f
land for the Crown and clergy, "which must for long keep the country a
wilderness, a harbour for wolves, and a hindrance to compact and good
neighbourhood; defects in the system of colonization; too great a
quantity of land in the hands of individuals who do not reside in the
province, and are not assessed for their property." The select
committee of the House of Commons on the civil government of Canada
reported in 1828 that "these reserved lands, as they are at present
distributed over the country, retard more than any other circumstance
the improvement of the colony, lying as they do in detached portions
of each township and intervening between the occupations of actual
settlers, who have no means of cutting roads through the woods and
morasses which thus separate them from their neighbours." It appears,
too, that the quantity of land actually reserved was in excess of that
which appears to have been contemplated by the Constitutional Act. "A
quantity equal to one-seventh of all grants," wrote Lord Durham in his
report of 1839, "would be one-eighth of each township, or of all the
public land. Instead of this proportion, the practice has been ever
since the act passed, and in the clearest violation of its provisions,
to set apart for the clergy in Upper Canada, a seventh of all the
land, which is a quantity equal to a sixth of the land granted.... In
Lower Canada the same violation of the law has taken place, with this
difference--that upon every sale of Crown and clergy reserves, a fresh
reserve for the clergy has been made, equal to a fifth of such
reserves." In that way the public in both provinces was systematically
robbed of a large quantity of land, which, Lord Durham estimated, was
worth about L280,000 at the time he wrote. He acknowledges, however,
that the clergy had no part in "this great misappropriation of the
public property," but that it had arisen "entirely from heedless
misconception, or some other error of the civil government of the
province." All this, however, goes to show the maladministration of
the public lands, and is one of the many reasons the people of the
Canadas had for considering these reserves a public grievance.

When political parties were organized in Upper Canada some years after
the war of 1812-14, which had for a while united all classes and
creeds for the common defence, we see on one side a Tory compact for
the maintenance of the old condition of things, the control of
patron