On the other hand even among the most attached friends of the Church, some are to be found who doubt whether on the whole the Church has gained from the Reserves as much as she has lost by them—­whether the ill-will which they have engendered, and the bar which they have proved to private munificence and voluntary exertion, have not more than counter-balanced the benefits which they may have conferred; and who look to secularisation as the only settlement that will be final and put an end to strife.

Up to this time Lord Elgin appears to have entertained at least a hope, that, if the Colony were left to itself, it would settle the matter by distributing the reserved funds according to some equitable proportion among the clergy of all denominations.  But as time went on, this hope became fainter and fainter.  In his next letter he recounts a conversation with a person (not named) ’of much intelligence, and well acquainted with Upper Canada,’ not a member of the Church of England, but favourable to the maintenance of an endowment for religious purposes, who, after remarking on the infatuation shown by the friends of the Church in 1840, expressed a decided opinion that the vantage ground then so heedlessly sacrificed was lost for ever, so far as colonial sentiment was concerned; and that ’neither the present nor any future Canadian Parliament would be induced to enact a law for perpetuating the endowment in any shape.’  The increasing likelihood, however, of a result which he regarded as in itself undesirable could not abate his desire to see the matter finally settled, or shake his conviction that the Provincial Parliament was the proper power to settle it.  With his correspondent it was not so; nor can it be wondered at that the organ of a Tory Government should have declined to accede to the prayer of an Address, which could hardly have any other issue than secularisation.  But the decision was not destined to be left in the hands of the Tories.  Before the end of 1852 Lord Derby was replaced by Lord Aberdeen, and Sir J. Pakington by Lord Elgin’s old friend the Duke of Newcastle, who saw at once the necessity of conceding to the Canadian Parliament the power of settling the question after its own fashion.  Accordingly on May 21, 1853, Lord Elgin was able to write to him as follows: 

[Sidenote:  Empowering Bill passed.]

I was certainly not a little surprised by the success with which you carried the Clergy Reserves Bill through the House of Lords.  I am assured that this result was mainly due to your own personal exertions.  I am quite confident that both in what you have done, and in the way you have done it, you have best consulted the interests of the Province, the Church, and the Empire.  I trust that what has happened will have here the favourable moral effect which you anticipate.  It cannot fail to have this tendency.