seditious in their conduct. The appeal was varied in form, but it was in substance that as those who made it were not themselves afraid to trust their interests in the hands of the Sovereign, their opponents should be equally trustful in the equal and entire justice which would be meted out to all of her Canadian subjects.[104] This appeal, from its very speciousness, and the skill with which it was pressed, had its effect in many cases. But, as a general rule, it failed. The object of the decisive change of tactics was too transparent to deceive the more sensible and thoughtful men to whom the appeal was addressed.
The two other methods adopted (already referred to) were only partially successful; but the three combined, no doubt, strengthened the hands of the advocates of the scheme for the re-investment of the reserves in the Crown. They, however, ceased to press the matter upon public attention, being determined to bide their time, and (as events proved), to carry their point in another and more skilful way.
In the meantime, and early in 1839, Dr. Ryerson was deputed by several important circuits to present loyal addresses to Sir George Arthur. This he did on the 2nd February; and in enclosing them to the Governor's secretary, used language which sounds strange in these days of religious equality. He said:--
I feel myself fully authorized, by various communications and my official position, to assure His Excellency that the members of the Wesleyan Methodist Church will not be contented with subordinate civil standing to any other church, any more than the members of the Church of Scotland. They do not, and never have asked for any peculiar advantages; but they feel that upon the principles of justice, by labours, by usefulness, by character, by numbers, and by the principles laid down in royal despatches, they are entitled, in the eye of the law, and in the administration of an impartial government, to equal consideration, and equal advantages with any other church. I am confident that I but state a simple fact, when I express our belief that the Methodist Church, in its doctrines, ministry, and institutions, furnishes as formidable a barrier against the irreligion and infidelity of the times as any other section of Protestantism. Nor is it possible for us--notwithstanding our unfeigned respect for His Excellency--to feel ourselves under any obligations to tender our support to another section of the Protestant Church, whose clergy, in this Province, collectively, officially, and individually (with solitary exceptions), have resisted the attainment of every civil and religious privilege we now enjoy--have twice impeached our character and principles before the Imperial Government--who deny the legitimacy of our ministry, who, in their doctrines respecting Church polity, and several points of faith, do not represent the doctrines of the Church of England, or of the established clergy in England as a body, but that section only of the established clergy that have associated with all arbitrary measures of government against various classes of Protestant non-conformists which have darkened the page of British history, and also the dark ages, notions of rites and ceremonies, and the conductor of whose official organ in this Province has recently represented the Methodist ministry as the guilty cause of those divine chastisements under the influence of which our land droops and mourns. I am sure my brethren, as well as myself, freely forgive the great wrongs thus perpetrated against us; but we feel ourselves equally bound in duty to ourselves, to our country, and to our common Christianity, to employ all lawful means to prevent such exclusive, repulsive, and proscriptive sentiments from acquiring anything more than equal protection in the Province.
I might appeal to circumstances within His Excellency's knowledge, to show that from 1836 to the close of the last session of our Provincial Parliament, I have spared no pains--without the remotest view to personal or even Methodistic advantage--to second, to the utmost of my humble ability, any plan to which the Province might, under all circumstances, be induced to concur, in order to settle the protracted controversy on the clergy reserve question; and that it has not been, until I have had indubitable proofs that there was no disposition or intention on the side of the Episcopal clergy to yield a single iota any further than they were compelled. It was not until all these circumstances had transpired, that we reluctantly determined to appeal against the exclusive and unjust pretensions of the Episcopal clergy, to the bar of public opinion--a power recognized by our free constitution, and which no party or administration can successfully resist many years.
The reply of the Governor was friendly and conciliatory; but in it he expresses his
Surprise to find that his appeal on a late occasion to the Wesleyan Methodists, to give the Church of England their most cordial support, had been misunderstood and construed into an expression of sectarian preference. By inviting the Methodists to such a course of conduct, His Excellency thought that he was only appealing to a feeling of attachment for the Church of England, which he had always been induced to consider--especially from personal observation--as a badge of "legitimate Wesleyan Methodists" all over the world.
Dr. Ryerson in his remarks on this reply, said:--
The questions at issue about the clergy reserves do not involve the principle of "attachment for the Church of England" from the well known fact that many respectable members of that Church, in every district throughout the Province, concur in the views advocated in the Guardian on that question--therefore an appeal to "attachment for the Church of England" as the rule of judgment in this controversy, much less as a "badge of legitimate Wesleyan Methodists," is the very climax of absurdity.
The discussions on the clergy reserve question up to the time when the House reassembled (27th February, 1839), must have convinced the dominant party that it was, and ever would be, hopeless, in the face of the determined opposition which their schemes encountered, to obtain that which they wanted from the local legislature. They could not again openly bring in a bill (as they did last year) to revest the reserves in the Crown, in the face of the declarations of the Colonial Secretary, that--
Imperial Parliamentary Legislation on any subject of exclusively internal concern, in any British colony possessing a representative assembly is, as a general rule, unconstitutional. It is a right of which the exercise is reserved for extreme cases, in which necessity at once creates and justifies the exception. (Lord Glenelg to Sir F. B. Head, 5th December, 1835.)
They therefore adopted what events proved to be a ruse, to accomplish their object. It is true that Sir George Arthur, in his opening speech, urged that--
The settlement of this vitally important question ought not to be longer delayed.... I confidently hope, that if the claims of contending parties be advanced ... in a spirit of moderation and Christian charity, the adjustment of them by you will not prove insuperably difficult.
The Governor then adroitly added--
But, should all your efforts for the purpose unhappily fail, it will then only remain for you to re-invest the reserves in the hands of the Crown, and to refer the appropriation of them to the Imperial Parliament, as a tribunal free from those local influences and excitements which may operate too powerfully here.
Both Houses, in apparent good faith, sought to carry out the wishes of the Governor as expressed in the first part of his speech. The managers of the scheme indicated in the latter part of the speech initiated a totally different bill in each House, apparently liberal and comprehensive in character, but yet objectionable in detail. Dr. Ryerson felt this so strongly that he petitioned to be heard at the Bar of the House of Assembly against the bill which had been introduced into it. His request was at first granted on the 7th April, by a vote of 24 to 22, but afterwards refused by a vote of 21 to 17. After protracted debates in the House of Assembly and about forty-four divisions, that House sent up its bill to the Legislative Council for concurrence. The Council struck out the whole of the bill after the word "whereas," and substituted one of its own, and in turn sent it down to the House of Assembly for concurrence. That House, not to be outdone by the other, struck out the whole of the Legislative Council bill, and substituted a bill of its own, totally different from the one first sent up to the Legislative Council, the last clause of which read as follows:--
The moneys to arise, and to be procured and henceforth received for any sale or sales [of clergy reserve lands] shall be paid into the hands of Her Majesty's Receiver-General of this Province, to be appropriated by the Provincial Legislature for religion and education.
The bill thus constructed needed but the alteration of the last five words to adapt it admirably to the object and purpose of the Church party. The Legislative Council, therefore, changed the concluding words in the last clause into the words "Imperial Parliament for religious purposes." In this apparently simple way, but in reality, fundamental manner--and without any attempt at a conference between the Houses, with a view to adjust differences--the Legislative Council, taking advantage of a comparatively thin House of Assembly, made the desired change on the last day of the session. By adroit manoeuvring the agents of the Church party carried the bill in the House of Assembly thus altered. In this way they succeeded in destroying the whole object of the bill, as passed by the House of Assembly. Sir George Arthur, in his despatch to the Colonial Secretary, virtually admitted that the passage of the altered bill was due to the fact that it was carried in the House of Assembly by a majority of one vote [22 to 21], in a House of 44 members, and at a late hour on the night preceding the prorogation!
Such were the discreditable circumstances under which the bill re-investing the clergy reserves in the Crown was passed. It, however, required the assent of the Queen before it became law. This it was destined never to receive, owing to a technical objection raised in England in the following October, that such a delegation to the Imperial Parliament could not be made by a subordinate authority. This defeat, however, proved to be a moral victory for the vanquished, as it gave them time for farther deliberation; it incited them to greater caution in their mode of warfare, and induced them to adopt tactics of a more secret and, as it proved, effective character.
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.Return to passage
Chapter XXXII
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 Assembly, on 11th May, 1839. On the 14th Sir George Arthur sent the bill to Lord Normanby (successor to Lord Glenelg) for Her Majesty's assent, 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 Assembly 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 Assembly 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 Assembly, 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 circumstances 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 petition 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 embarrassed 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 classes 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 constitutional 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 passions; 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 institution 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 Assembly 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 constitutionally, 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 constitutional 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 shores; 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 petition 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 petition 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 petition for what has been guaranteed to the constituencies 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 accumulated wrongs to the last farthing.
It is, of course, my good or bad fortune to be assailed from week to week, whether I write or not.... I am no theorist. I advocate no change in the Constitution 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 Constitution. I desire nothing more than the free and impartial administration of that Constitution for the benefit of all classes 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 passage 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 unconstitutional exercise of the office of royalty has been employed by His Excellency to influence the public mind, and the decisions of our constitutional tribunals on pending and debatable questions between equally loyal and deserving classes 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 passing 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 embarrassed 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 constitutional 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 assent 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 petition for presentation to the Queen and the British Parliament[105] containing the following statement and request:--
"Your petitioners, 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 constitution 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 petition 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 petition, 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 constitutional Act (which was invoked as though it had existed long before that date), was not passed 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 Assembly 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
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.Return to passage
[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."Return to passage
[107] It should be noted, in connection with this petition, 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 petitions 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 assent 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.)Return to passage
Chapter XXXIII
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 illustrates 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 Assembly 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 constitution 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 class 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 assiduously 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 mass 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 assistance, 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 Assembly, 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 associated.
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 Constitution (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 pass 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 assistance. [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 constitutional 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 passed in the House of Assembly, 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:
Feeling that the bill provides for the encouragement and propagation of error; inflicts the grossest injustice by robbing and plundering the National Church; that it attempts to destroy all distinction between truth and falsehood; that its anti-Christian tendencies lead directly to infidelity, and will reflect disgrace on the Legislature, I give it my unqualified opposition.
