it
to themselves. Naturally other denominations wished to share in this
most generous endowment; and quite as naturally the Church of England
desired to stand by the letter of the law and hold what it had of legal
right. Some extremists opposed any and all establishments, holding
that the church should be independent of the state. Let the endowment
be used for the sorely pinched cause of education, and let the
ministers of all denominations depend solely on the Christian
liberality of their people. Perhaps the extremists were in closest
touch with the genius of the new land and the new institutions growing
up in it. To the plain man in the pioneer settlement there seemed
something feudal, something {45} unjust, in creating a privileged
church at the expense of all other churches. Pioneer life brings men
back to primal realities. To the settler in the log-hut the externals
of religion are apt to fade until all churches seem to be much the
same: to set one above all the others seems in his eyes so unjust as to
admit of no argument in its favour. Besides, he had a very real
grievance: the reserved unoccupied lands interfered with his
well-being; they came between farm and farm, increased his taxation,
and prevented the making of the needful roads. How was he to get to
market? to fetch supplies? To-day few will be found to argue for a
state church; but it was not so in the twenties and thirties of the
last century. The battle raged loud and long; and pamphleteer rent
pamphleteer in endless, wordy warfare.

By 1817 the grievance had become clamant; and when that inquisitive
agitator, Robert Gourlay, asked the farmers of Upper Canada what
hindered settlement, he received the answer--Clergy Reserves. Two
years later the Assembly asked for a return of the lands leased and the
revenue derived from them. Up to this time the annual revenue had not
exceeded L700. In the same {46} year, 1819, the 'Kirk' parish of
Niagara applied for a grant of L100, and the law-officers of the Crown
supported the claim. This decision stirred up the Anglicans. They
formed themselves into a corporation in each province to oversee the
administration of the Clergy Reserves. Ownership in the lands was to
be obtained, if obtained at all, through the establishment and
endowment of separate rectories, as provided for in the original act.
Why the directing minds among the Anglicans did not adopt this ready
and easy method of obtaining at l