op Strachan. It is convenient to mention
here that this phase of the clergy reserve question again came before
able English counsel at the Equity Bar, when Hincks visited London in
1852. After they had given an opinion unfavourable to the Colborne
patents on the case as submitted to them by the Canadian prime
minister, it was deemed expedient to submit the whole legal question
to the Court of Chancery in Upper Canada, which decided unanimously,
after a full hearing of the case, that the patents were valid. But
this decision was not given until 1856, when the whole matter of the
reserves had been finally adjusted, and the validity of the creation
of the rectories was no longer a burning question in Upper Canada.

When Poulett Thomson came to Canada in the autumn of 1839 as
governor-general, he recognized the necessity of bringing about an
immediate settlement of this very vexatious question, and of
preventing its being made a matter of agitation after the union of the
two provinces. The imperial authorities had already disallowed an act
passed by the legislature of Upper Canada of 1838 to reinvest the
clergy reserves in the Crown, and it became necessary for Lord
Sydenham--to give the governor-general's later title--to propose a
settlement in the shape of a compromise between the various Protestant
bodies interested in the reserves. Lord Sydenham was opposed to the
application of these lands to general education as proposed in several
bills which had passed the assembly, but had been rejected by the
legislative council owing to the dominant influence of Bishop
Strachan. "To such a measure," says Lord Sydenham's biographer,[20]
"he was opposed; first because it would have taken away the only fund
exclusively devoted to purposes of religion, and secondly, because,
even if carried in the provincial legislature, it would evidently not
have obtained the sanction of the imperial parliament. He therefore
entered into personal communication with the leading individuals among
the principal religious communities, and after many interviews,
succeeded in obtaining their support to a measure for the distribution
of the reserves among the religious communities recognized by law, in
proportion to their respective numbers."

Lord Sydenham's efforts to obtain the consent "of leading individuals
among the principal religious communities" did not succeed in
preventing a strong opposition to the measure after it had passed
through the leg