The Bishop again utters his prediction, and stated that what he wanted would be secured in England. He said--
At the same time I have no fear of its ever becoming law. But it may be useful, for its monstrous and unprincipled provisions will teach the Imperial Government the folly of permitting a Colonial Legislature to tamper with those great and holy principles of the Constitution, on the preservation of which the prosperity and happiness of the British Empire must ever depend.
Although it was almost impossible to reason with any one who would deliberately use such extravagant language, yet Dr. Ryerson replied to the Bishop's statements seriatim. With a touch of irony, he said:--
After penning such an effusion, the Bishop might well betake himself to the Litany of his Church, and pray the good Lord to deliver him--from all blindness of heart; from pride, vain glory and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness.
The fate of the bill is thus described in a statement on the subject, prepared by Dr. Ryerson. What he details clearly reveals the powerful and sympathetic influences which the Bishop of Toronto was able successfully to bring to bear upon "Henry of Exeter"--the then leader of the Bench of Bishops,--and, through him, upon the other Bishops in the House of Lords. Besides, Sir John Colborne (now Lord Seaton) took strong ground in the House of Lords in favour of the views of his old friend, Bishop Strachan, and aided the English Bishops in giving them practical effect. Thus the reiterated prophecy of the Bishop of Toronto was not uttered without abundant foreknowledge. It proved too true. Knowing this, he no doubt felt free to deal in strong language, both against the Legislature of Upper Canada, and the members of the Church of England in both Houses, who were too patriotic, just and reasonable, as well as far-seeing, to second his efforts to aggrandize the Church at the expense, and against the strongly-expressed and oft-repeated wishes, of the majority of the people, of Upper Canada. He said:
On the bill being sent to England (accompanied by a most energetic despatch from the Governor-General, imploring Her Majesty's Government not to disallow, but to sanction it), the Bishop of Exeter moved in the House of Lords, that the question of the right to the clergy reserve property in Canada should be referred to the twelve Judges of England; but the decision of the Judges having proved adverse to the exclusive pretensions of the Bishop of Exeter and his party in England and Canada, the English Bishops then conferred with Lord John Russell, in order to set aside Lord Sydenham's Canadian bill, and introduce one into the Imperial Parliament which would accomplish as far as possible the objects aimed at by referring the question to the Judges. Lord John Russell became a consenting party and agent in this unconstitutional act of injustice and spoliation against the rights and feelings of a large majority of the people of Upper Canada. It was against this act that Messrs. W. and E. Ryerson (then in England), on behalf of the Wesleyan Church in Canada, remonstrated in an elaborate and strongly-worded letter to Lord John Russell--the only communication of the kind made by any religious body in Canada against the bill while it was before the British Parliament, or for several years afterwards.
Knowing the strong influences which had been brought to bear upon Mr. Poulett Thompson against Dr. Ryerson, by Sir George Arthur (page 193), and against the Methodist body generally by interested parties in this discussion, Dr. Ryerson addressed a letter to the Governor-General on the 25th March, 1840, in which he reviewed the course of the Guardian and his own attitude on public questions during the preceding ten years. The letter was evidently written with deep feeling, and under a keen sense of the injustice done to the Methodist people by means of the prolonged and persistent misrepresentation of these years. He said:--
I address your Excellency with feelings of the highest respect and strong affection. You are the first Governor of Canada who has exerted his personal influence and the authority of his station, to accomplish that in Upper Canada which has been avowed and promised by every Colonial-Secretary during the last ten years--framing enactments and administering the Government for the equal protection and benefit of all classes of Her Majesty's Canadian subjects.... In doing so, your Excellency has been told that you have patronized "republicans and rebels." ... The Guardian, which you have been pleased to honour with an expression of your approbation, has been charged with opposite crimes from different quarters.... You have been told that the ministers of the Wesleyan Methodist Church--whose rights you have justly and kindly consulted--have formerly come from the United States; and that the Guardian, during the first years of its existence, was nothing but a vehicle of radicalism, disaffection, and sedition.... As to the former, I may say that the Methodist ministers have not come from ... the United States during the last twenty years.... As to the latter, I furnish three columns of extracts from the Guardian, ... from which the following may be adduced:--
1. That in 1830 I entertained less friendship towards our American neighbours than I do in 1840.
2. That in 1830 I advocated the very principles in the administration of the Provincial Government that your Excellency has declared to be the basis of your administration in 1840.
3. That in 1830 I was as strongly opposed to an exclusive, or sectarian, spirit as I am in 1840.
4. That the very advice which I gave to the electors in 1830, as to their rights and interests, I could now repeat with a view to support your Excellency's administration.
5. That the very principles upon which your Excellency has commenced your administration, ... were actually promised and assured to the people of Upper Canada by a Tory Government in 1830.
In 1830 the Colonial-Secretary and Sir John Colborne proclaimed the "good laws and free institutions," and the non-preference system amongst religious denominations, which your Excellency is determined to carry into practice.... When the hopes created by these avowals have not only been deferred for these years, but those who have indulged these hopes have been maligned and proscribed for constitutionally seeking a realization of them, you cannot be surprised if many of their hearts have been made sick, and that confidence and hope has yielded to distrust and despair.
The Governor-General, through his private secretary, often requested Dr. Ryerson, while Editor of the Guardian, to correct misstatements which were made in regard to His Excellency's proceedings.[109]
After an interview with His Excellency, at his request, Dr. Ryerson, in a letter dated 4th April, 1840, made a practical suggestion as to the desirability of establishing the Monthly Review, as a means of disseminating the liberal views which he entertained in regard to the future government of this country, and also as an organ of public opinion in harmony with these views. It was at first proposed that Dr. Ryerson should edit the Review, but after fuller consideration of the matter he declined, and the editing and management of it was, at his suggestion, placed in the hands of John Waudby, Esq., Editor of the Kingston Herald. It was issued in Toronto early in 1841, but ceased on the death of Lord Sydenham, in September of that year. In Dr. Ryerson's letter to the Governor he said:--
About a fortnight after your Excellency left Toronto, I happened in the course of conversation with Hon. R. B. Sullivan to mention the subject of establishing a monthly periodical, such as I had mentioned to you. Mr. Sullivan was anxious that something of the kind should be undertaken; I stated to him that I understood that your Excellency would highly approve of such a publication, if it could be successfully established. Mr. Sullivan pressed me to prepare a prospectus and submit it for your Excellency's consideration. I drew up a prospectus, and got an estimate of the cost, covering all expenses. Mr. Sullivan fully concurred in the prospectus, except the first paragraph. He was afraid it might be construed into an expression of opinion in favour of "responsible Government," and proposed another paragraph in place of it. The one was as acceptable to me as the other. A feeling of apprehension and embarrassment at the responsibilities of such an undertaking, and the course of exertion which a successful accomplishment of it would require, has deterred me from forwarding, until now, the accompanying prospectus for your Excellency's perusal and signification of your pleasure thereon.[110]
I cannot but see that the public mind in this country is in a chaotic state, without any controlling current of feeling, or fixed principle of action, in civil affairs; but susceptible, by proper management and instruction, of being cast into any mould of rational opinion and feeling; yet liable, without judicious direction, to fall into a state of "confusion worse confounded." I know that now is the time--perhaps the only time--to establish our institutions and relations upon the cheapest, the surest, and the only permanent foundation of any system, or form of Government--the sentiments and feelings of the population. But I alone have not the means or the power of contributing to the accomplishment of these objects. To the utmost of my humble abilities and acquirements, I am willing to exert myself; and that without a shillings' remuneration--although my present salary is less than L200 per annum. I believe the government about to be established in these provinces may be made the most enduring and loftiest memorial of your Excellency's fame, and the greatest earthly blessing to its inhabitants; and it will be to me a source of satisfaction to contribute towards the formation and cementing of materials for the erection of a monument at once so honourable to its founder, and so beneficial to Her Majesty's Canadian subjects.
The personal influence of your Excellency in Lower Canada will be required to induce two or three of the cleverest men in Lower Canada to contribute to the columns of the Review; especially on questions and subjects which grow out of the state and structure of society in that province. Mr. Sullivan thinks he will be able to contribute one, if not two, articles for each number. I am acquainted with several other gentlemen who are competent to contribute very ably on some subjects. I know from experience that furnishing matter for any periodical, as well as giving it character, must chiefly devolve upon the conductor of it. He must give it soul, if it have any; he must combine, concentrate, and direct its power. And such a publication, got up under so high and favourable auspices, and properly conducted, and embodying the productions of the leading minds of both provinces, cannot fail to prove an engine of immense and even irresistible moral power in the country; and must materially contribute to its intellectual as well as political elevation.
As to my own views and feelings, I would greatly prefer retiring altogether from any connection with the press in all discussions of civil affairs in every shape and form, and I can consistently and honourably do so in June. But if this course be not justifiable in the present circumstances of the province; if it be deemed expedient for me still to take a part in public matters, I am sensible I ought to do more than I do now, or can do through the organ of a religious body. The relation, character and objects of the publication I now conduct, impose a restriction upon the topics and illustrations which are requisite to an effective discussion of political questions. Under such circumstances I can neither do justice to myself, nor to the subjects on which I occasionally remark, or might discuss.
I have felt the more disposed to make this communication, because your Excellency's avowed system and policy of Government is but carrying out and reducing to practice those views of civil polity in Canada which have guided my public life, as your Excellency will have observed from the articles and references which have appeared in the Guardian. I have been defeated and disappointed heretofore, because the local executive itself has been for the most part rather the head of a party, than the Government of the country, and the opposition, or "Reform" party, has often gone to equal extremes of selfishness and extravagance; so that I have occupied the unenviable and uncomfortable position of a sort of break-water--resisting and checking the conflicting waves of mutual party violence, convinced that the exclusive and absolute ascendancy of either party would be destructive of the ends of just Government, and public happiness; a position which, previously to your Excellency's arrival in Canada, I had determined to abandon, as I found myself possessed of no adequate means of accomplishing any permanent good by occupying it.
