Can it then be inferred from such indications that public opinion in the province does not support the cause taken by the Assembly in reference to the ‘Clergy Reserves’? or, what is perhaps more to the purpose, that a provincial administration, formed on the principle of desisting from all attempts to induce the Imperial Government to repeal the Imperial statute on this subject, would be sustained?  I am unable, I confess, to bring myself to entertain any such expectation.  It is my opinion, that if the Liberals were to rally out of office on the cry that they were asserting the right of the Provincial Government to deal with the question of the ‘Clergy Reserves’ against a Government willing, at the bidding of the Imperial authorities, to abandon this claim, they would triumph in Upper Canada more decisively than they did at the late general election.  I need hardly add, that if, after a resistance followed by such a triumph, the Imperial Government were to give way, it would be more than ever difficult to obtain from the victorious party a reasonable consideration for Church interests.  These remarks apply to Upper Canada.  It is not so easy to foresee what is likely to be the course of events in Lower Canada.  The party which looks to M. Papineou as its leader adopts on all points the most ultra-democratic creed.  It professes no very warm attachment to the endowments of the Roman Catholic Church, and is, of course, not likely to prove itself more tender with respect to property set apart by royal authority for the support of Protestantism.  The French- Canadian Representatives who do not belong to this party are, I believe, generally disinclined to secularisation, and would be brought to consent to any such proposition, if at all, only by the pressure of some supposed political necessity.  They are however, almost without exception, committed to the principle that the ‘Clergy Reserves’ ought to be subject to the control of the Local Legislature.  While the battle is waged on this ground, therefore, they will probably continue to side with the Upper Canada Liberals, unless the latter contrive to alienate them by some act of extravagance....

I am aware that there lie, beyond the subjects of which I have treated, larger considerations of public policy affecting this question, on which I have not ventured to touch.  On the one hand there are persons who contend that, as the ‘Clergy Reserves’ were set apart by a British Sovereign for religious uses, it is the bounden duty of the Imperial authorities to maintain at all hazards the disposition thus made of them.  This view is hardly, I think, reconcilable with the provisions of the statute of 1791; but, if it be correct, it renders all discussion of subordinate topics and points of mere expediency, superfluous.

[Sidenote:  In the Church;]