attack by the monarchy on their civil and religious liberty—­most unjustly, as any impartial historian must now admit[17]—­so in Upper Canada the dissenters made it one of their strongest grievances that favouritism was shown to the Anglican Church in the distribution of the public lands and the public patronage, to the detriment of all other religious bodies in the province.  The bitterness that was evoked on this question had much to do with bringing about the rebellion of 1837.  If the whole question could have been removed from the arena of political discussion, the Reformers would have been deprived of one of their most potent agencies to create a feeling against the “family compact” and the government at Toronto.  But Bishop Strachan, who was a member of both the executive and legislative councils—­in other words, the most influential member of the “family compact”—­could not agree to any compromise which would conciliate the aggrieved dissenters and at the same time preserve a large part of the claim made by the Church of England.  Such a compromise in the opinion of this sturdy, obstinate ecclesiastic, would be nothing else than a sop to his Satanic majesty.  It was always with him a battle a l’outrance, and as we shall soon see, in the end he suffered the bitterness of defeat.

In these later days when we can review the whole question without any of the prejudice and passion which embittered the controversy while it was a burning issue, we can see that the Church of England had strong historical and legal arguments to justify its claim to the exclusive use of the clergy reserves.  When the Constitutional Act of 1791 was passed, the only Protestant clergy recognized in British statutes were those of the Church of England, and, as we shall see later, those of the established Church of Scotland.  The dissenting denominations had no more a legal status in the constitutional system of England than the Roman Catholics, and indeed it was very much the same thing in some respects in the provinces of Canada.  So late as 1824 the legislative council, largely composed of Anglicans, rejected a bill allowing Methodist ministers to solemnize marriages, and it was not until 1831 that recognized ministers of all denominations were placed on an equality with the Anglican clergy in such matters.  The employment of the words “Protestant Clergy” in the act, it was urged with force, was simply to distinguish the Church of England clergy from those of the Church of Rome, who, otherwise, would be legally entitled to participate in the grant.

The loyalists, who founded the province of Upper Canada, established formally by the Constitutional Act of 1791, were largely composed of adherents of the Church of England, and it was one of the dearest objects of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe to place that body on a stable basis and give it all the influence possible in the state.  A considerable number had also settled in Lower Canada, and received, as in other