I think the appearance in this province of Lord John Russell's despatch on "Responsible Government" is timely. The "Reformers" are too fully committed to Government to fly off; and a large portion of the old "Conservative" party are glad of an excuse to change their position. Neither party can triumph, as both must concede something. This mutual concession will prepare the way for mutual forbearance, and ultimately for co-operation and union. Having perceived that the Editor of the Examiner was seeking, under the pretence of supporting the Government, to get a House of Assembly returned, consisting wholly of the old Reformers, who had identified themselves in 1834-5-6, with the Papineau party of Lower Canada, I thought it desirable to check such a design in the bud, by insisting upon the support of Hon. W. H. Draper, and that he should be returned upon the same grounds as those of Mr. Baldwin. The elucidation and description of this one case will affect the position of parties in the character of the elections throughout the province, and make them turn, not upon Lord Durham's "Report," or any of the old questions of difference, but upon your Excellency's administration. This, I have no doubt, with a little care, will, in most instances be the case. Thus will the members returned from Upper Canada, be isolated from the French anti-unionists of Lower Canada, and be more fully, both in obligation and feeling, identified with the Government. I have not, therefore, been surprised at the Examiner's indignation, as it is so ultra, and thorough a partizan, and as it has some discernment, though but little prudence.
In reply, the Private Secretary of the Governor-General said:
I am to express to you His Excellency's approbation of the plans you have suggested, and he desires me to say that he requests that you will visit Montreal, on your way to New York, as he is anxious to see you on the subject contained in your letter.
The Special Council meets this day for the first time.
The Secretary further added:--
His Excellency agrees that the line which you have taken is most judicious. There is no doubt that the gentleman to whom you refer is doing very great mischief both to Hon. Robert Baldwin and the Government, by the extremes to which he is pushing his cry for responsible government, and his opposition to Hon. W. H. Draper.
Dr. Ryerson (who was on his way to the General Conference at Baltimore) in a note, dated Montreal, 4th May, said:--
The Governor-General having kindly invited me to visit him and converse on matters relating to public affairs, I did so, and was most cordially received by him. I also had a long interview with him on Friday afternoon, and am desired to spend the evening with him on Saturday. His Excellency has given every requisite information as to his plans. I am thus enabled to accomplish the object of my visit far beyond what I expected when I left home.
In a letter from New York (dated 9th May) Dr. Ryerson said:--Much to my surprise to-day, while in New York on my way to Baltimore, I received a note from the Governor-General's Secretary, T. W. C. Murdoch, Esq., as follows:--
By direction of the Governor-General I send you the enclosed bill of exchange for L100 stg., the receipt of which I would request you to acknowledge.
You will have seen the English papers which hold out every prospect that both the Union and the Clergy Reserve Bills will be satisfactorily settled. I feel that I may congratulate you, and every friend of Canada, on such a result.
I acknowledged this kind and generous act, but at once returned the Bill of Exchange to His Excellency--at the same time respectfully assuring him, that under no circumstances could I receive anything for what I had done, or might do, to support the policy and administration of Her Majesty's Government, in the peculiar circumstances of the Province.
* * * * *
One of the chief points discussed in Upper Canada, in connection with the proposed union of the provinces, was the effect it would have on the Protestant character of the government and institutions of the county. Mr. John W. Gamble, a public man, and a leading member of the Church of England, in Vaughan, writing to Dr. Ryerson on the subject, said:--
I feel deeply the conviction that the time has now arrived when Protestants must sink all points of minor consideration, and unite in defence of our common faith. The union of the provinces will most assuredly result in giving not only a preponderance, but a large majority to the Roman Catholics in the united legislature; and this taken in conjunction with the plans now in operation for pouring a large Roman Catholic population into these provinces, surely ought not only to excite the fears, but rouse the energies of those who know and love the truth as it is in Jesus. I am altogether ignorant of your opinion upon the union question, but I call upon you as a Protestant to unite with me in endeavouring to avert the threatened calamity.
Mr. Gamble was for many years afterwards an earnest opponent in the Legislature of United Canada of the extension of the Separate School system in the province.
* * * * *
Although greatly enfeebled in health, yet Dr. Ryerson's Mother was enabled to write to him occasionally. In a letter written by her in 1839, after returning from seeing him, she said:--
I suppose you are anxious to know the state of my mind. I yet feel that the Lord is my trust, and I am waiting daily till my change come. I feel that when the "earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, I have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Dear Egerton, I feel very much as I did when I left you--a great deal of weakness. I am anxious to live to see you all once more, perhaps for the last time. Do not neglect to come up, one and all, as soon as convenient, if you only stay one day. When you come fetch some books, such as you think would be profitable for me, and one of your good-sized Bibles; also three of your likenesses. I thought that your Father had brought them up when he came. Do not fail to come up and see us. Don't let me be denied the happiness of seeing you soon.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] The organs of that party in Upper Canada spoke of Dr. Ryerson's advocacy of Lord Durham's reforms with far less courtesy, and for obvious reasons.Return to passage
[109] Thus in a note dated 8th April, 1840, the Private Secretary said:--I know that His Excellency would wish you to comment on Lord John's despatch in the sense in which it is treated in the Montreal Gazette. [This was done in the Guardian of 15th April.] There is no doubt also that it is absurd in Hon. Henry Sherwood to pretend that he is supporting the Government when he opposes their own Solicitor-General, but not less so in the Examiner to support him and oppose Mr. Draper, or to stand up for a kind of responsible government which both His Excellency and Lord John Russell have declared to be inadmissible. I know that His Excellency would wish you to do everything in your power to support both Mr. Draper and Mr. Baldwin. Should any article come out which you consider would interest His Excellency, may I request you to send me a copy.Return to passage
[110] The following was the prospectus agreed upon and issued:--Return to passage
A Monthly Review, Devoted to the Civil Government of Canada.
The Canadas have been united under an amended constitution; the foundation has been laid for an improved system of government. The success of that constitution will greatly depend upon a correct understanding and a just appreciation of its principles; and the advantages of the new system of government will be essentially influenced by the views and feelings of the inhabitants of the Canadas themselves. At a period so eventful, and under circumstances so peculiar, it is of the utmost importance that the principles of the constitution should be carefully analysed, and dispassionately expounded; that the relations between this and the Mother Country, and the mutual advantages connected with those relations, should be explained and illustrated; the duties of the several branches of the government and the different classes of the community, stated and enforced; the natural, commercial, and agricultural resources and interests of these Provinces investigated and developed; a comprehensive and efficient system[a] of public education discussed and established; the subject of emigration practically considered in proportion to its vast importance; the various measures adapted to promote the welfare of all classes of the people originated and advocated; and a taste for intellectual improvement and refinement encouraged and cultivated.
As the Editor's views on all the leading questions of Canadian policy accord with those of His Excellency the Governor-General, who has been pleased to approve of the plan of the Monthly Review, it will be enabled to state correctly the facts and principles on which the government proceeds; yet the writers alone will be held responsible for whatever they may advance.
[a] Dr. Ryerson, who wrote this prospectus, evidently had in view such a system of Education as he afterwards established.
Chapter XXXIV
1840.
Proposal to leave Canada--Dr. Ryerson's Visit to England.
The year 1840 is somewhat memorable in the Methodistic history of Upper Canada, for three things: 1st. The final retirement of Dr. Ryerson from the editorship of the Christian Guardian; 2nd. Visit of Revs. William and Egerton Ryerson to England, and the painful, yet fruitless, discussions with a Committee of the British Conference on the lapsed Union; 3rd. The annual and special Canada Conferences of that year--at the latter of which the formal separation of the British and Canadian sections of the Conference took place under peculiarly affecting circumstances.
Dr. Ryerson and his brother John attended the American General Conference at Baltimore, May, 1840. In a letter from there he said:--
The Methodist Connexion here are much in advance of us, and, as a whole, even of the British Connexion. I have never seen a more pious, intelligent, and talented body of men than the preachers assembled here at Conference; nor more respectable, intelligent congregations. The manners of the people in these Middle States are very like the manners of intelligent people in Upper Canada--alike removed from the English haughtiness and Yankee coldness--simple, frank, and unaffected. Bishops Roberts, Soule, Hedding and Waugh dined with us to-day. They are venerable and apostolic men. We have had cordial invitations to come to this country, and did we consult our own comfort, brother John and I would do so without hesitation. Bishop Hedding hopes to visit us at our approaching Conference. Rev. R. Newton, of England, will not visit Canada. Mr. ---- has told him that it was not worth while to go to Canada; and all that can be said to induce him to come is unavailing. We in Canada are not worth so much trouble, or notice!
In a letter from Baltimore, dated May 25th, 1840, Dr. Ryerson states the reason why he proposed to leave Canada:--
I am still at the General Conference. Rev. Dr. Bangs says that I ought to remain until the close. After much consideration I have decided upon a step which, for many reasons, appears desirable. Instead of coming to this country for a few months, in order to avail myself of some collegiate lectures, to pursue certain branches of science, I have concluded and have made arrangements to take a station in the city of New York for one, if not for two years. My brother John would have done the same if we could have both left Canada this year. If things in the province do not go on better with us he will do so another year. I have seen the new constitution which is about to be adopted by the British Parliament for the future Government of Canada. I do not approve of it. To interfere any more in civil contentions will be wasting the best part of my life to little purpose, for there seems to be no end to such things. To remain in Canada and be silent, will incur the hostility of both parties. The government will regard my neutrality as opposition, and the popular party will view it as indifference to the rights of the people; and, in such circumstances, I shall neither be useful nor happy. While, therefore, I am on good terms with the Government and the country at large, my brother thinks with me that it is by all means best to withdraw from such scenes. I have the offer of one of the three or four largest Methodist Chapels in New York. I shall be appointed to one of the largest and most elegant in the city, where all the great public meetings are held. There are, however, three or four vacant, equally desirable. I much prefer this to my taking a district in Canada. I would not return to the Guardian again for any earthly consideration.
Dr. Ryerson went to the Conference at Belleville after his return from Baltimore. Writing from there, he said:--
Previously to proceeding to elect the Secretary, an English brother remarked that he had certain communications from the Committee in London, which he wished to read. I observed that no communications could be read until the Conference was organized, and the Conference could not be organized until the Secretary was elected. The brother persevered, and then stated that the documents referred to me. I then arose, and observed that the proceeding was at variance with law, Methodism, and justice. The Conference was justly roused to indignation by my remarks, which were followed by some observations from my brother John, in the same strain. Not a man spoke in favour of the English brother's proceeding, and he was compelled to withdraw his proposal. Such an anti-Methodistic and barbarous attempt to sacrifice me (as some of the preachers afterwards expressed it), excited a strong feeling in my favour, and, I was told, increased my majority of votes for the Secretaryship. When the Conference balloted for Secretary, the votes stood as follows:--Matthew Richey, 1; Anson Green, 1; Wm. Case, 2; E. Evans, 12; Egerton Ryerson, 43. The circumstance has so deeply affected me, that I feel it to be like tearing soul from body to be separated from brethren who stand by me in the day of trial, and who will not suffer me, as one of them expressed it to me, to be sacrificed at the pleasure of my enemies.[111] But I see no reason to change my purposes; and my brother John thinks I can do more good to the Connexion by being in New York, than by remaining in Canada.
I desire, with humble dependence upon the wisdom and providence of God, to commit my all to Him. I hunger and thirst after the mind which was in Christ Jesus.
Subsequently Dr. Ryerson wrote, saying:--
My plans in regard to the United States must now be changed. The charges of the London Committee, and the state of the Connexion in regard to the Union, render my absence from the Province, in the judgment of my brethren, unjustifiable and out of the question. Some of the preachers insist that I must go to England, and meet Mr. Alder before the British Conference. Such a mission is not impossible, but, I hope, not probable.
After the election of Secretary, the charges against Dr. Ryerson were read. They were embodied in a resolution to the effect that he had improperly interfered and sought to deprive the British Conference of its annual grant from the Imperial Government for the extension of missions in the province. The resolution was negatived by a vote of 59 to 8, and a series of resolutions sustaining Dr. Ryerson, in the strongest manner, was passed. He and his brother William were appointed as Representatives at the British Conference, with directions "to use all proper means to prevent collision between the two Connexions."
As intimated in Dr. Ryerson's letter from Baltimore, he decided to retire finally from the Editorship of the Christian Guardian. This he did at the Belleville Conference, and on the 24th of June, 1840, he laid down his pen as Editor of the Christian Guardian, and was succeeded by Rev. Jonathan Scott. In his valedictory of that date, Dr. Ryerson said:--
The present number of the Guardian closes the connection of the undersigned with the provincial press. To his friends and to those of the public who have confided in him, and supported him in seasons of difficulty and danger, he offers his most grateful acknowledgments; those who have opposed him honourably, he sincerely respects; those who have assailed him personally, he heartily forgives; and of those whose feelings he may have wounded in the heat of discussion, he most humbly asks pardon. While he is deeply sensible of his imperfections, infirmities, and failings, he derives satisfaction from the consciousness that he has earnestly aimed at promoting the best interests of his adopted church and his native country.
Egerton Ryerson.
Immediately after the close of the annual Conference of 1840, Dr. Ryerson and his brother William left for England. From his diary, written at that time, he had made the following extracts for this work:--
July 22nd, 1840.--After landing at Liverpool, I called upon an old and kind friend, Mr. Michael Ashton, and I had much conversation with him and Rev. R. Young, on the affairs of our mission. I and my brother William arrived in London on the 23rd. Took up our lodgings with my old hostess, 27 Great Ormond Street. Addressed a note to Lord John Russell, on the object of our mission; an interview was appointed for the next day. Went to the House of Commons in the evening, having an order for admission to the Speaker's gallery, through the kindness of Lord Sandon.
July 24th.--Went to the Colonial office; had a long interview with Lord John Russell, on the Canada Clergy Reserve Bill. Mr. [afterwards Sir James] Stephen was present. We pointed out to His Lordship the injustice of the bill, and the probable consequences if it were passed in its present shape. We spoke at some length, but with great plainness; intimating that we regarded the measure as the forfeiture of good faith on the part of Her Majesty's Government, as the violation of the constitutional rights of the inhabitants of Upper Canada, and as the cause of the unpopularity of the British Government in that country. But his Lordship appeared inflexible, and seemed to regard it essential to conciliate the Bishops, but not essential to do what he considered just in itself, or to fulfil the declarations of Government to the inhabitants of Upper Canada, or to consult their oft-expressed views and wishes. In the afternoon we went to see Mr. Charles Buller, but he was not in town. In going through Hyde Park we saw the Queen and Prince Albert, coming from Windsor. We took a hasty view through Westminster Abbey, and in the evening we called upon the Rev. Mr. Stead, formerly a missionary to India, and received from him many useful suggestions respecting the object of our mission.
July 27th.--Prepared a long letter to Lord John Russell on the Canada Clergy Reserve Bill, now before Parliament. Went to the House of Commons in order to hear the debate on the third reading of said bill. Lord John Russell was not present. But we heard a long debate on the China opium trade, etc. Mr. W. E. Gladstone introduced the discussion. Afterwards Sir Robert Peel spoke on the present position of the Church of Scotland in resisting the decision of the House of Lords. Mr. Fox Maule [Lord Panmure] spoke in reply, and contended that the point for which the General Assembly contended was the right of the people to a voice in the choice of their ministers.
July 28th.--Visited the City Road Chapel Grave-yard, the Bank, various book establishments, and St. Paul's Cathedral.
July 30th.--Left London yesterday; entered the city of York by the southwest gate; got a glimpse of the Minster; the country exceedingly beautiful, and in a high state of cultivation. Heard of the death of poor Lord Durham. The attacks upon him in the House of Lords as Governor-General of Canada, the abandonment of him by the Government, the mortification experienced by him in consequence of the Royal disapprobation at his sudden return from Canada before his resignation had been accepted, are said to have hastened, if not caused his death. His heart seems to have been set upon making Canada a happy and a great country, and I think he intended to rest his fame upon that achievement. He was defeated, disappointed, died! How bright the prospect two years ago--how sudden the change, how sad the termination! Oh, the vanity of earthly power, wealth and glory!
July 29th.--Arrived this morning at Newcastle-upon-Tyne by stage, eighty miles from York. The next morning we went to the Conference, and sent in our cards to Rev. G. Marsden; he came out and kindly received us, and hoped our mission would be for good. We met with a very cool reception from several of the preachers, with whom I was acquainted and on friendly terms during my former visits. Not feeling very well, or very much at home, we enquired our way to our lodgings, and left.
July 31st.--Went to the Conference this morning at 7 a.m. We were furnished with the President's card of admittance, and shown a seat in a corner at the side of the Chapel, and could hear but a part of the debates. In the afternoon we addressed a note to the President, to which we only received a verbal reply.
Aug. 1st.--This morning we were engaged in writing a strong letter to the President concerning our treatment, our position, the objects of our mission, etc., but we were saved the pain of delivering it, as, on our arrival, we were met and introduced as accredited Representatives of the Canada Conference. Rev. J. Stinson and Rev. M. Richey were also introduced at the same time. My brother William then presented the address and resolutions of the Canada Conference. A comfortable seat was now provided for us, in front of the President. Thank God, we now have a right to speak, can take our own part, and maintain the rights and interests we have been appointed to represent!
Aug. 3rd.--The Committee of the last year on Canadian affairs had met and reported:--That the resolutions of the Committee of which the Canadian Conference had complained we unanimously confirmed, and recommended that the Conference appoint a large Committee to whom the Messrs. Ryerson and the documents of the Canadian Conference be referred.
The cases of Circuits proposed to be divided were next taken up. This caused many amusing remarks. Rev. R. Newton thought they were losing the spirit of their fathers in travelling, who had insuperable objections to solitary stations. Dr. Bunting assigned as a reason for the failure of the health of so many young men, the custom of giving up horses: said it was an innovation; quoted some of the last words of Wesley: "I cannot make preachers--I cannot buy preachers--and I will not kill preachers."
A long conversation ensued on the subject of reading the Liturgy generally, and concluded by a resolution that the Liturgy be read on the principal Sabbath at each Conference. On the subject of reading the Liturgy by the preachers themselves, Dr. Bunting said: It was very well for men to spend their strength in preaching, and let others read the prayers, when Methodism was only a Society supplementary to the Church; but having in the order of Providence grown up into an independent and separate Church, the preachers were something more than mere preachers of the Word--they were ministers of the Church, and ought to read as well as preach.
The address of the Irish Conference was read. Rev. T. Jackson said he could bear testimony to the very respectful manner in which the address of the British Conference had been received by the Irish Conference, and he trusted the brethren would understand the import and bearing of that remark. Rev. Mr. Entwistle referred to the liberality and cheerfulness of the Irish preachers in their difficulties, when Dr. Bunting replied that if they had been in such difficulties their heads would have hung down.
Dr. Ryerson's diary ends here. A full account of the interviews and discussions with the Wesleyan authorities in England are given in the Epochs of Canadian Methodism, pages 407-426. The result was, that the Committee on the subject reported a series of resolutions adverse to the Canada representatives, which were adopted by the Conference after "more than four-fifths of its members had left for their circuits." The pacific resolutions of the Upper Canada Conference were negatived by a majority, and it was declared "that a continuance of the more intimate connection established by the articles of 1833 [was] quite impracticable."
Thus was ignominously ended a union between the two Conferences which had (nominally) existed since 1833, and which had promised such happy results, and thus was inaugurated a period of unseemly strife between the two parties from 1840 to 1847, when it happily ceased. What followed in Upper Canada is thus narrated by Dr. Ryerson:--
The English Conference having determined to secede from the Union which it had entered into with the Canadian Conference in 1833, and to commence aggressive operations upon the Canadian Conference, and its societies and congregations, a special meeting of the Canadian Conference became necessary to meet this new state of things, to organize for resenting the invasion upon its field of labour, and to maintain the cause for which they had toiled and suffered so much for more than half a century.
The prospects of the Canada Conference were gloomy in the extreme; the paucity of ministers, and the poverty of resources in comparison to the English Conference, besides numerous other disadvantages; but the ministers of the Canadian Conference with less than a dozen individual exceptions, had hearts of Canadian oak, and weapons of New Jerusalem steel, and were determined to maintain the freedom of the Church, and the liberties of their country, whatever might be the prestige or resources of their invaders; and "according to their faith it was done unto them;" out of weakness they waxed strong. They sowed in tears, they reaped in joy. Their weeping seed-sowing was followed by rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them.
The Special Conference caused by these events was held in the Newgate (Adelaide) Street Church in October, 1840. The venerable Thomas Whitehead, then in his 87th year, opened the proceedings, after which Rev. William Case was elected to preside. Rev. Mr. Whitehead was subsequently elected President. Dr. Ryerson was elected Secretary, but declined, and Rev. J. C. Davidson was appointed in his place. The whole matter of differences between the two Conferences was discussed at great length, and with deep feeling on the part of the speakers. Dr. Ryerson spoke for five hours, and his brother William for nearly three. Finally a series of eleven resolutions were adopted, strongly maintaining the views of the Canadian Representatives to England, and protesting--
Against the Methodistic or legal right or power of the Conference in England to dissolve, of its own accord, articles and obligations which have been entered into with this Conference by mutual consent.
In consequence of the adoption of these resolutions, the following ministers requested permission to withdraw from the Canada Conference with a view to connect themselves with the British Missionary party, viz:--
Rev. Messrs. William Case, Ephraim Evans, Benjamin Slight, James Norris, Thomas Fawcett, William Scott, John G. Manly, Edmund Stoney, James Brock, Thomas Hurlburt, Matthew Lang, John Douse, William Steer, John Sunday, and C. B. Goodrich.
The leave-taking was said to have been very tender and sorrowful. Of the members of the Canada Conference who left it, Dr. Ryerson said:--
Among the ten who seceded from the Canada Conference to the London Wesleyan Committee was the venerable William Case, who took no part in the crusade against his old Canadian brethren, but who wished to live in peace and quietness, with the supply of his wants assured to him in his old, lonely Indian Mission at Alnwick, near Cobourg, isolated alike from the white inhabitants and from other Indian tribes, where he continued until his decease.
The character of this untoward contest with the British Conference party--so far as it related to Dr. Ryerson--can be best understood from the conclusion of his five hours' speech before the Special Conference. He said:--
I am aware that a combined effort has been determined upon and is making to destroy me as a public man, and to injure this Connexion, as far as my overthrow can affect it. I rejoice to know that the strength and efficiency of our Church are not depending upon me; but I am not insensible to the advantages which it is supposed will be gained over the Church if I can be put down. Our adversaries seem to have abandoned the idea of answering my arguments, or of diverting me from my purposes, in regard to my position, and views and feelings towards this Connexion. The only expedient left is that which requires no strength of intellect--no solid arguments--no moral principle--but abundance of confidence, malignity, and zeal. It is the expedient of impeaching my moral integrity, and blackening my character. And this is attempted to be accomplished. One class of adversaries, not by an appeal to reason, or even to official documents, but by the importation and retail from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and one end of the province to the other, and from house to house, of bits and parcels of perverted private conversations--a mode of warfare disgraceful to human nature, much more to any Christian community. History apprizes me that, in such a warfare, some of the best of men have not triumphed until long after they slept in death, when the hand of time and the researches of impartial history did them that justice which the cupidity and jealousies of powerful contemporaries denied them. I know not the present result of existing combinations against myself. On that point I feel little concern, though I am keenly alive to their influence upon my public usefulness. I engaged in the Union, because I believed the principles upon which it was founded were reasonable, and the prejudices against it on all sides were unreasonable. I do not regret the opposition which I have experienced--the reproaches which I have incurred--the labours I have endured; but I do regret--and every day's reflection adds fresh poignancy to my regrets--that in carrying out a measure which I had hoped would prove an unspeakable blessing to my native country, I have lost so many friends of my youth. No young man in Canada had more friends amongst all Christian denominations than I had when the Union took place. Many of them have become my enemies. I can lose property without concern or much thought; but I cannot lose my friends, and meet them in the character of enemies, without emotions not to be described. I feel that I have injured myself, and injured this Connexion, and I fear this province, not by my obstinacy, but by my concessions. This is my sin, and not the sins laid to my charge. I have regarded myself, and all that Providence has put into my hands from year to year, as the property of this Connexion. I can say, in the language of Wesley's hymn--
"No foot of land do I possess, No cottage in the wilderness; A poor wayfaring man."
And it is to me a source of unavailing grief, that after the expenditure of so much time, and labour, and suffering, and means, one of the most important measures of my life may prove a misfortune to the Church of my affections and the country of my birth. I have only to say, that as long as there is any prospect of my being useful to either, I will never desert them.
We have surveyed every inch of the ground on which we stand: We have offered to concede everything but what appertains to our character, and to our existence and operations as a Wesleyan Methodist Church. The ground we occupy is Methodistic, is rational, is just. The very declarations of those who leave us attest this. They are compelled to pay homage to our character as a body; they cannot impeach our doctrines, or discipline, or practice; nor can they sustain a single objection against our principles or standing; the very reasons which they assign for their own secession are variable, indefinite, personal, or trivial. But the reasons which may be assigned for our position and unity are tangible, are definite, are Methodistic, are satisfactory, are unanswerable.
The effect of this disruption was disastrous to the peace and unity of the Wesleyan body, especially in the towns and cities.
Some time after the Conference, Dr. Ryerson received the following characteristic letter from the venerable Thomas Whitehead, the President of the Canada Special Conference:--
I have been not a little pleased with the expectation of seeing you this evening, and of hearing you speak of the sorrows and joys of Wesleyan Methodism in Upper Canada. God grant that you and I and all of us, when our labours, sorrows and joys on earth are ended, may meet around the throne of God and the Lamb. Your labours, sorrows and joys for these years past have been unparalleled, and to the present they are increasing. Well, you have been called (with not a few invaluable assistants) to stand up in defence of the Gospel, and have been sometimes placed near the swellings of Jordan; however, you still rejoice in your labours, and the effects thereof, and so do I; and, blessed be God, the Pilot of the Galilean lake is still on shipboard, and he will soon speak peace to the troubled waters, and there will be a great calm. I have no doubt but Brother Green and Brother Bevitt (a comical soul) and yourself have had cold travelling (I hope good lodging) in your western rides; I am persuaded you have met with friends, and a generous people. God bless them!
I greatly rejoice that our brethren in the ministry are faithful, affectionate, and successful in defence of all that appertains to the privileges of the glorious Gospel of the Son of God, long, long preached by the Wesleyan Methodist ministers in the wilds of Upper Canada, and I trust they will, by all Christian means and measures, support Her Majesty's Government in Canada. May the Holy and Blessed God give us peace, and good government in our day. I have been a little vexed with the travelling gab of one of our own former friends, who is pleased to inform the people that you were the sole cause of the late rebellion. I must tell him, the first time I meet with him, that the meaning of his sing-song is not understood, and that if he will explain his hidden meaning, it will be, that he is ready to prove that the Rev. Egerton Ryerson was the sole cause of the rebellion in Heaven, by the fallen angels. In that case no one would mistake his meaning.
In a letter of congratulation, written in May, 1841, to Rev. Dr. Bangs, on his appointment to the Presidency of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., Dr. Ryerson said:--
I hope and pray that you may be able to continue without abatement to favour and edify the religious public with the rich results of your varied reading and matured thinking. On this ground I desire to express my personal obligations; and not the least for your "Letters to young Ministers of the Gospel," which were the first I recollect of reading. Many of your remarks and suggestions, on the subjects which they treat, have been of great service to me.
Speaking of the rupture of the union between the British and Canadian Conferences, and of alleged personal obstacles which he presented in the way of a reunion, Dr. Ryerson said:--The agents of the London Missionary Committee have not injured the Societies generally; although the scenes of schism which have been and are exhibited in many places are highly disgraceful. I am not aware that Elder Case has taken any active part in these transactions, and he has continued an acting and useful member of the Academy Board, notwithstanding his strange secession from our Conference. I have observed by the discussion, especially in the pamphlet lately published by the Committee in London, that the whole affair is made to appear, as much as possible, a matter of difference between the Committee and me personally, and epithets have been multiplied against me in proportion to the want of facts. I have always resolved not to allow myself to be the ground of difference between two bodies. If I can make this circumstance instrumental in effecting an amicable adjustment of differences, such as would be agreeable and advantageous to my brethren, I have thought it would be best to do so, and retire personally from the Conference, either employing my pen for the religious and general interests of my native land, or seeking a more peaceful field of labour in your part of the world, where I almost wish I had gone last year as proposed--although I know not that I could have done otherwise than I did, in accordance with what is due to personal honour and character.
The Imperial Parliament has disposed of the clergy reserves in a manner the most unfair, unjust, and corrupt, although the old Constitution of Canada provides for the disposal of them by the Provincial Legislature. Wide-spread, secret dissatisfaction exists in the country; a majority of the new Assembly (which has not yet met) are friends of the people, but many are afraid to move, or to say what they think. My own apprehension is that, notwithstanding all exertions to the contrary, under the present system of things the morals and intelligence of the people will be on a level with their liberties. Whether my continued silence in such circumstances is a virtue, or a crime; or whether I should retire from the country, or remain and make one Christian, open, and decisive effort to secure for my fellow-countrymen a free constitution and equal rights among their churches, is a perplexing question to me, as well as to my brothers. It is believed by some intelligent men, who have talked on the subject, that if I would come out as the advocate of the country, there would be no doubt of success, from my knowledge of the subject, from a general, and, as I think, overweening confidence on the part of my friends in my powers of concentration, perseverance and energy, and from the feelings of the country. It is also thought that, if there should be a failure of success, I could then honourably retire to the United States. I am no theorist, but I hate despotism as I do Satan, and I love liberty as I do life; and my thoughts and feelings flow so strongly in favour of the religious and civil freedom of my native country, that with all my engagements and duties, I cannot resist them, at least half of the time. I would be most grateful to you for your opinion on this general matter, irrespective of details, with which, of course, you cannot be acquainted.
To this letter Rev. Dr. Bangs replied as follows:--
I feel much for my Canadian brethren, and I can never be indifferent to their weal or woe. I have never had but one opinion respecting your separation from us, and that is, that it was an erroneous step at the time, originating with the ambition of one man--Henry Ryan. (See page 87.) Regrets, however, are useless now. The die has been cast; but from that unhappy moment you have been tossed about from one point of the compass to another. What a sad condition the people are in, according to your representation! And who shall right them? I suppose you cannot do it, although you cannot be indifferent to their interests, temporal and eternal.
Respecting your leaving the country, I would say, that if your brethren judge it best, you will receive a cordial welcome among us; as I am sure you would from me. In the meantime, you would do well to consult Bishop Hedding, who presides among us this year. I thank you for the expressions of affection. Whatever of good you may have received from my poor labours, let God have the praise and glory. I never undertook any duties with more appalling feelings than I did the present ones; and yet I have been wonderfully blessed and favoured by providential indications. When I was called to the Presidency of the Wesleyan University, I dared not say no; but I accepted it with a trembling sense of my responsibilities, and thus far I have been greatly blessed and comforted. I shall be glad to see you, and remember that I have a prophet's room, and a bed and a table for you.
From Rev. Dr. D. M. Reese, a noted member of the New York Conference, Dr. Ryerson received the following letter:--
I am at a loss to say what is the opinion of our great men here, touching your Canadian conflict with the British Conference; though all our sympathies are with you. All concur that you have the victory in your pamphlet war. I have not heard a different opinion from any one who has read them. I suppose you may have learned how cavalierly Rev. R. Newton treated Rev. Mr. Gurley, though introduced to him by letters from those to whom Mr. N. was largely indebted here. He refused to introduce him to Dr. Bunting, etc., although this favour was solicited. He neither invited Mr. G. to see him again, nor even called on him. This British reciprocity of American politeness is humiliating, and resembles the treatment you and your brother received at his hands, as well as that of other great men in the Wesleyan Conference towards you.
At the Special Conference of October, Dr. Ryerson was appointed Corresponding Secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society of Upper Canada. On the 10th November he issued a statement and appeal on behalf of the Society. In it he indicates definitely the secret causes which led to the disruption of the Union. He said:--
Zealous attempts have been made to lead astray sincere friends of Methodism and religion by the pretense that party politics is the [difficulty]. Never was a pretext more unfounded.... It will be seen by the proceedings of our Conference-- ... and is even admitted in the report of the ... English Conference--that no political party question should, on any account, be suffered amongst us, ... or in our official organ, and that we did not even desire the continued discussion of the clergy reserve question.... But with even silent neutrality on all questions of civil polity ..., the authorities of the English Conference were not satisfied; they insisted that we should "admit and maintain, even in this Province, the principle of Church and State Union"--a question which has been the most exciting and baneful topic of party feeling and party organization of any question which has ever been discussed in Upper Canada. They also insisted that we should concede to the Conference in England the right of an "efficient direction over the public proceedings" of the Connexion in this province.... These are the real grounds of the difference between the two bodies.
In a letter on this subject, written by Dr. Ryerson, 13th November, he said:--
Herewith is a copy of a letter which I addressed to the late Rev. Richard Watson in 1831 [see Guardian of November 18th, 1840], deprecating the interference of the London Committee with our work in this province, and explaining our views and operations as a body.... In going one day into the Wesleyan Mission House, when in England in 1833, I found one of the clerks copying that letter into the official books of the Committee. That letter is of some importance on several accounts. It will show that we were just as moderate, and as reasonable, and as constitutional in our views as a body in 1831, as we have been from that time to this, and that the representations to the contrary are the fabulous creations of party feelings.... [It will also show] that [the London Committee] fully understood our views on the question of a church establishment in Upper Canada, respecting which they have not even pretended that we ever made the slightest compromise; and that we as a body were in a prosperous condition before the Union.
It was not, therefore, without full knowledge of Dr. Ryerson's views on this subject, and of the state of the Methodist body in Upper Canada, that the British Conference in 1833, and again in 1840, sought to interfere with the work in this province and divide the Societies. By Dr. Ryerson's mission to England this evil was averted by a union in 1833, which proved to be but a hollow truce, as the events of 1840 demonstrated.
That the evil genius of Rev. Robert Alder exercised a baneful influence upon both Conferences, is abundantly evident from his own subsequent conduct and other events. And that this was the case is more clearly manifest from the fact that when he ceased to exert any influence in the Connexion, and when Dr. Ryerson and the Canadian Representatives were able to lay the whole case before the British Conference in 1847, that body, led by Dr. Bunting himself, entirely endorsed the consistent action of the Canada Conference in all of this painful and protracted business. He said: "The Canadian brethren are right, and we are wrong." (See a subsequent Chapter on the subject.)
Looking at the facts of the case in the light of to-day, can any one wonder at the pertinacity and zeal with which Dr. Ryerson resisted the unnatural and unwise system of foreign dictation sought to be imposed upon the Canadian Connexion. This he did at a great sacrifice of personal feeling, and of personal friendship, as well as of personal comfort and popularity. He maintained, as he had stipulated in the articles of Union, that "the rights and privileges of the Canadian preachers and Societies should be preserved inviolate." He knew that a Church in a free country like Canada, characterized as it was by Methodistic zeal and vigour, and yet tempered by the moderation of Canadian institutions and manners, possessed within itself a spirit of independence and of growth and progress which would never brook the official control of a Committee thousands of miles away. To be subject to even the generous control of such a Committee, possessed of no practical experience in Canadian matters, would, he knew, doom the Church to a dwarfed, and unnatural, and a miserable existence. Events had already proved to Dr. Ryerson (while the Union during 1839-1840 was in a moribund state) that the Church, controlled by a dominant section of the British Conference, would be a prey to internal feuds and jealousies. In the conflicts that would then ensue spiritual life would die out, missionary zeal would be fitful in its efforts, and every Church interest would partake largely of a sectional and partizan character, destructive alike to the symmetry, growth and harmony of development of a living Church, endowed with rich spiritual life and free and vigorous in its independent action.
To a person of the statesman-like qualities of mind which Dr. Ryerson possessed in so high a degree, these things must have been ever present. They gave evident decision to his thoughts and vigour to his pen. He was no novice in public or ecclesiastical affairs. He had been trained for fifteen years in a school of resistance, almost single-handed, to ecclesiastical domination, and had detected and exposed intrigues,--one of which was of parties in this conflict, which was entirely derogatory to the dignity and independence of Methodism in Canada. (See pages 238-241.)
His knowledge of public affairs and of party leaders gave him abundant insight into the motives and tactics of men bent upon accomplishing pet schemes and favourite projects. And all of this knowledge had so ripened his experience that it rendered him the invaluable and trusted leader in Canadian Methodism, which in those days made his name a household word in the Methodist homes of Upper Canada. This trust and confidence he never betrayed. His unswerving fidelity to his Church and people cost him dearly--the loss of many friends, and the reproaches of many enemies. But he survived it all, and was enabled, under Providence, to mould the institutions of Canadian Methodism and even of his native country. He has left on some of them the impress of his mind and genius, which it is the pride of Canadians to recognize and acknowledge to this day.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] The more important parts of the painful proceedings at this Conference are given in "Epochs of Canadian Methodism," pages 341-358. The result of this formidable attack on Dr. Ryerson by the English Missionary party before the Canada Conference, is thus stated by Rev. Dr. Carroll: "When the Rev. Matthew Richey's motion of condemnation on the Rev. Egerton Ryerson for his interference in the matter [of the Government grant of L900 to Wesleyan missions] was put to the Conference, there were only eight in its favour, several of whom, after obtaining further light, wished to change their votes; and fifty-nine against it. Three were excused from voting."--Case, etc., vol. iv., page 298, note.Return to passage
Chapter XXXV
1840-1841.
Last Pastoral Charge.--Lord Sydenham's Death.
The following paragraphs, prepared by Dr. Ryerson, refer to this period of his history:--
In the autumn of 1840, on returning from England, when the English Wesleyan Committee and Conference seceded from the Union with the Canadian Conference, I was appointed to Adelaide Street station in Toronto, which had been filled for two years by the Rev. Dr. Richey--an eloquent and popular preacher. The separation between the two Conferences had taken place the week before I assumed the charge of Adelaide Street station. Dr. Richey had carried off the greater part of both the private and official members of the Church, and I was left with but a skeleton of each. When I ascended the pulpit for the first time, the pews in the body of the church, which had been occupied by those who had seceded, were empty, and there were but scattered hearers, here and there, in the other pews and in the gallery. By faith and prayer I had prepared myself for the crucial test, and conducted the services without apparent depression or embarrassment. I made no pretensions, and had never made any, to pulpit eloquence--the motto of my ministry being to make things plain and strong by previous thought and prayer, and without verbal preparation. I often went from lying on my back in my study, in an agony of distress and prayer, to the pulpit, where a divine anointing seemed to rest upon me, such as I had never before experienced. There were frequent prayer-meetings in my own study, at six o'clock in the morning. The result was, by the Divine blessing, that the church was filled with hearers, and the membership was more than doubled.
At the first Annual Missionary Meeting in the Church after the division, the President of the Executive Council presided; several members of the Government were on the platform, and the collections and subscriptions were more than double those of any previous year. The pretext for this separation of the English Wesleyan Committee and Conference from the Canadian Conference, was professed loyalty in Church and State; but both the Imperial and Canadian Government of that day approved the position of the Canadian Conference, withdrew and suspended the grant previously made to the London Wesleyan Missionary Committee during the seven years of its hostility to the Canadian Conference, and only consented to its restoration for the joint interests of the two Conferences, and on recommendation of the Representatives of the Canadian Conference, after the reconciliation and reunion of the two Conferences, in 1847.
In October, 1840, Dr. Ryerson addressed a letter of congratulation to Lord Sydenham, on his elevation to the peerage. He again referred to the publication of the Monthly Review, proposed by His Excellency. In regard to the latter he said:--
The publication of a monthly periodical such as I suggested to your Excellency last spring, appears to me now, as it did then, to be of great importance, in order to mould the thinkings of public men and the views of the country in harmony with the principles of the new Constitution and the policy of Your Excellency's administration, and to secure a rational and permanent appreciation of its objects, and merits; and it would have afforded me sincere satisfaction to have given a proper tone and character to a publication of that kind. But what I have written publicly in reference to the principles and measures of Your Excellency's Government has already been productive of serious consequences both to myself and the Body with which I am connected.
In the discharge of my ecclesiastical duties, I have to devote several hours of four days in each week to visiting the sick, poor, and other members of my pastoral charge, and am preparing a series of discourses on the Patriarchal History, and the Evidences of Christianity, arising from the discoveries of modern science, and the testimony of recent travellers, besides the correspondence and engagements which devolve upon me in the office I hold in the Methodist Church. Under such circumstances the assumption by me of the management of such a periodical is impracticable. I could not do justice to it, nor to my other appropriate duties. I might, in the course of my miscellaneous reading, select passages from established authors, which would be suitable for a miscellany at the end of each number, to illustrate and confirm the principles discussed in the preceding pages of it. I might now and then contribute a general article on the Intellectual and Moral Elements of Canadian Society; or, on the Evils of Party Spirit; or, on the Necessity of General Unity in order to General Prosperity, etc., etc.; but even in these respects I fear I could not render much efficient aid, from the exhaustion of my physical strength in other labours, and for want of the requisite time for study, in order to write instructively and effectively on general subjects.
In the same letter, Dr. Ryerson thus referred to his determination to take no further part in the discussion of public affairs, owing to the hostility which his support of Lord Sydenham's policy had excited in various quarters[112]:--
In retiring from taking any public part in the civil affairs of this country, I beg to express my grateful sense of the frankness, kindness, and condescension which I have experienced from Your Excellency. You are the first Governor of Canada who has taken the pains to investigate the character and affairs of the Wesleyan Methodist Church for himself, and not judge and act from hearsay; the first Governor to ascertain my sentiments, feelings, and wishes from my own lips, and not from the representations of others. As a body, considering our labours and numbers, we have certainly been treated unjustly and hardly by the Local Government. Every effort was used here to deprive us of the Royal liberality, and Lord Glenelg's recommendations in regard to the Upper Canada Academy. I think Lord John Russell himself was prepossessed against me by the representations of Rev. Mr. Alder, and probably of Sir George Arthur and others. But by your condescension and courtesy I have been prompted and emboldened to express myself to Your Excellency on all questions of civil government and the affairs of this country, more fully than I have to any man living. My private opinions and public writings have been simultaneously before Your Excellency, together with all the circumstances under which I have expressed the one and published the other. I feel confident, therefore, that however I may be misrepresented by some, or misunderstood by others, I shall have justice in the estimate and opinions of Your Excellency--that I have been anything but theoretical or obstinate--that I have shrunk from no responsibility in the time of need and difficulty--and that my opinions, whether superficial or well-considered, are such as any common-sense, practical man, whose connection, associations, and feeling are involved in the happiness and well-being of the middle classes, might be expected to entertain.
It is not my intention or wish to obtrude my opinions upon your attention, except in so far as may be necessary to acquaint Your Excellency with the interests and wishes of the body whom I have been appointed to represent. In regard to the many other important questions embraced in the great objects of your Government, I shall abstain from any officious interference; although all that may be in my mind or heart on any subject shall be at the service of Your Excellency when desired.
From what I have witnessed and experienced, I have no doubt that every possible effort will made to prejudice me in Your Excellency's mind, and induce Your Excellency to treat the Methodist body in this province as preceding Governors have done. But I implore Your Excellency to try another course of proceeding, whether as any experiment, or as an act of justice. I am persuaded that Your Excellency has found no portion of the people of this Province more reasonable in their requests, or more easily conciliated to your views and wishes than the Representatives, members and friends of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada; and, I doubt not, Your Excellency will find them cultivating and exhibiting the same spirit during the entire period (and may it be a long one!) of your administration of the Government of Canada.
On the 8th of the same month, Dr. Ryerson felt himself constrained to address a note to Lord Sydenham in regard to the policy of Lord John Russell's Clergy Reserve Bill, so far as it might affect the question of public education, in which he was deeply interested. He said that he conceived the Bill to be most unjust in its provisions, as he had stated to His Lordship (while it was under consideration of Parliament). He added: Should the partial and exclusive provisions of the measure pervade the views and administration of Government in Canada, in regard to a general system of education, etc., I should utterly despair of ever witnessing social happiness, general educational culture, or unity in this country. But I have no doubt the exclusive powers with which the Bill invests the Governor, will be exerted to counteract the inequality of its other provisions, and that Your Excellency's whole system of public policy will be based upon the principles of "equal justice to all classes of Her Majesty's Canadian subjects." Under these circumstances, I have suggested to the conductor of the Christian Guardian (from the editorship of which I retired last June) not to make any remarks on the Bill which may tend to create dissatisfaction; nor do I intend, for the same reasons, to publish the letter which my brother and I addressed to Lord John Russell on the subject. His Lordship said, indeed, that the Bill was not what he wished, nor could he say it was just; but he had clearly ascertained that a more liberal one could not be got through the House of Lords, and he thought that that Bill was better than none.
The Hon. Isaac Buchanan, in a letter to the Editor, dated April 1882,--speaking of these times and events--said:--
I was one of Dr. Ryerson's oldest friends and cooeperators that have survived him. I was first in Toronto (then York) in 1830. Although not then 20 years of age, I came out to Montreal as a partner in a mercantile firm; and in the fall of 1831 I came up to York to establish a branch House. From that time I have known Dr. Ryerson, and then formed that high opinion of both his abilities and his character which went on increasing more and more; so that for the last forty years of his life I have regarded him as Canada's greatest son. Of late years I seldom met him, but when I did, it was an inexpressible pleasure to me, as an interchange of the most unbounded mutual confidences took place between us in our views and objects. He knew my view of religion,--that as with Spiritual Religion (which is nothing to the mind unless it is everything), so with the Religion of Humanity (my name for the removal of all impediments out of the way of the employment, and of the enjoyment of living of our own people)--it will not take a second place, but must be the first question in the politics of every country--otherwise its Government is a mere political machine. He knew my belief that the Church Question being in the way of this people's question, it took the first place among the causes of all the industrial evils in England and Ireland. With me, therefore, it was a sine qua non to get quit of our dominant Church nuisance in Canada, viewing it as a thing in the way of the prosperity of the people, and therefore as a thing insidiously undermining their loyalty. I am sure that his views were not far removed from mine in this matter, and yet not a particle of enmity to the Church ever affected me, and, I believe, the same thing was true of Dr. Ryerson. But I felt the insufferable evil of the position it had in this country, not only as usurping the first place in politics, which the Labour Question should occupy, but as rendering the connection with England odious and short-lived. Being one of those sent for by the Governor-General (Mr. Poulett Thompson) on the clergy reserve question, I told His Excellency plainly that although my countrymen, the Scotch, did not hesitate to dissent, as a matter of conscience, they would not be loyal to a government that made them dissenters by Act of Parliament.
Five years previous to this, or in 1835, I had, as an extra of the Albion newspaper, published by Mr. Cull, about the time York became Toronto, proposed a plan of settlement for the clergy reserves, fitted to solve the difficulties connected with them, whether Industrial, Educational, or Political. My proposal was that an educational tax should be levied, the payments by each church or sect being shewn in separate columns, and each sect receiving from the clergy reserve fund, in the proportion of its payments for education.
This first attempt of mine to get an endowment for education failed, as there was then no system of Responsible Government. But five years afterwards (in 1840) when my election for Toronto had decided the question of Responsible Government, and before the first Parliament met, I spoke to Lord Sydenham, the Governor-General, on the subject. He felt under considerable obligation to me for standing in the breach when Hon. Robert Baldwin found he could not succeed in carrying Toronto. I told him that I felt sure that if we were allowed to throw the accounts of the Province into regular books, we would show a surplus over expenditure. His Excellency agreed to my proposal, and I stipulated that, if we showed a surplus, half would be given as an endowment for an educational system. Happily we found that Upper Canada had a surplus revenue of about $100,000 a year--half of which the Parliament of 1841 set aside for education as agreed--the law stipulating that every District Council getting a share of it would locally tax for as much more, and this constituted the financial basis of our educational system. Thus I have given you a glimpse of the time when Dr. Ryerson and I were active cooeperators.
Dr. Ryerson has left no farther record of his two years' ministry in Newgate (Adelaide) Street circuit, Toronto, than that recorded on page 282. Some incidents of it will be found in the letter of the Rev. Jonathan Scott, editor of the Guardian, on page 294. Rev. I. B. Howard, Dr. Ryerson's assistant at the time, has also furnished me with some personal reminiscences of his intercourse with him during the latter year of Dr. Ryerson's pastoral life. He says:--
When I was Dr. Ryerson's assistant in Toronto, upwards of forty years ago (in 1841-2), he was studying Hebrew with a private tutor. As I had previously taken lessons in that language he kindly invited me to unite with him (at his expense) in this study. This I did three times a week at his house. On those days I always dined with him; and as it was his custom to spend the hour before dinner in devotional reading and prayer, I had the great privilege of spending this hour with him in his study--and I shall never forget the sincere, heart-searching, and devout manner in which he conducted these hallowed exercises, nor the great spiritual instruction and benefit I received from them. His humble confessions, earnest pleadings, and fervent spirit deeply impressed my youthful heart with the fact that he was indeed a man of God.
During that year (one of the few of his regular pastorate) I had also the privilege of frequently hearing him preach, especially during eight weeks of special and very successful revival services, which we held in old Adelaide (then nearly new and known as "Newgate") Street Church. I have frequently heard him preach since that time, mostly on special occasions, and always with pleasure and profit; but never since he left the pastoral work have I heard from him such earnest, powerful and overwhelming appeals to the minds, and hearts, and consciences of men, as when, with the responsibilities and sympathies of a pastor's heart, he delighted, and moved, and melted the large and admiring audiences which attended his ministry. I have always believed, that, had he continued in his pastoral work, he would have been not only an able and popular, but also in an eminent degree a successful soul-saving preacher.
During the year I was with him in Toronto, Dr. Ryerson frequently heard me preach; and as it was only the second year of my ministry his presence in the congregation was at first a great terror to me; but the kind words of encouragement, as well as the wise and fatherly counsels which he frequently gave me soon allayed my fears, and led me to regard it rather as a privilege than a cross to have him for a hearer.[113] Would that every young preacher had such a kind and sympathizing superintendent!
Hon. William Macdougall also bears testimony to the kindness which he experienced from Dr. Ryerson at this period. He says:
About the year 1840, I was living in the township of Vaughan, and like other boys of the same class and age, devoting my winters to school, and my summers to the healthful exercise of the farm. My father was a good farmer, pretty well-to-do, and I, being the eldest son, was second in command. He had purchased two or three uncleared lots in the same township, one of which was designed for me. I was fond of books, and possessed some good ones, besides I had made diligent use of a circulating library in the neighbourhood. We took in a political newspaper, an agricultural monthly, and the Christian Guardian. At this point of my career I met Dr. Ryerson. He came into our neighbourhood to attend a missionary meeting, and stopped at my father's house. I was asked to go with him to his next appointment. We were thus alone together for some hours. On the way we chatted about temperance, history, politics, education, etc. The rebellion of 1837, and the political questions that grew out of it still agitated the public mind. He spoke of Mackenzie and Rolph; of Baldwin and Bidwell; of Sir Francis Head and the Family Compact. I discovered that he admired Bidwell, but disliked Mackenzie. He took much pains to explain to me some points in reference to the clergy reserve and rectory questions, and seeing that I was an appreciative listener, he asked me if I would like to be a politician. I said I would, if I thought I could overturn the Family Compact, secure the clergy reserves for education, and drive the Hudson Bay Company out of the North-West. He looked at me for a moment with an amused expression. The last plank of my platform seemed to arouse his curiosity. The Hudson Bay Company and its affairs had not then attracted much notice. He asked me why I desired to drive out the Hudson Bay Company. I replied that I had read a lecture by Hon. R. B. Sullivan, on immigration and the movement of population westward, in which he described the Great Valley of the Saskatchewan in colours so glowing, that I wondered why we did not all go there, but on further enquiry I found that a small body of London Fur-traders claimed the whole country as a preserve for musk-rats and foxes, under an old charter from a King who, at the time, did not own a foot of it; that I thought the fur-traders ought to be compelled to give up the good land, vi et armis, if need be. He said, "My young friend, your ambition is great; I am afraid you have not considered the difficulties to be overcome." I felt slightly sat upon; but I warmed with my subject, and as I had already made temperance speeches to admiring audiences in the "back concessions," I was not easily disconcerted. He then made the remark which forty years afterwards I recalled to his recollection. "Before you undertake such enterprises you must study law; it is a noble profession, and in this country is the only sure road to success in politics. If I had not felt it my duty to preach the Gospel, I would have studied law myself." I remarked that I had read articles in the Christian Guardian, attributed to him, which I had heard people say exhibited a great deal of legal knowledge. He seemed pleased by the compliment, but did not acknowledge the paternity of the articles. After some further conversation as to my studies, etc., he recommended me to begin at once to read Latin, and promised to speak to my father and advise him to let me study law. He kept his promise; my father rather reluctantly consented, telling me that if I left home I would lose the farm. You know the rest.
May I not venture the remark, that if a promising agriculturist was spoiled by that interview, Dr. Ryerson was the spoiler? and, if Canada has derived any benefit from my humble labours as journalist, legislator, executive councillor, etc., he is entitled to a share of the credit, for, as I loved--and still recall with envious regret--the unsophisticated pleasures and contentment of a farmer's life, I would, probably, have pursued the even tenor of my bucolic way but for his advice and kind-hearted mediation.
In the political controversies that agitated the country from 1850 to 1862, we sometimes crossed swords. In 1865, it became my duty, as a member of Government, to carry through Parliament an important measure relating to Grammar Schools. Much to his surprise, I successfully resisted all attempts at mutilation, for which he warmly expressed his acknowledgements. During the serious, and sometimes acrimonious discussions which preceded and followed the Act of Confederation, I enjoyed the benefit of his approving sympathy and wise counsel. Others with better warrant may speak of his great power and achievements as a Christian Minister; but you will permit me to say that I knew him as a generous friend and patron of Canadian youth; as a sagacious and resolute man of affairs; as a staunch defender of the British constitutional system of government; and as a patriotic, true-hearted son of Canada--Si monumentum requiris--circumspice!
Dr. Ryerson's pastoral charge of the Toronto City Circuit in 1840-41, and other ministerial duties, engrossed all of his time to the exclusion of other matters. It seemed to have been a positive relief to him to engage in these more congenial pursuits. He rarely used his pen, except on very pressing occasions. He was nevertheless a close observer of passing events, but took no active part in them.
Lord Sydenham frequently availed himself of Dr. Ryerson's counsel and co-operation. Shortly before the death of that able Governor, Dr. Ryerson had gone to Kingston, as requested, on matters of public interest. The unexpected death of Lord Sydenham, on the 19th of September, 1841 (the immediate cause of which was a fall from his horse), called forth a burst of universal sorrow throughout the then newly created Province of Canada. One of the most touching tributes to his memory was penned by Dr. Ryerson, while on his way to Kingston to see him. It was published in the Guardian of the 29th September, and republished with other notices in a pamphlet by Mr. (now Sir) Francis Hincks, then editor of the Toronto Examiner. From that sketch of Lord Sydenham's career I take the following concluding passages:--
At the commencement of His Lordship's mission in Upper Canada, when his plans were little known, his difficulties formidable, and his Government weak, I had the pleasing satisfaction of giving him my humble and dutiful support in the promotion of his non-party and provincial objects; and now that he is beyond the reach of human praise or censure--where all earthly ranks and distinctions are lost in the sublimities of eternity--I have the melancholy satisfaction of bearing my humble testimony to his candour, sincerity, faithfulness, kindness and liberality. A few days before the occurrence of the accident which terminated his life, I had the honour of spending an evening and part of a day in free conversation with His Lordship; and on that, as well as on former similar occasions, he observed the most marked reverence for the truths of Christianity--a most earnest desire to base the civil institutions of the country upon Christian principles, with a scrupulous regard to the rights of conscience--a total absence of all animosity against any person or parties opposed to him--and an intense anxiety to silence dissensions and discord, and render Canada contented, happy and prosperous.
... The day before his lamented death he expressed his regret that he had not given more of his time to religion.... The last hours of his life were spent in earnest supplications to the Redeemer, in humble reliance upon whose atonement he yielded up the ghost.
After the publication of this letter in the Guardian, Dr. Ryerson received the following acknowledgment from T. W. C. Murdoch, Esq., late private Secretary to Lord Sydenham:--
I ought to have thanked you before for the numbers of the Guardian containing your letter on the death of Lord Sydenham. That letter I have read over and over again with the deepest emotion, and I cannot but feel how much more worthily the task of writing the history of his administration might have been confided to your hands than to mine. That I shall discharge the duty with affectionate zeal and good faith, I hope I need not assure you, but I fear my inability to do justice to so statesmanlike an administration, or to make apparent to others those nice shades of policy which constituted the beauty and insured the success of his government. In the meantime what are we to hope or expect from the new Governor Sir C. Bagot. My principal confidence is that Sir R. Peel is too prudent a man to wish discredit to his administration by allowing the re-introduction of the old, bad system, and that consequently Sir Charles will be instructed to follow out to the best of his ability Lord Sydenham's policy.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] In the Guardian of October 7th, 1840, Dr. Ryerson says:--Lord Sydenham well knows the feelings of reluctance and apprehension under which I assumed the responsibility of giving my humble and earnest support to the measures of his government in Upper Canada.... He well knows that I adopted the course I did with a deep consciousness that it would be attended with personal sacrifice, with no other expectation or wish but justice to the church to which I belonged--equal justice to other churches--and the hope of prosperity to my native country under an improved and efficient system of government. I did not indeed expect that hostility against me from London would be prosecuted to the extent it has been.... I have incurred the censure of the British Conference for supporting, and not for opposing, the government when it needed my support, and when it was in my power to have embarrassed it.... As it respects myself personally, I shall not repine at having made the sacrifice, if the new system of government but succeeds, and the land of my birth and affections is made prosperous and happy. Note on page 199.Return to passage
[113] This the Editor has been assured was also Rev. Dr. Potts' experience of Dr. Ryerson as a hearer, several years afterwards, and during the time that he (Dr. Potts) was pastor of the Metropolitan Church, Toronto.Return to passage